I’m so excited! Our declutter challenge was highlighted in this post over at 5 minutes for mom.

If you’re not familiar with the site, Janice and Susan are two GORGEOUS twin sisters who work from home and run two toy stores:

A Rocking Horse To Love and Pedal Cars and Retro Collectibles.

I’ve been interviewed by them before so you can look for me under Readers Blogs. I’m a personal fan of Tackle it Tuesday because I love the idea of making yourself accountable by posting your projects.

Anyway, go look!

It’s at times like these that I realise I also need my Organise your Home home study system

This is how I decided what had to go:

1. I hadn’t worn it for two years (!) either because I just didn’t feel like it or it didn’t fit me. Both those lilac suits in the pile don’t fit me yet I hung onto them because when they did, they looked really gorgeous on me *sigh*
2. I didn’t LOVE it. There is a shirt in that pile that I have been keeping because

(a) my MIL bought it for me and I thought that was very kind of her and

(b) it is cool to wear in our blazing hot Jhb summers. BUT I must admit, I don’t love it and it doesn’t even look like me.

So I threw them out. That’s only 6 items of clothing in there but the weight off my shoulders is huge, which brings me to another point:

Sometimes we make a bigger deal of things than they have to be. I’d been procrastinating all of this for 2 – 3 weeks and it took me 10 minutes to throw out

What have you tackled this week?

If you don’t know how to reach your organising goals, join me on a free Skypecast this Thursday. Get all the details and your handout here.

Those of you who have been reading my blog since the beginning of the year know we’ve had some cleaning lady hassles.

Well, the frustration with this 2nd one has been building and this weekend, I called her up and fired her.

And you know what? I feel relief about it.

Yes, I have to now do my own cleaning but that’s fine – at least I don’t have the expectation of a house in order only to come home and find that it’s not done properly!

Back to the drawing board!

What are you tackling this week?

I’ve told you before about my to-do lists and since I’ve been doing really well, getting through my frogs easily every day, I have quite a lot of time on my hands.

So I made a list of things I don’t really need to do but would like to and that’s what I tackled today.

1. I decluttered about 20 of the web links in my favourites and organised those that were left into 3 categories – time management (that’s the main subject I coach on), blogging and other business resources.

2. I went through my 34 sub-folders in my inbox and decluttered those down to 15. Sometimes we get stuck into one way of doing things. When things change, we need to change our way of doing things.

For instance, when they first contacted me about writing for Clutter Control Freak —->> I kept all those emails agreeing to this and that, the how-tos and so on. Now that I know what I’m doing, I don’t need that folder. See?

here is my after

What do you need to get rid of that you’re holding onto?

3. I went through 234 emails in my Sent Items and decluttered those right down to……. not 150……. not 50….. but 13!

If you’re wondering, I have 3 emails in my inbox (it is usually empty-ish like that so I don’t have to declutter that very often)

I’d love to know how many emails, favourites and subfolders you have. Go on – share in the comments.

Last night I wrote my to-do list for today and when I was putting my planner on the pile mountain of books, I grabbed it again to add “tidy bedside table”.

The things on my bedside table have been multiplying slowly over the last week because I’ve been spending such a lot of time in bed. I used to only have the one basket before but I have so much stuff – notepads and stuff – that I brought one of these pink baskets out to contain the extra stuff. It helped a lot because I didn’t have to stretch for a long time to find things; I just grab the basket and find what I need.

Here’s the before, just after I finished my muesli and yoghurt this morning.

and here’s the after

And here’s the pile of books that went back to my bookshelf. I need to finish that time management one before I get the goals one!

What else am I tackling today?

Because I have to be sedentary, I made a master to-do list of 19 computer things I want to do (some of them, like writing a new e-course, has multiple parts, so is going slowly) and so far (yesterday and this morning) I’ve done 6). I’ll keep you updated.

