Small Steps to Organizing Success

jrae_01 I have clients find out what type of learner they are (audio, visual, or kinesthetic) so we can figure out a better plan to stay organized. I also get them involved in the process to ensure that the organized area stays maintained.

JAN MOYER All due respect to the ladies, but I am starting to believe after twenty years of helping people weed closets, garages and WHATEVERS as I decorate their homes, that organization is a personality type in the same way as fat or a general body type seems ingrained.
The "skinnies" have a place for everything, and everything in its place. They retain not an ounce of anything they do not need or use. They are envied. Ask one of them if they have a yard of purple string and they run to it and even own a special bag for you to tote it home. They don't read this stuff, as they think everyone is like them. They cannot imagine otherwise, and their spotless homes always have fresh flowers with clean water.
Next we have the "mildly overweight". They could shed some stuff, but for the most part it doesn't interfere with a good looking home, or the life within. Occasionally, they "diet like maniacs" and keep the serious damage of clutter to a minimum. It is very safe to enter their homes at most any time. They even throw impromptu parties with a simple trip to the grocery. They are obsessed with making their homes even better, and are suckers for articles on how to do it, particularly those with really cute mud rooms. They are the strivers for perfection, and they never EVER give up.
Alas and last,....... we have the folks who struggle with "serious obesity". They keep the stores, the internet, and the professional organizers, and the container stores in business. It is a minefield within their homes. Their housekeeping issues rival the storage and organizing problems. There is no amount of time that will help them get, or stay organized, as they never plug the intake. Closets explode, they purchase multiples of everything, because "hey, ya never know." They shop big box. They shop online. They shop. They are sentimental, so nothing can be tossed, and they save lint. They are depressed, or too busy, or they suffer from attention disorder, or they "need more storage", but mostly they suffer from a lack of a routine, and an absolute inability to put a single thing in the same place twice. They are the "I will do it later" folks, and later never comes. They have had organizers at the home multiple times, always with the same result. A week later, they are in the same state they were before they started. They have baskets and notebooks and filing cabinets, and every system known to man. It all disintegrates to become part of the ongoing mess. Dishes go in the sink and remain, laundry piles up or remains tangled in a basket. Beds go unmade within the mess of clothes and shoes. .... and the bags of more clothes and shoes which arrived via UPS today, and unpaid bills on the nightstand collect as much dust as the catalogues they are hidden within.....and on it goes. And on, and on....
You are either laughing, or upset, or disbelieving of the three types. Ask any residential cleaning person/service if you don't believe me.

beeje Having close to 200 cookbooks already, I gave up clipping recipes long ago. Since those that are clippable are usually from magazines, I just find them online, save to my computer (sorting into categories such as soups/stews, seafood entrees, salads, desserts, etc) and then view them from the laptop or tablet computer when it's time to cook. Not only is it a greener solution, it's also super easy to share recipes with friends/family by simply emailing.

Bette Love these articles. According to Jan M. I'm struggling to stay "thin". "Putting things in the same place" is huge! I do have three other businesses with paper that goes with that. Parents loved to travel and took tons of pictures. I call a shredding company every 6 months for documents (keep a laundry basket for this in garage. they crunch staples, CDs litely bound material). Garage is now being renovated, so even my photos, slides are being scanned, either personally or sending out for this service, and throwing these away!! My HUGE problem is saving boxes my electronics, or computers come it. How can I stop this?

Beth Swantek Love the comments from Jan Moyer regarding the skinnies, mildly overweight, and obese. Said so well Jan. I'm a designer/organizer and say to myself when going into one of these situations with the "materially obese," "It's not going to last, but I'm getting paid so I can't complain. I have found these obese ones to be the most laid back people who always have time for me, unlike a skinny like me who seems to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

patscats2 Jan, I don't get it, but then again I'm not skinny, but am very organized and a minimalist. I'm not a "stuff" person. Only own what I need or use. My closets are empty. I find it offensive that you compare a person's body type to forms of clutter and hoarding. If you read Julie Mrgenstern's book on clutter and organizing you'd know that people who have difficulty organizing suffer from deep seeded mental issues that can stem from a number of things. I just find your characterizations offensive. I had a couple of relatives who were hoarders and their lives were a living hell everyday.

