well welcome good afternoon my name is helen stephan and i am the principal organizer at the welcome home so this is messed up so i've been doing this work my mother will tell you since about thirteen months old when i was organizing blocks and organizing trying to organize my siblings they didn't go for that so much but i'm of the camp that you're either an organized person or not and i'm thinkin i got a lot of not spend here otherwise you probably would not be interested in learning more about the clattering so i will try to answer as many questions as i can  this i try to develop this around de cluttering in preparation for a downsizing so i don't think you can downsize so going from a home of five six bedrooms to independent living or a one bedroom condo or something like that without de cluttering first so that's going to take you through those steps and then if you're interested in ok so i cluttered now i'm ready for downsizing we can we can talk about that as well so they said that you'd be might be interested in you know talking about this as we approach the holidays i'm just going to throw you know a little shout out to that but we're going to help you try to get organized and d cluttered and then hopefully we'll be have a nice home to invite friends into and  more things in maybe as long as things are going out the back door so let's talk about that again i've been doing this for about fifteen years on and off and the three areas that i really focus on are home staging to make your home presentable to people that are coming in to buy i do organization and styling of people that are just in their homes and need to be organized or what i restyle or  re decorate to make things a little more comfortable and then staging and settling in so that when you know when people do move in i help them set up their homes so it's a broad swath of services but everything really is designed to make your home more comfortable that's what i try to do so again going from a large house to a small house you kind of get the concept but what struck me is and i think this should stick in your head is not everything in your big house can go to your small house and that's what people i find trying to do they hold on to memories they hold on to things that they've you know traveling accumulated throughout the years and they want to bring it all with them because you're a clutter you don't know how to let things go or you don't want to let things go but that's really something important to remember keep that visual in mind that you can not speaking of overwhelming yes see that that is that was a client and i refer to this is chaos which in the organizing world means can't have anyone over syndrome you would not want to invite someone over to have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in that but yet they do live like that you can see the back counter and the cooking areas that they just they haven't cooked in years they just they're unable to do that so hopefully you're feeling a little bit better about your home in contrast but if you want to talk about what clutter is this is probably really obvious but some of the points that i really want to focus in on clutter is that this order of an excess of things that cannot be used or enjoyed to clutter something means to fill or cover with scattered or disordered things that in peed movement and if reduced effect clutter creates anxiety and discomfort creates hazardous conditions it's the opposite of calm clutter is what is literally standing between you and the calm welcoming home that you want to enjoy and invite people into this was not new to me but in hearing this it makes so much sense clutter is delayed decision making so if you think of anything that's around your house that might be a lying around that you're not using in the moment because it has a home you know where it belongs you just haven't gotten there yet you haven't decided what to do with it yet so once lack of all those decisions tend to pile up i think all my dining room table and clutter cannot be organized i have so the this client wanted me to organize that it just i'm sorry you cannot do that with all of the organization says i could go to the container store and get every conceivable nice little knick knack the box two or hanger things and i still could not organize that place so keep that in your mind clutter cannot be organized what i'm going to help you do is pared down the down what is no longer useful and then we can organize and arrange the rest ok so we want to go i think my whole thing in life is going from chaos to calm that is not the same house but what i want you to stick with is you probably have this reaction between the kitchen and then this imagine living in that so it's that feeling that i want to help instill and i think most people want to live in the second home and not the first so again that's what that's where we're trying going to try to get so so again so i go back to we need to declare it's about getting rid of those items that you do not use and no longer love that are not serving you it's about letting go of the past enjoying the present and clearing away for the future and your future things declaring your home will not only make you your space feel less cluttered but also help to clear your mind and then practically you know when there's less stuff to take care of there's less running around to find easier wallet your you know you name it and really more time to spend on the things that you want to spend time on photographer getting married so she kind of cluttered everything into this second bedroom and they're they're quite small so by the end of the day actually not even though this is literally within three hours we were able to go from this to that and it's not magic and it's not like i think things under beds and stuff them in closets that you can't open and take you through what i first called them ten steps