5 Day Get Yourself Organized Challenge - Day 5

by Kathi Lipp

Clean Out Your Purse Day

I've always known the truth: the bigger your purse, the smaller your butt looks.

But with a large purse come the ability to fill it to the tippy top with a back breaking amount of "stuff".

I knew I had issues when I casually mentioned to Roger, "I wish they had purses with wheels on them." His reply, "They do. They're called suitcases - and you have a problem."

I would love for you to have the feeling that wherever you go, you are not weighed down by "stuff".

Here's my super-speedy way of cleaning out my bag. I simply take my purse and dump it out into a plastic grocery bag. I sort the dump into Put Away, Put Back, and (in this case) Throw Away.

Put Away

Anything I want to keep that doesn't belong in my purse gets put away. This is also when I go through receipts I've carefully placed in my wallet (or, more likely, the ones I've quickly thrown into my purse…) and random notes or other pieces of paper. If you're away from home while you're sorting, just put these items into another bag to put away when you get home. And when you get home, put them away in the right spot.

Put Back

If it belongs in your purse, go ahead and put it back into your purse.

Throw Away

Anything that's left over in your plastic grocery bag (food wrappers, cash receipts you don't care about, and so on) is now garbage that gets recycled or thrown away.

The beauty of the grocery-bag organizing system is that you can do it anywhere, anytime. Just grab a grocery bag and start sorting while you're waiting for your kids to get out of band practice or while you're on the phone with your mom.

Clean it Up

Give your purse a good shake and get out any stray bits, crumbs etc. I've even used a hand held vacuum to really get the bag clean.

Label It and Put It Away

Assign a spot for everything that belongs in your purse, bag, or backpack. I use three zippered pouches. Everything goes into one of those three pouches or into your wallet (or in rare cases, onto your key chain). The fewer items you place in your purse, the easier it is to know what's in there.

Wallet. I recommend you keep in your wallet only cash, receipts, checkbook, and credit, debit, and gift cards.

Pouch 1: Makeup bag

• Lipstick and gloss
• Eyeliner
• Powder
• Sunscreen stick
• Blush and brush
• Eyeglass cleaner wipes
• Hand sanitizer

Pouch 2: Emergency kit

• Fashion tape
• $20
• Needle and thread
• Nail glue
• Advil
• Couple of adhesive bandages

Pouch 3: Change

Other Things to Keep in Your Bag

• Sunglasses case
• Cell phone
• Keys

Keep It Up

If I sort through the items in my purse once a week, it really is easy to stay on top of it. It takes only a couple of minutes to keep it up.

Do you have to do it exactly like this? No. I just want you to have a clean purse that is functional and doesn't give you a hernia.

5 Day Get Yourself Organized Challenge - Day 4

by Kathi Lipp

Keeping up on the Living Room

SPACE

DVDs One of the areas that got out of hand for us was our video collection. There were so many videos that we had that were given to us for Christmas or birthdays that it was getting a little out of control. If you a deal with similar issues, here are a couple of ways to deal with it:

• Roger's brother Randy, and his wife, Debbie, have taken all their DVDs out of their cases and put them in a huge binder with pages designed to hold DVDs/CDs. This is only for people who are already somewhat organized and would take the time to put the DVDs back. Debbie is one of those naturally organized people. (In a good, cool way…)
• Get rid of a bunch of DVDs. I know that is hard to read, but if staying organized is a priority, the less you have to organize, the better. Roger and I still have a pretty decent-sized DVD collection, but we go through it regularly and get rid of the ones that we won't watch again. A fun way to do that is to post the title on Facebook and whoever responds first, gets the DVD. (It costs less than $2.00 to mail a DVD and how great will it be to make someone's day by getting a DVD in the mail.) If you're in a financial place where $2 is too much, you can always just limit it to friends who are local.

TIME

Remotes Ugh. How many days of my life have been wasted looking for remotes? A big basket on the coffee table can eliminate the hide and go seek as long as everyone in the house knows where it goes. (And make it a big basket so teens don't have to work too hard to put them away.)

Don’t let it Get Messed Up in the First Place Limiting the food that is eaten outside the kitchen/dining room is a huge time saver when it comes to your living room carpet. I have no problem saying that adults are allowed to have drinks in the living room, but kids can't. Each of our kids has had to earn the right to have food in the living room by cleaning up after themselves and dealing with their own dishes.

