Organize 365 Podcast

The first step in organizing the family room is to stop and think about what you really do in this space. Do you still watch DVDs or do you stream your entertainment? If your youngest child is in 2nd grade it is OK to move all the toys out of the family room. If your youngest child is in middle school all their toys can be in their room. For the full show notes go to organize365.com/157

Here are the 7 steps to decluttering your bedroom at any age. 1. Pick up all trash 2. Collect all food, dishes and dirty laundry. 3. Scan the room and fill a bag of any easily donateable items. 4. Go through ALL your clothes. Try on all your pants and tops. 5. Look at the items on your floor (including furniture) and make decisions about what can go. 6. Go through the books in your bedroom. 7. Stand and look at each wall of your room. For the full show notes go to organize365.com/156

Step 1 - Get ALL your photos in ONE place. Step 2 - Decide what you want. Step 3 - SORT by person and Project. Here are my favorite albums to make. Click here for my photo services and see videos of the most popular albums I make. Step 4 - Print your photos. :) TimeShel is the Apple App I am using to print 30 photos each month from my phone. Look at these beautiful pictures! TimeShel is super easy to use. Remember to use the code: ORG365 to get a free month 10 prints or 40% off your 30 monthly print subscription. Era is the Apple app I mentioned for having larger prints printed from your phone. Again, use the code ORG365 and get free shipping on your first order. :) Click here for all the links and show notes. Click here to join the 100 Day Home Organization Challenge.

The Procrastinate on Purpose By Rory Vaden is the book that explains how I am so ridiculously productive and it has NOTHING to do with time management. I had so much fun sharing about the significance calculation, the rule of 30 and how all this relates to getting your home organized! Rory's Focus Funnel: Can it be eliminated? Can it be automated? Can it be delegated? No? Then do it now or procrastinate it on purpose. Links mentioned in the podcast: My Weekly, Monthly and Yearly checklists. Rory's book on Kindle The audio book version of The Mindset of Organization is finally here!! I hope you enjoy the sample chapters in podcast 140. You can get a free audible copy of The Mindset of Organization and start a free 30 day trial of audible at Organize365.com/audible

I talk a LOT about saving your memories. And while I tell you to save your memories in blankets and photo albums, I have not given you a resource to do so. Until today. I am SO excited to introduce you to Once Upon A Time Creation. Jen Anderson has created a beautiful line of keepsakes that can be created from your storage room treasures. Check out my favorites in this week's blog post. What treasures will you create? Check out Once Upon a Time Creation here. Click here to join the 100 Day Home Organization Challenge.

How will you get your storage area organized? Lots of boxes eh? I'm teaching you how to go through those boxes, how to get them organized and how to set up the storage space. I'm going to review 4 spaces within the storage area; seasonal, baby, photos, and random. The First step is always to take one box upstairs into your kitchen and empty the box completely. Disperse Now that you are comfortable in your climate controlled house you can better make decisions. All of the items you took out of the box need to be identified as yours or someone else's. If they are someone else's you need to start a box for them. You will need all of their things and pictures in the box when you give it all back to them! I mentioned in this episode about keeping items for a child. You may need to store it for them or it may be relocated into their room. If you are keeping some baby clothing you may see it needs washing. Go ahead, wash it, and store it away nicely for when you want to use the clothing again. Donate All of the things you have decided you no longer want or use, you donate. Don't worry about the time of year. All you need to know is you do not want the item anymore and let the donation centers worry about it from there. Decide Once you have decided to keep an item you also need to know why or what purpose it will serve you in the future. I just love snowmen. There was a snowman Greg had given me that I wanted to donate but after further consideration I decided to keep it. I decorated my bath space with it and that inspired me to decorate that space seasonally. Some people may keep baby clothing or shirts of a person to make a quilt. Or maybe in summer it's nice to have a second blender, but have a purpose for keeping the items. As far as pictures go, keep them all in a clear box and label photos. While watching tv or something you could sift through them and toss blurry/bad pics or scenery if it's not something you'd document in a scrapbook or album. Package and Relabel The last step is always to nicely repackage and then label each box. The boxes that you will definitely keep should be put into clear bins with color coded lids. I have red lids for seasonal boxes and each person can have a different color. You get the idea. Once you have done this, purchase shelving to accommodate. I love the shelving from Home Depot because you can reconfigure it for any home you move into, it's easy to move, and it's good in all temperatures. Then, categorize your storage room starting with the 4 categories plus additional ones you may need. This is just your first pass though. Keep in mind each time you will see roughly a 20% improvement. The boxes you are undecided about stay in brown boxes with color coded duct tape on them. You may be able to make a kitchen box later on down the road when you go through them again. But now your clear bins are stored and you can easily find that second blender then next time fun calls for it! Your storage room is like a prepaid store. Pro Tip: Get a bookshelf and put all of your home decor on it in the storage room. When you get ready to redecorate, you can now "shop" in your prepaid store for new items with which to decorate. EPISODE RESOURCES: The Sunday Basket® How to Go Through a Box Checklist Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Share this episode with a friend and be sure to tag Organize 365® when you share on social media!

