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The RETHINK logo was designed with intention. My dear and incredibly skilled graphic designer friend Nicole Wilson, owner of Inspired Indigo (www.inspiredindigoshop.com), designed the RETHINK logo. Nicole listened to me talk about my new business and latched on to my "sort, reduce, place, use" words and incorporated them into the logo itself. Let's unpack that phrase. Sort. Reduce. Place. Use. To get a handle on your stuff you need to give focus and time to each of these four words. Sort. Reduce. Place. Use. You must know what you have; it is frequently helpful to have less of it; you must decide where you want to keep it; then you must be able to find it when you need it. These four things come easily to me. I do them almost without thinking in my home and office. I have all my life. But not everyone can, or does, and not necessarily easily. The statistics are startling. There are 300,000 items in the average American home. The average American woman owns 30 outfits (up from 9 in 1930). Consumers in the U.S. (a country with roughly 3% of the world’s children) purchase 40% of the world’s toys. (Boston Globe). We really are a society of consumers. As of 2020, the U.S. population increased their rental storage by more than 10% since 2010, and the self-storage industry has grossed over $30 billion in revenue (InvestmentBank.com). This excess has even led to reality-TV shows like A&E Network's Storage Wars, which depicts what can happen when people don't pay their rental fees on those storage units. If I were a different person, I would buy a self-storage facility and help you keep all that stuff. But that is simply not what I want for you, dear reader. Having lots of stuff does not buy you peace or happiness. Having lots of stuff causes stress – if not for you, then for the people that must go through your stuff when you are gone. Read my blog post on that here. I believe life is more peaceful and more happy when you gain control of your stuff. Gretchen Rubin writes in her book Outer Order, Inner Calm, “In the context of a happy life, a messy desk or a crowded coat closet is a trivial problem – yet getting control of the stuff of life often makes it easier to feel more in control of our lives generally.” If you are a person with stuff, who seemingly cannot find bottom and are always searching for the thing you need, I want to help sort, reduce, and place your things, so that you can use them when you need them. Helping you know what you have and have what you want is what RETHINK is about. Rethink how you think about your stuff and consider if you really need it all. Are you controlling your stuff, or is it controlling you? When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

The real beginning of any organizing project is deciding what you want to do. What is it that you want to achieve? Envisioning what you want at the end of anything is crucial to getting started. Let’s imagine you decide to tackle organizing your enclosed back porch. Your back porch has not been used in the five years you have lived here as it was a convenient dumping ground when you moved in. Frankly, you’re not entirely sure what is in there. You know you have some old clothes, your dad’s sled, a toilet plunger, some bins of seasonal decorations, and – worst of all – a pile of about 15 boxes that were never opened after the move. But your vision is to be able to sit on that enclosed porch and enjoy your coffee on a Sunday morning, so you hire some help to get it done and keep you accountable. Where do you start? We start by sorting and reducing. This is hard, but also doable. The time it will take is directly correlated to how fast you make decisions. Start by sorting everything into one of three categories: Things you want to keep. Things you want to donate or sell. Things that are trash or recycling. Sometimes pulling out items in the third category is a good place to start. Anything that is broken or unidentifiable should be removed. As a professional organizer, I will not discard anything without asking your first. It may be trash, but it is your trash! However, I will always encourage you to throw broken things away. Truly brave souls may throw out those 15 boxes without opening them. (If you haven’t needed it in five years, are you likely to?) If you don’t want to tempt yourself, give those boxes to your organizer to sort or simply take away. As much as possible, remove the third category from the space entirely; this will clear area to further separate the second category into two piles: things for a donation drop-off, and things to sell. Many people get hung up in the second category, or the “sell” category, imagining that someone is really going to want what they have or that what they have is valuable. If you have room to store these items, you can of course do so. But the value of items to be sold can easily be over-estimated. I am a collector of books, and I spent a good deal of time during COVID quarantine attempting to sell books on eBay. Although I sold a few, the effort ended up costing us money. It is much better to either donate them to libraries or other donation sites that will take them and recycle those in truly poor condition. Once you decide to donate items, remove them from the space as soon as possible. After sessions I take away as much as possible in my car so that my clients get that space back immediately. Load up your car and do the same. Move anything you want to keep to where in your home you'll use it. Many things get stuck in boxes on porches that can be used in the home. Take it there now. Don’t get too distracted from your project. The idea here is to keep going until you’re done. At the end of this phase of your project, you now can see the outline of a beautiful enclosed porch. Remember, having coffee on a Sunday morning on this porch will feel so good when the space makes you feel relaxed and happy. Hold on to your vision – it will give you energy to keep going. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

