Organize 365® Podcast

These weeks between October 1st and Thanksgiving are typically the most productive weeks of the year. I want to help you make October super productive by helping you declutter. I want to give you tasks you can complete in 15 minutes a day so you can declutter some different areas of your life. I am focusing on decluttering only, not on organizing or productivity.

Have you been listening, or have you been taking action this month? We’ve talked about files, hot spots, and hot mess rooms. Today, we are going to talk about decluttering entertainment. 

This pandemic has taught me that Americans are entertainment hoarders. We have long lists of things we pursue for the sake of entertainment like kids’ activities, restaurants, shopping, TV shows, sporting events, and even travel. We have become so used to consuming entertainment that the pause in novelty during the pandemic has led to boredom. There was even a meme that said: “I finished Netflix today, what’s next?”

Today, I want to share my thoughts about decluttering the entertainment we have inside of our homes. Those games, puzzles, and hobby materials that you were keeping just in case - have you used them? Can you plan to use them this winter? If you have entertainment you no longer wish to keep, clear out your house and make more space for the things your family does use. 

Listen to the podcast as I talk with you about board games, video electronics, that mega box of cords, and even analog entertainment (waffle makers, for example). 

I want you to use the entertainment you do have and enjoy to make memories with your family. And, for the things you no longer need, can you pass them on and bless some other family? I bought a bunch of puzzles when we first started staying safe at home. I have passed them along to people who passed them along to others - the puzzle train means that many families get to enjoy spending time together working on a puzzle, but do not have to keep storing a puzzle they have already used. I’d love to hear what things you have passed along to others on Facebook or Instagram

Direct download: Org365-359.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

 
Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!
 
This week’s Transformational Podcast features Renee. She and her husband have 2 daughters, and a dog. She also works as a speech language pathologist. She shares how she has gotten her home and kids organized, and how the Mini Medical Binder helped her family during COVID (get yours at organize365.com/emergency)!
I hope you enjoy her story and find her as inspiring as I do
 
I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.
Direct download: Org365-ReneeC.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

These weeks between October 1st and Thanksgiving are typically the most productive weeks of the year. I want to help you make October super productive by helping you declutter. I want to give you tasks you can complete in 15 minutes a day so you can declutter some different areas of your life. I am focusing on decluttering only, not on organizing or productivity.

Today, I want to talk with you about decluttering your hot mess room. A hot mess room (HMR) is where we lovingly place (shove?) things we don’t know what to do with, can’t part with right now, are not sure about, or want to keep “just in case.” Depending on your home, a HMR can be a garage, shed, storage room, basement, attic, shed, or sometimes even a whole house.

If you are working through the rest of your home (like with the 100 Day Home Organization Program or All Access Membership), you declutter your main living areas, and end up dumping your extra stuff into an area that becomes a HMR. This area becomes overwhelmed as you put things into the space “for now” while you delay making a decision to actually get rid of the stuff. This is perfectly normal - it’s a rest stop for your clutter on the way out the door.

All Access members have a deep dive course to help clear out a HMR, but for today, I want to help you to make progress simply decluttering this space. Unlike a kitchen or a living room, HMR can be hard to clear out because they accumulate stuff from everywhere in the house. Today, I want to help you make progress decluttering this area so that it is more useful to you.

First - be realistic about any item you are considering continuing to keep just in case you need it. Remember that you have just lived through the ultimate just in case scenario - you were safe at home (sometimes for months) during a global pandemic. If you didn’t use the item (food, clothing, or hobby) during that time, you probably never will. Let it go. If you do keep just in case items, you should know what you have and how to find it when you need it.

Second - clear out the things you don’t need that will make the biggest difference in the space - empty boxes, broken items, orphan pieces of furniture, and household items you no longer want or do not use (vases & holiday decorations that do not fit your taste or style anymore). See if you can reduce the stuff by 25-30%. Send things to trash, recycling, or donation centers and reclaim your storage space for the things you do want to keep in storage. 

Direct download: Org365-358.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Welcome to the newest Wednesday Podcast! On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

This week’s Transformational Podcast features Melissa F. She and her husband have 13 year old twins, a dog, and a business. She shares how she has organized her home and her paper - and we celebrate her progress!  I hope you enjoy her story and find her as inspiring as I do!

Melissa's kids Allie and Brady have an Etsy shop. Feel free to check it out!

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket ® 

100 Day Home Organization Program

All Access

Friday Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

Direct download: Org365-MelissaF.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

In today’s podcast, I want to inspire you to take quick action to address the clutter hotspots in your home. A hotspot is anywhere that paper or physical stuff accumulates. As our lives change, we often use our homes in ways that are different from the organizational systems we have already set up. This leads to stuff sitting out and making hotspots. There are three major reasons a clutter hotspot develops:

  1. You have not made a decision about an item.
  2. You have a project you are deferring (not taking action on right now).
  3. You have brought new items into your living space that need to be given a home.

In the podcast, I will walk you through several different hotspots that have popped up in my own home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how I was able to declutter them. I bought some food items but did not have a plan to actually prepare them for a specific meal, so they were left out. Some hotspots were from aspirational purchases where I purchased things I thought I wanted to do (breaking my own 24-hour rule), and left the items out in our living space. Another hotspot was from purchasing new kinds of supplies for the pandemic (gloves, masks, hand sanitizer) without a place to store them or a sense of how many we needed to store in our home.

