Your Closet: Have a Party!

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 You’re looking at your closet and wondering how you can sever the ties that bind, purge the plethora of the unknown, make room for the look you want for the person you are NOW. You have a small space, likely, and need to use that space as efficiently as possible to save time in the morning and in the evening.

What if you were having a party and you only have a small room to entertain in? That’s how I like to look at my closet. Your clothes are the invited guests.

 Ask yourself if each item is a:

Friend, Acquaintance, or a Stranger

Who are you going to invite to the small space?

Create an invite list.

Be vigilant on what things you allow to enter your life. This includes your friends doesn’t it?

The invitation list has to come within certain parameters when you have a small space:

1.     Size Matters.  Too big or too small a size, or waiting until you are that size again? They are there to mock you! Dress for now, if it doesn’t fit, it needs to disappear.  If you lose weight and a few sizes, you DESERVE new clothes.

2.     They have to fit in. Certain items of clothing you would wear if they didn’t pucker, or make your tummy or behind look ‘this-way’ ‘or that-way’.  These need to go. You only want clothes that make you feel and look good.

3.     They can’t be outdated. Haven’t worn them in a year? How do you know for sure? Peter Walsh’s tip is my favourite because it’s easy. Turn all your hangers backward. After you wear something, replace it on the rack forward. Now look at your hangers in 6 months when you’re changing over seasons. Purge them. If and when those styles come into fashion again, be assured that new colours and textures will be used by current designers.

4.     They have to be a good influence. Remember your mother telling you that ‘you are who your friends are’. Every time you put it on you get asked if you feel tired. Truth is, you are tired of the item. Then it just sits in your closet

5.     They should be in season Decide, depending upon space, if you need a place to keep out of season clothes. A plastic container, or an unused suitcase can work well for these. Winter clothes get of the way as soon as it’s May! I keep a bulky sweater in white or cream handy for those cool summer nights.

6.     Cliques  Sort like colours together: This will help you see what colors you have in your closet. Is it all black? Black, being a minimizing color, is what every woman needs, but you might consider looking into other colors to accessorize your wardrobe that work for YOU.

7.     Treat your guest list well. No wire hangers for your clothes that have earned their place on your list! Give them the honour they deserve. They made the list after all!

Every party is over at some point, but your closet will keep on dancing with you if you maintain it well. Have a permanent donate bin or bag in your closet so you can toss items into it immediately when you have the whim to do so.

Your closet will love you and you will save time, energy, and yes, money!

 

 

How To De-Clutter a Room

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Remember,

De-cluttering and organizing your home is not about getting rid of everything. It’s about surrounding yourself with the things that speak to you, make you feel happy, and reflect the person that you are.

Make the appointment and keep it!

Respect yourself enough to show up. Respect yourself enough to keep the appt like you would respect your friend, co-worker, business associate, or your Dr, Hair dresser, child’s teacher, etc. Why not? You are just as important as they are to your life.

Gather equipment. A donate box, and/or clear plastic bag, a dump bag and/or box, and a delegate bin. This is for those things that are going to another room or place like a garage or storage space.

Turn on some music.

Set the timer for 20 minutes.

Listen to the ticking to focus on the task.

Zone in on one area at a time. You’re keeping only the items that have a home and deserve that prime real estate.

Honour the item if it does.

Use it or lose it.

Use your good things now.

It’s not the end of the world if you have to replace a piece or two.

Donate, Delegate, Dump   Remove to containers. Don’t think long about each item.

Designate a permanent donate container. This is especially useful in the closet.

Sort like with like.  You will eventually designate zones for items that are alike. This makes things easier to find. I know if something is a paper, it’s in my office zone.

Acknowledge your progress - even if you don’t do it perfectly. Focus on what you ARE doing.

Reward yourself: You choose! When the timer goes off, decide if you’re on a roll, and keep up the momentum, or reward yourself with a break, even if it’s just a stop for a cup of tea with your feet up. But time the break also, if you plan on doing more. When I’m involved with a task, it seems that I work beyond the 20 minutes, and

The Organizing Habit

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You’ve seen the photos in magazines and online. Oh, you think, how would you love to have that space, that closet, that kitchen, that master bedroom. You can’t have it all, but you can have something like it, I always say. If you dream of that spacious, clean, fresh environment, then there is no reason why you can’t get some part of that action.

Just ask the right questions.

What do you want?

How bad do you want it?

What would you do to get it?

Fake it til you make it. Live in your space as if.

As if you were house sitting.

As if you were selling.

As if you were temporarily there.

