Urge to Purge… It’s Springtime!
Does the warm weather bring you a new felt energy to “let go,” declutter, clean, reorganize, and revisit setting up your spaces inside and out? It certainly does for me, and I see it in my clients too. We all seem to enjoy the change of season with longer, brighter days seen both with our eyes and felt in our hearts.
I thought I would list my favorite “Urge to Purge” tools for when I organize a home or home office. April is a natural month to “prune” our possessions, paper, and time. Here are the items I have on hand as an organizer, wife, mother, or friend, when helping people to edit their belongings and information…
Pruning “Stuff”
- Garbage bag(s) – I like to use heavy-duty black bags for trash. I always inquire if there is a bulk trash day in someone’s town to take advantage of and if not, I always know the phone number of a green junk removal company when there will be lots of refuse that a person’s community may not pick up.
- Recycling box(s) or brown bag(s) – Knowing the town’s recycling schedule/policies is a help and even being able to drive to the recycling center in town after the purge to get the non-keepers out of the newly reorganized spaces right away.
- Donation bag(s) or box(s) – I like to use white kitchen liners and/or small boxes for donations. One can easily write the name of the charity on the outside of a white plastic liner or box with a black marker. Schedule a pickup or drop-off around your “spring fling” dates.
- Sell bag(s) or box(s) or simply write a list – One of the hardest categories I find to follow up with in the decluttering of a home is when a client wants to sell something. Right now, I would say that social media platforms such as Facebook Marketplace are a great way to sell individual items you no longer want but feel you could get a buck or two for them.
- “Belongs Elsewhere” box or even an area on the floor – When digging into your “urge to purge”, there will always be items that you decide you want to keep but belong in another part of the house, not in the space one is currently decluttering. I advise you to put all the things away after you’re done organizing. Don’t stop while you’re decluttering to put the items away because you just might do what I call “zig-zag organizing”…
Pruning “Papers and Information”
- Recycling box(s) or brown bag(s) – Just like the urge to purge our things above, knowing the town’s recycling schedule/policies is a help and even being able to drive to the recycling center in town after the purge to get it out of the spaces right away is advantageous.
- Shredding box(s) – If there will be mounds of papers with identification information on it that needs to go, I recommend it be shredded. One can do this with a hardy shredder, take the shredding to a town-wide shredding opportunity, an office supply store that utilizes this service or I sometimes have a shredding truck come to the home.
- Scanner – By scanning your papers to digital documentation will help you to go paperless. I like to set up my file hierarchy in advance so that once I scan something, I know exactly where to send it.
- Email Specific – Using the options: delete key, unsubscribe button, block this sender, or mark as Spam, are all excellent ways to make information disappear.
- Delegate – If you can delegate your follow-up of information and paper to another such as a virtual assistant or family member, I consider that a pruning tool as well.
