Organizing For Dummies Read online

  Part VI: The Part of Tens

  These five chapters have ten ideas each for organizing a particular process or space. If you’re looking for storage ideas for apartments and condos, want to be better prepared for emergencies, or need some pointers about pets, this is the place to turn for quick ideas. Anyone gearing up to move may want to jump into Chapter 24 and have a great garage sale, then go to Chapter 23 to make your move smooth.

  Icons Used in This Book

  I direct your attention to all sorts of helpful hints for getting organized in Organizing For Dummies with a system of icons that help you scan right to the juicy stuff on any given page. Here’s an overview of what you’ll see.

  Extra ideas to aid the points made.

  This warns you of possible problems.

  Points to remember that will save you time and trouble later.

  Shortcuts to shave time off tasks and leave more for living.

  Cut-to-the-chase ways to clean up that mess.

  High-level hints for advanced organizing.

  You Don’t Have to Be Organized to Get Organized

  I want to conclude all this talk of what’s where with a reassuring word and a promise. First, there’s no wrong way to use this book. Read it however you please (though if you go from right to left your comprehension may be seriously impaired). The point is simple: Read and do, and you can’t go wrong.

  My promise is that if you read and do just a little bit at a time, you will get results. Really. Twenty old papers tossed is an inch of free file space and the beginning of a new habit, and you can do it in five minutes or less. So get organizing today, and by tomorrow, you may start seeing things in a whole new way.

  Part I

  Basic Organizational Tools and Tenets

  In this part . . .

  O rganized people aren’t born . . . they’re made. So if you wouldn’t know a time-management technique if you tripped over one and can’t figure out how clean- ing out your closet can make your life better, where do you start?

  This part introduces you to the why and how of getting organized, giving you both the convincing pep talk and the basic principles you need to put everything in its place. You can discover the many benefits of being organized, how to develop an organized mindset, and six tricks that make quick work of any organizing challenge. Read it and you’ll be raring to go!

  Chapter 1

  Dealing with Clutter

  In This Chapter

  Why anyone can get organized and why you should now

  Calculating the cost of disorganization in dollars and cents

  How organizing increases time, productivity, and good health

  Stopping clutter-causers in their tracks

  I know you think clutter-busting is going to hurt. For many people, getting organized sounds less appealing than a trip to the dentist and more complicated. You may have put off cleaning up your life by figuring that if you’re not organized yet, you must have the wrong personality type. Getting organized goes against the grain and only causes pain.

  Then there are the more specific antiorganization arguments. “I don’t have time,” say many, mixing up the excuse with the exact reason to do it. Others worry that organization will limit their creativity or rob them of their spark. Some people steer clear because they fear that organizing systems might turn them into uptight rule-makers or rigid control freaks.

  If a broad range of people didn’t share these concerns, I wouldn’t have a booming business as a professional organizer. My job, in my business and in this book, is to prove the power of putting everything in its place and how that improves all aspects of your life, from work to home, play, personal relationships, and professional reputation. Why get organized? How about recovering the 15 minutes a day you spend looking for your car keys, or the hour lost last week searching for a critical computer file saved in a dark corner of your directory? Getting dinner on the table with ease and cleaning up like a breeze? Inviting guests into your home without shame? What about finally winning the promotion you may have been passed up for because your desktop piles or late arrival at meetings have undermined your credibility? Wouldn’t you like to leave the office earlier so you can get to know your friends and family again and earn more per hour than you did when you were 16?

  The techniques in this book provide simple and proven ways to organize your life the way you like to live it. Get organized to achieve peak potential and enjoy lifelong peace.

  Organizing myths and truths

  Myth:

  I wasn’t born with an organized personality.

  Getting organized will make me less creative.

  I don’t have time to get organized.

  Getting organized will turn me into a control freak.

  Truth:

  Organization is learned, not inherited.

  Organization frees the mind to think outside the box, and leaves you more time to do it in.

  Organization saves time, yielding huge payoffs for the small amount of time invested in setting up systems that will last for life.

  Organization reduces your need to exert control. Everything is already in its place — so you can relax instead.

  Living in an Overstuffed World

  Imagine that a tornado hit your house and whisked it away. What would you really need to start over again? What would you truly miss?

  Say that an earthquake levels your office to rubble. How many missing items would you have to reassemble to get back to work? An accident lands you in the hospital. How much would the world really suffer because you didn’t attend to all the obligations on your calendar? How much of the confusion could you have prevented with good systems that someone else could manage while you recovered?