ENERGY

Quick Pick (Ups) Commercials are a great time to keep up on your living room pickups. I know you can blast through all the annoying car ads now thanks to Tivo, but instead of hitting fast forward, go ahead and use those minutes to fold blankets, put your housemate's things in a basket to be distributed and straighten up your magazines.

Baskets If your living room, like ours, tends to be one of the busier rooms in the house, you may want to consider having a basket in that room for each member of the family. It is a quick way to clean the room, and will save you a lot of stress when you want to quick clean.

Limiting Toy Drama in the Living Room

"When our second child was born, the four year age difference became profoundly apparent in the toy box. Most of our family play area was dominated by Big Brother's trains, pirate ships and airplanes. All of which, as you can imagine, were completely fascinating to a toddler.

Rather than listen to the endless cries of "No, that's mine!" ringing through the halls, we implemented a rule that if you aren't willing to share it, then don't leave it in the family part of the house. You have to keep it in your room AND play with it in your room.

Now that that Little Brother is a bit older, his toys have become a lot more alluring to his older brother, so we give him the same guideline. He also has the opportunity to retain full rights and possession as long as he keeps and plays with it in his own room.

This gives them both a sense of personal authority over their own stuff, but the bottom line is -- it's much more fun to play WITH someone else than by yourself, so sharing is worth the effort." Adelle Gabrielson

MONEY

Cable Look at the cable channels you are paying for. Do you really need everything you're auto billed for each month?

Library We got into the bad habit of not using our library for books. Finally, when we returned, I never realized the DVDs that were available. Between the new authors, I discovered and the BBC series that am now addicted to all free, the library is the best deal on the planet. The key for us was having a bag by the front door to store all of those books and DVDs that needed to be returned.

"To make this easier on myself, a few years back I bought a canvas reusable tote from our local library. It has a nice picture of our library on the front. It is our library bag and the library books, CDs, DVDs live in it until they are returned. I can’t help but be reminded of its use when I see it." Jennifer Atkins

However, let me say that not every family should use the library, or use it all the time. There are some of us (and I can defiantly be this way at the busier times of my life,) where I have the best of intentions and get a dozen books to read, DVDs to watch, etc. and they sit by the front door, racking up late fees. I have limited myself to using the library in the summer when I have the luxury of time to catch up on all those books I’ve missed during the rest of the year.

If you've tried the library on several occasions, and it doesn't work for your family, don't stress about it. You are not a bad person if you have problems getting the materials back on time. But don't set yourself up for failure either.

Bonus Projects

I firmly believe that every woman should have one spot (besides her side of the bed) that is fully her own.My goal is to have a chair that is all mine, in the living room. Until then, I have a spot on the couch that has a place for a drink, my magazines, and a comfy quilt for when then the California airs dip into the mid 60’s.

My friend Shannon talks about her special spot:

I love your placing value on a woman having a place of her own. When you mentioned desiring to have your special chair, I thought of my sofa. Our "grown up living room" is my space. It's where I write and where I sit on my big, crazy yellow sofa we found for a song at an antique market downtown. It makes me smile. We've repainted the entire downstairs of our home just to flatter this crazy sofa -- it's amazing how that one special piece of furniture can really lift a girl's spirits."

Create a spot that call you for a quiet sit down, a coffee, and some peace.

5 Day Get Yourself Organized Challenge - Day 3

by Kathi Lipp

Get Ready, Get Set, Go!

Get Ready

Get Your 3 Boxes and 2 Bags together (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read this post to learn all about it.)

Get Set

Figure out what area of your living room you’re going to quick clean. Now is not the time start alphabetizing your DVDs. I just want you to put 15 minutes on the clock and pull out only what you can put back in that amount of time. Maybe you need 15 minutes to clean off/out your coffee table. Maybe 15 minutes to attack underneath the stairs. Awesome. Pick an area and work on it for 15 minutes (you might want to set a timer).

We'll use the boxes and bags from yesterday's challenge. 

Here's what to do with each one:

Other Rooms Anything that doesn't belong in the area you’re cleaning gets put in the "Other Rooms" box. This would include toys in the kitchen, dog brushes in the living room, report cards in the bathroom or dishes in the bedroom.

Give Away Outgrown kids clothes? Check. Videos your family will never watch again. Check.  There is huge freedom in giving stuff away.

Here is a great set of criteria for keeping or giving away an item:

• Is it something you are currently using or wearing?
• Is it something that makes me happy when they see it?
• Is it something I will definitely use in the next six months?
• If you can answer "Yes" to one or more, find a home for the item. If not, away it goes.