I want you to take some time and look around your home for your hotspots. Which of the reasons above are these items sitting out randomly around the house? What can you do with your items? What can you donate? What can you work on right away? What can you finish up?

As you look for solutions, think about the Sunday Basket® has helped to eliminate your paper clutter hotspots from your kitchen counter. You know where to put items while you make a decision, you have a place to store your paper that is supporting deferred projects, and you have a home for every piece of paper that enters your home!

Make your home function for the way you use it every day, the way your family lives right now in the present moment. I want you to know that if you need it, you have #permissiongranted to choose functional organizing for your actual daily life.

Direct download: TPHS_357_Decluttering_Hot_Spots.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Listen to all of the transformational interviews at organize365.com/wednesday-podcasts

On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Today, I am sharing my conversation with Jill M. She lives in IL with her husband and 2 kids. She recently completed her Master's Degree and is now starting her own business. I hope you enjoy her story and find her as inspiring as I do!

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

100 Day Home Organization Program

ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Direct download: Org365-JillM.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

These weeks between October 1st and Thanksgiving are typically the most productive weeks of the year. I want to help you make October super productive by helping you declutter. I want to give you tasks you can complete in 15 minutes a day so you can declutter some different areas of your life. I am focusing on decluttering only, not on organizing or productivity.

When decluttering, the way to make it easier, faster, and more effective is to create rules for your items. Rules free us! With rules, you will make quicker decisions and reduce your decision fatigue. You don’t need to stop and consider each item’s value or importance, you will refer to your rule and rapidly decide to keep or toss. 

This week, we are focusing on decluttering the file cabinet. The Paper Solution launched in August of 2020, and I am hearing from many of you how helpful that book is in getting your paper under control. For the fall, I want to help you declutter and reduce the amount of paper you are managing (and will later organize). 

When it comes to paper, you need rules. There are different kinds of papers - I think of papers as being parts of different categories. First, all actionable paper belongs in your Sunday Basket®. For the podcast today, I am focusing on decluttering your archive (sometimes called reference) papers. 

When you make your rules, you need to answer two questions:

  1. What will I save? (or what will I toss/not save)?
  2. How long will I keep this category of paper?

In the podcast, I share examples of the rules I use in my own life for my own paper for several different categories:

  • Manuals & warranties
  • Phone books
  • Kids’ school papers
  • Pets
  • Home decor paperwork
  • Automobiles

I do not always keep papers, and I’ll explain why I now discard many papers in these categories. If you sort through 3-5 folders from your file cabinet each day, it will typically take around 15 minutes. Focus on identifying what you want or need to keep, and toss the rest (of course, shred sensitive private information). Most people are able to reduce their saved paper by 50-80% when decluttering this way.

Direct download: Org365-356.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

Listen to all of the Transformational Podcasts at organize365.com/wednesday-podcasts

This week, we are back to our traditional transformational podcast. On Wednesdays, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365 community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps, and triumphs along their organizing journey. You can see and hear transformation in action. I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Today, I am sharing my conversation with Audrey N. She just started her 2nd round of the 100 Day Program. She is married, works part time outside the home, and is a parent. I hope you enjoy her story and find her as inspiring as I do!

Audrey recommends the meal planning app Plan to Eat (no affiliate). 

I am grateful that you are reaching out to share your stories and progress with me and with the Organize 365 community. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

For more information about the programs and products mentioned in this podcast please check out these links:

Organize 365

The Sunday Basket®

100 Day Home Organization Program

ALL ACCESS

Workboxes

Paper Organizing Retreats

I look forward to helping YOU get Organized!

Direct download: Org365-AudreyN.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

These weeks between October 1st and Thanksgiving are typically the most productive weeks of the year. You will get to see your productivity skyrocket and your 2020 goals come to fruition. Once the holidays come, you will turn your focus to social events and making memories, so I want to talk with you about how COVID may be a Golden Window for you.

Some of you have been barely surviving this pandemic. And, that’s perfectly reasonable. I am not asking you to do more, but I want to share some short, actionable podcasts that can help you cultivate a mindset so you are prepared for when you can deep dive into organization and productivity. 

A Golden Window is a time in your life where you have an unusual period of energy, drive, and focus to take back your life and get organized. Are you in a period of your life where you are reevaluating your life? Have you stopped to think about how you use your time, where you live, your job situation, or your home? Everything has changed - for all of us. For a Golden Window, you are ready for the change. If you are merely reacting and surviving, you may not have the extra time, energy, and motivation that a Golden Window brings. 

If you are not in a Golden Window, do not worry. Keep going and give yourself grace. Your turn will come. If you are in a Golden Window (Podcast 242), I want to help you analyze and plan for this opportunity. 

If you are entering a Golden Window, I want to help you end 2020 strong, and to start thinking about how you can use this opportunity to look ahead 5-10 years and begin making the changes towards that future. Listen in as I help you figure out what you want to start and how to take the first step.

Direct download: Org365-355.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:00am EDT

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