Keep it Moving and Let it Go

“I think in terms of day’s resolutions, not years”. Henry Moore

As I think about making my 2014 resolutions, I start small in terms of what I will accomplish every day, instead of trying to make action plans for the whole year.

With the holidays behind us, January is a great time to get organized. You may notice Target, Home Depot and every other retailer advertising large plastic containers on sale to help us in our quest. In the article below from Medical News for You, Barbara Morris offers many suggestions on how to “keep it moving”. She says if you tackle a little at a time, you will witness progress without sacrificing a lot of time to get it done.

So now, you are ready to de-clutter, downsize, and get organized! If all this sounds overwhelming, Smooth Transitions of St. Louis will be glad to assist you in your process. Another great source of motivation is the De-cluttering Calendar for 2014. It offers action steps and checklists to help you get your home in order (a little at a time) without becoming overwhelmed. The challenge is on-going so you did not have to start January 1st! Week one starts with organizing the kitchen counter tops and sink. Throughout the 52-week challenge you will organize every room in your home.

The calendar may be found at www.home-storage-solutions-101.com.

January is Get Organized Month- the perfect time to get serious about organizing your home, your office and your life!

Beth

The holiday decorations are back in the box and the only reminders of the season are the extra pounds on the scale. Can you even remember what your favorite gifts were?

While these gifts are fresh in your mind, this is a good time to eliminate the “extras”. If you got a new sweater, donate at least one older one. A new shirt? Give away several older ones. Put a plastic bag in the bottom of your closet and keep adding to it. If you have something that doesn’t quite fit anymore and you kept it with the idea of losing five pounds, forget it! Put it in the donation bag.

We are blessed with so much and of course we have our favorite things. We have a lot of things that we bought on sale. But they don’t fit just right. They should be the first to go and not simply sit in your closet taking up space. Someone else may be able to use them without pain. Are you keeping a favorite outfit with the idea that it may come back in style? Even if it does, will it still fit? Keep it moving. Donate it!

If this doesn’t sound like an exciting way to spend an afternoon, then commit an hour to the project. You could do a shelf, a drawer, a rack in the closet. . . not all at once, but in small bites; the way you would eat a foot-long sandwich. By tackling it a little at a time, you will be able to see progress without sacrificing a lot of time to get it done.

It will be tax time before you know it and if your papers are in a state of chaos, don’t wait until the last minute before getting things in order. Use the time while you are watching reruns of your favorite TV programs and start sorting those papers…a stack for taxes, a stack to shred, others to file and some to pitch.  Remember anything with Social Security or account numbers needs to be shredded before putting in the trash.

Are those gift catalogues still hanging around after the holidays? Those are easy to pitch. Are you up to your ears in magazines? If you have any magazines older than November, now is the time to keep them moving. That is November 2013! If there are any special articles you want to keep, tear them out. Give current magazines to friends and family or take to a retirement community, hospital, or any place people wait—the hair salon, car repair shop, doctors’ office. Just get them out of your home.

When you are really brave, go to the attic or basement and evaluate what you have accumulated. Is it trash or treasure? If you can’t remember when, why or how you got something, it is time to let it go. Do you have appliances that once you couldn’t live without but now seldom use? Do they need minor repairs?

Those are ideal donation items as some of the organizations use them for job training exercises. Did you put an old television in the basement thinking you might need a replacement ‘tube’ some day? Well, televisions don’t have tubes anymore, so keep it moving. Have you accumulated old radios, telephones, or other electronics? Time to let them go.

Do you have enough food on hand to survive a nuclear attack? Have you looked at your canned goods lately? Do they have an expiration date? If it doesn’t say 2014, then it is time to pitch it. Another clue to outdated items is that if they don’t have a ‘bar code’ they probably aren’t safe to use either.

By purging your home of those extra items, your life will be better for it.  You’ll feel lighter! Do a little at a time and it shouldn’t be a difficult task. Remember, your new mantra is, “Keep it Moving.” If you haven’t used it recently, then let it go and let someone else make good use of use it.