Your goals form for Feb is ready over at my site. If you’re already signed up, you will have received the form this morning. Otherwise, when you sign up, it will be delivered to you in the welcome pack.

Happy planning

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On Saturday morning I tried to squeeze something into a cupboard and when it wouldn’t fit, I  just lost it.

I then chucked out stuff like crazy.

Why do I have four huge plastic salad bowls when I only ever use at most two at a time?

I use these ones for baking when it’s a 3 cups of flour or more recipe too, and of late, for my sweet and savoury snack mixes.

And that’s how it went.

I had a pile big enough for two grocery carrier bags on my table and told Nester (our cleaning lady) to please help herself to it all. Or otherwise, to toss!

I’ve been seriously decluttering and organising for just over 6 years now, as long as we’ve been in this house and it was my stinginess that started it.

I actually considered getting a kitchen cupboard built to house all my extra stuff and when they quoted me R5000-odd in those days, I nearly fainted.

But I did have an aha – those things I wanted stored weren’t nearly worth R5000 so why would I pay for storage to house rubbish that I probably wasn’t using anyway.

Let that be some inspiration for you!

What do you need to clear out this week?

PS Organise your home will help kick-start your decluttering journey.

I’m writing to you from Ballito, a seaside town right on the Kwa-Zulu Natal coast.

Yes, I’m on holiday at the beach!!!!!!!!!

We are right on the beach and I’m loving the sound of the waves. Bliss. I’ve even painted my toenails bright blue to celebrate the summer weather

A quick reminder that

1) My friend, Beth, has her fabulous Declutter Calendar in print now. Check it out and grab your copy.

and

2) I’m celebrating by holding a buy one, get one f.ree sale for Beth’s and my readers.

It’s really easy – buy whichever product takes your fancy (Organise your Home is really popular at this time of year) and put another product of your choice (at the same or lesser price) in the notes to seller section. And I’ll get those to you asap.

This offer is only good until midnight EST (Sat 14th 7 am South African time).

Here is the list of all the products – have at it!

I’ve been teaching my children to pack their own toys away, put things away before they take out new toys, and so on since they were about 12 – 13 months.

Well, I thought it was time to teach them decluttering.

Who would ever have thought I’d say something like they have too many books but they really did.

They had foam books, thick board books and even plastic bath books and material books. Lots of the books have been chewed on and are not looking great at the moment.

So I told them to go through their books and take away the ones they don’t read so I could give it to other kids who don’t have books

They decluttered these four plus two of their absolute favourites, Daniel and David.

I will admit that I was heartbroken when they tossed Daniel and David into the mix. Quite honestly I didn’t think they’d thought it through properly so the books have been in my study.

The next night Kendra asked Dion to read David. They looked through the pile and he said, “did you not give David to the other kids?”

Her little lip started to quiver and this is where I encountered a totally new experience – I have never before had a client cry for things they tossed out.

Then again, this little one is my daughter and I did have the book.

You should have seen the joy on her face when I produced David.

Of course a day or two later Connor asked for Daniel and I whipped it out straight away because I certainly don’t want to hear all that screaming.

These four books will now go because it’s been about 3 – 4 weeks and they haven’t even asked for any of them.

Poor Poppy Cat. This was one of their favourite books when they first started “reading” but I think I miss her more than they do LOL

I think holding onto the books for just a little while may be a good thing to do for kids who may not be fully aware that donate = gone for good.

Do you teach your kids to declutter?

What do you do when you want to hang onto something but they want to toss it?

Organise your home will help you declutter and get your home organised for the new year.

     Rachel R. says

1. How do you stay motivated when the junk you box up to send away never seems to get gone? (I don’t drive, nobody comes out this far) and I’m the only one who seems to care whether or not it leaves, or that something as bad or worse takes its place.

2. Also, ideas for keeping a flighty teen on task – she’s got to learn to do it for herself in her rapidly approaching adult days.

My answers

1. What works for us is as soon as I have a packet or box of something ready, I take it to our cars and put it in the boot there and then.

We donate the kids clothes to an orphanage our church supports and as soon as a bag is ready (big or small) I take it to my husband’s car boot (we always use his car on Sundays.

For things that are miscellaneous (I had a box of old books recently that a friend wanted), I give a deadline and say “if it’s not fetched by such-and-such date (I’m not unreasonable – I give a few weeks), I’m dropping it off at the church”. I think people know I’m serious so they come fetch when they say they will.

An idea for Rachel – keep a post-it note on your door so if anybody comes out your way, you have a visual reminder to ask them to drop your stuff off at the nearest collection place.

2. I am a strong believer in natural consequences. It’s worked for me (when I would sleep longer than I was supposed to in my youth…) and I just believe that the quickest way to get “flighty teens” to stay on task is to let the laws of natural consequences take effect.

When no-one bails you out, you get responsible very quickly!

What do you think? How would you answer Rachel?

PS what do you think of my button?

When you take off just one day from reading blogs and your previously empty reader goes to 120 unread items, you know it’s time to start decluttering.

Well, that’s how I know it’s time to start decluttering.

The thing is…

I typically have a problem letting go. I’d say that on the scale of 1 – 10, where 1 is terrible and 10 is great, I’m about a 3.

• What if they post something super-awesome and I miss it?
• What if there’s the PERFECT organising tip and I don’t see it?
• What if there’s the best crafty idea ever?
• What if I just miss out?

(clearly I think too much)

But I’m going to set myself mini goals.

I already started. From 116 subscriptions I’m already down to 98.