Since so many people "liked" what you said I suppose I'm the minority in thinking your "joke" was not funny.

deeniekov Not a physiologist or a therapist or a designer. Just a farm wife. Who inherited antiquing traits and keep trying to shed them as well as the stuff that I hang on to. I'm a bit overweight or mildly obese, stuff-wize.

It has become easier to shed stuff while cleaning out 60 years the house/farm of my parent's traits, which included the antiquing (possibly due to need), heritage of having NOTHING after their parents sneaked to freedom almost 100 years ago, living through the depression and just an appreciation for history.

I shall not be offended by your humor, Jan. Rather entertained by it. (I copied it to show to my house cleaner!) I shall continue to analyze my situation. I constantly pare down as my children are not interested in heirlooms, even intricate handmade ones. I probably do have issues with family of original but I choose not to dwell on it.

And...tonight I just cleaned up from a garage sale this last weekend! I have some empty closets and cupboards! What a good feeling!

JAN MOYER Okay.... lets be honest here. I used an analogy in an earlier comment that some may have "missed". The comment wasn't meant to be in any way about body types, simply about how DIFFICULT it seems to change that type, and I related that to the very same difficulty many have with changing clutter for better in their homes. Patscats is correct in that there are reasons for this, they are often emotional ( I said that) and sometimes there are very sad deep seated problems beyond any we can imagine. BUT, and it is a big one ( one t in that ladies !!), a lot of the problems are just habit. Some are laziness, or even a refusal to acknowledge that work expands to fill time, junk expands to fill storage, and storage can expand to the point of crowding you out of your own home. Cookies eaten relentlessly will make you chubby and unhealthy, no matter the reason you eat them. Consumer goods of any kind, acquired and cared for with abandon, will multiply, and their condition will disintegrate. Over- acquiring will obscure the best in your home, and "clutter" the best of your mind at the same time. It will make simple cleaning tasks daunting, and daunting tasks herculean. That alone can make for strain in a household. We are talking simply of habits for the ordinary regular folks, not the very extremes. One "thing" set down for "later" becomes thirty misplaced things for many people. The habit you're trying to change, must be replaced with a new and different one, just as a cookie must usually be replaced with a celery stick, or an apple. A cigarette with chewing gum or a mint. And it IS hard. That's why there are distinct body types, and "levels" of clutter and housekeeping habits too! They cross all shapes and sizes of homes, and they cross all the shapes and sizes of the folks who inhabit them. Need proof? Bet that there are as many organizing books as diet and exercise books. I rest the analogy..(:

susig I've recently started an "organizational group" with two of my best friends. We take one day a week and rotate going to each other's houses and work on organizing just one area-a closet, a small room, etc. We have so much fun chatting and laughing while we work that it feels more like a play date and less like a chore. we always end with enough time to drop off any donations before the kids get home from school. It's so motivating that we usually accomplish a few smaller tasks in our own homes before the next "play date"!

jrae_01 The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. A neat freaks dream book. =)

defarrell I like Jan's analogy. I was someone who was overweight, worked hard to make life style changes, and am now enjoying better health and fitness. Getting organized is my next big battle, and I'm making good progress. There are a lot of similarities, and I think if you've conquered one of these things (either losing weight or getting organized) it should serve as inspiration that you can achieve the other as well. It's all about changing your habits.

lottabreyer Jan, I think you're spot on and your analysis is hilarious! However, I think it's missing one category, although I don't know what the "weight" analogy would be. My mother belongs to this cagetory (and I to some extent): she does not shop much or collect things, but she also does not prioritize house keeping because so many other, more interesting things are keeping her busy. She is not a hoarder, but is very frugal and doesn't throw away things, and as a result her house is a mess.

A & D Glass Inc. Just tell yourself that you only have to do it for 30 minutes. Most of the time, you'll pick up momentum and continue longer. I'm OCD on the organization, but this even helps me get started some times.

debb v My next reorganizing project will be the business and household filing systems. Hubby's "system" leaves alot to be desired, and foot high piles of paper all over.
A&D's comment about the time limits on straightening works GREAT for kids. If you tell them to 'clean their room' they'll be in there for hours and get nothing done. If you tell them that you're settng the timer for 15 minutes and they should see how much they can get done, things actually get done!. I find that if you do this 30 minutes before you leave the house they rush to get it done! Seriously, if two or three people straighten for 15 minutes a day it all stays neat!