  It often takes dramatic thinking to help people sort out the productive elements from the clutter in their lives. Why? Because the world is overstuffed. Houses and offices are filled to the brim, and yet advertisers still beg consumers to buy more. Sandwiches get bigger all the time, and people do too. Cities are bursting at the seams, schools are overcrowded, and they’ve jammed so many seats onto airplanes that passengers are practically sitting on each other’s laps. Society has adopted an overstuffed mentality, and then you wonder why you can’t think clearly or feel peaceful and calm.

  Getting organized is about unstuffing your life, clearing out the deadweight in places from your closet to your calendar to your computer, and then installing systems that keep the good stuff in its place. Organizing is a liberating and enlightening experience that can enhance your effectiveness and lessen your stress every day, and it’s all yours simply for saying “No” to clutter.

  Clutter happens when you don’t put things in place, whether on your desktop, inside the filing cabinet, in your calendar, or atop the kitchen counter. Bringing things into a room and not putting them back where they belong creates clutter. Leaving toys in the hallway, newspapers in the living room, or e-mail in your incoming queue clutters up your space. Unimportant obligations are clutter in the day. Jamming too many things in your home, office, or schedule — filling every space, littering your life — doesn’t give you more power or pleasure. Random articles and activities give you clutter. By getting organized with the techniques in this book, you can leave space free to work, play, and be.

  Piled-up clutter

  Then there’s that special form of clutter you may recognize with a guilty smile: the pile. While making a pile could seem like putting things away, nothing could be farther from the truth. Think about what happens when you make a pile: Now you have to dig through everything on top to find what you need, instead of simply going to the file or drawer or shelf where the item should be. Whether it’s papers, toys, clothes, or computer disks, making piles makes work and wastes time.

  Organization turns pilers into filers and helps you to put things away naturally and easily, because everything has a place.

  Mental clutter

  The most disorienting form of clutter is mental. Mixin
g up your mind with commitments you can’t keep track of, things you can’t find or don’t know how to do, or chaotic surroundings can cause stress and block basic cognitive pro-cesses. If you find it hard to make a decision; if you frequently have to go back to the office, the store, or home to pick up something you left behind; if you’re worried that you can’t accomplish what’s expected or needed, from cooking dinner to finalizing a deal, then you’re probably suffering from the confusion caused by mental clutter. When you get organized, you’ll gain planning, time-management, and placement techniques to clear your mind and de-stress your life. Getting organized is like growing new brain cells — an all-natural upgrade to your gray matter.

  The Cost of Clutter

  The reason for reading and using this book to organize your life is simple: Clutter of all kinds costs you dearly.

  The costs of clutter range from hard cash to time, space, health, and your relationships with people. You may be unaware of the price you pay for overstuffing your life, but when you analyze the cost of clutter, the rewards of getting organized become clear.

  Time

  What’s the one commodity we can never replace in this life? Time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Not a moment can be retrieved, relived, or replayed. Time is the most precious gift, yet we casually throw it away every day. Did you spend time looking for something this morning? Miss an appointment, train, or plane? Drag your way through a report after wasting your peak work time on opening the mail? Maybe you waited in rush hour traffic because you left too late. Perhaps you lost an hour of relaxation time because it takes too long to get dinner on and off the table, your laundry room is set up wrong, or you went to the grocery or office supply store without a list.

  Every second counts. Getting organized helps you get things done fast so you can spend the extra time enjoying life.

  Money

  Hello, bottom line! The wallet is often where people feel things first, and disorganization could be draining yours. Consider your own situation, and take a minute to calculate the dollar cost of the clutter in your life based on the following:

  Rent or mortgage: All the square feet filled with junk in your home, office, or storage locker

  Wage or salary: The time you waste doing things inefficiently, twice, or without a plan plus the raises you haven’t received because you’re not working at peak potential

  Overpaid for purchases: Excess costs from buying at the last minute, from the wrong source, or in the wrong quantity

  Duplicate purchases: Cost of things you’ve bought duplicates of because you couldn’t find yours, forgot you had one, or lost the instruction book or warranty to use it or get it fixed

  Penalties: Fees, interest, and penalties for late payments and bounced checks

  Depreciation: Loss of resale value of cars and other equipment you’re not maintaining properly

  Medical bills: From doctor’s visits to aspirin and stomach medications, all the money you spend because stress is sabotaging your health

  Now imagine: What can you do with all that money when you get it back by getting organized?

  Don’t waste your money renting storage lockers or warehouse space. If you’re using something so rarely that it’s in offsite storage, you don’t need it, so throw it away, sell it, or give it to charity. One of my clients paid to have the contents of two storage lockers moved to his new house in a faraway state, only to realize when the stored contents arrived that he didn’t want most of the items anymore. Poor Robert; he could have used that money for fixing up his house instead.

