Finding a Way through the Painful Purging Process Part I

The first step in organizing yourself, your home, your office is to purge. This is usually the hardest step. I was recently trying to find space for magazines that covered a 20 foot dining room table, many of them dating back to 5 years ago or more which still had not been read. I kept wondering if they ever would be read.

Is there a purpose in keeping items that will never be read, used or needed? Or more importantly, can you accept that if you’ve had a magazine for more than 2 years, that perhaps it’s time to admit to yourself you don’t have time to read it.

Where do you put it all when there simply is no more space available? Will you be able to start to purge, to accept that letting something go doesn’t make you a failure? To limit the items you bring into your home? Can you accept responsibility, take action and maybe look forward to a new beginning in a home or office that has spaces not covered in something?

In our society, we’ve become major collectors. Seeming to have an insatiable need to gather as much stuff as we possibly can before we die, yet there is a downside to collecting everything: we don’t have the space. I’ve seen this obstacle solved by clients renting out or buying more space. Perhaps a second home is purchased for their belongings. Maybe they rent storage lockers. Does this solve the problem? Are you truly enjoying and using what you have? Do you even remember you have it? Would you be able to find the item if and when you did find time to read it or use it?

To successfully become organized the first step is to take responsibility for the decisions you make when purchasing an item and not react to the emotional levels purchasing items often bring. When deciding to bring a new item into your home or office, ask yourself:

1. Do I already own something like this?
2. Do I really like this item?
3. Do I need this item?
4. Will I use this item?
5. Do I have room for this item in my home?
6. Can I part with something else in order to make room for this item?
7. If I buy this item and I find that after 6 months to 1 year that I haven’t used the item, will I be willing to part with it so someone else can use or enjoy it?

If most of your answers are no, then you’re not ready to take responsibility for the items you own. Most likely you’ll let the emotional high of the purchase take over. Perhaps you’re having a difficult day and buying that magazine, book or blouse will make you feel better for the time being. Much like buying food such as candy or chips, the immediate gratification is there until you bring it home. Once the food is consumed, the guilt sets in. Once the blouse sits with its tag still on gathering dust in a corner, the guilt sets in. Often you convince yourself (not well) that you will, in fact wear that item, read that book, use whatever thing you bought to make yourself feel better. Just like the food binger promises they’ll diet. If that promise happens, great! However, more often than not, it’s a way to lie to ourselves as yet another quick fix towards feeling better about ourselves while ignoring the real problem.

The real problem with not purging is that chaos comes out of it. Clothing is pushed to the back of the closet never to be found or worn again. Items you love get lost or don’t last as long because they’re mistreated. Magazines and other reading materials get placed on top of one another creating large piles of paper which then attracts dust.

Stress and chaos become part of your life – the mounting wall of items that are accumulating makes space feel smaller and you are no longer rested in that environment. The feeling that you can never catch up on your reading becomes a nagging feeling and you feel stressed that there’s not enough time to get to everything. Energy is sucked out of you by your environment.

So the first step to avoiding that awful feeling of failure is to figure out why you’re buying those items you don’t use in the first place.

If you need help assessing your items and going through the purging process, contact Alison Kero at Gotham Concierge for a consultation. She provides free 15 minute consultations to new clients and is available in person in the NYC area and via Skype in the U.S. and Canada. She can be contacted at: 646-831-9625 or info@gothamconcierge.com.

Breaking It Down: Getting Things Done… Eventually

I’ll admit it I have not always been organized. In fact, if you saw my bedroom up until I left college, you’d never believe that I now spend my days organizing others and helping them manage their time. My bedroom used to look like a tornado hit it. Sometimes it was so bad, my brother, (whose organizational skills can best be described as overly-anal) would offer to clean my room for me. I always cheerfully accepted. (What a treat!)

I have since altered my disorganized ways, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve gone overboard on everything having its place or that I somehow experience joy by going through stacks of paperwork. I too hate filing. It’s hideous and usually you’re just glad you avoided getting a paper cut. The worst part is how dry it makes your hands!

So how does an inherently lazy disorganized person go from never seeing the top of her dresser to professionally going in and helping others create workable systems to make their lives easier? Mostly by figuring out that being organized could be fun and easy, that’s how.

There are some basic rules on how to make getting organized easier, like doing a little at a time instead of big projects. It’s easier. You can talk yourself into doing 3 dishes because, hey, it’s only 3 dishes and I’ve never once woken up the next morning and I thought to myself, “gee, I’m so glad I waited to do these dishes. I totally feel like doing them now.” No, I always thought, “Thank GOD I did those dishes last night!” So just knowing that made it easier to almost always do my dishes as I dirty them instead of waiting to do the 3 hours project (which has now become an even longer task thanks to dried food particles now clinging to the dirty dishes) because I have to do it.

Do that with everything in your life and it kind of makes it more manageable. If there are certain things you don’t like to do, like those dishes, try to at least make a game out of it. I like to do some dishes during the commercials. I get some done and I know I get to sit back down when the show comes back on. It’s win-win in my opinion.