This helps you learn what’s really important in your life. Try not to purge to the point of guilt, because that would be more detrimental than productive, no?

There’s a show on TV called Consumed, in which the participants get most of their stuff removed and have to go through a month without it, then decide what to do with the heaps of it in a huge storage unit. But for you? Try a few boxes. Label them, and then-

This could be worth renting a storage space. It could save you in the long run, because consider that this is the price to pay now for saving later in shopping binges and the collecting of items like you’re accustomed to.

Oh the 1st world problems we have!

Fake it til you make it for 30 days.

After 30 days revisit your ‘stuff’ that you’ve stashed. You may be interested to see how you can continue to live without it. You’ve created a habit.

It takes about 30 days to make something a habit.

Set your intention to take your new action each day for the next 30 days. Put up reminders around your home.

Stephen Covey’s book, ‘The 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE’, teaches habits of personal change.

Habit 1 Be Proactive

Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind

Habit 3 Put first things first

Habit 4 Think Win/Win

Habit 5 Seek first to Understand, then to be Understood

Habit 6 Synergize

Habit 7 Sharpen the Saw

 Choose just one new habit to install at a time.

It’s a challenge to focus on more than one. In fact trying to make a whole lot of changes at once is a great way to sabotage yourself. One a month means a whole lot of change by the end of the year.

What if you had only 2 hours a day to be productive? What would you choose to do? When you book the appointment…2 hours a day, you will use it productively.

Tell others about the actions you intend to take - the more people you tell, the more committed you’ll be and the more you’ll be accountable.

Organizing for your Health

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You’ve heard them. Other peoples resolutions.

Some of us want to lose weight. Some vow to save money.  Some want to be more organized or make their business grow in 2012, some just need to live healthier.

Some want all of the above!

Maybe secretly, you do too.

If this is in fact so, pick one goal or resolution, and focus on it for 30 days. Just one, please!

Let’s say we start with organizing for several reasons:

Organizing can improve so many aspects of your life, including helping you to live a healthy lifestyle.That’s two, two, goals in one!

I’m an RN in a small ER department, so I have vested interest in this two in one goal.

Start with organizing, and watch how the next goal and the next goal just fall into place.

Being organized reduces stress

The biggest cause of stress, when it gets right down to it, is RESISTING CHANGE. Change is inevitable, as we know, and require us to make decisions in our lives. My definition of hell on earth is having a big decision to make and not having made it yet.

Clutter represents postponed decisions!

BP’s taken before and after a person bets on a horse race at the track, showed significant increase before, then normalizing after the bet was placed. And the race hasn’t started yet! Think about it. Decision’s postponed.

One of the reasons I respect my shopping time, is that, not only are you walking on, perhaps, not the best shoes for a work-out, but everything you pick up has decisions attached to it. Do I like it? Would it make my life better? Can I justify the CPU? (cost per use). Is it worth trying on? Does it come in my size?  (Now you’re looking for something again).

Decisions postponed causes stress. Stress causes illness.

Being organized gives you time to eat right.

You will have the time you need (and you don’t need hours) to eat well-balanced, home-cooked, homemade, healthy meals. You’ll shop with picking healthy foods in mind. You’ll book your time to pack them up in snack sized quantities. You will make your shopping list according to a menu plan. This saves time and dollars!

Being organized gives you time to exercise

We spend up to an hour a day, looking for things. Don’t believe it? Add the computer, your purse, and the fridge.  Ahh, the 1st world problems of today!  The first three things to go when a person is too busy, or just managing their time poorly are friends, exercise and paperwork.

You can easily build exercise into your daily routine–no matter how busy you are. You’re going to make an appointment with yourself for that.

Being organized reduces accidents

Trippage, falls, fires from paper files, candles, computer, etc. Spillage,  and also clobberage from above. I’m an ER nurse. I know how accidents happen. We sutured a 9 yr old with knife wound in his chest recently because he was running with a bag full of hangers. He was helping his sister move into an apartment. He fell onto the bag, and lo and behold, stood up with a knife in his chest! Luckily, he wasn’t badly hurt, and the knife didn’t penetrate his chest, but didn’t that throw a ‘knife’ into the moving day chaos!

Being organized allows you to breathe better

It’s very difficult to clean when there’s clutter strewn about. When you’re organized, you can quickly and easily dust and vacuum, without obstacles. Otherwise those dust mites are there, causing allergy symptoms to you and those you live with.

Being organized can make you and others happier

Perhaps you are late for things, your family has to look for things, you cause your daughter to always be late for practice, dance, hockey etc. Your boss might be angry that you can’t find something or get things done on deadline. Less stress and less conflict with family.members.