JAN MOYER Beth Zeigler now gets a homework assignment! Next time you're in a book store, browse a copy of a new release entitled " Life at Home in the Twenty First Century" (Arnold, Greasch, Ragazzinni, Ochs). It's a study of 32 families in the Los Angeles area, all with kids, and..... well! let's just say you only need to look at the photos! If you didn't believe my first comment with the humorous analogy to body type, you won't believe your eyes when you open the book, and you will at least understand how the out and out consumption of goods has put comfortable and stress free living in peril! Along with the possibility of EVER getting organized... a non-liklihood for so many. The volume of possessions acquired is simply out of control.

Lisa Ward I loved Jan's comments. I am not a skinny but HATE the time and money disorganization wastes. I don't have anything in my home that is not functional or loved. the only sentimental items I own are organized and stored out of site. I shop but not as recreation and believe in repurposing. So what would I be?

janakilakshman Whatever you are,you seem to be doing an enviable job....!If not skinny,hmmmmmm...may be 'always in shape'?Way to go!

tarabunge Love this discussion. I fall into the disaster category. I could blame Mom for not insisting I make my bed, and hence I feel more comfortable in chaos. Regardless, for whatever reason, order does NOT come naturally to me. I truly envy the organized person. I've discussed it in therapy, and wonder if a type B can ever become type A. Perhaps I should strive to make enough money to pay someone to keep my life in order.....

JAN MOYER tarabunge
I have a client who probably could be you. She can create chaos in a room simply by entering. By the time I finished decorating her home.... I was exhausted from the hauling, sorting, cleaning, carting away, that accompanied the process. In the case of this home, every person in it shares the "oh, put it anywhere" trait, and the house is very large, so you can imagine how, when that trait is accompanied by the resources to buy anything you WANT... exactly how bad it can get.
Why are some people in this state? MOST of the problem is one simple thing: THEY "SAVE UP" VERY SMALL TASKS. Yes, it is true. Eighty percent of the problem is just that simple. Now, you will gaze around your home, and you will say, OH NO... my problem is larger than that. I say bunk!! Your problem became larger because of that "one simple thing". You mentioned your bed, so let's start there. I will close my eyes..... your chair is piled with clean laundry, or dirty laundry. The bed is unmade. The dresser, if you could see the top, is piled with little tags from purchases, coupons, books, clothes, deodorant, jewelry, and DUST. A laundry basket explodes in a corner. Under your bed... who knows? A ton of dust, and every single thing you shoved under so that now it is IMPOSSIBLE to clean under there. Your side tables next to the bed are coated with dust, on which sit the bills you mean to pay, the books you have been reading for six months, water bottles from a week ago, and the toothpaste that belongs in the bathroom. I won't discuss the floor, as you haven't seen it in weeks. Am I close, is it NOT that bad, or is it worse? I will assume just for this purpose, that I was accurate.
How did it get like that? One day at a time. One t-shirt, one pair of socks, one pair of boots, or jeans. One book, one days mail, one empty kleenex box, at a time. One basket of laundry not washed, or one basket not folded and stored. One thing dropped on the floor, one towel tossed on a dresser or chair. One waste basket not emptied. One bag of cards and wrapping paper shoved under the bed. One thing ordered online, and not returned when it didn't fit. And it is still in the box with all the packing, and the extra catalogue. Every single item, or small mess happened one item, one moment, and one day at a time. You saved up the small items, and the small easy to do moments of tidying/putting away/hanging up/ throwing out/ dusting/vacuuming.... and there you are. Do you think you may deserve better? In that room, or any other room??
Please, Go buy this book:
The Messies Manual
by Sandra Felton
I wish you luck. Half the battle is choosing to change. Yes, it IS a choice.

cherc Amazing comments again Jan! Truth.

niamunchkins I think i'm mildly to kinda obese. My bathroom is spotless but my bedroom.... My nightstand's jewelry holder is a MESS! I try to spend ten minutes every night picking up. My desk is so cluttered I have never written on it in a few years! My floors are spotless though :D

tarabunge As I mentioned above, I suffer from obesity organizationally speaking. I'm tired of envying the skinnies and I'm ready to hire a trainer! So, how do I find a good organizer/cleaner?