to organizing but then i like to get rid of things so of shampoo bottles from hotels and i want to collect them because all what that's a great thing i might need that someday but then when it gets to the hundreds stage you've got it has to go someplace and it went here  so that's the was the end of that particular workday now and again things are not you know i had to pare down eighty percent of what was in there it's still functional there's still lots of so there's lots of her paper and there's still plenty of things that you would need for a living but you just don't need all that excess so that's what we cleared out so let's get to the nine rules and these all flow together so i don't think you know even nine can feel overwhelming they really do flow one into the other but the first thing i want to caution you is that things get worse before they get better so think about the room that you're messiest and if you were to tackle that stuff someplace so things definitely get worse before they get better the second thing i will say is do not go to the container store or someplace similar and load up on stores of storage boxes because then you're just going to keep everything you have and hide it where you want to do is get rid of the things that you no longer need so you will no longer have a need for those storage boxes so that's the next i would like to save money so choose one area at a time don't i would if you're sort of new to this i would suggest taking your least cluttered area of your dining room table every spare bathroom and linen closet something that is doable that you don't feel overwhelmed because  feel overwhelmed i can't do this it can't be done i'll do it another day so i would choose one area or room and ideally it's something that can be manageable here's what i'm sorry about the resolution of this this is actually in the limbic rower her house she she's now a coach and being a coach she's mobile so she lives out of those plastic containers that i dearly love but which she doesn't think when she gets into an apartment and you know she's running out the door to work and grab something and a sweater and out the door she goes and then i think her system is when she comes in  h dirty at the end of the day it goes into this pile over here so it's not a really attractive way to live again by the end of the day this is one day we've cleared all that out it's not like i did all that stuff it got folded it got sorted it got pared down and taken away to what she realistically can use so she went to bed that night and and something i think was a lot more calm than when she woke up in the morning to set aside be realistic with your time i would set aside an hour or two again most of my clients have said for thirty years on going to get to that just a rainy day or you know in the spring i'm going to tackle that well those days don't come there's rarely days when you don't have anything better to do than to go through your linen closet or your spice rack so i would suggest that you set aside one or two hours that again it's not overwhelming you haven't destroyed all of your house or all your living environment and you'll feel a sense of accomplishment afterwards this is probably the central tip that any organizer can give you is to sort you want to set aside again think of your room that you want to organize and if you can't  get boxes or bin just create an area so the dining room table this corner of the floor that corner of the floor have different zones have different areas you don't even need to have nice little signs but if someone's helping you it can be helpful to have different areas segmented them labeled so that people know where things go so you want to have you know a box that everything that i want  keep that i need that in this room this makes sense in this room it's a bathroom my so my shampoo my towels a need stays here kids toys mementos no bills whatever does not belong in that room going to use the bathroom as an example leaves that room in one box one form or another so it's either going to go in a store i need to put that someplace in my office or in a filing cabinet or in the hope chest you going to store you're going to keep it the other is going to donate it i can no longer use this this no longer is useful to me in my life but it's in good condition somebody else can use it this can go to another home and someone can enjoy it it could be trash something that's just really not in great shape it could be broken you need repair or need cleaning something that you have a worn him two years you know you want to put that in a separate area and then said the other room you can deal with it later but the idea is in that one room you're going to put each item into one of those either boxes or corners bags what have you is what every organizer i've ever met in the seminar ever gone to the national association of professional organizers this is what we do we sort and then everything that doesn't stay get used in that room gets taken out so think if you started you know with that bathroom eighty percent of the things in there are not useful in that room or are too much they're overwhelming we took out eighty percent that doesn't leave a whole lot to the have to organize so your job is essentially done your organize just by virtue of taking things out that you don't so that i think is it's easy to understand and it's hard to do expression only when we're not decision makers we grew up or had parents that are in the depression era or we've just got world travels or we have a lot of kids that we want to pass things on to i recognize it is not easy to let go of these things but then that's why i have you go back to the boarding house and the common vironment you need to ultimately decide what you want to live in malang going forward and make that decision that will help you make these decisions so you can ask yourself this would come intuitive