There’s change in the air!

No I’m not referring to a woman running for president although I think that is pretty cool. I mean how amazing would it be to have a woman’s energy in the White House? In any case I think we are going to be just fine this time around. We really can’t lose with any of the candidates Republican or Democrat.

But what I am referring to is the change in weather. I know winter isn’t over yet but the birds are singing and the tulips are beginning to show their sprouts. At least up here in the Pacific Northwest.

So what does Spring coming mean? It means cleaning and organizing. Now I haven’t heard from many of you in a while. Probably because I’ve been missing in action lately. Going to school and becoming a foster parent has taken some of my time but I’m back full swing. So what are you waiting for? Give us a call and let’s see about tackling that mess once and for all.

This is the year to make big changes starting right in your own home!

2008 Los Angeles Organizing Awards

Vote for your favorite in the 2008 Los Angeles Organizing Awards! Votes may be cast at http://www.napola.org now through December 31, 2007. The Awards are a celebration and culmination of national “Get Organized Month,” to be held in January.Award Categories: (Even though it is the Los Angeles Organizing Awards you don’t have to be an LA company to be recognized so be sure to VOTE!)

The Los Angeles Organizing Awards features more than 15 categories, including:

• Best Home Organizing Product
• Best Office Organizing Product
• Most Helpful Organizing Technology
• Best National Organizing Show

And just to give you an idea of what this is all about take a look at the 2006 Nominees on John Trosko’s site Organizing LA

Interior Plant Scaping

I begin work with a new client tomorrow in indoor plantscaping. I’m very excited to introduce a new element to my tool box. Interior plant maintenance and design.

Plants of course are a terrific way of cleaning our internal air supply. But don’t let them take over your life. It’s  important to groom or ‘organize’ your plants as well.

We have a plant that is about to take over our living room. So as any good gardener will tell you it’s important to keep your babies pruned. The only problem is you have to make sure you have a partner that supports your vision in plant pruning. If not there’s always the accidental snip here and snip there.

What to do with the snippings? I take my snippings and gather then into a bunch and use them as an impromptu plantal arrangement. Simple green leaves can be so beautiful in a bathroom or on a kitchen counter and they can brighten up a bedroom side table just as easily as a vase of tulips and all for free!

Turn off the television and live your own reality show

As the rain begins to roll in here in the Pacific Northwest our tendency is to flick on the tube and let our eyes glaze over while we watch mindless reality shows.

So now is the perfect time to turn off the tube and have a family ‘organize night’.

Time to clean out the clutter and donate your excess to a local charity. Gently used coats, toys, and the general clutter that has slowly crept back into your life since the last time you cleaned and organized.

I’m doing it today in fact. Spur of the moment organizing fun!

Design with a purpose

By now you know I love to organize but organizing is only half the fun. The other half of course is starting off with a space that has been designed thoughtfully.

In my search for a design firm in Vancouver that shares my design sensibility I came across Patricia Gray’s website. In my opinion Ms. Gray is the perfect designer. She thinks about the impact design will have on the client’s enjoyment of the space as well as the impact the design is going to have on the environment in the short and long terms and I think that is amazing.

Design should be about balancing our need for a comfortable space with the needs of our planet.

This means that you should be asking yourself ‘what impact am I having on the planet when I buy things for my space?’. How long will the item I’m purchasing last?  Is it essential to my daily life? Does it have a purpose? What is the quality of the craftmanship? Will it last me a lifetime?

I starting asking these questions during my years as a general manager for a specialty retailer. We carried pots and pans made from materials that would last a lifetime if treated properly.

Since those days I have adopted a philosophy of spending a little more for quality even if it means doing without for a while until I can afford it.

So today’s mantra is “Buy quality for a lifetime of use”. Don’t get suckered into buying trends. Think classic.

Oranizing toward a ‘purpose’ driven space

The single most important skill you can acquire in learning how to organize is the ability to distinguish between something that has a purpose and something that is simply window dressing.

What do I mean by this?

We are surrounded by objects that we’ve accumulated throughout the years. Regardless of where you acquired the object a time comes when you must evaluate its meaning and purpose.

Some items will be very meaningful and yet serve you no purpose. So how do you decide which ones to keep and which ones to let go.

Here’s an approach I have found to be very effective.

First of all I begin by deciding to organize a small area of my home. For example I’ll begin in the bathroom. I pull everything from the cabinets drawers and bins. With everything exposed it’s easier to make quick decisions about an objects purpose.

Toothpaste=oral hygiene=purpose
Toothbrush=oral hygiene=purpose
Acrylic Soap Dish=hygiene=purpose (But wait, there’s more…..it’s not being used and as a result it is collecting dust so it is not serving a useful purpose right now.)

The idea is to scrutinize your belongings and make a decision about an objects purpose. It may have a useful purpose that is not currently being realized, or it might just be something you are hanging onto because of sentimental reasons or because you think that by ridding yourself of the object you are somehow wasting the object.

