My Apron Pocket

By Zach Bradley

Rome wasn't de-cluttered in a single day. You will get terrible withdrawal tremors if you approach your clutter too fast. A 3-drawer day is an honourable accomplishment while a 7-drawer day and attic/workshop/garage day could be suicidal. What I'm trying to say is try not to do too much at once or you'll tend to lose your enthusiasm to dejunk, lose your edge and not be nearly brave or fierce enough to get the declutter job done right. I am going to share with you some home organization tips and decluttering secrets that I have learned in my 35 years as a professional cleaner.

1. Do your best to pace yourself and not fall for the old traps. Once you begin de-junking a habit or an area, get the job done: otherwise when you go to throw out that old pan you will begin to notice on the way to the garbage that your yard needs decluttering too. So you stop to do the yard, but eventually notice those faded and worn out bumper stickers on the car. You begin scraping the bumper and discover that the toolshed is a complete mess; you stop what you're doing to rearrange that - and find that the plants on your porch need to be repotted! As it turns out, nothing was dejunked.

2. Put variation in your attack to maintain momentum. Try switching back and forth between inside and outside clutter. Each time you have a session of getting rid of shabby coats and worn out tires, turn to your inner clutter and get rid of an old unkind or unpleasant feeling or a shabby little habit. You'll discover that it works! You can actually lose hundreds of pounds of emotional and physical junk in a single day!
Here are more home organization tips: How to eliminate junk.

Simply dumping junk is harsh and not always the wisest and only way to get rid of it. Begin with 3 big, heavy-duty box and garbage bags. Put the following labels on them:

• Charity - if it is till useful to someone else or repairable, if it's too big or too little for you, is the wrong colour, or is simply an excess, put it in the charity bag. For a change, let someone else worry about it.
• Junk - if it's outdated, broken, out of style, lost its mate, ugly, mouldy or dead, useless, then it is junk.
• Emotional - unused, outdated and inactive sentimental stuff. Keep this stuff in junk limbo for about 6 months and then throw it away. Don't open or peek into it!
• Sort - all your misplaced, loose and homeless things that is still needed and useful, but that you still haven't figured out where to place, put in the sort bag. The majority of this is probably not placed in a convenient place to keep for future use.

Dragging your box and bags behind you, attack each room of the house systematically. Assign each junk suspect - each piece of loose clothing, clutter, toy, magazine, stray animal, shoe, etc. to the box or one of the bags. Once you've taken these home organization tips to heart, you'll thank yourself for it! De-junking is one of the most effective, fastest and cheapest ways to become financially, physically and emotionally sound.

Zach Bradley is a professional organizer, cleaner and coach for 35 years. Discover more secrets and professional tips about home organization tips and everything you need to know about how to eliminate clutter and simplifying your life in the process with his popular free ecourse, available at http://www.reduceclutter.co/

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Home Organization Tips for a Clutter-Free Home