you don't have to write it down as a staff but do i love it do i use it does it fit would someone else enjoy this more than i do is a broken or missing parts have i worn in the last two years  and do i have more then i need do i have two hundred shampoo bottles that i could possibly ever use so you want to pare down and i think those questions once you start going is the kids one of the kids rooms years ago but they've been gone for ever graduated school probably twelve fifteen years ago and this is the office but it's also the room that everything else in the house goes into when they can't make a decision about how to use it where and when so this is more than a day everything off the floor and we've got of in those boxes here's just panning around that room and i have so this probably two or three day job very little of this actually got thrown out i hate to say we had to store it in the basement and i refused to go to the basement but it did get out of this room and now this room is functional so you can see there are there are desks the her husband can get in and actually do work back and they're continuing to pan around the room there's an apartment in cambridge very small apartment and this woman had lived in italy and travelled all over and has collected things that she just loves and doesn't want to get rid of so it arse all sort of got mashed together lot of colors there doesn't seem like a very relaxing place at the end of the day to command and that's really when you walk in the front door this is the view that you see  i took out that very busy rug and i put it under the dining room table so that i created sort of a separate room so she's got two rooms i just remove the couch so instead of being on the wall it created a separation so now she's got two distinct spaces before there is no you know with the chairs on the opposite side of the room it really wasn't comfortable if you were having a glass of wine or a cup of tea you're so they yelling at each other across the room and it doesn't people just don't tend to gather in a place like that so again really nothing went out of here but we did sort this is just a matter of reorganizing and moving bookcases and moving furniture around a little bit but the big difference was moving the r the next step is now pared everything out you've taken everything out of the room that you no longer need the next step is to give everything a home again self explanatory but i'll take a dining room for example  all of your napkins all of your linens should go together in a drawer and they all go together all your plates go together and they've gone in one area so everything should have its own home and not really be out in the open if you're going to have something on the sideboard a side table it should be decorative and it should be something that you absolutely love it's one of those cherished keepsakes that when you see it there is just filled with memories and you enjoy looking at it  that should be the one item on the table top i would do one or three three is a nice collection anything more than that tends to feel druggy so one or three so everything should have a home so here's a plan i have in lexington and her two year old used the living room as her playhouse  she didn't want that so you know she has been a community help redefine that but it seems pretty intuitive that a play castle does not belong in the living room so just by putting things where they belong that was the space at the end of the day and is the nicest compliment i have ever gotten on my work when she said her husband now uses that room used to be a walk through a pass through now that the two year old daughter has her place place in her room but this is an adult room to have people over she's got a book club now to me that's that's a satisfying result and just in of i don't know if i'd been interested in furniture arrangement but again you can you're certainly not going to talk to the people or have a glass of wine and talk to people far far over there by the fireplace this couch was looking out to nothing no place to put you know a cup of tea and really no one to talk to plus the chairs are much too big scale for that fireplace so we move them into the room and you've got it off in your in your living room you think if you've got a you set up in your furniture that tends to be the best configuration for conversation so think about creating a u shape in your furniture so that was step seven organize w here's one house that i staged in cambridge really this is just i think a conglomeration of all the things that we talked about but  there's a dining room and most people are not going to want to paint dining room so it's just a before of a dining room and then after that same dining room no there's no clutter but that house did not was not selling that house sold it's the same it's essentially the same it's the same room obviously it's moved the chandelier  so that is essentially how do you now want to talk about how to keep it that way and i gave you that handout to think it will go over and we can talk about that but you even now spent a lot of time taking things out of your room that you no longer use that you no longer love that no longer you have a use for it now you want to monitor what comes in the front door and this i find if you can get your arms around this one it's really easy to stay pretty cloudy clutter free so for instance when you pick up the mail do you put it on the dining room table and look at it later or this is what i've taught myself and a lot of people to do is to open it over the trash and recycling so everything that doesn't have a forty nine cent stamp on it or the equivalent is bulk mail it's jug it's not right into the recycle bin i tear off the payment portion and i take that and i put it into my bill for file folder so this has to get paid by only that one piece of paper to do that i pay my bills online now