Simplifying means making choices that improve the quality of your life by saving you time, money and space and reducing stress.

I’m sure you have your own ideas and suggestions that you’ve tried to help simplify your life. Let me know what you’ve tried and I’ll keep a list of those ideas.

Have a simplified week!

I think most of us today would agree that everyday life has gotten very complicated and stressful.

Simplifying is a great idea and here are 10 suggestions to help you start to simplify your life.
1. Get a goal! Get a clear idea of what you want your environment to look like. Form a picture in your head or in other words – visualize. The more you visualize the faster your dreams will take shape.
2 Let go of your “shoulds”.   Let go of projects, roles or self-imposed obligations that take up your time and keep you away from what you really want to be doing.
3. Say “NO” more often. Say no to what you don’t want in your life and say yes to what you do want.
4. Schedule “downtime” days for yourself where you don’t do anything but what you really want to do. Don’t cancel them!
5. Schedule one day a week with some time to do all those little things that you need to get done – errands, small repair jobs, quick chores. You won’t have to be running around everyday.
6. Create clear surfaces in your home or office. Confine the papers to a beautiful box or container – not all over the room or house.
7. Make and return voice messages only during certain times in your day.
8. Shop only when you have to. Take a long hard look at your potential purchase before you take it off the shelf and put it in your cart. Do you really need it? Consuming less is good for the Earth.
9. Ask for and accept help. Get the whole family involved. Even small children can help with all kinds of simple chores around the house. Delegate chores so you aren’t the only one that’s exhausted.
10. Remember to take a deep breath and relax. The mess did not appear in one night and it isn’t going away in one night. It will all be waiting there for you in the morning. Don’t stress out.

Start a gratitude journal that will help you discover what really matters most to you.
Simplifying means making choices that will improve the quality of your life.

I’d love to hear what you are trying in your life to simplify.

Take time to read the following and identify your style…it makes a world of difference in how organized and efficient you become at handling paper.

If you’re LEFT:
Left-brained individuals have a tendency to be perceived as methodical, sequential and linear thinkers, who are task-oriented and focused.
• You prefer “to do” lists. Commit yourself to a daily “to do” list crossing off completed tasks.
• Maintain only ONE “to do” list. Just one – no sticky notes.
• Left-brainers tend to like neatness…they are not necessarily organized, but tidy.
• You probably prefer storing paper vertically rather than horizontally. File cabinets with well-labeled file folders work for you.
• Identify no more than 8 major filing categories for storing paper. Any more than that and quick retrieval becomes difficult.

If you’re RIGHT:
Right-brained individuals are creative in nature, nurturing idea and project oriented, and maintains several projects at once.
• If you feel your style is right-brained, “to do” lists generally don’t work as well as mindmapping.
• Use spiral binders rather than regular tablets where the paper flips over the top – they can be used for mindmapping or taking notes.
• Your environment is important to you. Surround yourself with your favorite pictures and mementos which remind you of special people or events you’ve enjoyed.
• Visual and direct access is the key. Try file folders with a clear plastic cover rather than standard manila file folders.
• Identify your active papers by project rather than category.
• Store and access active project papers in a horizontal position, using a number of stacking trays or a cubby-hole type of container.

If you consider yourself right brained or left brained, what tools or systems do you use to keep yourself organized? I’d love to hear comments and ideas to add to my list.

Take everything out of your closet and try on all the clothes you own. Only keep those that fit your shape, style and color palette and fill a slot on your written plan. What do you do with everything else? Donate to a charity and take a tax deduction for the fair market value of each piece. Sell what you don’t want at a yard sale or use the various sites on the Internet to list the items you want to get rid of.

If you stick to your style, shape and color palette, you will be able to come up with many new outfits by mixing and matching what you already have. Add to your wardrobe by including inexpensive accessories to keep up with new colors and fashion trends.

Develop smart shopping habits when filling in the missing pieces that you need for your wardrobe. These days in order to save money it’s important to take advantage of sales at your favorite store. Each store has its own sales cycle. You can always ask the salesperson if the item isn’t on sale, will it go on sale soon. Waiting a day or two can save you money.

Remember there are all kinds of places to look for the pieces that will help fill in your wardrobe. Don’t forget consignment stores, vintage shops and discount and thrift stores as well as the many online shopping sites.

Another good tip to remember is to find a good tailor. A first-class tailor can take a garment down by as much as two sizes. Having this service available gives you flexibility and versatility in your wardrobe plus has you looking great because everything fits so well.

