Why is it that people lose their sense of organization?  What is it about their lives that cause them to become unorganized?  Most unorganized people would tell you that they just became too busy to take care of simple chores that, when left undone, would pile up and cause enough cluster to make Mary Poppins curse!  It’s not that they intentionally became unorganized; it’s just that they put everything else in their life above the mess that surrounds their life.  That’s completely fine, but what worries me is when that mess begins to take over.  That mess moves to the car and eventually to the work place, and sometimes it even overflows into your children.  You’ve heard the phrase, “Monkey see, monkey do”, well I hate to break it to you but your bad habits are slowly rubbing off on your children.  It will be difficult to teach them to be organized and neat when they never see you do the same.  And believe me; kids will let you know rather quickly that you’re not following your own rules.  I went out to the movie theatre once with some friends and we had just finished a delicious Italian meal.  We were standing in line behind a family of five.  They got up to the window and the mother pointed to each of her kids and said his or her age.  As she said her youngest daughters’ age (which she said to be seven; kids under eight get in free), the young girl quickly interrupted and said, “But mom you said I turned eight last month.”  The mother had been caught.  The mother blushed, paid the correct amount and vanished into the theatre with her family.  It just goes to show you that kids will not let you get away with anything.  If they get in trouble for lying then they are definitely going to call you out on it if they catch you!
Getting back on the track of organization is so often overwhelming that people refrain from even starting.  They think it will take months of placing things in boxes and labeling countless folders of junk mail.  However, I can turn one of the most unorganized houses into a somewhat “organized clutter” in less than a month.  Last week we discussed your Organizational Flow (Org Flow) and now I’m going to help you to develop a system to keep that flow moving without interruption.  The first step, I always tell my clients, is to go through your things and get rid of things you no longer need, want, or have no purpose for.  All of those old newspapers; why are you keeping them?  Is there an article you’d like to keep?  If so, then cut out that particular article, place it aside and throw away the rest of the paper.  What about all those old baby clothes that you’ve had in storage for the past 25 years?  Don’t you think there is someone else out there that could actually use them?  Why not donate them or sale them in a Yard Sale?  This part, what I call De-cluttering, is normally the hardest part for most people.  Getting rid of things you’ve had for years, many of which you have a strong emotional connection with, may seem extremely difficult at first, but once you get started it becomes much easier.  I had a client once that had a HUGE box of white candles.  When I asked her why she kept them she said they were the candles used in her wedding over 15 years ago.  I gave her a look and without saying a word she knew that it was pointless to keep that box full of dusty old candles that had only been lit once then placed in the basement.  Instead, she gave the candles to her niece (who was getting married in a few months) and used the box to store other valuable items.  Those candles, which no longer served a purpose for her, will now be passed down in the family and will serve someone else.  That is a perfect example of De-Cluttering. 
Telling someone to “get rid” of precious items, items that anyone else may see as junk, is much harder than it sounds.  They will come up with countless excuses to keep these things and try to assure you that they will eventually be used.  Well, as a rule of thumb, if you have not used it or thought about it in over two years chances are it’s okay to get rid of it.  Some items, such as a wedding dress, an old family heirloom and things of that nature are different, but you do have other things that are simply taking up space.  Maybe you have several boxes of books that you’ve read numerous times.  Chances are you are not going to do anything else with them, unless you’d like to start a bonfire with them in the near future, so why not donate them to the library or maybe sale them online to Amazon.com or Ebay.com?  As you go through your house you will begin to realize that there are tons of things that you could get rid of that you wouldn’t even miss.  I often have clients that will be going through old boxes and they will find something that just they HAVE to keep, yet they haven’t seen it since 1974.  Why keep it?  If they can give me a legit reason then we will try to work around it, but I always say for one item that you really want to keep you need to get rid of two other items that are of lesser value. 
My challenge to you this week is to go through some of your old things, or maybe just some “junk” sitting around the house and throw some of those things out.  Pick a particular box or drawer in your house and clean it out.  Make three piles:  Throw Away, Keep, and Give Away.  You will soon find that getting rid of certain items is not as difficult as you would think, especially if you’re giving it away.  It always seems to make people feel at ease knowing their belongings are actually going to be used again, versus just being tossed in the garbage. 
Think of this as “De-Clogging your pipes” (like we talked about last week). 
Getting rid of some of this stuff is just helping you move in the right direction to becoming a much more organized person.