because it's free and it's easy to have the right of check it i have to pay for checks i don't have to pay for stamps so i will throw out the return address and elope that's a habit that i would recommend that you get into but if you still don't want to do that then i would take the payment receipt put it in with the return envelope and put that in your bill pay file folder and then everything else goes in the trash  i don't keep the statement it's all online they keep all of your usage information online you can always get it in if you're interested in what gas you used hundred ninety seven you know ok they'll have a record of it i don't keep in mind you need to keep your house so i'm saying things that have account numbers on it certainly anything with your social security or bank information if someone's going to put those two together and go through my trash and do that the money more than i do so i think the next we can go over can house worst thing you can have in your house a plastic bag you want to take you come in the back door or the front door whichever you're coming in you want it delaying that decision making you want to process that item it's toothpaste you take it out of the carton throw the carton in the recycle the toothpaste goes to the bathroom or to the linen closet or something like that if it's food put it away immediately in the right cabinet in the right spot in the refrigerator whatever but you want to get everything out of the plastic bags because one passes a bag like that is clutter in and of itself whatever's in it you needed it you thought you needed it you bought it if it's in a bag you're not using it so i would urge you once again is in the back door the front door going into your kitchen on your counter or whatever you have take everything out of the plastic bag recycle plastic bag and then process what's there i like to take things out of the outer packaging and recycle it right away so i don't have to deal with that later trash or recycling up in the third bedroom i need to get rid of that now i don't want to do that i just want to do it immediately so things like clothing if you're going out shopping if something is coming in the front door in a bag i always encourage you to have something going out the back door so if you buy a new sweater set looks lovely on you and i love the matchups is there so you bought that because that's going to make you look better feel better than what you have in your closet right that's why we're out shopping so if you can i would say if you bring something new in take something out give it away donate there's a lot of women shelters around that would love your clothing that you no longer use that no longer look great on you so just start to train yourself if you are bringing things in one door something should go out so maintaining here's where we have the the tips for not having enough to go around but i can print them and drop them off make your bed every day and how many people in here do that but i find that it's just one step it starts to get you working towards clearing towards clutter if your bed is made you don't have unfolded laundry on it you don't have the dog toys on it or whatever it doesn't become a ground dumping ground for anything else so make your bed you know give you a little bit of momentum to start facing the next things so as soon as you get out of bed ideally you're going to make it and be done and have a nice fresh something large in your bedroom put everything in  place sort the mail over there cycling bin keep one bin for reading material so i have a lot of people that have their reader's digest from the seventy's and they know there's an article they would not have saved it unless they knew there was something in there that they wanted to read forty fifty years and they're not going to read it i promise you  so not only is that a fire hazard that a store that you know so your house has to be big enough to store all that stuff and the bigger houses are the more they cost so all of that you know that accumulation that there's  monetary cost to all of that if there's something that you want to read i want encourage you to keep it in a file folder or one place and then go through it every week and if you didn't read it this week you're not going to read it next week because you've got daily things coming that you need to read so i would encourage you to process it ruthlessly every once a week get rid of anything you haven't read pay bills online i love that again it's free it actually saves you money keep flat surfaces clear except for one or two decorative items so if you're thinking about if you're dining rooms and mass and you've got a  sideboard you know you've got serving plates and then you've got some mail and then you've got some key in some loose change in a bottle of nail polish or whatever just tends to gather when you have a flat surface and if you have anything on there but a decorative it's going to collect it's like a magnet to a fifteen minute clean sweep every evening so if you're just chewed daunted to take on a big task i would just go through you know as you're locking the front door and turning off the lights go through and if something does not belong in the in the living room there's a cup or you know serving piece from the kitchen take it and put in the kitchen you can process the kitchen later but as long as you clean sweep that night anything that does not belong in a room you that much better off the next have less clutter to deal with  in italy by an economist who recognized or were discovered that eighty percent of the wealth in italy was held by twenty percent of the people so that's where it started but since then people have used that in management they'll say in business that twenty eighty percent of your profits come from twenty percent of your customers they say that roughly speaking eighty percent of your productivity comes from