Sorting and Reducing is hard work. Placing is a bit more fun. Using is the reward. In my previous post, Sorting and Reducing, we imagined the enclosed back porch of your home, used only for storage for the five years you have lived here. Your vision is to enjoy your beautiful, enclosed porch, and you have hired a professional organizer to help make it happen. The first step is to sort things into categories: Keep, Sell, Donate, Recycle, or Trash. And as you sort, reduce, reduce, reduce down to those things you really need, want, or use. These are your belongings, accumulated over time, and while the organizer can help you sort, only you can decide what to keep. The time it takes to do this work is directly correlated to how quickly you make decisions. It takes time and sometimes can feel overwhelming. I helped a young couple reorganize their kitchen to help prepare for a coming baby. In the middle of sorting through pantry contents – with everything strewn across the kitchen table, the counter, and their toddler’s play table – the husband’s eyes caught mine and he his eyes were like saucers. He looked terrified. I could tell what he was thinking. Everything from their cupboards was sitting out in their kitchen. What if we ran out of time and I just left it like that? The temporary chaos was just too much. I reassured him that this was the middle of the mess and that we were about to the turn the corner. I asked him to trust the process. So he took a breath, kept going, and sure enough it all came together like a puzzle shortly thereafter. The process is to sort and reduce, and sort and reduce. Trust that if you do this it will all come together. It always does. Back in your enclosed porch project, after all that work sorting and reducing, your belongings are now sorted into three categories: The things you want to Keep remain in the space. Things were Sold or Donated to others. Remaining items went to the recycling center or into a dumpster. If the only remaining items are those you want to keep, "Placing" is easy, right? The truth is that the 4 steps - Sort, Reduce, Place, Use - can be cyclical. It is not a one-and-done. Sometimes you have to go back. And that is okay. You sort a category of items – say, flowerpots – and get rid of several of them. But when you go to place those flowerpots on your available shelving, not all of them fit. Do you go out and buy more shelves? Or get rid of a few more flowerpots? Don't purchase more things to put things in. Marie Kondo says in her book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, “Storage experts are hoarders. . . Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problems have been solved.” Sometimes you don’t need a new storage solution for your flowerpots. Sometimes what you need is fewer flowerpots. The four steps of sorting, reducing, placing, and using can lead to further projects. A few years ago we started organizing the garage. Once that was done, the laundry room attached to the garage looked cluttered. So, we cleared that out, and so on. This is how we organized our garage, laundry room, sunroom, home office, and attic in the summer and fall of 2020. Storing the items you decide to keep often falls into place easily because you have already done the hard work of deciding to keep the item. Available storage can be used first, and additional shelves, bins, racks, or other built-for-purpose items can be purchased, but one of my frequent recommendations to clients it to not go shopping for storage solutions. Don't go shopping for more shelves or bins when what you really need is fewer items to put on the shelves and in the bins you already have. You can always upgrade to better products. Now is not the time to go shopping because what you buy may not work, and worse, make you think you can't be organized. The Place step can also morph into redecorating. A fresh coat of paint can do wonders to brighten a space. Maybe some new rugs would make it more inviting. You may discover that installing a set of French doors will enhance your enclosed porch with easier access to the deck outdoors. All of these costs should be prioritized and they don’t all have to be done right away. They all set the stage for the payoff. Now you get to Use. Enjoy the space! You have worked hard to get here and now enjoying it is your reward. Congratulations! It does need to be maintained. You did all this work; it would be awful to have it slide back to what it was. What can you do to ensure you don’t slide back? Find the answer here. For now, just enjoy the end of your project. Look at the beautiful, enclosed porch. Your vision, realized! Go get a cup of coffee, sit down, and enjoy it. You've earned it! When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