When you make Organizing your first resolution, you’ll find that the next goals will fall into place before you know it.

Have a healthy January!

Secret New Years Resolutions

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Welcome to the new year 2012 AD!

There’s been lots of talk about this year, so it promises to be an interesting one for all of us human doings, and human beings.

I’ve asked several people if they have resolutions for the new year, and got no real responses other than “To make no resolutions” or “I don’t make resolutions”.

I have a feeling that they are secretly making some semi-resolutions in their head for the next year to come. We can’t help it, if we are true human beings, to have goals, can we? Isn’t just the act of telling yourself that you plan on improving some part of your physical or spiritual nature, a goal in itself? Who doesn’t want something to be better?

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. But the ones that will do something about it are another group. It’s just a dream if you want it, but it quickly turns into a goal if you plan on a strategy to get it!

What are the differences between resolutions and goals?

We have seen the acronym S.M.A.R.T. when talking about goals:

S pecific

M easurable

A ttainable

R ealistic

T imely

If goals have to meet this criteria, then what are your resolutions doing?

Wikipedia’s definitions for RESOLUTION are:

Legal: a written motion adopted by a deliberative body

New Years Resolution: a commitment that a person makes in the new year to one or more lasting personal goals, projects, or the reforming of a habit.

So if a person writes the ‘motion’, and adopts this motion as a law into herself, then doesn’t that make it a legal resolution? Make it a SMART resolution, and there you have it: A GOAL!

A goal is a dream that has a strategy, or plan attached to it!

How do goals work? Three ways:

Focus

Visualize

Believe

Are your dreams, just dreams, or are they goals? Are you afraid to take the leap to make the change? Maybe you have a dream to be able to play an instrument, get fit, make money, change a relationship’s status, or just to be a better person.

How big do you dare to dream?  How much are your dreams dampened down by your own stories of what is and isn’t possible?  How much do your behavioral patterns hold you in a space that prevents you from growing? Any thought in your mind can be ‘morphed’ into a dream, then a goal, if you make the decision to do so.

And speaking of decisions…

My definition of stress is when you have a big decision to make and you haven’t made it yet. In my experience, stress levels are high at that time more than any. One of the biggest causes of stress is resisting change, especially when it is inevitable.

This year, lets wake up from our dreams and add the plan!!!!

2011 can go straight to …

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I just got home from a busy 12 hour shift. A busy one in which the alarm bells and whistles of patient calls, IV machines, cardiac monitors will be in my new years dreams tonight, I’m sure. Straight into the hot tub with a glass of wine went I after disrobing from the grimy germy uniform.

As I sat in the soupy lather, listening to Dan Mangan on the outdoor speakers,  I contemplated the year from beginning to end.

My new year started in Toronto, where I witnessed the scene after the first stabbing of the year. It was a balmy evening, just like this one, and it took us 2 hours to get home by packed streetcar to the Beaches. The streetcar crowd was singing ‘Build me up, Buttercup’ and ‘Hey Jude’ at the top of our lungs. Admittedly,  fun was had.

Since then, all in all, I can remember more bad times than good this year, with relationship issues with family members and friends in their own crises. As a close friend of mine put it once- “Just thank the Universe you’re just the supporting actress instead of the starring role in these dramas”. There were times that were not bad, spent trying to make these count as the good times, just because they weren’t the bad times.

I have been told, and agree, that I am an optimist and have a cheery disposition, but sometimes I feel that I’m not as good a supporting actress if I have too many stars to support all at once. We all got through it OK, albeit a bit bruised.

When we talk about New Years Resolutions, all I can think about is that I resolve to live in the present, not to repeat 2011and to embrace 2012 as the year that could!  This year will be a new year. It will be better. I just  know it.Don’t you? That’s the optimist in me, through and through!

So my toast to this new year is that 2011 can go straight to *%###*”(BLEEP)!

Here’s to 2012: The year that could!

Christmas Countdown: 3, 2, 1!

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.The psychologists say Christmas stress is often ignored!

Stress, as we know, can causes a breakdown in your immune system, leaving you susceptible to colds and flu.

Add to that the overdrinking and overeating, and under-exercise, and you might end up in my emergency department!

Yet some stress is natural, invigorating and can get the adrenaline flowing, quickens the mind, energizes the body and helps us get on with life in a much more positive way.

We can see stress as something of a friend: 

As Monty Python once put it:

When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle

So I feel my ethical job is to give my 2011 Christmas organizing, décor and health tips that will relieve the stress. And it’s not a cocktail list, just some ideas to help you make this holiday season the best one yet!