twenty percent of your employees bring more practical think about your jewelry case i must have one hundred pair of earrings and i wear these so there's the eighty twenty so essentially is you've got eighty percent of the things that you have you're not using you're only using twenty percent of all the stores you can go shopping at you go to the same ones so keep that in mind and so when i say purge and it go through how many white tops do you have maybe you could live with three and get rid it handy to keep a donation bag by the back door or in the garage or someplace again on the way out something that you no longer need and you want to it's worthy to be donated to someone someone else could use it put it in a bag and it's in that your back hallway or your garage it's closer to your car so it's out of your house and it's closer to where it's going to eventually get to that donation center if it stays in your bedroom or the third guest room it's never going to leave so if you leave the bag by the back door it's you know you'll feel that once it's filled you put in your car and then when you're driving michael there is one of those yellow bins where i can drop off clothing it's out of your house and it's now has a life for somebody else so that's they're my ten tips for staying organized what you want your organized we talked about this before and i put this in particularly for this group because if you have it in your house now one you haven't gotten rid of it because you don't know what to do with it you don't want to decide you're delaying that decision making or really mean something so i want to talk about getting rid of the sentimental items because that's the pushback that everybody gives me when i when i'm working with them all but this was given to my my boyfriend in junior high school and you know and it's a dead rose but it really brings back such memories and i want to keep it or i'll deal with that later let's just put that in the in the maybe pile if i get it it's hard it's hard for anyone to do  and so i talked about the beginning if one decides in the environment that you want to live is that one cluttered by things that no longer are useful to you has it been in your attic for fifty years or ten years or four years if it's in your attic it's in a box it's clutter in your head it's cluttering your your attic and it's not doing you any good if you truly loved it it would be on display for you to enjoy every day so the thought process is if you're if you're getting rid of sentimental things that are of sentimental value it enables the tru meaningful items to shine it allows you have space to create new memories if you if you so desire to bring them in creates breathing room in your life and really i think gives the proper prominence to the few things that you love and there are really meaningful and it's less stressful these are just some questions to ask when you're going through that box of sentimental items does this interfere with my daily living and my navigating around it do they serve me are they useful just big and i don't know what to do with it do i love it to enjoy it does all the old stuff dim the brightness of the really sentimental items if it's so important if it's so  wonderful is it displayed in a place on or is it's perceived value is great is the value of the space that it's taking up so the questions to ask as you go through that process  now what to do with the things that you've decided ok i'm going to keep and again when you're going through those i'm hoping that you're you're putting them in the proper box it's either donate give away sell trash recycle something but then you have you have the items that you're going to keep going to pick your favorites not a thousand figurines and i've seen people with a thousand little dog are clutter but one or two that are really special to you will stand out if you have those on the counter but not a thousand make it useful  something that really has memories and is a joy to you if you're not displaying it it should be of use to you take photos i always tell people you know a flat image is a lot easier to store to enjoy again and again if you have a photo so you can throw out those ticket stubs from the concert that you took your girlfriend to back in one nine hundred forty can throw the ticket stubs and if you want take a picture but if it's your a you know it's not that you're not using it anyway you know we're all going to have storage i'm not telling you to get rid of everything your house that isn't immediately useful or it brings you joy there is going to be some things to store but as a rule you should be going through it so that continually not every day but and prioritizing in editing what you have and lastly i would share it if you were if there are things in your house from your children that you're storing and i know a lot of us do that as our kids move around and before they settle i would give them a time limit i would tell them you're moving and it needs to be out by may thirty first on going to donate it you know there's a point where we no longer have to keep our kids stuff share it if there are things that you want to pass on do it now share with them  now you know why why wait why have them wait twenty years maybe they're not old enough to appreciate it but i would be selective and get give those things away now so that you can share it and pass on the memories with them share the memories with downsize and and actually move we can talk about that but i'm happy to take questions and or tips so if there are tips for that new found for organizing that could be useful over here please shar salie there's a there's there are different websites craigslist or free cycle that you can just put it out there it's at the end of the driveway a lot of times people come by i don't know if you've noticed like on recycling nights at three o'clock in the morning there are trucks going