And a friendly reminder: don't donate garbage. It costs charities time and money to get rid of stuff that you don't want. Only donate those things that are in decent condition and are worthy of reselling. Don't be that person.

Put Back This is the box that you put things that go in that area, but need to be put back into the right place. Clean clothes on the floor of your bedroom that you’re organizing. Shoes under your bed. Scarves hanging over a bedroom chair. These all go in the PUT BACK box so once you’ve got your bedroom in order, you just put those items back where they belong.

Garbage Bag Anything that you don't want, isn't worthy of being donated, and can't be recycled goes in here.

Recycle Bag Recycling regulations vary from city to city, so check with your local municipality if you have any question as to what should be recycled and what shouldn't.

Once you have cleaned out your area, take the OTHER ROOMS box around the house and put away all the stuff in the box. Take the GIVE AWAY box to where you gather stuff to take to donate, (or, directly to your car to be donated the next time you run errands.) And now, since your area is clean and organized, put back anything in the PUT BACK box into the spot it's supposed to go.

Do this at least once this week, but I warn you - it's addictive. Once you see how clean one area will be, you'll want to do it all over your house. RESIST THE URGE. Just do 15 minutes at least once a week - or up to once a day. You'll love the feeling you'll get!!!

Doesn't that feel better?

Just a warning: Make sure you take care of your boxes quickly and then put them away. Otherwise, a husband, disgruntled over some fresh claw marks in his new chair, might get some bright ideas about what needs to  be donated.

Go

Spend 15 minutes a day for the rest of the week cleaning and putting stuff away in your living room.

5 Day Get Yourself Organized Challenge - Day 2

by Kathi Lipp

Take 15 Minutes to to Get Yourself Organized: 3 Boxes and 2 Bags

With the response of my book The Get Yourself Organized Project being so amazing (BTW - thank you!!!) I have heard from a load of you that you are just overwhelmed when it comes to getting things put away. It's much easier to go lay down and watch an episode of Hoarders. ("At least I'm not as bad as her...") So I will be helping you get your stuff put away, one room at a time. And below, are the basics of the system: 3 Boxes and 2 Bags.

Today, just gather up these materials. Tomorrow I'll walk you through what to do with them. Don't worry! It will be easy, I promise!

This is a system you will be using in almost every room in your house, so I want you to gather up everything that you'll need right now:

1. Set up three boxes, a garbage bag and a recycle bag, your iPod, and a timer. (You can use the one on your cell phone or your oven.)
2. Mark one box as "Other Rooms" one as "Give Away" and one as "Put Back".
3. Mark one bag as "Garbage" and one as "Recycle"

Easy, right? Tomorrow we'll put these items to good use!

A different kind of Challenge

Last night I picked up a book that I bought sometime over the last few years and started reading it.  I was so motivated by it that I started on some of the action items right away.  I decided that if it was having such an impact on me, perhaps some of you would benefit from it as well.  I know you can relate based on some of your recent responses to the photo of my desk on Facebook last week.  

Remember, this one 

I found that the author, Kathi Lipp, has a 5 Day Get Yourself Organized Challenge.  Continue reading to determine if this is for you!

Are You Organizationally Challenged? by Kathi Lipp

After his 3-month-old son sailed off the roof of his car at 50 mph and landed unhurt in the middle of an interstate highway on Sunday, Michael Murray decided to break the news to his wife gently.

It was, after all, Mother’s Day, and Murray, a 27-year-old factory worker, said Monday he did not want to say right out that he had “messed up” by absent-mindedly driving off while his son was strapped into a car seat that he had left on the sunroof of his bronze 1987 Hyundai. As her husband sheepishly held Mathew, who was sleeping serenely in white pajamas and sunbonnet, Deanna Murray, 28, recounted the phone call she received from her husband.

"'Come to the emergency room,' he told me."

A surgical nurse, Deanna Murray was on duty at the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts in Worcester when her husband’s call came in. The emergency room is down the hall from her work station.

"'Just come down here,' that's all he told me," Deanna Murray said, describing the phone call. "'Mathew has fallen,' he finally said. I ran all the way down the hall."
After learning the full story, Deanna Murray said, "I was in shock. The nurses had to sit me down and hold me. It’s a miracle. It really is."