JAN MOYER tarabunga.
Mmmmmm. I think you should review your list of friends and family FIRST. Who among them is good at this? The organized are usually good cleaners too!! But I will tell you this as fact: You must learn to tackle the tasks you believe you can not do, or think you are not good at, or do not want to do, or think are too large, or too whatever. Why do I say this? Because there is no once and done to either the cleaning or the organizing issue. And the reason for that is you are living versus dead. So while a once a week cleaning person is a luxury, you must still perform the daily picking up and mucking out of LIFE. An organizing professional can be very helpful in getting you on track, but you must maintain a new system and the habits, it or the money is wasted.
Call for help. But be prepared to dig in. To change, is to change the hour by hour, day by day, week by week habits that are making the house obese. No different than beginning a new and healthy eating style, it isn't for a day, or a week. It is to want to change the status quo for the long term.

tarabunge I totally agree and want to make changes and learn new skills. I actually have significantly improved through the years, and have even had periods of near skinniness. It doesn't come naturally, but I when I have enjoyed order - it feels great! At work I am great with keeping things in there place, not procrastinating, and maintaining order. I can use the system fine, But i really struggle with setting up a system of my own. I have sought help from some fabulous ladies and it does help. They won't let me pay them!

One problem I have is when I get some cleaning time, I waste time on details. For example, when I organize a drawer, I have to take everything out, shop vac any fuzzies, wipe out drawer, lint roll the clothes, resold, and start a bag for goodwill (which of course rarely makes it there). So Then i love that drawer, but I don't want to do another one. Now I will clean toilet and mirror. Then I will try to file papers for awhile until I find something I need to make a phone call for, so I throw in load of laundry (then forget about it). Then I pull out vacuum, pull sheets off bed, put all random things on bed so I can vacuum. Then I remember I have to go to bank, so I run errands (probably buy something to help me get organized). I Come home clean kitchen, remember about laundry, etc...... Usually it ends with me being too exhausted to figure out where to put everything on my bed. Since the bed isn't made anyway, I sleep in the spare room where I trip over the vacuum I intended to use again before I put it away.

Yep, it's chaos.

JAN MOYER tarabunga
COWABUNGA !!!!! Okay, this is attention deficit disorder to the max and it is funny... and yet not FUNNY. It is also called perfectionism,which oddly and very often goes hand in hand with A.D.D. which is not very hilarious in that is is the very thing which keeps you from achieving anything close to that state of anything resembling perfect. Please. Call a very good friend. You are going to spend ONE day, on ONE room. You can pay her or not. But you are going into one room, and you are not leaving that ONE room, until it is purged of useless "crapola" and all dirt and grime. It may take all day. You are going to take a picture at finish and post it prominently.Then, for one week, you are going to maintain that ONE room. If it still looks like the picture you took at the end of a week, your friend is coming back, and you will do the same to another room. JUST one more. Then you will take a picture of THAT room and post it prominently. You will work your way through the house, one room, and one day at a time. Each of the rooms must look like the finished photo.... no cheating, and stuffing things under beds and in closets. Once you have done all the rooms, make a list of basic tasks to be done daily in each room. Some rooms will have several, and some will have no daily tasks. Some, like laundry, may be once or twice a week. Making the bed, loading the dishwasher after meals... no skipping a day or a meal. A.D.D is not a laughing matter, nor is the way it can affect living conditions. It will be a constant battle to ignore the urge to stray from simple task at hand. You are going into battle. But it is one you can win with desire and vigilance.... and help. Everyone deserves the calm of a comfortable and serene home. You deserve it. Think of it as gifting yourself and Good luck!!!

