We all hoard stuff. Yes, even you.

August 18, 2016 by Leave a Comment

We all hoard to a certain degree. That’s “hoard” with a lower-case h. I’m not talking about Hoarding Disorder (another post, another day!).

I have a friend who has a well-organised, substantial hoard of travel toiletries. I have more staples than I’ll use in the next 5 years. And I have amassed quite a collection of iPhone cables.

We do our hoarding either passively or actively. If we actively hoard, we are aware of the volume of stuff we have, and we continue to acquire them and choose to not discard any (shoes, notebooks, pets, furniture, craft supplies and books come to mind).

When we passively hoard, we accumulate relatively mindlessly (as part of everyday life) and don’t have the corresponding habit of discarding established. And so we gather a little collection without realising. My friend recently went through her junk drawers and found several boxes of staples and no stapler. I think they’d also accumulated several rolls of tape. She was surprised – she had no idea they had that many.

First Aid, anyone?

First Aid, anyone?

That’s passive hoarding and you’ll see it manifesting in things like pens, tape, broken things you intend to fix, cassette tapes and VHS tapes, cords and cables, placemats, old paperwork, coffee mugs, plasticware, water bottles, stubbie-holders, vases and platters.

You don’t realise until you go to declutter just how much you’ve accidentally kept!

If you’re passively hoarding stuff, it’s a good idea to establish the habit of regularly going through those areas and having a quick cull to keep the volume at bay. Another good habit is to have a quick review whenever you bring a new item into the house and see if anything needs to go to make room for it or to maintain the current volume.

What do you find that you passively hoard?

Filed Under: Culling, Disorganised, Habits, Hoarding, Home, Maintenance, Organised, Psychology, Shopping Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

For the serial task-jumper …

June 16, 2013 by 2 Comments

You know how I’m always on about how unproductive it is to multi-task, or to switch from task to task before they’ve been competed?

I’m also a fan of working with your personality, so here’s something you can try if you really love the variety of multi-tasking but know it’s not getting stuff finished.

Choose 2 or 3 jobs that you want to finish by the end of the day; no more than 3.

Now, allow yourself to jump (as infrequently as you can manage) from task to task, but NEVER deviating from those original 3 projects.

You should find you enjoy your day more AND get stuff done!

Filed Under: Disorganised, Office, Procrastination, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

6 Quick Tips for Back-to-School

January 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Going back to school after the summer holidays brings mixed feelings. Personally, I’m sad to see the holiday feeling leave us – I love the holidays. However, many kids are ready to get back into routine, and quite often their parents are more than keen for that, too!

Here are some tips for kicking off the year in an organised manner.

  1. Reinstate (or introduce) a morning routine. We keep ours during the holidays, but have a more relaxed version. If we didn’t keep it, I’m sure the kids would never clean their teeth! The morning routine should hand responsibility of their own self-care over to your children, encouraging their independence and easing your mental and physical workload.
  2. Similarly, ensure you have an after-school routine in place, even if it’s as simple as putting their bag in its home and handing over empty lunch boxes and any notices from school.
  3. Make sure they are getting enough sleep. If your family is anything like mine, they’re often in the pool until 9pm at night during the holidays. This works just fine because we let them sleep in to compensate. Once school starts, however, our kids need at least 10 hours of sleep a night to function at their best, and because they have to get up early to go to school, a 10pm bedtime is a bit late to squeeze all those hours in! Ensure they get back into the routine of a healthy bed time as soon as possible (depending on your child, you may need a week or more of transition – ours cope okay with a couple of days).
  4. Set up a system for organising your paperwork so that the school notices don’t get lost or forgotten. There’s nothing like having your child turn up for school in uniform and everyone else is dressed up as a pirate. Your child will take some time to forgive you that little slip-up!
  5. Have a home for bags, sports uniforms, shoes, hats, sunscreen and library books, and help reinforce the habit of keeping them in their homes. You’ll need to issue lots of reminders before it becomes second-nature to them, but it does happen.
  6. Introduce Menu Planning into your own routine. It will help ensure you never run out of bread and have to resort to buying lunches. It will save a lot of money and reduce morning stress.

What are your own tips for making Back-to-school time organised and stress-free?

