Where Did I Put That?

One of the most frustrating things about having a cluttered, disorganized home is not knowing where to find something when you are looking for it.   But I don't have to tell you that. That is the reason we have all chosen to go on this decluttering journey.

But ironically, for people with chronic health or memory problems, one of the most frustrating parts of organizing your home is remembering where you put everything. 

It is great if you have decluttered and now have all the items a room all tucked neatly in their new homes. But if you think you are going to be able to remember where all these new homes are, forget it. 

It is time to meet your new best friend: the label. By labeling your various bins, baskets and containers, you can tell at a glance where things live. This speeds up both the time it takes to find it and the time it takes to put it away when you are done with it.  It also helps other people who are not inside your head figure out where to find anything. 

There are so many different ways to label things that your imagination is really the only limitation. You can hand write labels and stick them on with tape, print them from a computer, use a label maker, create an elaborate handmade hanging tag, you name it. All are good choices. 

But my current labeling obsession is chalkboard tape. I love it. It is an adhesive tape with a chalkboard surface. You can cut it to whatever size you need and write on it with either regular chalk, or as I prefer to use, a chalkboard pen. 

The main reason I like this is because it is so easy to change the label. I started using this tape for labels when we were organizing Paige's room.  Organizing a kid's room is a challenge because as soon as you think you have stuffed everything in a bin, more stuff shows up. This lead to lots of changes in where we decided to store things and what bins worked best for what. 

With the chalkboard tape, any time we changed our mind about what went in a bin, we could just wipe off the label and rewrite it. The one drawback to the chalkboard tape is that the adhesive on the back is not that strong so it does not always stick well to fabric bins or baskets so you might have to restick it every once in a while. 

My other current favorite choice for labels is Post it brand label roll. It is basically a big continuous roll of fully adhesive post it note in a tape dispenser. It sticks better than the chalkboard tape to some surfaces and can be easily removed from a bin but the label itself can not be wiped clean. I just use a sharpie on it and slap the label where needed. 

It is not as pretty as the chalk board tape in my opinion, so I tend to use this more on things that are out of sight. 

What ever you use, I suggest you stick to one or two labeling styles. Why? Because it is very likely that at first you will be organizing with a collection of mismatched bins, baskets and containers. (Remember, we are not running out to buy a bunch of expensive matching containers before we know what we are storing and that the system works for us, right?). 

Below are some of the various containers we used to organize Paige's room. Her room is far from perfect and everything is stored on mismatched furniture. She is at an age where her style is going from kid to tween to teen so we are not buying any new furniture until she figures out exactly what her new style will be. 

In the mean time, using the chalkboard labels helped tie the look together more, made it so she could actually find her toys to play with them and wonder of wonders, put them away!  

So learn to embrace labels. They can be an invaluable tool to help keep your space organized. I will warn you that your friends and family might make fun of you for turning into a label crazy lunatic who labels anything that sits still for a minute. 

But as long as you are not trying to label the cat, dog or any other living being, I say ignore them and go for it. 

There's No Place Like Home

I have said before that the key to an organized space is for everything in your home to have a designated home. It is a simple concept but so hard for many of us to execute.

For some of us, our things have never before had a home so finding homes for literally everything is overwhelming. I get it. I really do. Just take it one item at a time and it will get easier the more you do. 

Some of you may say "My stuff has a home but it never seems to stay in it".  If that is happening, you need to do some thinking about why. The answer might be different depending on the item. 

It might be that you are not used to putting things away because they are easier to find if they are in sight. Be patient with yourself. Trust the organizing systems you are putting into place and give yourself time to develop the habit of automatically putting stuff away. 

The other possibility is that the item has a home, but it is not the right home.  We tend to put things where "they" say they should go or where "it makes sense" for them to be. 

But in reality we should store them where we use them. Or even where we tend to put them all the time. Even if that does not make sense to other people. 

I have trouble lifting anything over 10 pounds. It is not good for me. But I also don't leave the house without the bag that holds my nebulizer, epi pen and other emergency meds. 

So if I go shopping, it is a huge effort just to get this bag, my purse and the few shopping bags from my car, up the walk and into the house.   I am literally exhausted when I get in the door and just drop them in the entry way. Which quite frankly looks like crap. 

I have tried in vain to change this habit, getting angry with myself because I was not succeeding. I finally realized this was a limitation of my health and I needed to find a way to deal with it. So I did. 

This is the bin I got to hold my bags when I get home. The stuff still gets dumped right inside the door, but it is contained in a pretty bin so it looks better. And I don't feel so bad. 