wredding Re ADHD and inability to be consistent with housework.... That is too true. Staying tidy poses a serious frustration to those with ADHD; inattentive types vacillate from being hyperfocused on, say, one drawer at the exclusion of anything else, to flitting from one task to another and not finishing anything. Such behavior is not, however, laziness or a personal choice but physiological in origin for ADHDers. I cringe at the extended comparison with weight, since our culture focuses on weight a little too much and self-esteem and blame are too often associated with that. ADHDers already beat themselves up enough! But otherwise I like Jan's suggestions and it is clear Jan has a personal understanding of ADHD clients. But as a mom in a small house full of ADHDers (and devoid of closet space, even for our vacuum cleaner), I find the biggest challenge is motivating kids/husband and myself to stay on top of things. My real-world compromise has included banishing visitors who are judgmental about our living style from our private space -- I keep them to the (more public) living areas. I also notice and bear hug any kid who does what I ask them to do on the first ask (e.g., put their shoes in the shoe cabinet or whatever). I focus on the areas that really and truly matter - hygiene, clean kitchen, homework and library books in the right place, etc - and consider knicknacks to be the enemy (I quietly re-gift those when possible). Beyond that, the most effective self- motivators have been (1) to clean house with a neat-nick relative who lives nearby and understands our need for occasional help. It makes her feel good to help, and we help her in other ways. Tag-teaming really helps me to keep my focus. (2) I challenge my kids to occasional "seven-minute cleanups" in which we'll target specific jobs in a specific room on a posted checklist and set the buzzer for seven minutes. Everyone (EVERYONE) pitches in and we check those boxes off as we go. ANYONE can do 7 minutes; and with all five of us working on it, we get 7x5=35 minutes' worth of work accomplished in that time frame. Lastly, (3) I periodically make sure to invite people over for a neighborhood meeting or dinner party for, say, two days from now, and that forces me to clean house by then, since I do care about how my place looks -- I just can't focus without a compelling deadline. Hope that helps someone.

patscats2 At one time I thought I had OCD and ADHD but then I learned it was old lady CRS. Can't Remember Sh..... and that's why I jump from one thing to another. LOL

stevi Jan makes some great points and excellent tips. I really like the one room plan- and I will start with my bedroom tomorrow- I am inspired as it is 3:44am as I am reading this- maybe a neater room would inspire sleep. Thanks Jan

JAN MOYER stevi,
I hope you got some rest! You will be surprised to find that a nice clean, organized and peaceful room is more conducive to a good nights sleep. And who doesn't deserve that? In fact.... take a before and after pic, and post it here. You can do it!!! Good luck to you.

JAN MOYER Stevi,
So what happened babe? It's been five weeks kiddo....maybe that should be your xmas present to yourself. A serene room and a good nights sleep......?

astraea Jan - You're terrific!! I fell into the "mildly overweight" category .. and it's applicable to both me & my organizing personality! I can easily see that "weight" can be substituted with the way we approach other things in our lives.

One of the projects I'd like to do something about this year is jewelry. I'm a little embarassed to admit that I'm still using a jewelry box I got probably as a sweet 16 present, and it's beginning to show its age (LOL). I've also accumulated more jewelry over the years than fits in it, and are often "sets" in nice boxes. So I've got the boxes stacked neatly in a drawer .. but you have to open them up to see what's inside .. every time. Because of their small size, it's not possible to post pictures on the boxes. I'd like to get a new jewelry box, but don't know where to start (and hate giving up the nice original boxes, some of which are leather).

marthafaudoa I have a motto that helps me declutter: there is always someone in need of the stuff I don't use. I make sure it goes to the right hands. (A school in need of books, a club in need of art supplies, a friend in need of a sofa, etc) At the beginning I was afraid I made need it in the future, and I will regret giving it away. Soon I realize that it never happened. When Ever I need something it came back by other means. I remember giving all my babies stuff away, crib, stroller, gadgets etc. after 4 years I was pregnant of my last child, and a friend of mine who wanted to get rid of her baby things gave it to me. It was in much better conditions and updated that if I had just kept mine.

marylou1712 Any idea how to inspire a husband to go through clothes. This is a big problem.

JAN MOYER Marylou
mmmmmmm a promise of carnal entertainment may do it, and possibly a very favorite meal. I personally think it may take both dangling carrots,, and in any case if that does the trick let us know? : ) LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fidelise I am having great difficulty parting with or even paring down the thousands of family photos I have.

astraea @fidelise - I've often wondered if there's any photo organizing software. Now that I have a scanner, it would be easy to convert all my photographs, but I want to be able to identify key people in them, so I can organize them as well.

