dClutterfly … Liveable Organization

As the summer winds down, the back-to-school rush begins. While parents are most concerned about what they need to get before the first day of school, they often don’t think about what they need to get rid of.

“Chances are the kids’ backpacks are right where they left them on the last day of school and their artwork and field trip notices are still covering the fridge,” said professional home organizer and founder of dClutterfly, Tracy McCubbin. “So before the school bell rings now is the time to de-clutter. Out with the old so you can prepare for the new.”

As a home organizer, McCubbin says there are three major causes of clutter during the school year: paperwork, homework and artwork. She advises parents to follow these three steps in order to earn an A+ in home organization.

Toss the trash – Grab the recycling bin and toss in all the notices and calendars from the previous year. There is no reason you need to hang on to a piece of paper that alerted you to an early dismissal last year.
Pick a favorite – Gather up all those old tests, projects and reports, pull out one or two that really stand out and recycle the rest. Hanging on to a few samples is fine, keeping every assignment is extreme.
Give it a home – Whether it is a 3-year-old’s turkey hand drawing or a 7th-grader’s 3-D design, don’t just stuff it back in a drawer give it a home. Binders are great for keeping projects preserved and decorative boxes or file folders are great ways to store those special art projects.

Once the clutter from the last year has been cleared its time to prepare and get organized for the new school year.

Before the first day, create files, folders or an inbox for current homework, artwork or notices. Don’t forget to purge as you go, use the quarterly report cards as a reminder to clean out those folders.

McCubbin says while it may seem overwhelming at first, keep in mind, the key to getting and staying organized is to create a place for everything and put everything in its place.

We’re never quite sure if it’s worth it to trade something in or just donate it.  Obviously companies offer trade-ins as incentives to get you to buy their products.  If you were planning on buying their product, then clearly the 10-25% you can get off the new item is worth it.  But if you weren’t, then you’ve got suckered into buying something you didn’t need.

We need an new iPhone over here and just found out Apple offers 10% off a new purchase if we bring in our old phone.  This means we’ll buy our phone from Apple not AT&T.  Click here for  the info on their recycling program.

Babies R Us often does trade in events for strollers, car seats & cribs.  This is great, as it’s impossible to donate car seats.  But you need to buy a new item from them to get the 25% off.  If you don’t need another car seat is it worth it?

We’re not sure where we stand on trade ins.  It is just a big time suck or do you really save some money.  We say, worth researching.  Here’s a good article from CNN money on where to trade in.

It’s all anyone is talking about.  Read what we have to say about it on OregonLive.com.

Read what we have to say about spring de-cluttering in the DBusinessNews.com.

Read what we have to say about the 6 types of clutter and how you should handle it on spafinder.com

We think Peter Walsh has some great things to say about clutter and it’s toll on us.  Read this article to figure out what your clutter is really costing you.  And while we hate to say we told you so …

A little horn tooting here.  For the third year, we’ve been given the Super Service Award from Angie’s List.  We are super proud of this award.  We LOVE our Angie’s List clients and are so grateful for the glowing reviews we get from them.

Read what Angie herself has to say about the award:

dClutterfly  has been awarded the prestigious 2010 Angie’s List Super Service Award, an honor bestowed annually on approximately 5 percent of all the companies rated on the nation’s leading provider of consumer reviews on local service companies.

“Our Super Service Award winners are the cream of the crop when it comes to providing consistently high quality customer service, as judged by the customers who hired them,” said Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List.

For those of you who don’t know about Angie’s List, it’s an amazing resource of consumer reviews of home services.  In addition to being listed on the site, we also use it to research service providers for our own home.

Thanks Angie’s List!

We think Peter Walsh has some great things to say about clutter and it’s toll on us.  Read this article to figure out what your clutter is really costing you.  And while we hate to say we told you so …

We’ve always had trouble with New Year’s resolutions.  Those sweeping and specific proclamations that seem to set us up for failure.  I will stop eating sugar.  Um, impossible.  Okay, I’ll eat less sugar.  Less than what?  Okay, a little sugar.  By this point the baby is going out with the bath water.

This year someone suggested instead of specific resolutions how about picking a theme for the year.  Something you can continually strive for and use as litmus test for most decisions.  We decided on “Family Wealth.”  So everything we are doing this year, we ask ourselves “Is this good for the family?”  ”Will this help us create wealth?”  ”Does this add to the wealth of our family or our life.”  So far it’s working out pretty good.  We don’t feel guilty about what we haven’t done and it’s a great place to make a decision about.

What’s your theme for this year?

We got inspired by a great article in Real Simple Magazine (as we often do) about how much you can get done in five minutes.  One to the main reasons people get derailed on their organizing projects is they try and tackle the whole project (or whole house) in one session.  It didn’t get cluttered in one day, so it ain’t gonna get uncluttered in one day.  A whole day de-cluttering by yourself is a lot of hard work and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and stop the project.  Then you’re right back where you started.

Breaking organizing up into manageable blocks of time means it’s going to get done.  1 hour of success feels a lot better than 5 hours of procrastinating and moving things from one side of the room to the other.  Target your organizing, get in, get it done and feel good.

Breaking organizing projects into 5 minute blocks is genius.  We all have an extra 5 minutes a day.  In fact, log off the internet (Facebook especially!) and try some of the easy organizing tasks.

*Move 5 misc files on your computer desktop into their proper folders.
*Refold sweaters or t-shirts and stack by color.
*Throw out 3 expired food items from your fridge.
*Pick 5 items from your closet or drawers and put them in a bag to be donated.
*Test pens or markers and throw out the ones that don’t work.
*Return 5 items around the house to their proper homes.
*Clean out your purse.
*Put one pair of shoes that hurt your feet into the donate bag.
*Toss out any expired medicine, sunscreen or vitamins from medicine cabinet.
*Shred that stack of “to be shredded” that’s next to the shredder.
*Toss all expired coupons.
*Pick 5 old files from your file drawer and toss or shred.
*Shampoos or body washes you don’t use, toss out (recycle bottles if you can).

Ready, Set, Go!