 

Filed Under: Family organising, Home, Organised, Paperwork Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Are you Dame Washalot?

August 28, 2011 by 5 Comments

My daughter loves reading the Faraway Tree books. In it is a character called Dame Washalot, who spends all of her time doing laundry.  Today, sitting on the floor in the laundry, sorting my own pile of washing, it occurred to me that most women (sorry guys, but usually the women do the majority of the clothes washing tasks!) spend far too much time keeping their family in clean clothes. Unlike Dame Washalot, however, they don’t really enjoy it!

I go into people’s homes just about every day. One of the most common causes of clutter that I see is clothes. Clean or dirty (or of unknown status!), they overtake the house! I see it time and time again – and it really bothers people but they don’t know how to deal with it.

Here are a few tips I implemented at home, and recommend to clients, to reduce the task a bit:

  1. Wash regularly and, if you have a good machine that adjusts water usage, with small loads. Don’t save it all up for the weekend.
  2. Reduce the amount of clothing you have by setting boundaries. If I can’t fit any member of our household’s entire wardrobe in their cupboard and the washing basket (and on them!), I cull their clothes (and mine, too, of course!). There should be no overflow whatsoever.
  3. Avoid ironing as much as possible. In summer I drip-dry, then shake and smooth them out before hanging or folding. In winter I either use the dryer (and remove and hang immediately) or I line-dry and then lay them flat on each other for a few hours before putting away. For the perfectionists out there who say this is impossible, let me tell you that this has made the single biggest difference to the efficiency of my washing cycle. I save around 2-3 hours a week, not to mention the elimination of the stress of that ironing pile waiting for me! I was once just like you, ironing everything but underwear. After a month on a family road-trip last year, I returned home realising that I will survive without ironing. And I have ironed only a handful of times since. If I can do it, so can you!
  4. Finish the cycle before starting another.  If you have mounds of clean clothes waiting to be put away, finish that job before you put another load in the machine. “Clean” is not the end of the job. If you regard it as such, you will find yourself and the rest of your family perpetually dressing themselves from the pile of clean washing taking up half of your living or spare room. Regard each load as a singular task, with “Away” as the end of the task.
  5. Engage the help of the family. Have them fold and put away their own clothes, or a load each.  It’s a simple job – one that can be done in front of the TV if there is a need to make it less mundane (although I have found it a great opportunity for meditation when done as a solo task).
  6. Have routines.  Choose a time to put a load on every day, and follow through the entire cycle (wash -> dry -> away) on the same day. Stick to the routines until they become a habit.

Do you have any tips or tricks of your own to help keep on top of the washing? Do tell!

Filed Under: Disorganised, Family organising, Home, Maintenance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Meal planning 101

April 29, 2011 by 1 Comment

Deciding what to cook  can be a stressful activity for many.  Late afternoon heralds the time to head to the kitchen to try to decide what to cook. You open the pantry and stand there staring, waiting for the food to jump out and scream “cook me!”. Of course it doesn’t, so you then head over to the fridge to see if it’s going to cooperate better. Nope; it’s silent as well, not being very helpful at all. It happens in households everywhere!

Meal planning takes the stress out of deciding what to cook, as well as providing other benefits, and this is how it works:

  1. Clean out the fridge and take stock of what needs to be used
  2. Do the same in the pantry
  3. Refer to your recipes and old favourites and write a list of all the meals you’re going to have for the week and assign them a day.  It helps to include the whole family; everyone can choose a favourite meal to include (and it helps to have finicky toddlers choose some meals, or at least which day they’re on, because they’re more likely to then eat it without fuss – I know this from personal experience!)
  4. Write the meals on the family calendar, or on a note on the fridge
  5. Write your shopping list based on the ingredients for each meal
  6. Add in other extras such as lunch foods and cleaning products
  7. Shop with purpose (no impulse buying!)
  8. Enjoy the freedom of knowing what’s for dinner each night.

Another great habit to do is every sixth week or so, buy only fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and dairy, and plan the week’s meals based on what’s in the pantry. It helps keep the volume of food down and you can maintain a more organised pantry as well as reducing wastage.

Filed Under: Family organising Tagged With: , , , , , , ,