Procrastination is the thief of time. Procrastination is postponing doing something you have to do that you don’t particularly want to do right now. The idea of procrastination is wrapped up in the concept of distractions, the ability to focus, and the attraction of “shiny objects”, and in today’s multimedia world, distractions abound. One could argue that during COVID lockdown, we all had a whole lot of time. Many things were postponed or cancelled. Suddenly families had fewer commitments and travel was largely out of the question. We learned how to work at home and be productive when not in the office. But when you are at home all the time, it is easy to get distracted by household chores or streaming services or the dog or linger over your breakfast newsfeed instead of buckling down to work. The truth is that we all have no more nor less time in a day than we had before COVID. How we choose to fill that time is completely up to us, and it is in fact a choice. 4 tips to avoid the results of procrastination 1. Capture distracting thoughts on paper so you can let them go. Distracting thoughts can derail you. Write things down in a designated space when you think of them, and then schedule those thoughts into action items in your calendar as soon as you can. Something I learned during COVID is that distracting thoughts can keep me up at night. I now keep a notebook by my bed, along with a flashlight and a pen. That way I can jot things down at 3:00 a.m. when I think of them. Once released to paper, your brain can let it go. 2. Embrace the idea of rhythms and routines. Some people dislike the idea of routines. If your personality is such that you don’t like to be told what to do, you may not want to "have to do" something on a certain day. So allow yourself to be flexible. Nothing is better for housekeeping than establishing some basic routines. In fact, this is what our grandmothers did. Without the ridiculous distractions we have today, they were able to get on with business and get things done. Here is an old rhyme you may recognize from an old storybook. Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Bake on Wednesday, Brew on Thursday, Churn on Friday, Mend on Saturday, Go to meeting on Sunday. Multiply this concept for your business (client contacts Monday, meetings Tuesday, blog post on Thursday) or your daily family routine (homework done before dinner, shoes placed away when you come in the door, hang your coat and hat) and you have the rhythms of a relaxed, tidy family home. Establish rhythms in your life and home. Those rhythms give you energy and purpose and before you know it you are accomplishing more than you thought you could. 3. Recognize that you are procrastinating. In some ways, this is the single most effective thing you can do to stop procrastinating. It is so easy to think you are on task and then realize you got distracted. Pay attention to what you are doing and recover when you notice your purpose has wandered. Sometimes it is startling to discover at the end of the day that you wasted hours on non-productive tasks. 4. Try the Pomodoro Method. This technique is quite popular perhaps because it is fairly easy to remember. First, pick a single task you need to complete. Next, set a timer for 25 minutes. Focus on that single task until the timer goes off, then take a 5-minute break. Reset your timer for another 25 minutes. Repeat this pattern 3-4 times, and then take a longer break. You can accomplish a lot in a morning when you focus on something in intervals, knowing that there is a fixed end point to that focus. Procrastination and Shame Procrastination can be hard to admit. There is a stigma that somehow you are lazy if you procrastinate. But we all do it, and it is not always tied to a lack of discipline. Remind yourself that time is a finite resource. We all get the same amount of it each day. How you choose to spend that time says a lot about you. Do you spend that time browsing the internet or flipping through social media? Or do you purposely work your priorities to achieve the goals you have for yourself and your family? Owning your time and controlling where it goes is really an exercise in choosing your legacy. We all are going to run out of time eventually. So it is important we spend the time we have on the things we value most – the things that really matter. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

I invite you to an organizing challenge – with yourself! Can you commit to doing 1 organizing task per day for 7 days to start a real change in your life? You don't need to register for anything or be accountable to anyone but you. But tackling a single task a day for a short few days can help kickstart good habits. Even if it doesn’t, you can accomplish something solid of which you can be proud. Sometimes the thought of organizing is just downright daunting. You look around your home or apartment and think, “Where do I even start?” and so you sit down with a book or the remote control and avoid it. But while you may not be able to organize your entire home in 7 days, you CAN make some changes that can shift your mindset and make your life easier. And if nothing else, you will have 7 areas tidy and clean. January is the traditional month to start new habits but you can start a New You anytime. You are missing out on 11 whole other months to make positive changes in your life if you keep it to only January. So let’s get started! Day #1: Clear out under your bathroom sink. Choose this one small area of your home that is disorganized and straighten it out. Empty the space. Sort things out, throw away junk/empties/products you don’t like, and rethink how you store things as you put them back. If you need labels, Brothers P-Touch PT70BM label makers are a good price point for a home-use model. Day #2: Sort out and reduce your kitchen cooking utensils. This one can be done quickly. Gather all your cooking utensils from wherever you keep them: various drawers, counter-top containers, the dishwasher, or the drying rack by the sink. Sort them and reduce duplicates. For each type – say, wooden spoons – keep the best and a spare, and consider donating the rest. Finally, rethink how you put them back in storage. I bought these bamboo drawer dividers