Closed September 2017

Clutter Video Tip: How to Start Getting Organized, Part 1

Three is a magic number, yes it is!

The past and the present and the future.

Faith and Hope and Charity,

Centralizing, Outside-In and Circular.

Give you three as a magic number.

Wait, what was that? Centralizing, Outside-In and Circular? Oh yeah, those are the three sorting methods you can use right away to get started on your organizing project. In this video I am answering the age old question “where do I begin?” Following any of these strategies will help you not only gain focus, but also stay focused on your project. Just remember there are three approaches to sorting…

No more, no less.

You don’t have to guess.

When it’s three you can see

It’s a magic number.

(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/TCDSort1.)

And if you need to brush up on your magic numbers, click here to watch the Schoolhouse Rock video.

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, and today’s Clutter Video Tip is about basic approaches for sorting when you’re doing an organizing project. One of the first questions that people ask us is “Where do I start?” And by that, they usually mean “What project am I going to do first in my home?” “A closet?” “A kitchen?” “A home office?” Whatever that is, the next question often also is “Where do I start?” Because they feel overwhelmed about the actual space, how to tackle the project within the room. So, here are a few approaches that will be helpful for you, to give you some structure on how to do that sorting and reviewing.

First, I want to talk about Centralizing. We just touched on this when I did my Organizing Christmas Decorations video recently. And that’s where we de-Christmased everything in the house and we brought everything into the dining room right here, and we put it all on the dining room table. All the bins were here on the floor, and we were able to have that all in one place, and we could review it and sort it more easily. Plus you get very quick visible results in the rest of the house, which is very satisfying. Another place you can do Centralizing is in a bedroom. So, you just make the bed first, and then you are able to take everything on the flat surfaces and the floor and pile that on the bed to do the sorting. So, that also is very satisfying to get quick results.

Another approach is called Outside In. That’s when you work on all of the flat surfaces and the floor first, in a situation like a home office, before you then open up drawers and cabinets and cupboards and start adding anything else into the mix. So, you get all that stuff that’s primarily outside under control first before you add in the other items.

The third approach I want to talk about is called Circular. And this actually can be used in combination with those other two approaches. And it’s just simply making a circular pattern around a room. So it’s picking a starting point, usually people pick right by the door, and you can go whatever direction you want – clockwise or counterclockwise – but just starting at that point working your way around the room in a circular pattern sorting as you go, working your way back to that original starting point. These are just ways to give yourself structure. They’re not rules per se, they’re just guidelines. So you can do it however you want. One other thing to consider though is having a staging area.

No matter which one of those approaches that you choose, it’s great to have a large open space, if possible, to spread things out so you can see things more easily. For example, if you’re organizing a bedroom, you might want to pull everything out into an open hallway to see it better. If you’re doing a garage, you might want to pull everything out into the driveway to spread that out and see it better as well. So a staging area can be a very important way to facilitate your project. Another thing to think about is paper sacks. And we’ve made some videos about this before, and I’ve put the link here on the screen for you. But paper sacks are a great sorting tool because you can write on them, and you can give them away without worrying about getting them back. There’s lots of good reasons to use a good old paper sack.

If you like these tips, we have lots more where that came from. You could come to our page at https://www.clutterdiet.com/freetips where you can sign up for our weekly newsletter that comes out every Thursday. We also have a couple of very popular bonus items that come with that when you sign up for the newsletter. So we’d love to see you there – https://www.clutterdiet.com/freetips – and we’ll see you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

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