Why the Garage is the Best Place to Start Organizing
It is very common for me to meet with a potential client who can’t decide if she wants to begin with organizing the cluttered bedroom, the cluttered kitchen, or the cluttered home office. For me, it’s always a clear choice: the garage.
March 2015, Time Magazine
Although we aren't mentioned by name, that's our project with the Matt Baier Organizing team on the pages of the March 23, 2015 issue of TIME.
Organizing: It Ain’t About Being Perfect
Yup that’s me, enjoying a heavenly IPA at Coalhouse Pizza. That’s about as close as this 7-day-a-week business owner gets to happy hour. The laptop comes with me, so I can write posts like this one. So what’s the point I’m making here? I consider myself very organized and I, literally, make it my business to empower others with organizing, but organizing has got nothing to do with being perfect.
Real Estate Ads: What They Say, What They Mean
We work with a lot of realtors, helping their clients declutter their homes for a faster sale. My friend Gay Gasser, who has a background in real estate, offers up some sage advice to home buyers.
Why I Hate Clutter
I hate clutter because it feels like death. (Can’t accuse me of burying the lead.) Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about your purposeful collections, piles of laundry, or ongoing project, sprawled across you table. I’m talking about that excess stuff, with no plan for movement.
Organizing Your Way Out of a 3 Ring Bind
There is a time and a place for three ring binders. Simply put, when you need to bind reference material, you should use one and when you don’t need to bind reference material you shouldn’t. So what would be some good examples?
Organizing a Path Beyond Creativity
Much has been written recently about a study done by Kathleen Vohs, at the University of Minnesota, that finds a messy work environment promotes creative thinking. Here’s my two cents. I’m a fan of evidence through science, but I am skeptical of these results. Furthermore, I would argue that creativity is rarely the biggest challenge.
Why Your Organizing System Is Still Not Working
So you’ve bought all these great organizing supplies, done some purging, created a space for everything and everything is in its place, but you still can’t stay organized. What could possibly be missing? The problem is, life doesn’t stand still and neither do your organizing needs. There must be a plan for movement.
Shelf Organizing Cheat Sheet
I have written a ten part series on closet organizing, but if you’d like to see the best placement practices summarized on one sheet, here it is. This is just for a closet with shelves, from top to bottom, not one with a hanging rod. Before following these, I recommend emptying your closet entirely and purging the excess. When you reload, consider this.
The Very Worst Organizing Advice
I have written about the worst ways to get organized before, but today I want to focus on just one. If you are helping a friend or family member get organized, the worst piece of advice you can give them is: “when in doubt, throw it out.”
Good Structure Means Good Organizing
I have to admit, I was a big fan of TLC’s What Not To Wear. One of the things the hosts consistently recommended for the wardrobes of the poorly-dressed, was more structure. An important part of our organizing recommendations is also structure. Here are three good examples.
3 Filing Supplies I Hate and Why
On the whole, I try to avoid negative posts, but I’ve had it these guys. The organizing solutions we provide, mostly come down to editing and approach, but sometimes they are purely structural. It could partly be that you are just using the wrong supplies. Over the last ten years of organizing, we have found these three culprits used in hundreds of homes, as indispensable organizing conventions. Indispensable they are not.