We have to get over this thinking and start fresh. When purchasing a product in the first place you have to ask yourself whether the object is necessary and needed. Quite often we purchase things we simply don’t need because the marketing is so persuasive. Or we are given a gift and we feel badly if we don’t keep the gift even if it doesn’t suit our taste or we simply don’t need it.

The important thing here is to begin making decisions about an objects purpose. If it does not serve a meaningful purpose you probably don’t need it and thus you should give it to someone or some organization that can find a meaningful use for it.

Breaking down the ‘Organizing’ process (Part 2)

So now let’s talk about the physical steps necessary for a stress free plan to organize your space.

By now you have taken a visual inventory of your stuff and you’ve identified possible areas to integrate your things.

The next step is setting aside time or deciding a date to begin the work.

In my case I like to start work as soon and as early as possible and during a time when when you don’t have a lot of family members around. The next couple of hours are going to be controlled chaos so I like to limit the number of people around just to keep stress levels in check.

Next comes the fun part. Start pulling items from the area where you plan to integrate your extra stuff. By taking everything out of the closet or room and creating piles of ‘like items’ you are accomplishing two things. 1. You are forcing yourself to re-think each item already located in the space and 2. You are setting the stage for an organized ‘re-ordering’ of your things. Think of it as starting off with a blank canvas.

This process let’s you breathe. When you are standing in front of or inside an empty space your brain will ‘re-set’. Now with a clear picture of your space you are prepared to begin putting things away. So, one by one start putting your things away while integrating your extra items.

Beware though. During the process you’ll come across an item or two that can be donated, tossed or consolidated.

I don’t know how many things I’ve come across that can be tossed or combined with other items. For example as I was organizing my cupboards I came across spices that were so old I had no choice but to toss them out.  In other cases I had two or three of the same item so I’d combine them and in doing this I was able to free up additional space. And freeing up space and using it creatively is the key to a successful organizing process.

Breaking down the ‘Organizing’ process (Part 1)

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.

Are you a compulsive hoarder?

According to Dr. David, Tolin, Director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at The Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital compulsive hoarding may be a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Now I’m no scientist but my opinion is that compulsive hoarding is a learned behavior brought on by our consumer culture.

While I agree that some people may find it difficult to let go of certain objects I also believe that one can learn how to let go by simply having an outside perspective share in the learning process.

That’s my specialty. I find that a compassionate approach to teaching someone how to manage objects is the only way. Often people simply don’t know how to organize so they give up and in giving up they become overwhelmed and before you know it they are buried under a pile of stuff. Then to explain the condition someone comes along and offers up a ‘dis-order’ to explain it all. Through in some pharma grade drugs and you have a full blown illness that can be managed. Well, I prefer to manage my responsibilities head on. And I want to help others do the same thing. It’s really a wonderful feeling to finally get control of your life but sometimes you need a coach or an expert to guide you.

A passion for organization and LS (Living Space) design

I worked in specialty retail for nearly 11 years and in that time I developed an amazing passion for organizing things. Office supplies, product inventory, cash register procedures, visual displays, you name it I organized it.

Getting my degree in Communications would only satisfy my passion for communication on one level so I’ve been on a life long journey to understand what it is about our physical environment that has the power to communicate to us in ways we only thought were possible through verbal means. I’m talking about the type of communication that a space can send to one person or many people.

A case in point involves the infamous Bernhard Goetz who in the early 80’s in New York city shot four teenage youths who had attempted to rob him during a routine subway commute. All four survived the shooting spree but one was left paralyzed by the incident.

According to Malcom Gladwell author of ‘The Tipping Point‘ this incident happened because of the “Power of context”. In the early 80’s New York subways were riddled with graffiti. Every inch of every available space was painted over with graffiti. Malcom Gladwell suggests and I agree that our physical environment can have a powerful influence on human behavior.

The graffiti in this case was communicating the message that no one was in control other than those who were responsible for making the graffiti. It also said neglect, disorder and chaos. All elements that contributed to the teens feeling that it was perfectly okay to rob a person in broad day light in full view of the other travelers.

New York had been experiencing unprecedented crime during the 80’s with an average of 38 crimes reported on New York city subways each day.

Gladwell goes on to suggest that the subsequently dramatic reduction in subway crime was due in part to new policies adopted by the transit authority that took a zero tolerance stance with regard to subway graffiti. When a subway car was ‘tagged’ with graffiti it was immediately taken off the line, cleaned and put back into service.

Until today you will not witness graffiti on a New York City subway car and as a result New York has one of the lowest subway crime rates.

It’s the “Power of Context” that makes the difference.

If your home is cluttered with chaos and discord chances are you are tired, unhappy and a host of other maladies that affect your being.

And that’s where my passion for organization and LS Design come to play. I have spent a lifetime studying the affect physical environment has on ones being.

give us a call me and let’s talk about your needs.