It’s just a matter of how you think of things. If you go about the task at hand thinking negatively then the activity will almost always take longer than you thought – mostly because your negative thoughts got in the way. Just accept that certain tasks will always suck. Like doing your taxes, this activity will always suck. However, choosing to reflect on the fun things you did with all those receipts may make the time pass much more quickly than griping about it ever will.

So when you wake up tomorrow and try to talk yourself out of making your bed, remember that it’ll take 2 minutes of your time (unless you’re one of those people who likes to put like 10 pillows on your bed for show, then it’ll take more time and frankly, if you are one of those people, it’s your own fault it takes so long because you were the one who bought those pillows. Stop buying so much stuff – less stuff means less time dealing with your stuff) and the end result is a nicely made bed. I guarantee you the thoughts you have looking at the nicely made bed are far more positive than looking at a tumble of linen. So start breaking down your projects today. It’ll make the process more manageable, easier, more fun and you’ll probably actually do it versus waiting for that “one day” when you try to accomplish the whole task in one fell swoop.

Good luck on breaking down your projects into simple tasks. If you need more advice or help getting organized or managing your time contact Alison Kero at: 646-831-9625 or at: info@gothamconcierge.com to schedule an appointment.

Organizing your Inbox for Time Management

Let me guess, your e-mails have gotten out of control. You get distracted quickly because an e-mail comes in and as a result, your work is taking longer than you had originally thought. You have begun to have a love/hate relationship with e-mail.

It’s completely understandable these days we get so many e-mail messages during the day that it becomes overwhelming. More e-mails pour in every day and you never want to miss an important e-mail, but are starting to feel overwhelmed by the amount and want to make sure you’re also staying on task while devoting enough time to responding to important e-mails.

First, unless you have or work in a business where your only part in being there is to respond to e-mails, most e-mails do not need to be read as soon as they come in. In fact, studies show that every time you get distracted, whether from a phone call, someone stopping by your desk or an e-mail comes in, the average person gets off task for anywhere from 10-20 minutes. How often are your e-mails so important that stopping your work for that long is actually beneficial to your time? It’s probably not as often as you think. To help prevent such losses in time, schedule specific periods during your day to look at and respond to your e-mails. How often you do this depends upon how much e-mail you get and how much you need to respond to them.

If you fear that not responding immediately will cause problems, start to let people you work with know that you will be looking at your e-mails during specific points of the day. Let your clients know as well. Then invite them to call you if there is an emergency, but otherwise, you’ll get back to them at the allotted time in the day. Always train people to know what to expect from you and it prevents unnecessary problems and/or breakdowns in communications. Most people can wait a few hours for a response.

When you do reach those points of the day where you are responding to e-mail, first go through the e-mails quickly one by one. Do not respond immediately to any of them. Create file folders for your incoming e-mails such as: research, respond to within 1 week, respond to within 1 day, keep, etc. These different file folders can be set out to work for the types of typical e-mails you receive daily. Once you have put your e-mails into their respective folders, go through those e-mails you perceived to need an immediate response and get them out of the way. Also, set up and utilize your junk folder to filter out unwanted e-mails.

Again, any time you are in the middle of a task and you take a moment to look at an e-mail, it will take you 10-20 minutes to get your brain back on task. If you receive many e-mails during the day, this habit will create problems with getting your work done on time, keeping you working later hours than are needed, leads to exhaustion, stress and less time to concentrate on other things. By setting specific points during the day, such as at 9:30 am, 12:30 pm and 4:30 pm to look over, sort and respond to e-mail then you have made a date with yourself to handle e-mail, but are not a slave to handling everything that comes in when it comes in.

Sorting quickly through your e-mails helps you to quickly assess what needs to be looked at immediately and what can wait. By assigning certain items to be worked on later when you have more time and those that aren’t pressing matters, it allows you to have the time to devote yourself to work that is imperative. Sorting your e-mails into categories allows you to prioritize your work and makes it simpler and less overwhelming to deal with. The file folders also make it much easier to find e-mails in the future.

Always make sure you delete items you no longer need on a daily basis. If you aren’t sure, create another file folder to hold on to items you may need to find later on. However, your inbox should only carry items that need to be addressed immediately or those items you have not yet sorted through.

I hope this helps to begin the process of learning how to live without instant e-mail gratification. If you have a ton of e-mails to sort through, do a little at a time or you’ll never get it done. Ask your assistant to help filter e-mails for you as well. Lastly, if you feel you need additional help of a professional organizer or time management coach, contact Alison Kero at: 646-831-9625 or on her e-mail at: info@gothamconcierge.com. Consultations can be done in person in the NYC metro area or phone consultations are available nationwide. Lastly, if you trust and know of another professional organizer, contact them and make an appointment to get your time, space and life organized today. You’ll see and live the difference every day! Good luck!