to divide our kitchen drawers. Day #3: Cancel the junk mail. This one takes a few minutes but is very satisfying. Stop unsolicited mail, phone calls, and email by visiting the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Information site here. Work your way through each link and lessen the junk. Day #4: Slim down your keychain. Rethink how many keys you need to carry. I used to carry too many things on my keychain. My weak point is to use souvenir or keepsake keychains for too long. Reduce the extras and remove keys you don’t need to carry every day and label them with these. Streamline your keychain to only those you really need. Day #5: Free up your bedroom chair for sitting. Piles of shirts worn once; jeans that are not quite dirty enough to wash; and extra bulky sweaters that don’t fit in your drawers. These can all get heaped on the chair (or the treadmill, or the dresser top, or the floor.) Take back the space for its intended purpose. It may build up again (don’t get discouraged!) but clear it now to enjoy the feeling of space. Day #6: Start a returns bin. Place a medium-sized cardboard box by the door you most frequently use to leave your home. This is your new temporary hold-all for library books you have finished reading, things you borrowed from a neighbor, and clothing that needs to be returned unworn. Spend a few days collecting these things in the box, and then take the box and return all the items. Then, recycle the box. Day #7: Use the sides of your furniture. It is so easy to place removable hooks on the sides of kitchen cabinets to hang dish towels, or to hang your yoga mat in your workout space, or on the inside of the coat closet door to hang winter scarves. If you prefer a more polished look, you can also install permanent hook racks in your kitchen to hang aprons and canvas reusable bags. Let me know how it goes! These 7 tasks may not all apply to you – and if so , consider it a day off. But see if you can complete these in the next 7 days and see if your home feels easier to manage. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

After you organize something, wouldn't it be nice if it just stayed that way? Unfortunately it is not that easy. But don't be discouraged. Help is here! Here is a picture of my office this morning. Even with the skills, knowledge, and tools of a professional organizer at my fingertips my office is temporarily a mess, and certainly is not “Instagram-worthy”. I share this today because your house or office may look like this, too. Things “get on top of you”, as my husband says, and suddenly you have a heap of things piled in the corner of your office and your once beautiful space is cluttered and stressful. The good news is that this can be fixed. Those skills, knowledge, and tools I mentioned can be employed to sort out the heap. And you are not alone. Some people are natural born organizers. Their natural inclination is to keep a tidy space. But even naturally organized people follow processes to keep things organized. Sometimes they consciously realize what they are doing. Sometimes it comes so naturally that they do not even have to think about it. And sometimes those processes go haywire. Here are 5 ways to maintain an organized space 1. Every item must have a home. This is a foundational rule. Clutter is literally an accumulation of things that are not where they belong. The idiom “a place for everything and everything in its place” has been around since at least the 17th century for a reason. Part of the problem in my honest photo is that some of those items have not yet been assigned a home. The basket at the top does not have a space yet to live. I need to clear some things out somewhere and assign it a home. Until then, it is resting, as clutter, in my office. Give everything a home. 2. Follow the One-In-One-Out Rule. This is another foundational rule. It is preventative in nature. When you buy something new, discard another, older, version. This can apply to anything. Shoes. Clothes. Purses. Jewelry. In this way, you never over-collect too many of one type of thing. Top Tip: A way to reduce what you have without full-on organizing is to follow the sister rule "One-In-Two-Out". If you buy a pair of shoes, get rid of two. Part of the problem in my honest photo is that I currently have too many books. I generally follow the One-In-One-Out Rule with books but recently brought home books that do not fit in my available shelf space. I literally am in the process of deciding which books can be sold or given away so that my shelves stop being overcrowded. 3. Get an Accountability Partner. If you really struggle with organization, ask someone either in your family or outside your home to encourage you. Sometimes life partners serve well in this role. But if a person is attached to their things they might bristle if a loved one suggests they get rid of their things. Also, you can have uncooperative housemates that simply do not want to maintain as tidy a space as you do. All of this is a process. Sometimes you may have a friend who can fill the role, or a colleague that wants to maintain their tidy home as well. You can also hire a professional organizer to help you gain control over what you have and then help serve as accountability to keep it maintained. 