It took running up against one of my physical limitations to make this clear to me, but this really applies to any item in your house. And since we are hoping the children in our lives grow up with good habits rather than learning them as adults, here is the bin to contain Paige's school stuff. It not only contains it, it makes it so she knows where to find it!  

So store stuff where you use it not where it "should" be stored and it will be much more likely to stay in its home. 

We actually store our cordless drill in the cabinet with our spices because it is used most often in the kitchen. Do you have items in your home that might need an unusual home based on where you use it?  

What are they and where do you use them?  Share with us!

All Containers are Not Equal

Ok. You did it!  You decluttered an area, whether it be a table, a drawer or a shelf. Good work!  You know what you want to keep, but wait ... You have no way to store it. 

Now is when you start organizing vs decluttering.  First group like things together. Once you do that, you might find more to get rid of. For example, when I started organizing the three drawers in our bathroom vanity, I realized we had way too many half empty dentist giveaway dental flosses and travel sized toothpaste tubes. I got rid of most of them. You may find a smiliar hoard that you did not even know you had. 

Once I started organizing these drawers, I realized just how much space was in them. It was great!  But, wait. Empty space is clutter's nirvana and just tossing stuff in drawers will quickly lead you right back to where you were when you started. 

The key to keeping stuff organized is to give it a permanent home in a contained space. That usually means baskets, bins, containters, oh my!

DO NOT get sucked into buying bins before you know what you are going to store in them. Organizing supplies are cute, fun, varied and addicting. If you are not careful you will have to declutter your organizing bins. 

So what should you look for in an organizing container?  Here are a few questions to ask yourself before parting with your money to buy a bin.

 

1.  What am I going to store in this bin?  If you don't know the answer to this question, back away from the bins. And "something" is not an appropiate answer to this question, sorry. 

2. Will what I want to store fit well in this bin?

3.  Will the bin fit in the space I planned to store it?

4.  Is it worth the cost?

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating you go out and spend tons of money on bins. In fact, I am suggesting the exact opposite. Most people with chronic illness don't have money to spare. We are new to the organizing game and we are going to make mistakes or just change our minds about our new organzation systems once we live with them for a bit. This is normal and a good thing. 

One of my current favorite places to get bins is at the Dollar Tree, a local dollar store. Every bin is literally $1 so if it ends up not working it is not a huge loss. But still be careful to be picky about the quality of the bins. Even $1 is a waste of money if it breaks the first time you use it. 

For us, this means any bin we bring into the house has to stand up to the weight of a cat trying to cram itself into it. Because if you leave a box, bin or basket unattended for even a minute, it will have a cat in it. 

So what did I use to contain the items I wanted to store in my bathroomvanity  drawers?  Well, I looked at drawer organizers online and in stores and said "no way am I wasting that much money on those"!  I am pretty cheap. 

Instead I thought back to the very first area I decluttered - our plastic food storage containers. I got tired of the falling on my head and pulled out any that did not have a matching lid which was pretty much most of them. 

But you know what?  They may be useless as food storage containers but they work amazingly well as cheap (or free in my case) drawer organizers!

So make sure you are picking the right bin for the job, even if it means holding off on organizing an area while you shop around. Don't spend aren't more than you need to and try thinking outside the box for storage ideas that might already be in you home. 

Decluttering with Training Wheels

Do you remember what it felt like as a child to sit on your tricycle and watch the older kids fly by on their two wheelers?  Were you like me and sat there yearning to taste that freedom but with no idea how to get it?

And then came the miracle answer - training wheels. That wonderful thing that bridged the seemingly insurmountable gap between three wheels and two. 

Well for many of us, decluttering is like learning to ride a bike. Going from cluttered to organized is too big of a jump. We need training wheels. Don't be ashamed. Raise your hands up and say I use training wheels and I am proud of it!

And now let me introduce you to the declutterer's version of training wheels:  small sorting bins. 

Go out and get yourself two SMALL bins to use for sorting.  Don't let this photo fool you. This is not a laundry basket. It is small. The dimension are about 10" x 13" x 5". It needs to be small so you do not get overwhelmed. 

So how do you use these baskets?  Easy. Pick an area, any area. I do not reccommend starting with the area that completely overwhelms you to even think about. Instead chose a random area of clutter. We chose our kitchen table. 

Now fill up one of the bin with clutter that needs to be sorted or anything that does not have a home. Once the bin is full, stop!  Resist the urge to cram the bin untill it is over full.  It does not matter if there is still clutter in the area you picked. Ignore it. All you care about is what is in the bin. 

Now it is time to sort. 

Quickly go through the bin using the following steps:

1. Throw out anything that is obvious trash

2. If you know at first sight it is a donation, put it in a bag for donations

3.  If you want to keep it put it in the second bin. 

These should be quick instinctive decisions, don't labor over them. Your first instinct is usually correct. 