springlering My friendgirl's mom passed. She was single, could have dealt with it then easily. Three years later she is married, has a ten month old, and her husband is pulling his hair out at this unoccupied house in a very rural area, filled to the rafters with junk. "No it's not!" she argued.
In an effort to help her salvage her marriage, I offered to go clean the house for her. She mumbled something about "well there's a lot of it". No sweat, I've just retired. Give me a week and I'll do what I can. If it takes longer than that, then pay me what you think is fair. A week? She insisted on coming, too. No problem, baby was still in a bouncy chair, so no chance he'd get into something.
Arrived on scene to a massive 4 bedroom stone house, huge family room with ten foot tall,five feet deep wall to wall cupboards, formal living room, second den, dining room, stairwell reading nook, office, and gigantic sunroom that took up half the second floor. It was piled to the ceiling in some places with junk. I had only brought three or four hundred trash bags with me and knew right away we had a problem. It was so rural, we couldn't find anyone who could get a dumpster to us. Or maybe they called back but couldn't get reception, we were so far in the sticks.
The house was so full of junk, we had to share a sofa bed downstairs because we couldn't reach any of the beds.
To top it off, she found her mother's safe had been rifled, probably by the caretaker, and suspected several hundred thousand dollars in cash, jewelry and coins had been taken. I felt bad for her, but doggone it, take some responsibility and get valuables out of an isolated house when someone dies!
But to the cleaning out.....we had words after the first day, tension after the second, and exploded the third day. I had literally filled a two car carport with trash bags from just the family room and kitchen cupboards, and I had been through every single damned scrap of paper with a fine tooth comb, because she was worried there might be cash, stock, bearer bonds,etc caught up in the mess. What set her off the first day was her mom had dozens and dozens of those Danish butter cookie tins she had saved. My friend was convinced these were antiques and worth a fortune. No.....these are what they sell cookies in at Walmart and drug stores, honey. The next day she got upset that I had trashed some tchotchkes from the dollar store. She was sure they were valuable, along with some things her mom had probably purchased at a garage sale because they still had "$.10" cent stickers on them. The la st straw was when I lugged yet another bag outside, and she kicked the bag open (which ticked me off right there) and a newspaper clipping of her sister fell out. "how dare you throw away my childhood!!!!!" she roared.
Well, I dared, because, if you'd stopped to ask me before throwing your conniption fit, you'd know there were four other identical clippings, and so i had saved one for each of you and thrown away the other three. And I also dared because the whole time we were there, you never once lifted a finger to help me or tell me what to keep and what not. I was going by the seat of my reasonably intelligent, dollar-store-quality-identifyin'-pants.
Anyway, let me tell you, offering to help a friend to help you clean up a mess is a pretty darn good way to ruin a friendship. You should have seen her husbands face and the dejected body language when she brought me back to her house to pick up my car three days early.
I would be willing to bet you that all those bags have been brought back into the house for "safekeeping". A really nice house will crumble into ruin, when it could have been sold to fund college for a very nice woman's only grandchild. What few items of worth in the house are an obvious target for burglars. A marriage is teetering under the weight of this "inheritance". And a good friendship of many years is toast.

springlering Anyway,the moral of this story is, a year ago, I came home, and cleaned every last drawer, dresser, cupboard, and closet in my house. If I so much as bumped into a piece of furniture, I sold it.

I told my husband we will NEVER put our kids through something like that. We're orderly, and i'm a neat freak, but we are natural collectors and accumulators. Well I am. With him it's stupid stuff like suitcases of 8tracks he swears he will want some day,

I donated carloads of stuff to goodwill, sold a ton on Craigslist and a yard sale, and photographed and stored jpgs of documents that I then shredded. I got rid of two whole file cabinets of just paper. That was six big black garbage bags of shredded paper!

And after reading the usual schlew of Houzz "Clean Yer Houzz " new years articles this evening, I think I'm going to have a fresh whack at it this week.

It was beautiful, it was cathartic, it was freeing, and it was like being high on empty space.

jukesgrrl @Springlering Wow, your friend has the same psychological issues her mother had. So sad and such a waste of money and resources!

I faced a project that wasn't nearly that bad and it almost undid me. Moving my widowed mother out of the house she and my father built 50 years earlier was the single most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. Added to the physical labor was the enormous stress of the arguing. I was downsizing her three-story house into a one-story with a smaller footprint. And I say "I was" because she did nothing. She didn't pack a single tea cup. And when anyone else came to "help," she would draw them into her nostalgia trip and they would contribute no labor.