  Health

  Getting things done when you’re disorganized is hard enough, but how about when you’re sick too? Over time, disorganization can actually contribute to disease. Stress can cause disorders from headache and fatigue to ulcers, high blood pressure, even heart disease. Missing checkups or neglecting treatments can allow conditions to get worse. Simply can’t make the time to exercise? You could be shaving years off your life.

  Just as being disorganized can make you sick, getting organized is a sound investment in your well-being. Reducing physical and mental clutter and creating easy self-care systems can give you the gift of health, now and far into the future.

  Space

  Close your eyes and imagine you’re in a park, on a mountain, at the beach. What makes you feel so great to be there? It’s that rarity of modern life — wide open space.

  People today are so accustomed to being crowded that forgetting the value of physical space and letting yours get overstuffed with things you don’t want or need is easy to do. Yet space creates appreciation for everything it contains. As they tell you in music class, without the rests, the notes lose all their interest. When you get organized, you can find out how to stop filling up space and let it stay empty, so you have room to breathe, dance, and dream.

  Reputation and relationships

  Missing birthdays. Blowing deadlines. Greeting guests with a harried face and house. Letting clients, colleagues, and your boss see you surrounded by piles of papers and supplies. What do you think clutter does to your reputation and relationships?

  Clutter comes between people. At work, looking or acting disorganized presents a picture of incompetence that may make your boss hesitant to assign you projects or put you up for promotion. Teammates might be reluctant to work with you if they doubt your act is together. A messy desk, missed meetings, or misfiled memos can all inhibit your potential for money and growth.

  In your personal life, the toll is just as high. A cluttered home puts your family on edge and discourages guests from having fun or even coming by. High-stress holidays and parties, late or poorly chosen gifts, leaving the kids waiting at soccer practice, forgetting to follow up on a sick relative or pick up your partner’s dry cleaning when you promised can all lessen the love and laughter in your life. Is that a price you’re willing to pay?

  Getting organized can enhance all your interpersonal relationships by letting your talents shine. Order and clear expectations create a comfortable environment, freeing everyone up to enjoy and express themselves. Organization can boost self-esteem and the regard in which others hold you. This confidence will reflect in everything you do.

  The Causes of Clutter

  Clutter is costly but not inevitable — clutter is caused by patterns and practices that can be changed. If you have clutter-causing habits, I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. The age of abundance has affected everyone, and I have clients of all ages, backgrounds, and occupations who are equally unequipped to process all the information, products, and activities being pushed upon us today. You are living in a unique historical period in which people generally have more things and thoughts than ever before but are finally facing the limits to growth. You may want to simplify, streamline, get to the essence of what’s important, and at the end of the day have more time and money and less stress and stuff. But how?

  Let’s tackle the problem at the root, by looking at the causes of clutter.

  You’ve got mail and other forms of information overload

  Whether you’re hooked up to the Internet, surfing a few hundred satellite TV channels, or simply trying to get through your mail and the daily paper, you’re probably faced with all the facts you can handle and more, 24 hours a day. Just a short century ago, books, newspapers, and mail were about it in terms of information arriving at your door. Today the telephone has become a fifth limb that travels everywhere you go. Radio and television bombard the population with messages around the clock. E-mail, faxes, and the Internet broadcast information instantaneously, keeping millions up-to-the-minute on a world’s worth of minutiae.

  Knowledge is power, but information you don’t need is clutter. Whether data is printed on paper, electronically encoded, or just bouncing around in your mind, information without a proper place is a waste of time and space. Getting organized will help you filter information flow and turn the tide of this new age to your advantage at work and play.


  The drive to buy

  Though the information age is still a little new, the consumer age is so well entrenched that buying has become second nature — whether you need it or not. The Sunday paper beckons you out to stores. The exciting ads in the evening entertainment can leave you dissatisfied with your lifestyle and eager to make up the difference for a few (or many) dollars. A culture built on free enterprise encourages people to compare themselves to their neighbors, not on the basis of inner riches or personal fulfillment but by the number of things in their houses and yards.

  My main message when it comes to managing the drive to buy is: Be very afraid. Salespeople are pros. Advertisers go to school, attend training sessions, and earn advanced degrees finding ways to sell you things without regard for your needs. Their sole purpose is to sap your bank account and fill your available space. Then, surprise! You don’t end up with the more fulfilling lifestyle they promised. Your big reward is an empty savings account and an overstuffed house. Driving the drive to buy are the standard, full-price temptations. And then there are the sneaky ones.