Part One: Making a decision
Today I’m organizing a few key areas in my home.
I started with the freezer, worked my way to the refrigerator, and now I’m on to my cupboards.
The funny thing about starting off small is that it can quickly snowball into something much larger if you do not begin with an organized plan and set aside adequate time to accomplish your plan.
I fully intended for my freezer organizing to morph into a full blown organizing exercise that would ultimately include two of our main closets.
The reason for this intention?
My partner and I recently made the decision to convert our home office back into the bedroom it was meant to be.
The only problem with making this decision is that we now had to come up with a plan to do something with all of the stuff we had accumulated in our office.
My first reaction is “No problem”. I believe the key to success is attitude. When you start off with a positive attitude everything else just seems to fall into place.
My second thought is “when can I do the organizing and how long will it take me?”.
Since I consider myself an expert at organizing I do all of the internal planning automatically and I do it throughout a week or so prior to the actual organizing event. This way I don’t stress out about the ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘when’, or ‘why’.
This is it all begins. I first make a decision.
That is, I decide that something must be done. In this case my partner and I decided we needed to convert the office back to a bedroom so that we would have a place for guests to sleep rather than relegating a corner of the living room for a blow up bed every time we had a visitor.
Next I take a ‘visual’ inventory of the stuff in the room in question. That is, I stand back and just take it all in. I don’t make any more decisions at this point, I simply take stock of what I am about to get myself into.
For some this step will seem absolutely overwhelming but don’t think about the ‘how’ or ‘when’ just look at your stuff and let it sink in over the next few days.
Unfortunately since we live in a world where instant gratification rules we often put unnecessary pressure on ourselves to solve our problems immediately when in fact if we just ’sit’ with things from time to time we’d be much better off in the long run.
But I digress so back to the process.
After I have taken visual stock of my stuff I begin my next step.
Identify possible areas where you can integrate the extra stuff.
In my case I had two closets that were very disorganized. Yes, you heard correctly, MY closets were very disorganized. I may be an expert but I have a busy work schedule just like anyone else so too my spaces need the usual maintenance now and again.
Before I get too off track I want to point out that if you have an area that is ‘dis-organized’ that automatically says to me that you have extra space where you thought there was none.
How can I make this statement? Because I have years and years of experience working in specialty retail where we had to accommodate weekly shipments of inventory into impossibly small spaces. We were forced to be organized. So I speak from experience when I tell you that you have untapped space just waiting to be realized.
As with any organizing effort you still must go through the elementary steps of identifying what to KEEP, what to DONATE and what to THROW AWAY. These fundamental steps to organizing must never be ignored.
Back to the process.
Now that I have taken a visual inventory of the office and I have identified possible spaces for integrating my stuff all that remains is setting aside time to begin the actual work.
Next time I’ll talk about going through the physical steps of devising a stress free plan that will have your new space organized and that will free you up to begin organizing things like your freezer, refrigerator and yes, even your kitchen cupboards.
