Tackle the Big 3 while Staying Home and Staying Safe

What can you do to make these Stay Home, Stay Safe days more productive? Here are a few things you can do now that will put you in control when the rest of the world seems to be spinning out of control.

The first thing I suggest to clients who may be planning to downsize and move or who just want to get their homes more organized, is to tackle the Big 3. These 3 things are highly personal, take the longest amount of time to sort and can only be done by you. These are also the 3 areas that people tend to procrastinate the most on. Why? Because they are the hardest to do. Odds are these 3 things have been on your To Do List for a very long time. So why not take them on now? Working on the Big 3 will leave you feeling that you are in control… in control of your stuff!

1. Personal Paperwork – tackle that desk and get things filed away. Also target any other areas that may be filling up with paper like the kitchen counter or table. Earmark boxes of old records and paperwork that can be shredded and recycled. Fill up your recycling bin! Excess paper brings with it a tremendous burden of weight so anything you can do to lighten the load will help you feel like you can breathe again.
2. Clothing and Shoes – go through your closets and purge items you no longer wear. Get donation items in bags and place them in a holding area somewhere in your home that you can easily get to when Donation sites open back up. Be ruthless with clothes! Pull things out – try them on and get rid of them if they do not fit or are not something that fits with your current lifestyle. Let someone else get some use out of these items.
3. Books – Go through your books and decide what books you want to keep and what books can be donated. If you are a book person, this is a big project. Start sorting books by shelf, place KEEP books on one shelf and move DONATE books to another shelf. Use labels or colored dots on the shelf to identify the keep and donate.

Start small, maybe just 1 shelf of 1 bookcase, or the top of the file cabinet. It took you a long time to get this much of everything, it will take you awhile to bring it under control. Start with an hour or two a few days a week, do not think you can do this 8 hours a day because you cannot. But that is the beauty of time, right now you have a lot of it! Use it wisely, think of it as a gift and direct it to those tasks that you may not want to do but you know you need to do.

A little bit every day will lead you to a more organized home and a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Christy Urdal is owner of NextStep Transitions, a relocation and home transitions specialist in the greater Seattle area. She helps people with downsizing, move management, getting homes ready to go on the market and many other home and relocation related services. Her specialty is assisting Seniors as they transition from their lifelong residence into smaller spaces. www.nextsteptransitions.com 206-276-7271