 

Buy Gift cards. Yes, I said it, something for everyone! The recipient gets to choose the gift, yet it shows that you know what they like, where they spend their time or prefer to shop.

To further personalize, add a token gift to go with the card. For example: Earphones with an Itunes card, A key chain with a Canadian Tire,  or give a La Senza card with a dollar store net bag for washing under garments, A box of popcorn with a Galaxy Cinemas card, a travel mug with a Tim Hortons card.

One Christmas I opened a gift to have an onion fall out onto the floor. It was wrapped in with a set of swimming goggles! That was meaningful and funny for me.

The season is for laughing and joy, after all.

Organize your purse before you go shopping. In my clutter workshop I give the participants 5 minutes to write down everything in their purse without looking in it. Interesting results!

Eliminate any unnecessary receipts, paperwork or other items. Start an envelope for all your Christmas receipts. Especially the gift cards. If there is a problem recinding them, you may need to show the receipt. Best to give it with the card.

Ensure you have all your coupons and gift cards before you go out the door.

Lock your purchases in the trunk of your car. Take a blanket with you to throw over purchases you place in the back seat. There’s nothing like being a victim of theft to ad stress to your life.

Last minute wrapping, baking, preparing?

When you have to organize something, the last thing you want to do is get bored with the project at hand. Add some zest to those organizing projects ahead of you

Turn on the tunes. Background music can be very motivating when you’re trying to get something done. It can keep your energy flowing. However, the type of music you choose should be suited to the job at hand.

Sprinkle in some fun.

Dancing is a perfect way to relieve stress and burn calories. Slow dancing—3.5 calories a minute, fast….10.4 calories a minute. You might pick a pop Holiday album to bop to your chores with..

Remember STRESSED IS JUST DESSERTS backward.

Visiting family, or having them over, and being an adult, but put once again in the role of a child is very difficult. Don’t expect good will. People don’t change. Don’t take responsibility for other’s happiness. Don’t expect miracles. Avoid known triggers in family gatherings. Use distraction techniques. Be a good listener. It makes you popular. (So does stocking up on rum and eggnog)

Guests coming over with no time to clean?

First impressions make the difference.

Take 10 min. to clear and clean the foyer.

Take 10 min to shine the taps and wipe down the bathroom

Take 10 min to declutter. Delegate!

If you set up your manger and there are wise men and a camel missing,, don’t worry. The fact is that there were not 3 wise men, no camels, and actually no manger.

They came to see a babe in a house acc. To Matt. verse2:chapter11.

They didn’t make it to the manger on time, and like 3 wise women would have, they didn’t ask for directions, deliver the baby, clean the stable, make casserole or bring diapers and other practical gifts!

  Don’t do it all in one day

Only Santa has to worry about that Thanks to our time zones, he has as much as 31 hours to deliver to 832 houses per second. And anyway, it was Pope Julius in the 4th century that chose Dec.25. It’s called a season, this Christmas thing.

If you have a busy lifestyle, you’re not willing to give up any of your activities and you can’t hire someone to help, you can’t expect your home to be perfectly organized all the time. Once you acknowledge this fact, you’ll be able to progress and find happiness in everything you are able to accomplish, instead of fretting over everything that still needs to be done.

 Finish what you started. So today I went home and looked for all the things I started but didn’t finish. I finished off a bottle of wine, a bottle of Bailey’s, some cheesecake, that bag of cookies, the prozac and a box of chocolates. You don’t know how good I feel!

You can complete projects if you commit to the ’20 minutes each day’ plan, and your home could look presentable. Set a timer. Make an appt with yourself. Respect yourself enough to keep the appt.

Book a silent night, holy night. Stay home, play soft music, light some candles,  meditate. You may not say no to others, but don’t say no to yourself either. Treat yourself as often as you can.

My lovely and talented sister, Marion, painted this blue tree. I love it!!!

The #1 selling Christmas song of all time?

Bing Crosby’s:Night before Christmas

 

Be the architect of your own holiday season.

Honour your family and friends with opportunity to connect.

Create intimate times with the ones we love.

The holidays will not let you down. Only you can do that.

If you could package this wonderful spirit of Christmas, you would have a present full of wonder, peace, faith, goodness, charity, simplicity, fun light and delight, laughter, and glory .

Thankfully you can give this gift. Take care of yourself and you can let it flow freely from your every thought, feeling and action. Give the gift that keeps on giving.

 

 

Merry Christmas to All!

Patti and Jim