The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is the book that has helped me the most in achieving increased productivity. Using the focus question, "What is the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will become easier and unnecessary?" I prioritize my day on a continual basis. In this podcast you will hear: Why I prioritized a nay over recording this podcast. How extraordinary success is sequential. About the domino effect. How to apply the ONE thing to organizing your home. The audio book version of The Mindset of Organization is finally here!! I hope you enjoy the sample chapters in podcast 140. You can get a free audible copy of The Mindset of Organization and start a free 30 day trial of audible at Organize365.com/audible

The audio book version of The Mindset of Organization is finally here!! I hope you enjoy these sample chapters today. You can get a free audible copy of The Mindset of Organization and start a free 30 day trial at Organize365.com/audible

Listen to how being organized, and living an organized life allows you to be more productive, and be able to handle those unexpected emergencies and events that come into every person's life. Change is inevitable. Unexpected events are going to happen. They are a guaranteed but they're unexpected. A few weeks ago, I had a series of events happen in a matter of just two to three days that cost me 80 hours out of the next two weeks of my life. Some of these were good changes. Some of these were bad changes. And all of them were unexpected. I'm going to walk you through that 16 days, how these events unfolded over that time, what ended up getting sacrificed out of my schedule, and how I got back on track. So what did I do? #1 - I managed my expectations. #2 – My systems are rock solid. #3 - I used my phone for almost everything! #4 - I remained calm so that the kids and Greg remained calm too. So this getting organized thing, it's a big deal. It's a really big deal. It has a huge impact, not only on your space and how your space looks, but your ability to drop everything and take care of your kids or the people that you work with so that they can go and grieve or do what they need to do, and you can pick up the pieces and not be a hot mess or all stressed out about it. It's important for your marriage if you're married. The more organized you are, the more time you have for those people that you love and for yourself. The quickest way to get to a productive life is to get your home organized. Join me in the 100 Day home organization challenge and let's do this!

I'm sharing what I like, don't like and why I think that this book doesn't work for American women. Talk about a controversial statement, I know, but I think "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" does not work for the majority of American women. Marie and I approach organizing differently based on our ages and countries of origin./p> There a few things that I do like about Marie's book. I love that she has brought the discussion of clutter and organizing to the attention of the media and people around the world. I like the idea behind her method of sparking joy. "If it doesn't spark joy that you should get rid of it." I also love that Marie champions that idea that organization is a teachable and learnable skill. Yes, yes, YES! That is what I have been saying for years, that it doesn't matter if you're not organized now, you can learn to be organized. {To really understand why this book doesn't work for American women read the whole post or listen to the podcast where I dive deep into the differences between an American house and a Japanese house and our cultural differences.} What works for Marie but I have not seen as easily implementable for Americans are the following five things. #1 Marie says you should tidy all at once and be done. Immediately that rubbed me the wrong way, which is why I had such a hard time with her book. Having helped so many women organize their whole homes and organized my own I know, it took me three years to get organized. Knowing how hard American women try to be organized and the quantity of items to be organized I knew it was not that easy. You can't just wave a magic wand, do it once and it's all done. #2 Marie consistently brings up this idea of perfectionism, the perfect system and that you can reach perfection. I do not think that you can reach perfection. I'm not there, I actually get bored when I get anywhere close to being super productive. I create all these alternative projects I can do to make my life a little bit more cluttered. I don't want to live in a perfect minimalistic, 100% efficient life. I don't agree that you can actually even achieve a perfect life. #3 Is the topic of paper organization. This is the hot button that originally rubbed me the wrong way when reading Marie's book. The first time I read her book, I stopped reading after the one and a half pages about how to organize paper, which basically said just get rid of all of it. I about had a heart failure. So when I re-read the book last week, and I read all the way through I realized that towards the end of the book she does tell you how to organize paper, a little bit. But she still sticks with the idea that almost all paper should be thrown away and that there are only three files that you should have. Files. Not filing systems. Files. Three envelopes or three files of paper, TOTAL. #4 Marie glosses over photos and memories. Her suggestion to go through your photos one by one and make decisions, would take at least a year for most of the Americans that I know. It is definitely not something you can tidy all at once and be done in a day or two. Furthermore, most Americans have a hard time deciding which photos are good to keep and which ones can be let go. Don't believe me? What do you do with your school pictures after you put one in a family frame and hand them out to friends and family members? If you are like most Americans you store the rest in the school envelope and "save" them. Who know, we might "need" them. And they cost good money. See – we need help. And lastly, #5 Marie explains how she empties her purse every single day. Her wallet, train ticket, etc all come out of her purse and are stored in different places in her home. Then she puts the purse in a bag and puts it up on the shelf of her closet. There is no way that I could empty out my purse and refill my purse every day. I am so grateful that the "Magic Art of Tidying Up" has become such a popular book and has brought this whole idea of organizing and decluttering to the forefront of the media. It has opened up the discussion for people around the world to really take a look at the stuff that they have saved and think about the kind of a life that they want to live. However, if you are an American and you have read this book and you've made great progress in your master closet, but then you haven't made much more progress in the rest of your house, you're doing just fine. So what does work for American women? The 100 Day Home Organization Challenge is the perfect match for your American home. Registration just opened for the January 2 kick off. Join today!