Once you do the initial sort, it is time to deal with what you decided to keep. These items will fall into just a few categories. 

1. Items that have a home but were left out - put them away - now. 

2.  Items you like but that you have no real use for - consider letting them go and put them in the donate bag - now. 

3. Sentimental stuff - put it aside to be sorted later after you get the rest of the clutter under control. 

4.  Items you want to keep but that do not have a "home". 

This is where decluttering usually gets derailed. "I want this but I don't know where to put it."  This leads to people putting the stuff right back where it was and giving up. 

But with training wheels you are not going to allow yourself to get sidetrack by these items.  Instead place them in a box which will now be known as the " needs a home" box.  All you are doing right now is deciding what is staying or leaving your home. 

Why does this step trip so many people up?  Because deciding what to keep is decluttering. Figuring out where something should live is organizing. They are not the same thing. And if you try to organize an area before you completely declutter it, you will fail. Trust me, I know. 

So use your training wheels. Keep the bins small to avoid getting overwhelmed and stick to decluttering. Organizing will come later. 

I am proud of using the training wheels my sister gave us to declutter our entire kitchen table over the course of a week. Won't you try it out?

If you do, post a photo of your progress. I would love to see them. 

The First Step is . . . Overwhelming

So you have looked around your house and decided it is over cluttered. You are wasting too much energy on living with clutter. Great. So now what?

The obvious answer is deal with the clutter. Get rid of what you don't need and organize the rest. Easy right?  Oh how I wish it was that simple. 

If you are anything like me and my family, wanting to get rid of clutter is not a new idea. We have tried - and failed - to declutter many many times. We were destined to continue to fail until we finally saw the huge wall that was between us and actual progress. 

That wall is called Overwhelm. I was overwhelmed by the clutter I needed to deal with in order to have an organized space. That being said, we have too much clutter but we don't live in fear of the Hoarders team knocking on our door. The clutter is not that bad. It is just the thought of it that is overwhelming. 

Overwhelm is an emotional response to a situation or activity. It activates your fight or flight response and basically shuts down your logical mind. Because it is an instinctual reaction, it does not take into account the realities of the situation. It just wants you to run away from it. 

Even the thought of trying again (and failing) to declutter exhausted me before I even started. It was not going to work, so why even bother. The task was just too huge. Any of this sound familiar?

Luckily, I am blessed with an amazing sister who understands the limitations of people with chronic illness and anxiety. She also understands how easily clutter can take over if you get overwhelmed and give up because she has been there. 

My sister was able to talk us down off the proverbial ledge and give us a way to see that we can do this one little piece at a time. 

Below is a photo that I am very embarrased to share. I have decided to share it because I feel that the nature of chronic illness makes it likely we all have places in our homes we can't deal with or that embarrass us. And I am hoping my being willing to share our before and after will motivate others to stop being ashamed of these trouble spots and actually deal with them even if it means letting someone else see your mess. 

This is a wall in one room of our house. It is a catch all for craft supplies, bags, basically any crap we don't know what to do with gets tossed there. It started out when a piece of unused kitchen cabinet got tossed in a corner to be disposed of later. 

Only problem was, the trash will not take it and even if they would it was too heavy for any of us to lift. So it became an eyesore that just got worse over the 6 years we have lived in the house. It looks horrible and makes us feel even worse. It is also one of the first things you see when you come in the house. 

When my sister asked what bothered us most this was it. But we have tried so many times to "fix it" and failed over and over. That is because I was overwhelmed by the idea of bringing order to this area. Organizing with your freaked out emotional side leading is destined to fail. You have to push past the Overwhelm and let your brain take back over. 

Here is what happened when I was finally able to let my locigal brain deal with this same space. 

Is it perfect?  No. Are we still stuck with the cabinet we can't move?  Yes. Is it better than it has been since we moved in. You betcha. But the most important thing is that it is now a functional space that we can use rather than a dumping ground. 

In future posts, I will share the system my sister taught us to break this overwhelming task down into small enough parts that I could deal with it without sending myself back into a state of Overwhelm. 

The moral of this post is, you can do it - but you might need help. Find a patient, nonjudgemental person who understands what limitations you have and have them help you break through the overwhelm. It might be a friend, a family member or for some of you, it might even be a professional organizer. 

Push any embarassment aside. Living with chronic illness forces you to become incredibly strong. But part of that strength is being able to admit when you need help. 

Use what ever tool, get whatever help you need to beat back Overwhelm. Once you do, you can start decluttering with your logical mind. You will be amazed at the difference it makes. Trust me.