4. Notice When Things Are Getting Off-track Noticing that there is a problem can be more than half the battle. We can get used to living with clutter and so simply not see things piling up. Kitchen countertops are notorious clutter-catchers. You can implement processes, but things can get on top of you. Set a reminder on your phone once a week to make a sweep through your home or office and gather the clutter that has accumulated and put it all away. Just the reminder itself is useful even if you do not have time right away to actually do it. It keeps the idea present in your mind and makes it possible to do. 5. Schedule maintenance checkups with your professional organizer. When you have invested in a paid professional organizer, consider asking them to provide a maintenance package. You can determine the time horizon; 3 months, 6 months, or whatever makes sense. These “refresher visits” are useful. In this way, your hard work is maintained and you do not lose the progress you have made. You will also have access to additional tips and tricks to further organize your space. If you have an area of your home that used to be organized, you are not alone. If you have an area of your home that has never been organized, you are not alone. Organizing is not a one-and-done activity, not even for a professional organizer. Circumstances change and you can suddenly find yourself with clutter. Use the resources you have, pick up and carry on, and reach out for help if you need it. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

How to store your most important records and other valuable belongings Here are some things to consider when deciding whether to keep things in locked storage: How difficult would it be to replace the item? Anything that requires significant paperwork, your time, and/or money to replace from a governmental, financial, or legal body is a good candidate for secure storage. Does it have great financial value? If you have valuable jewels or significant amounts of cash, consider keeping it in either a bank or in secure storage at home. Is it dangerous? Any kind of firearms should be stored locked in safe storage. Is it backup information that would be difficult to replace? Keep your backup data storage secure. If you have terabytes of data stored on external hard drives, you probably have considered secure data storage already. Just remember a backup drive lost in a fire is not backed up. Here is a partial list of the items you should consider for locked storage. This is not exhaustive but catches some high points. Marriage, birth, death, and adoption certificates Passports Social security cards Automobile titles Life insurance policies Property deeds of title Immigration status documents (Visas, Green cards, I-94s, etc.) Divorce decrees Copyrights, patents, or trademark information Which do I need? A home safe or a safe deposit box? It depends on what you need and how long you plan to need it. Both options provide you protection from fire or theft. One major difference between the two options is accessibility. If you choose to keep items in a safe deposit box at your local bank, you will only be able to retrieve those items during bank hours. Under your control at home, you can get in your own safe any time. You may also be limited in the kinds of things you can keep in a bank safe deposit box as you will be subject to their terms and conditions. Another major difference is cost. A one-time outlay for a personal safe may be less expensive over time than paying monthly or annual fees to a bank. A lock box can start as low as $20.00 but keep in mind they can easily walk away. Secure, firesafe, locked storage at home can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, whereas safe deposit boxes can run $50-$200 per year. There are several features you can choose in a home safe, depending on your comfort level and need for complexity. A simple inexpensive lock box could come with a key. You can upgrade to biometric scanners, tamper alerts, and keyless entry options. A safety deposit box of course has the security of a bank vault. Do your research, compare, and purchase only what you need. If I choose a home safe, which should I purchase? There are three main classes of home safe available for purchase. The free standing safe. These can be quite small or enormous, depending on need. There are small, fireproof boxes available on Amazon for as little as $15.00 and steel standing safes taller than the average man available for hundreds of dollars. Again, it depends on what you need. Depending on weight and size, these may not be locked down so an intruder could remove these from your home so keep them someplace discreet. The floor safe. These can also be large or small, but the key benefit is that they are bolted to your floor or surface making it more difficult to easily burgle. While they are locked down, you should also keep them someplace discreet. The wall safe. Just like in the movies, these are built into the frame of your home and are concealed behind artwork or curtains. These offer little fire protection and require construction for installation. Unless you are building your home, these may be difficult to add. Storing important and hard-to-replace items openly in your home may feel okay because you do not plan to be burgled. But don't make it easy for an intruder. Obvious locations, like filing cabinets or jewelry boxes, are easily rifled and emptied. Consider saving yourself time, cost, and annoyance by planning ahead. Play it “safe” (pun intended!) and keep your valuable papers and belongings secure in either a home safe or a safe deposit box. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