As Michael Murray recounted it, things began innocently enough around noon Sunday when he decided to drive Mathew and his 20-month-old sister to the hospital, where Deanna was working the day shift. He wanted to drop off her Mother's Day gifts--a gold necklace bearing the legend "Number One Mom" and a single rose.

After presenting these gifts, Michael Murray carried his two children back to the indoor garage where he had parked the car. Murray put his daughter into her car seat but then got into the car with Mathew still on the sunroof.

"The garage was dark," Murray said when asked how he could have forgotten about his son. 

(Chris Reidy, "Absent-Minded Father Sends Baby Son Flying Down the Highway", Boston Globe, May 12, 1992.)

I first heard this story on a radio broadcast over twenty years ago, and it still gives me the same sick-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling every time I think of it.

But maybe not for the same reason as you.

You see, I think when most people hear or read about the story of young Mathew, their first reaction is, "Thank God that baby is OK." If that is your reaction, congratulations. You are probably a pretty well-balanced, normal person.

However, my first reaction was, "Thank God I haven't done that yet." If that was your first reaction as well, this challenge is for you.

Here are a few other ways to know whether or not this challenge is for you:

• if you always know where your car keys are
• if you look at Martha Stewart and think, Now that's somebody I can hang with
• if all your dresser drawers slide closed with ease
• if there's nothing in your fridge that's older than your youngest child
• if you think laundry baskets are for folding laundry and not for running around the house gathering up papers, shoes, and fourth-grade science projects

then this challenge may not be for you. However,

• if you have offered any of your children five dollars if they win the "Where Are Mommy's Keys?" game
• if you have ever entertained someone entirely on your front porch because your house was such a mess
• if your kids automatically know that the hour before Grandma and Grandpa visit is stash-and-dash time
• if you think that getting your shoes on, driving to the ATM, and ordering fast food at a drive-thru is easier than cooking
• if your house is clean and your husband automatically asks, "Who's coming over?"
• if you wear something besides pajamas and slippers to drop off your kids at school, and the drop-off lady asks, "What are you all dressed up for?"

then this challenge is for you.

You're Not as Disorganized as You Think You Are

I come by my chaos honestly.

I am only one in a long line of people in my family who are disorganized. I have an aunt and uncle who could easily take up a full season on the reality show Hoarders, and my dad has stored in his garage nonworking electrical parts from the Nixon-era. (At least when it comes to my mom's walk-in-closet-sized collection of quilting fabrics, they are organized by color for easy retrieval.)

So when it comes to managing my own household, I was probably a lot closer to being invited to my own clutter intervention than invited to cohost a segment on "Clear Away the Kitchen Clutter" on Good Morning America.

Like reading a diet book from someone who has never weighed more than a buck ten, trying to find help from "organizational experts" who have color-coded their laundry hampers since they were three just didn't do it for me.

Out of sheer desperation (and a strong desire to regularly have clean underwear) I would buy the oh-so-magical, super-organization books, start on their perfect systems, and then realize that the author and I had a major communication issue--we weren't speaking the same language. Apparently, my brain was wired completely different than hers was. (Then I would have to organize the book that I was no longer reading into my collection of organizational books.)

The difference seemed to be that while these experts lived to organize, I wanted to get things organized so I could live. I saw organizing as something I wanted to do and then move on. The experts saw organization as the goal in life. (The last time I checked, no one was giving out blue ribbons for the fewest mismatched socks.)

I'm sorry, but I want a little more from life than an improved laundry system.

I bet you do too.

Now don't get me wrong--I have a few friends who love to clean. I mean can't-wait-to-get-down-on-their-hands-and-knees-and-scrub-the-grout-with-a-toothbrush friends. (Come to mention it, I’m wondering again why we're friends.) There again, I realize we have completely different ways of approaching life. While I see the glass as half full, they see the glass as "Are you finished drinking that? If so, go rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher." From these friends and their "kind" I would never be able to learn the art of home management.

I need to learn from people who have the same kind of brain that I do:

• one that loves to get things done--as long as it's quick and easy
• one that doesn't want to waste time on boring or seemingly unproductive things
• one that doesn't want to spend time cleaning a bathroom that's already clean
• one that would rather be watching a good DVD than organizing them on a shelf

So if this sounds like you, keep going. In the next four days you're going to see some progress, take some steps, and be a bit more organized than you were when you started.

In the meantime, the book is The Get Organized Project: 21 Steps to Less Mess and Stress. If your desk looks like mine, I suggest you get it right away!