you can't put a refrigerator you have to check with a towel i don't i don't know what illegal things that would have a you know mercury or you know lead or something in it paint no the town has very specific rules about how another thing i will say instead of us spending a lot of money to have you know the blue trucks that come around that the junk removal companies try to get it donated there are a lot of places he's not one of them but there are a lot of nonprofit organizations that will come by and pick up specific items no one will take a used mattress purple heart saying this is depaul at the epilepsy foundation they're always around they're constantly calling me so there are a lot of organizations that will pick up useful  items even clothing you just gave to my website if you're if you go to websites i have a a list of them and then from what's not taken they give much less to have to pay to have removed  d yeah all my back save me i destroy them right away but it's all online they have to keep it in the banks and i can tell you exactly how long they need to keep it that they must keep it available for you for a year after a year and prior you can pay to have them if you need them but i hear people saying seven years that's usually for financial documents related to your income tax so they they could audit you thirty years back but you are not required to have receipts past seven years there yet so every every document has a different life that you need to keep for financial reasons seven years is usually good to get a bank statement i won't keep it's online and i never need to know what i bought two years ago and how much i paid for it and if i do i know i can get it from there same thing with your electricity bills and credit card statements now i will just be so i can keep track keep this statement portion of my credit card bill so i can see and i can write off in different categories if it's business what have you but that's probably just redundant but that's just my is that answer a question about paper check shred shred there's no use for them that all of the businesses that you have accounts with will have records of all of all of the payments all of your usage  wage earner's propers social security benefit and just i had not heard that so i guess what you're saying if there is find it anywhere that's why i mentioned identity theft she's saying you know keep your w tuesday from earnings for ever well and they could go out of business they might go out of business they might not be around right also they just with yeah so i haven't heard about th to find out how much well then you need to find someplace to donate it to myself it's all research is internet research but there are production companies that do movies that would you know would use it for a period i have a general with a collection of really nice old old photography quit there's a market but it's not going to pay what it's will make piles that's really there's no mystery we all make piles these is you know this goes to cousin jenny this i really want to keep there's only a few that you can actually enjoy and if there are boxes you're not enjoying them anyway so you can spend a ton of money scanning them all and you can get them want to computer disk or they could put it up in the cloud for you they could even make photo albums for you but i would sort through them first find the ones that have the most meaning to you that you really want to keep have those scanned and put an album the rest you're either going to the grainy photos are going to get rid of them now you're not using you're not enjoying them anyway  so that's what i would that's what i would do if you're if the frame is not displayed in your house absolutely if it's in a box get rid of it you don't like it and you like that you'd have it out so i would do yard sale it's an awful lot of work for a little bit of return so you can donate it but there's an awful lot of nonprofit organizations that do do yard sales give it to them get a tax receipt  right right you don't need the negative saver outlasts there are two big sick and there's one in natick it made it framingham line called savers if you're going out to shoppers world i think that's either st vincent de paul or one of those organizations but they have they go through every item and certain designers they'll always take them and you can just drop them off when they sell they send you a portion of what it sells for  are dressed for success that if you have nicer clothing they're so organization that brings in women who are trying to get on their feet and going off for interviews and they'll go through racks and they'll help them pick outfits that are appropriate really ideally dress for success so there are just hundreds of organizations that will repurpose almost anything that you have let's get it out of your find those organizations that will take it so  company there are fashion and design schools in boston that will use the material and then the students can learn how to repurpose a dress it's finding the places to first get it out of your room and then decide and then decide what how much time you want to spend on that particular thing you might just want to throw it away and you're not using i really mean throw it away and you could go to the extra trouble and donate it and find find a home for it but that's you know getting back to that you have to find the market moving riegel player so there's a lot of yeah they're not there and they're beautiful and they were you need to decide you can go on e bay and see if there are other people in the world that are still collecting them so yeah you got a question  car you know right view so the old was as open and i would throw it away it's not doing you or anybody else any good but the new ones that you pick up i would certainly donate that to a homeless shelter yeah i do i have cards and brochures up here please take them