Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi. I'm Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we're
going to talk about not being perfect and getting away with it. You know in my program
we talk a lot about being effective, doing what works. And I have a few examples today
to show [POP] you things that I've done for myself and for my clients that have not been
the perfect, lined-up-on-a-shelf, rigid organization solution you might expect from someone in
my profession.
So here's something I want to show you in this office closet here in my new house. This
fixed shelf is not going anywhere. And I had these plastic drawers already and I wanted
to see if I could use them in this space. When I measured, it was just a fraction of
an inch too tall. So I looked at it and I was able to remove the drawer and look under
here and realize that if I were to remove the top on this set of drawers it actually
would fit just right underneath the shelf. And so I very elegantly got out a hack saw
and hacked off the top of this thing. And now that I've shown it to you -- I was saving
it for this video -- I'm just going to recycle this, because I don't need it. I'm just going
to have this tucked underneath the shelf permanently and there it works just fine. And you can
do that too. Use what you have, make it work for you.
Another thing that people don't expect from me is to say: "Maybe you don't need a filing
system." You know, nowadays people have gone paperless to such a degree that we actually
have very little paper left in our lives to file away. And what if [POP] you just have
a box for things at the end of the year or even a big folder and label it for the year,
make an index of the pile of stuff. You can put that index in front of the folder, you
can put it inside the box, if that's what you're doing, or you can even type up that
index and put it in Evernote and that's it. What if you didn't make individual folders
and have them all special and color-coded with all of your files in them? Usually you
rarely reference the things that you put in your filing cabinet anyway. So why bother?
If you just need them for a "just-in-case scenario," you might as well just put them
in a pile together and bundle them up and be done with it. We're always looking for
the return on investment in an organizing project, so we're not organizing for organizing
sake, we're organizing because we're going to get more time back on the other side. So
if the time invested is not going to pay off, why do it?
You know, another thing that we do for our clients, and I did for my own little kids
growing up, was we did not keep their shoes all lined up in the closet ready to go in
their bedrooms and worry about running upstairs to the bedroom when it's time to go somewhere.
We would get a big basket like this and put the kids' most commonly worn shoes in the
basket, have another basket for socks, and, you know, I have two boys so we would just
do all white socks in that basket, and when it was time to go, everybody would line up
by the back door, we'd put everybody's shoes on and get out the door. We didn't have to
run back and forth up and down stairs to go to bedrooms and find the shoes. So just do
what works. Think about what you could do in your house if you didn't have to have the
perfect solution.
If you need some help we have advice from our Team on-line available seven days a week
in our Member Area. You can find out more at http://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore. You
can ask our experts your question, upload your photos, show us what's going on, and
maybe we will even let you off the hook of that organizing project you were thinking
of doing.
Come and see us, come and talk to us, we'd love to help you. See you next time, and may
you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.