For You, For a Friend: The Top Ten Tips to De-Clutter With Love  

     Ahhh! Love is in the air! It's the perfect month for that perfect gift: helping yourself or someone you love de-clutter and organize their living or work spaces.

     Miles of piles, cramped and crowded closets, surfaces that haven't seen the light of day in long while - those crowded spaces that overwhelm us (or someone we know). To get through those things requires lots of work and hundreds of decisions. Doing it alone or with a friend may result in creating more chaos, which ruins the aim of Cupid's bow. Negativity, a lack of objectivity, or judging yours or another's clutter usually leads to giving up before getting started.

     With your mind and heart in the right place, de-cluttering with love is possible and the results can be long-lasting. It's about feeling good about yourself, believing that you can do the work, and understanding that the clutter doesn't define you. It is not who you are. It's just a lot of stuff you want to eliminate from your life so that Cupid's arrow flies true.

De-Clutter With Love:  

The Top Ten Tips    

1. Calendar the date to do the work then gather your supplies (trash bags, recycle container, boxes for donated items).

2. Ask for help: love yourself enough to ask for help to de-clutter. The person you choose should be able to make you laugh, not judge you for what you want to keep, and help you feel good about your decisions to let go.

3. Offer to de-clutter someone you love: Make them laugh, help them feel good about their decisions to keep, toss, or recycle.

4. Start journaling: Write down why you think you have clutter? Can you name the obstacles that keep you clutter-free. Did you grow up in clutter? How does the clutter make you feel? How have you tried to help yourself (or someone you love) in the past?

5. Stop telling yourself you are lazy. Most people are not lazy. They just can't deal with clutter for other serious reasons: fear of failure, frustrated by not knowing how or where to start, anger about letting things get "this bad." Be kind and gentle to your self or your loved one. Try to get to the root of why you may have clutter.

6. Eliminate all "head trash." These are the negative messages that enter our brain and help us feel badly about ourselves and our abilities. Negativity begets negativity: If you feel you cannot do something, you won't. If you feel it's impossible, it is.

7. Bring into your life the power of affirmation. Affirmations are uplifting messages we can apply to nearly every everything that we do. Since our subconscious believes everything we tell it, we may as well recite the good stuff instead of the head trash. Create affirmations to elevate your spirit. Try this: "I deserve a clutter-free home and I accept this now!" Repeat at least 10 times/day.

8. Love yourself enough to lay out a plan to de-clutter. Your organizing/de-cluttering projects don't have to happen all at once. If every room has clutter, work on one room per month. Take a year to complete the task. Don't despair if you skip a session with yourself.

9. More journaling: Become clear about your big, over-arching life goals and the elements (needs, wants, passions, desires) you need to feed those goals. Then, look at your clutter and identify those items that you believe will feed the goals. Eliminate the those that do not.

10. Conceive, believe, perceive, achieve.

Upcoming Workshops!    

• April 21: California State Univeristy Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (details forthcoming)

• May 4: Santa Monica Older Adult Task Force "Hoarding 101."