I finally found a floorplan of her future house from the builder's website and insisted she explain to me where she was going to put something before I would pack it. That's where all the fighting came in. The beloved house was sold and she HAD to get out, but she resisted every item that needed to be gotten rid of. It helped me to put like with like. When she could see that she had 40 bud vases, she would have to admit that it wasn't cost effective to move them all cross-country. But had she had the financial wherewithal to do that, I have no doubt her entire house would have been professionally packed and moved into another place the same size as the one she was leaving. And the boxes would be piled up there largely unopened.

stevi I think all people over 60 with children ought to read this. I have continued to purge since comments by Jan Moyer a few months back- but when reading this I thought of my daughter and how she doesn't need this grief. So I'm finished with the master bedroom and kitchen , dining room . I now have a commitment from my husband that March is all about the basement. It will be a great weight off my shoulders and my daughter will be thrilled - especially since she knows when the time comes her brothers will be of no help!
Thanks for the extra motivation!

eztia For help learning how to break huge tasks into 15 minute segments, and maintaining a household in routines lasting no more than 15 minutes at a time, please look at FlyLady.net. It has been very helpful for me.

astraea The decluttering person I know uses 18 minute intervals .. but I guess most people have an attention span between 15 minutes and a half hour!

A & D Glass Inc. I cleaned out my parents' home with absolutely NO help from three brothers. I kept what I wanted, distributed a few things to them, and gave the rest away. I would literally talk out loud to myself "Mom, why did you move 20 coffee cups when you downsized? How were you going to fit 20 people in here?!" I think in the end it was good therapy, and helped me feel better a lot quicker than the boys.

JAN MOYER A and D glass,
I feel your pain, the same happened to me with one sister who helped to the max, and one who left us to dangle. And the prior 21 months of illness leading to the grand clean-up wasn't a ton of laughs either. But, you are 100%n correct on outcome. Put your clear head on your pillow at night, and know that "someone" knows. There is nothing like a clean conscience of having done your best to elicit a good nights sleep, and a lot more as well.. You did GOOD. : )

dhfales Interesting comments. My husband retired and we sold our 3300 sq. ft home and moved into a much smaller town home. I am not a hoarder. We had, however, some nice antiques, china, and glassware. All were lovely things that we thought had value. Letting go was easy; finding buyers and homes for these items was not! Young people today do not want china and crystal. --if you need to declutter and downsize, start early. It takes more time than you think.

countrygirlatheart General!! That's the hat I have to wear sometimes when it comes to keeping things under control in the home!! The men in the home just want to know what needs to get done, when and then they tackle the project....but I do have to give them boundaries on their 'collections'!! My hubby & sons caps for instance! They each got a cap rack for Christmas that holds 30 and thats all they can have! SOOO nice to have been freed from THAT collection!! Every little bit counts!! Keep on with the Organization War everyone and find yourself a General to help!! lol!

Debbie Abate I am a bit offended by the weight comparison. I do agree with those who understand ADD and ADHD. It is very hard to focus. I feel there are far more emotional issues other than weight that affects us to become better organized and purge. I also had to empty my parents house of 55 years, they grew up in the depression era and served in WWII, both veterans. They kept everything, not because they were skinny or fat, actually they were both skinny and active and intelligent. But saved everything. Believe me some of these traits are passed along to children. I also have 3 brothers, but thank god they helped. :)) I struggle with small spaces and not a lot of storage areas. I have down sized a lot, but still need to find clever ways to get organized. I like the room at a time or set aside a time limit. Taking pics are a good idea. But we need to recognize that clutter etc....goes deeper than size.

catnmouss I love your article! I'm slightly obese, and everything you said is true. It don't help that my three children don't do a thing around the house, or my hubby. They just walk in and kick their shoes off, throw the coat. Now, I have finally gotten sick of it, I just have to stay off the computer and get started, lol. No really, everything you said is true. As I started reading I was anticipating getting to my weight comparison. When I got there it was true. I think it will help me reflect back, I'm keeping this article, and getting inspired from it, so that I can finally get organized in my life, not just my home!

Thank you for an added wakeup call!
Cathy

JAN MOYER catnmouse,
Good for you! And stick to your guns and demand some help from hubby and kids. I took a bit of heat here for the weight analogy, but it has nothing to with POUNDS!! It only referred to the difficulty in changing any ingrained type of housekeeping style, and how hard it can be, or why it comes so naturally to others. I am sure we have all watched a size two wolf down fries and a burger, while we struggle to stay at a stable weight on mixed greens! I wish you much luck along with the power to change. Even small steps over time, make big impact.