Develop your own style by considering what you like to wear and then stick with that look. Your favorite outfits hold the clues to what your style really is. When you start learning how to make the right choices for your body you will stop wasting money on clothes that look great on the hanger but not so good when you look in the mirror.

What are your ideas and suggestions for looking good while saving money and uncluttering your closet?

How would you like to get back all the money you’ve wasted on clothing you didn’t wear? What would you do with all that money? Buy more clothes? Shoes? Take a trip?

Most of the time the problem is that we go shopping with no particular plan in mind. If it fits and you sort of like it, then it’s a good candidate to take a ride home with you. If it’s on sale then there’s no question we need to buy it because it’s such a good price – even if you aren’t sure it goes with anything else. There’s nothing like getting a good deal on something to spur us on to buy it.

Cutting down on the amount of money you spend on clothing is not as much about finding the great bargains but more about knowing what to wear, where to go shopping and of course the most important piece – when to stop buying!

Stay tuned for part two……

Does fear grip you because:

• your garage has turned into a jumble of boxes, tools, lawn equipment, toys, miscellaneous items, and who knows what else.
• your car (usually your second most valuable possession) is always parked in your driveway because there is no way it could ever fit in the garage.

I constantly get asked for tips about organizing a garage.  It can be a daunting task to many people. When planning what you want the garage to look like, keep in mind that this one place has to handle the storage needs of the entire family.   What usually ends up in the garage is all the stuff that we don’t know what to do with from the rest of the house and all the items we might need “just in case!”

Stand in the doorway of your garage, close your eyes and visualize what you want it to look like.  When you get that clear vision of what you’d like to see when your garage door opens, make a list of what you need to do.

Don’t forget when setting aside spaces for what you’ll be storing, consider electrical outlets and where windows and doors are located.    If you plan to set up a workbench to hold all your tools, where are the electrical outlets?  Are they nearby or would you have to run wires across the garage floor to use your equipment?

Break the project down into manageable parts.    This is a very basic rule that I tell people to follow whenever they are trying to tackle a large project.    Many people decide they can do the entire job in two hours.  However, after four hours of hard work, they lose their energy, get distracted and then don’t have the oomph required to finish what they’ve started.   Always add more time than you think you’ll need because it invariably seems that something unexpected happens to offset your timetable.

Where is the best place to start when cleaning out the garage?   Where to start is not as important as just making the decision to start. Pick up anything and begin to make decisions.  Choose the starting point based on what looks the most doable and makes the most sense to you.

Sorting is another part of the project you’ll have to deal with.  Categorizing items does not come as easily to some people as it does to others.   As you pick up items and start taking them out of the garage, set them in the driveway in certain areas you can designate by using signs, boxes, bags or chalk marks on the driveway.    The easiest items to make decisions on should be those that can be tossed, recycled, sold or given away.

It is very hard to make decisions about what items you are going to keep if you don’t first know how many you have of something.  You won’t know if you should get rid of some screwdrivers if you don’t know how many screwdrivers you have. When you pile all the tools together, you finally see that you have 25 screwdrivers (you bought a new one every time you couldn’t find one).   Maybe ten are rusty and the other fifteen are in good condition.  Now since you know what you have, it is easier to make a decision on what to keep and what to discard.

After you’ve cleared some space now you can start to create “homes” for everything that you want, need, use and will be bringing back into the area.  Creating homes for items we use everyday in our lives helps to establish a place where they can “live.”   At least you have a starting point to look for it the next time you need it.

Have a great day working in your garage, but one word of caution.  If you are going to drag everything out to the driveway to sort, check the weather forecast first to be sure you won’t have rain.  You don’t want to watch your possessions get ruined because of a rain shower.

It’s one of those days when I wish I had a dollar for every time someone says,

“I’m feeling so overwhelmed and I don’t know where to start.”   If you are one of those people who take one look at your office or home and feel totally overwhelmed with what faces you – the piles, the clutter, the stuff everywhere — then join the crowd because the feeling of “overwhelm” is affecting everyone these days.

When you consider yourself overwhelmed you feel out of control and that adds to your stress and anxiety level.  All that additional constant worry and nervousness may make you a difficult person to live or work with.   It can start to interfere with your relationships and your self-esteem.

What can you do about that feeling of being buried by your clutter and piles?   Here are five steps to begin to reduce that overwhelmed feeling and reclaim that sensation of control by putting your focus on what needs to get done and get organized for a more productive day.