I’m telling myself that somehow, somewhere, if something is meant to find its way back to me (!), I’ll either see it featured on a blog I still read or on Pinterest.

How’s that for positive self-talk?

So how good are you at letting go?

And more importantly, how many do you have in your reader?

Today I want to talk about an area of the office that may just be one of my favourite things to organise – your computer!

Because we can’t see computer clutter as obviously as we can see physical clutter, we often don’t realise it’s there but believe me, it’s still affecting you.

How does it affect you?

When you open your Inbox and feel drained at the sight of all your emails, when your computer runs slow because there are so many photos on there and when you click into your Google Reader and can’t BELIEVE how much some people post because you went through your blogs for 3 hours yesterday and now there are 127 unread items yet again!

Sound familiar?

We’re going to look at 4 places where you can declutter electronically. Today we’re going to look at two and next week we’ll discuss the other two:

Free downloads

We (especially women) like fr.ee things, don’t we? Buy one, get one f.ree sales come to mind… As a result, we download anything and everything we can find that’s for fr.ee.

If it’s fr.ee, it’s got to be good, right?

No, actually, it’s not all good. Not only are you cluttering up your computer but you can’t possibly use all the things that are out there because we live in an information-overload society.

I wish I could say that I’m immune to the addiction to F.REE stuff but I’m not! I am much better than I was but I still find myself entering my email address far too often for my liking.

At one point I had about 6 different grocery shopping lists on my computer (all fr.ee downloads) and 10 different versions of a to-do list. None of them quite worked for me so I made my own and deleted all of them.

Email

Mmmm, email.

My clients need help with email more than any other thing in their office, and paper’s a close second.

That’s because email’s so fast and because we don’t use it correctly. Did you know that for every email you send out, you get at least two emails back?

So how do you know if your emails are a problem?

The quick answer is if you spend more than 30 minutes a day on email.
90% of people waste an extra hour a day on email that they don’t have to. That hour translates to SIX WEEKS a year. You read that right – six weeks!

Get familiar with the delete key (my favourite key on the keyboard) and start deleting. Delete immediately once you’ve replied to an email and don’t file unless you absolutely have to.

Disable all the notifications from social networking sites like Facebook.

I only get friend requests, messages and notes on my wall in my inbox. The rest I’ll see when I choose to log on. (No, I don’t get Facebook on my phone but that’s another article for another day)

Here again, decide on your comfort level for emails and make sure you work your system until you can breathe again. Personally, I set a daily goal of deleting at least 50 items so once I’m done with my inbox, I go through my Sent Items and delete, delete, delete

As a matter of interest, how many emails are in your inbox right now?

Want to reprint this article on your blog or in your newsletter?

You may do so as long as this entire blurb is also included.
Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focussed action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full. Visit http://purposefultimemanagement.com for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.

My babies don’t go to daycare; we have a nanny who comes in every day to take care of them.

She is fabulous at caring and loving our children but her standards for keeping my place tidy is not the same as mine.

So every Sunday I do a bit here and a bit there to “restore the order” but I’ve been itching to get properly stuck in for weeks now.

I didn’t even consciously plan it but yesterday and today I went through each of my kitchen cupboards, the fridge and freezer, the laundry and a miscellaneous dresser.

I decluttered a bit (when you do it regularly as I try to, it’s not as bad) but mainly re-organised.

Where things weren’t working, I tweaked and tried some new systems.

I must add… it really wasn’t my intention to do all of that – there were two cupboards in particular that were driving me nuts. This was one of them…

However, once I started, I got in the zone and I believe if you’re in the flow, go with it.

And I did.

The point is that momentum always moves you forward and makes the rest of the task seem easier.

The whole thing didn’t take that long – probably an hour on each of the two days.

Have you been in the zone lately? What was your latest organising project?

If you blog, please feel free to share the URL to your organising project in the comments

PS I know I missed posting yesterday but I really wanted to unplug on Good Friday so I’ll make it up on 1 May

PPS And now, I hope the zone stays with me as I need to start packing for our holiday!

A few weeks ago I got tired of lugging my gigantic handbag around.

I decided to switch to a smaller one and see what happened.

Here is the smaller bag:

and a closer pic

Well, I loved it.

As you can see, there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place.

I also love that there’s not a lot of space to throw miscellaneous items into which means I’m not lugging around things “just in case”.

When I’ve wanted to use some of my bigger totes, I’ve placed this entire handbag inside the fabric tote so it looks like a different bag but is, in fact, the same old thing.

You won’t believe how light it feels compared to all the things I used to carry around. Mind you, it was all organised but just too much.

So my question for you is this – how much do you carry around with you?

Do you prefer a big or small handbag?

Is yours organised or chaotic?

PS I’m looking for a guest blogger.

So, it’s 1 April but this is not an April Fool’s joke
I want to know what your organising and time goals are for the month.

I’ll go first. Mine are

1) enjoy a lovely holiday – we’re going away for 4 days this month – so quite a bit of packing to do

2) get this blog redesigned – it’s about time, isn’t it?
3) declutter and organise the kids’ clothes as we go into the colder weather
4) get chest of drawers and other dresser painted (I’m going olive green for the one and turquoise for the other)

Last month I didn’t get the filing done but I did declutter their toys.

Sometimes you just have to ask youself, “what’s driving me more crazy right this minute?”

So, what are your organising goals this month?

PS I’m also going to blog every day this month. So I need some ideas – what questions would you like me to answer? Ask in the comments and I’ll pepper my answers throughout the month. And don’t forget to send me your inspiring space, or the link if you see some gorgeous spaces while you’re blog-hopping.