One thing I often hear from my home organizing and purging clients is an overwhelm of where and how to start. My mom felt this too when she started down this path of readying her home for whatever was next after my dad passed. 

The many years I spent in a small NYC apartment taught me how to make the most of space and that when you let go of something, it makes room for something better. My time as a merchant helped me analyze that everything should have a purpose. My time learning reiki helped me hone in on the energy of things and how too much feels in a space (to me it feels suffocating). And my certification process as a coach taught me our outer world can often match our inner world and that there is so much emotion attached to the things we choose to keep and the things we avoid letting go of. Helping my mom purge my childhood home also anchored into me that I will never make my future kids do this type of heavy lifting. 

So where do you start?

First step is to spend a few minutes fine-tuning your vision, your why. What is it that you want to create and feel by letting this stuff go and by creating better systems in your home?

The next step is to pick something easy. Don’t dive into the hardest, most emotional stuff first (childhood pictures anyone?). You’ll just stop your progress and momentum and feel frustrated at the whole thing. 

The next step is my simple system.

When you open a box and it looks like the below (and this is any box and any group of items in a home)

Follow these simple steps. 

1. Put it in an area of the home you have to look at it (if you hide it away, you’ll never do the work needed)
2. Sort it into piles. These piles can look like: keep, research, donate, recycle, digitize, think about
3. It’s important to only keep things that resonate with you – that doesn’t mean you can’t take pictures of things – but really sink into how everything feels. Ask yourself, am I keeping this because I think I have to? Or am I keeping it because it brings me joy? Is there someone else that would get even more joy out of this?
4. Let it stay there a few days and see if you still feel the same way
5. If you do still feel the same way, act on it!
6. Things you may research: how to best discard of this? Is it worth anything, should I sell it? Would someone close to me want this? etc

Start small, one box at a time. It’s similar to learning how to crawl before you walk before you run. You’ll build this muscle and this momentum. 

This doesn’t only work for stuff, but it also works for our mindset and our leadership style. I’ll dive in deeper on this at a later date (see post here), but in a nutshell… noticing you are the one creating spin with your team? Feeling overwhelmed and like no matter what you try you can’t get to where you want to go in your organization? You likely have clutter in your mind, whether it’s an outdated mindset, persona, way of working or not-delegating, and so much more. The process above also works for inner clutter. 

Something else that’s really important whether it’s internal or external clutter is to phone a friend for support, find a way to make it fun, reward yourself when you hit a certain milestone, and / or hire a coach to help you. Getting rid of stuff is a lot harder than people realize. 

Learn more about working with me here.