Step 1 – Plan, Plan, Plan

This is the most important step.  Without a plan you won’t know which direction to go in or even what needs to be done first.  Many people don’t want to plan because it will take time away from working on the project.   But if you don’t have a goal and a vision of what you want your life to look like you’ll soon feel overwhelmed again.  Without a plan  the objects you are sorting have no place to go and you’ll soon develop a bad case of indecisiveness.

Step 2 – Prioritize your list.

Deciding how you’ll tackle this job and where you will start is the next important step.   Have you decided to paint the room?   Then you know you’ll have to remove as much as you can and put a tarp over whatever stays.   Will you be creating a great new filing system to use?  Then you know you need to purchase a file cabinet if you don’t have one.   Look at your plan and then set your priorities.

Step 3 – Get Ready and Choose the Date

Pull out your calendar and plan the date you will start working on your office or home.   Cross it off, mark it in red, highlight it and then don’t make any plans at that time.  Keep your date with yourself and just the act of getting started will make you feel better.

Step 4– Just do it!

You have your plan and you know your goals and you’ve set your date to start the project – now what?    This is where I hear, “I don’t know where to start.”    Taking the first step is always the hardest.   Stand in the room you are working in and pick something up – anything – make a decision on that something.   Here are some questions to ask yourself about the stuff:

• Is it a keeper?   Is it beautiful?    Do I love taking care of it?
• Is this trash?  Would the people at my charity be able to use it?
• Can it be recycled or do I know someone who could put it to good use?
• If you can’t bear to part with it, ask yourself, “Why?”

Step 5 – Remove, Reuse, Return

After you’ve done all that sorting and asking yourself those hard questions, then continue to follow through and take the items to be donated, return the library books, call a shredding company to alleviate your shredding piles.   Do whatever it takes to complete the job as soon as you can.

It’s remarkable what happens when you get organized at home or in your office.  You will feel better living and working in that newly cleared space.  You’ll enjoy better self-confident and self-esteem.    You’ll be able to get so much more done each day.   You’ll be saving time, money and space.

Enjoy your organized life and banish the feeling of being overwhelmed.

We were just visiting some friends last night for dinner and my husband and I were discussing our travel plans for the next few months.   We love to travel.  Our friends listened and said, “Wow, I can’t believe you have all your plans in place.”     Having a plan ready is how we accomplish our goals of traveling to various places and crossing them off our “bucket list.”

Many times people are just like the remote control vacuum cleaner, Roomba.  They just go along doing whatever and when life bumps into them with a new problem or roadblock, they change direction and head off somewhere else never knowing where that somewhere else will lead them.  With a plan in place, even if you get sidetracked, you still know where you want to end up.   So you can take a tackle by life but still end up in the end zone with your plan in place.

Scoring a touchdown in football may sometimes look easy but it has taken the team and the coaches a great deal of time, practice and having a plan in place to accomplish that feat.      Set up a plan in your life,  even if you just start with a plan for what you will accomplish in the next hour.   As you get more practice planning an hour, a day or a week, you’ll get better and better at it.

One of the best rules I’ve learned in working with other people is:  you can’t organize someone who doesn’t want to be organized or who doesn’t feel they have a problem.    You can make other people do something, but if they have not made the choice themselves to make a change it doesn’t stick.    Someone who doesn’t buy into the idea that they really need to alter their ways, isn’t going to make any progress — sometimes temporary movement in that direction but not lasting change.    If they didn’t come up with the end goal for themselves, then they may “clean up” to please the other person, but it won’t  last.

I warn the members of my audience about this challenging situation.     If they continue to inquire how they can help their relative or friend with the clutter problem, I give them information on my de-cluttering support group.   Even if the person they are trying to change doesn’t come, they can attend and get additional information they can pass on and put in the other person’s path so they may get interested later.     Even this does not always work.   Each of us has to work on our own situation and not try to change people without their cooperation.     Sometimes we just have to take a deep breath and shut the door on the situation.

Look at your life and make a list.  A short list, something that is manageable.  You don’t have to list everything you want to change in your life all at once.   How about listing three important areas you feel would help you the most if you started working on changing them today.     Some examples might be  opening the mail the day it arrives, putting events on your calendar immediately, or  setting out the clothes you’ll wear tomorrow tonight.   They may sound like insignificant little things.   Opening the mail the day it arrives will greatly reduce the piles you have to deal with and immediately putting dates on your calendar will stop you from overbooking yourself.      More often than not we have the same things that trip us up every day.   Those little bumps in our lives are the ones we have to work on.     So keep what’s working in your life and concentrate on what drives you nuts.