What does your to-do list look like?

after - this is what it looks like on my corner shelf. The flat plastic container to the left of the front green basket is what I keep in my lunch bag and take to work. There is just enough space for 5 of each for the week.

and this is the aerial view

1. Does this idea work for you?

2. Where do you keep your vitamins and how do you organise them?

For more tackles, visit 5 minutes for mom

I love baking (because of the eating!) but one thing I don’t love is the mess. I found a way to combat the messy flour and cut down my baking time.

The one thing I had no ideas about until recently was the Baking Pan Mess. That is, until I did a virtual organising session recently and my client mentioned these containers. I LOVE THEM.

This is an aerial view…

and this is what it looks like in the cupboard!

They contain the odd-shaped pans and this thing is so easy to pull in and out of the cupboard (like a drawer).

If you’re in South Africa, you can get them at Game, Dion or Pick & Pay. This one used to keep my extra toiletries until I decided to re-use it like this.

Check how Tertia uses them to organise her kids. It is too cute!

How do you contain your baking pans?

My new thing is to do my main priority items before I start reading from my Google Reader. Of course this means I’m behind with reading but the good news is I’m being far more productive.

My tackle for this week is to get a number of blogging items up to date, which are all done:

1. Write 4 posts for Clutter Control Freak
2. Create 2 PDF files for Decluttering and Time-Saving tips from this post. Please come back tomorrow to download the PDFs. In fact, there’s still time to leave your words of wisdom because I can easily add your tips to the document.
3. Blog about contest on CCF

Woohoo – now I’m busy writing tomorrow’s weekly tips newsletter. If you’re not subscribed, go here.

How do you make sure your top-priority items are done every day?

P.S. Go to my main blog page to read about the contest and about the Sunshine Organizer.

Well, hello! I can’t believe the responses to this post. You guys had such awesome ideas which I’ll recap in a moment.

But first, the stats…

Less than 20……………………………….3

More than 20 but less than 50……4

More than 50 but less than 100….6

More than 100……………………………2

Tips for blog maintenance (from you readers)

• no carry over to the next day
• mark all as read
• always keep pruning
• if people don’t post for a predetermined time (without saying they’re away/ on a break), delete
• limit time for reading
• use folders so if you’re limited with time, just read favourites

I officially started with 61 (when I wrote that post) and I’m very happy to say I now have only 50. Here’s the proof

What I learnt

1. I seemed to have no trouble deleting feeds of the blogs I only lurk on. This is because they don’t know I’m reading so I’m sure they don’t care. BTW, some of this lurking is unintentional because I have problems with Typepad and WordPress blogs, especially those who have comment moderation. So if I really, really want to say something, I email them. I know, I know, it’s crazy.
2. I seem to have a misguided sense of loyalty on blogs I comment on regularly. Those are definitely very difficult. However, what I’ve been doing the last couple of months is this: I delete the blog but when I do my usual thing with the memes (MPM, WFMW, and this one), I scan through the participants and look for those blogs I don’t have in my reader but do enjoy catching up with. I then click through and read the whole front page, or the posts that interest me.
3. I read LOTS of creative blogs (this is my biggest category)! I looked through all of them and did not delete even one because they inspire me!

My folders are named Business, Creative, Cute kids, Still deciding, Friends, Lots of reading (long posts), Organising, Infertility and Memes.

In case you’re interested, I like blogs where people live in interesting places. That’s how I met Ali (the only blog friend I’ve ever met…YET) who’s in Mocambique. I also read a blog from a lady in Beijing and I’ve just added someone in Taiwan

The blogger with 375 feeds is extremely organised as you’ll see when you go read her comment on the other post. So it’s not about the number – what can you comfortably control without it taking over your life?

I just cannot mark all as read so I need to have a manageable number. I was happy at 30 to 40 feeds, and now 50 is the new happy medium. When it stretches beyond that, I start twitching (as Barb says ). Incidentally, I counted the blogs I actually comment on regularly and they only number 13 out of the 50!

I like to go through my settings every couple of weeks so that I can check if the blogs are still active, and if I still want to be following them. I start with my Still Deciding folder and then do a quick scan of the rest until it’s displaying a number I’m happy about.

What is your comfortable number? How many blogs do you comment on regularly?