Kick clutter to the curb! Here are the 10 rules to end clutter. Decluttering can feel overwhelming. Help is here! Clients tell me time and again that they do not know where to start decluttering. They know what they want, they may have a vision of the finished product, but they are too overwhelmed and frustrated to even begin. So where do you start? There are a few guidelines I find universal. If you do these 10 things, you’ll be well on your way. 1. Use a timer, work when your energy is highest, and for no longer than 4 hours at a time. If you can, focus straight through for 3 hours, or consider using the Pomodoro method I discussed in my February 17th blog post. Either way, set alarms to make sure you don’t work too long and exhaust yourself. Circadian rhythms are a real thing. If you are a morning person, tackle your project in the morning; if your energy is highest in the evening, work in the evening. Try not to work longer than about 3 to 4 hours at a time. Work 3-4 hours, take a lunch break, and then perhaps choose to keep going in the afternoon, but only if your energy holds. If you work too long at one time you risk exhaustion and discouragement because you did not leave time to clear up and now you're exhausted. Avoid exhaustion and frustration by limiting your work sessions. 2. Address one area at a time. Take it in pieces. Do not try to work in more than one area at a time. Start in one space, complete that space, and then move on to the next. Trying to declutter your whole home or office is too much at one time. 3. Work top to bottom, left to right. In any given space, start on the left and move to the right, and start at the top and go down. In this way you will focus on all areas of a given space in a consistent way, and when you stand back at the end, that whole space is addressed. 4. Sort into 5 groups: Trash, Recycle, Donate, Sell, and Keep. At the beginning, make space for 5 piles or set up 5 bins for sorting. Have Trash bags available to remove junk right away. Have Recycle bags (preferably in a different color) available to haul straight out. Put Donations in bags or boxes and move them straight to the car for removal from the property. Designate a space in your home for temporary storage of items to Sell. (My advice is to severely limit this pile. Things are rarely worth what you think they are!) Put your Keep items away in their new, designated home. Separate and process all items in that space that day. 5. Remember OHIO! Only Hold It Once. Handle any item in the space only once, make a decision about it, and move on. This can be hard because it demands that you make a lot of decisions, which is tiring! This is why you set timers. Going too long at this is honestly exhausting. But clutter is quite literally delayed decisions. (Please note Tip #9 below. Staying hydrated helps!) A professional can help you learn how to do this quickly and decisively and teach you how to keep going when they're not with you. Avoid the urge to put things aside “for now” because that is literally creating clutter! 6. Pretty organizing bling is no substitute for tough decisions. Do not buy anything to “help” you organize until you’re done sorting and planning. There is a considerable market for organizing products. You go shopping for containers to get your clutter under control without measuring or planning or counting. That is what organizing guru Julie Morgenstern calls “organizing from the outside in”. It fails to look at the big picture and jumps ahead several steps in the process. Don’t get me wrong – I love organizing products! But purchasing too soon can be discouraging because they can lead you to believe you will never be organized because clearly, you can’t get these built-for-purpose products to work. Buying too soon fails time and again because it is not the right product for your project. Wait until you are done sorting and planning, and then go shopping for the storage solutions you actually need. Hiring a professional can help you make these decisions at the time they should be made. 7. Minimize distractions – even short ones. Phone calls, text messages, and emails, even from well-meaning friends or family, can derail your focus. If you can, do not stop to take calls or messages. Turn your phone to Do Not Disturb. Stay focused on your task, which is doable if you don’t go longer than about 3 hours. 8. Do NOT feel shame. You're doing it! Be proud! Please believe me when I tell you that you're not alone in your clutter struggle. It is actually quite impressive that you’re addressing it at all. So be proud of yourself. 9. Keep water handy and a snack nearby. Decision making is tiring, thirsty work. Even if you are sitting at a table, sifting through paper, the mental effort burns calories and wears you down. Keeping hydrated and properly fueled from the beginning of your session is important to your overall wellness. Just like you should not grocery shop when you are hungry, you should not organize when you are thirsty! It will exhaust you and make you crabby even when you’re making good progress. 10. Friend, family, or professional, get objective help. I mean this quite literally. Ask for help. It can be deeply discouraging at best and dangerous at worst to tackle some jobs alone. Call a good friend, a family member, or a professional. Help provides outside accountability for focus and can help you make decisions as you go. You do not have to do this alone! Professional help can provide an objective, non-judgmental viewpoint to help make decisions and get through your project quickly and with more ease. Bonus Tip: Aim for progress, not perfection. Rome was not built in a day. Decluttering is never a one-and-done activity, so do not feel discouraged if it takes longer than you’d like. The key thing is to get started, and sometimes this is the hardest step! So get started, do the motions, and trust the process. I will not tell you it is easy. But I will tell that you absolutely can do this. I believe in you. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

Tis the season to start thinking about productivity in the coming year! At the end of the calendar year we begin to think about resolutions and planning. This can be a hopeful time, allowing for space to consider goals and to build clarity surrounding interests and commitments. But how do you capture all those good intentions and remember them months later? People need a way to coordinate calendars and track events and appointments to be effective and there are countless options from which to choose. So. Many. Options. There are planners designed to keep your house organized, keep you focused on your business goals, or to schedule your days in 15-minute increments. There are planners that you can put on a wall, that are essentially blank notebooks, or that claim they'll make your dreams come true. There are planners with floral patterns, plain blue or gray ones, ones with spiral binding, those that lay flat, and those that fit in a pocket. Then there are electronic options. Scheduling needs can be very complicated. There are phone apps you can share with family members. There are apps that will tie to your work schedule. There's Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, Cozi, myriad task trackers, and To Do list apps galore. You could be juggling work calendars, multiple family member calendars, school district calendars, professional or networking group calendars: the list feels endless. And then there is a whole paper planner industry designed to entice you into purchasing the perfect planner for you. Further, you can spend a fortune on planners, but if you don't actually use it, it won't help you achieve your resolutions. They don’t always work. Not necessarily because there is anything wrong with them but because the variable here is you. Which date planner or calendar app will work for you? I could list my favorites brands and discuss their relative merits, but if you simply Google “best date planners for 20XX” or "calendar apps for iPhone" you’ll get hundreds of Top Ten list suggestions for potential products. I honestly suggest you shop around. Visit the local big box office supply store or bookstore. Shop online and check out various YouTube videos that discuss planners for next year. 5 question framework to consider as you shop. 1. Does anyone else need to see your calendar? I would prefer to write down my appointments on paper. If I lived alone and had no immediate family, that might work. But I have a husband and two active kids that all have cell phones and schedules of their own. So we share a family electronic calendar and we each work to keep it updated. For my business, I do not need anyone else to see my schedule because I work alone. But clients and professional contacts need to contact me electronically and block appointments using my scheduler. I track my schedule electronically as well, separate from my personal one. (The two are shared to each other to avoid double-booking.) I satisfy my need to write by keeping notebooks, and then transfer To Do’s to blocks of time on my electronic calendar. Choose something that works for you. 2. What do you need your planner to actually do? Do you need it to simply track appointments and blocks of time? Do you need it to set, plan, and track goals for the year? Do you need it to track your contacts and important dates? Contacts; national holidays; weights and measures; birthdays; time zones; goal tracking; Scripture; menu planning. There is a planner that contains any element you need to track. Choose the elements you need. Many people keep addresses and birthdays electronically now, but some people still want to write them out long-hand. I also know people who are completely paperless who keep everything electronically all the time. A cool new trend is the “bullet journal” that is essentially a book of free form blank grids that you can fill in with whatever your creative mind wants. You can use colorful markers to create lists and charts and schedules of your choosing. Choose something that works for you. 3. How much do you want to spend? Depending on what you need, prices can vary widely. If you go to the local drugstore, you can get a small datebook for a few dollars, or you could spend hundreds of dollars on a leather-bound volume. You can spend as much or as little as you want. Apps can be single purchase or monthly/annual subscriptions. Employers may pay for these for you, or if you need to pay for these yourself, price can become prohibitive. Choose something that works for you. 4. Choose a layout that works for you. Do you need to plan daily, weekly, or a month at a time? Some people benefit from a yearly wall-hanging with dry erase markers nearby to keep a bird’s eye view of the year. Or does it need to be extremely granular and block out 15-minute increments? Weekly planners work great if you need an overall view of your schedule, but if you keep detailed notes of multiple appointments you can end up overflowing into considerable notes space. Choose something that works for you. 5. Allow yourself to change your mind. This piece of advice applies to just about anything. You may do all the research, discuss with friends and family, consider all the angles, make a choice . . . and never use it. Barring the financial cost, that is okay. You're allowed to make mistakes. Over the past 5 years I have personally completely changed how I track appointments and honestly, it may always be a work-in-progress as new options develop and technology evolves. If the pandemic taught us anything it is that we need to be able to change our minds. So set a budget, shop around, and simply choose one. It will be okay. Choose something that works for you. When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.

Maybe you could use something else. Yes, you read that correctly. It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Just because you use something doesn't mean you need to keep it. The classic 3 organizing questions to ask yourself when considering whether or not to keep an item are “Do you use it? Do you need it? Do you love it?” In fact, you’ll find a blog post written by me on just that from a year ago. But just because you used it yesterday does not mean you need to keep it. This idea has come up several times over the past few weeks and is significant enough to make me rethink my previous ideas. Our homes are full of things we use. Many of the those things are only occasionally used, or we would not miss them if they weren’t there. So do you need all of those things? What I am proposing is that you don't. What I am NOT saying is that we need to get rid of everything we use. There is a difference between getting rid of everything you use and allowing yourself to get rid of something you use. So do a thought experiment with me. What if you didn’t have to keep all of something because you simply don’t need that many? As an example, I use pens and pencils all the time. I write things. I jot notes. I need pens and pencils. So do my family. (There are 4 of us who live in this house.) But we have 4 different pen holders full of writing utensils within a 25 ft. radius of our kitchen/my office space holding hundreds of pens, pencils, and markers. There is no way we need that many writing utensils. Do we perhaps use them all occasionally? Yes. But we don't need to keep them all. Or how about lap blankets? We have multiple lap blankets all over our family room for the 4 people living here. We do use all of those blankets at various times. But in truth we don’t need more than maybe 5 or 6. Or 4. We certainly do not need 14 lap blankets. (And yes, it is 14 - I just counted them.) Further, if you use something only occasionally, could you use something else to achieve the same task when needed? Again, the lap blankets. What about those times when you have a movie night, you have guests, and everyone wants a cozy blanket? What would we use if we didn’t have 14 blankets but instead the suggested 4? We would head upstairs and get some bed blankets out of the linen closet to temporarily use on movie night. And at the end of the night, we’d free up space in the living room again by putting the bed blankets back upstairs. Just because you use an item doesn’t mean you need to keep it, particularly when you have something else in your home that already accomplishes the same purpose. “I can’t get rid of this because I use it” is a thinking trap we fall into that can keep us from freeing up space, time, and money. I encourage you to take a fresh look at the things you use and give some thought as to whether you really need to keep them all. Reorganize the things that have been there so long, you hardly see them anymore. Just because you used it yesterday does not mean you need to keep it. For those of you who are already quite comfortable with all the things you own, this may not resonate. If it causes you anxiety to not have the perfect item all the time, then disregard it. I will never tell you that you have to get rid of anything. But for those of you who are thinking, "Hm. She may be on to something here" give it some thought. If you are looking to minimize or simplify, or are ready to rethink some of your previous ideas, remember that just because you use something doesn't mean you need to keep it. "What else could you use?” is a more helpful question to ask than just “Do you use it?” When you're ready to tackle your tough organization project, I am here to help you learn how. Let's RETHINK organization together. For more information, visit the RETHINK website today. Mandy Thomas is a professional organizer fulfilling her lifelong passion for creating order out of chaos. She finds joy in helping people tackle their most overwhelming spaces and collections to create the optimal living space and enjoy their homes. RETHINK organization is on a mission to help you develop long-term patterns of organization that you can maintain and feel good about long after our work together is done.