NOW 2010

Every year, the second week in September is National Organising Week. This year has been the 4^th, and for the last three years we (AAPO) had Dymo sponsoring our efforts.

There are competitions and free workshops all over the country – and Peter Walsh, Oprah’s Organising Guru comes “home” to give the event a bit of a celebrity shine.

In my role as Sydney Forum leader, I had the great pleasure to meet him yesterday for breakfast –me and 80 others.

A couple of years ago I worked with him on a before and after style TV segment, so it was nice to catch up. He gave a short talk, which ended up being mostly an answering questions thing, but he is very entertaining and clearly knows what he is talking about. He uses good analogies: finish the cycle- as you would never stop a washing machine mid cycle to leave it half washed in the drum for a week, you shouldn’t stop midway through any project.

Arrange your desk like a car is arranged for you. Have the things you use constantly at arm’s length – the stuff you use less frequently is in the glove box: you have to bend over to get to it. To fill the car up = get new paper or stationery, its fine to get off your seat and walk to a different end of the room.

And pay attention whether you are left or right handed. It’s good to pick up the phone with one hand and write with the other.

through my involvement with AAPO and in my role as Sydney Forum leader, I am  going to have the great pleasure to meet Peter Walsh, Oprah’s organising guru. Next week is National Organising Week (NOW) and he is hosting a breakfast for us Organisers here in Sydney.

A couple of years ago I worked with him on an before and after style TV segment and I really enjoyed that. So I am over the moon to see him in a more social environment – not just for work.

He is such an inspiration to us Organisers and to our customers. He is relentless in his mission to have  less clutter in  every body’s home through his TV shows. His message is that everybody has a choice and that you should be aware what you are missing out on when picking stuff over people.

Despite being a bit repetitive here – but every hero needs a mention:

these are the pictures of the amount of rubbish we moved out of a Storage unit here in Sydney last Friday.
And believe it or not, it took just 3 hours.
On top of this we decided on 7 boxes of books to be sold at the upcoming garage sale and took them from the storage unit back to the house to be ready to go.
The only things that were left are photo albums (which will come into the house after as much as possible has been sold at the sale) and Christmas decoration. For that we found space in the attic, so, by the end of the month, this storage unit will be empty and $ 55 a month saved.

… not necessarily people but definitely relationships.

I am coming across a lot of people with an oversupply of scrapbooking material. To an extent that there are three kids bunking in one room, because the second bedroom is completely overtaken by paper products and ribbons.

Most scrap bookers are very fast to admit, that they do love scrapbooking, but never have enough time to produce the page about  little Tom’s  christening (little Tom being big Tom in the meantime and finishing High School).

And that they love shopping for the material much more than actually sitting down and doing it.

I love paper and anything crafty or stationery myself – I mean really love it. (I still have big sheets of special paper from studying Interior Architecture some 20 years ago… and a couple of notebooks from the Czech Republic from before the iron curtain was lifted!!)

But I would never even contemplate scrapbooking. The reason being, that  a day has just 24 hours.

So let’s do the math and see where you would find the 50 hours it takes to finish a scrapbooked photo album:

7 hours for sleeping, 1 for cooking, ½ for cleaning and tidying, 1 for driving the kids around. 1 for helping with homework, 1 for eating breakfast lunch and dinner, 2 for watching TV, 1 for reading a book, 8 for working in a payed job, 1 for getting to and from work.

That already equals 23.5 hours. All this doesn’t’ include the weekly activities like shopping for groceries, exercising every second day. In these 23.5 hours you haven’t talked to anyone, didn’t drink a beer with a mate, haven’t done the gardening or cleaned the windows. You haven’t taken the kids on a day to the zoo or had just half an hour with nothing planned.

Because that’s what I would like to do with the half hour – just have nothing planned.

So give your scrapbooking material to a toddler, watch him have fun with it for a couple of hours and happily chuck the leftovers in the bin!

And now: enjoy half an hour with nothing planned!!!!!

Panic! We have to move overseas for my husband’s work. Packing up a messy house with years of accumulated clutter was not easy. So we called LessMess less Stress. Our house was also needing some renovations before we could rent it out. LessMess gave us practical advice on decor and color schemes. LessMess then took over the supervision of the renovations after we had left. Susanne supervised new carpets, painting inside and outside the house and various odd handyman jobs. She then organised the house to be cleaned, the rubbish taken and the garden done. Susanne from LessMess is down to earth but totally professional. Everything was done to our absolute satisfaction. The bill was very reasonable too!
Carolyn, Singapore

Dear Susanne,
Thank you so much for travelling to Brisbane to help me sort out my storage units. I really couldn’t have faced it on my own and your enthusiasm and excitement from the very beginning was very infectious. The process was very satisfying, especially nearly filling a rubbish truck with “stuff” that I had been PAYING to store! Another highlight was having the driver of the charity truck THANKING me for the huge donation of goods I was just glad to be relieved of! I have continued utilising the skills I have learned at home and am, for the first time, actually enjoying tackling new areas that need “organising” without being overwhelmed by the thought of it.
I must share with you an unexpected serendipity of this process. During the sorting of papers in the storeroom I came across several warranties I hadn’t seen in four years. One was for an expensive DVD recorder that no longer recorded and the other was for a leather sofa suite that now has a tear in it. Both of these items were over five tears old but I had forgotten that at the time of purchase, I had paid extra for extended warranties and, for the sofa, a protection plan. I am pleased to report that the DVD recorder I thought I was going to have to replace, was picked up yesterday to be fixed and… today I selected my BRAND NEW leather sofa as apparently mine was faulty!
I’m thrilled with this result as well as my new found confidence and skills taught by LESSMESS.
Thanks again Susanne.
Julie-Anne

“350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere.
Accelerating arctic warming and other early climate impacts have led scientists to conclude that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390ppm, and that unless we are able to rapidly return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt.” http://www.350.org/about/science
Everything we buy has a carbon footprint – and it doesn’t matter whether we use it or just store it. I have written before about food wastage- which is a very obvious waste.
But what about the things we acquire and then never use, the stuff that accumulates at the bottom of the wardrobe, the shoes that don’t and never will fit? The novelty toy we bought a winging kid at a theme park? They have all cost the earth something to get produced and shipped.
Most of my clients have too much stuff (otherwise they wouldn’t be my clients) but they are still buying more. There are several reasons for that: some people can’t find what they have because of all the clutter, some people like shopping. Both categories end up having unnecessary things lying around their home, costing us dearly.
On the other hand most people nowadays are very conscious about how to dispose of their belongings – which is great. But when it comes to the carbon footprint, as soon as you buy something you are responsible for the energy it took to produce and get it to you. In regards to the carbon footprint it doesn’t matter whether you chuck it into landfill, or you have your own little “landfill” in a cupboard or in your garage.
When getting organised you will be able to find the things you have and by seeing the amount of objects you acquired over the years on shopping sprees, and realizing that it ultimately cost’s you money to get rid of them (yes, Professional Organisers do cost money – and so we should!!) maybe next time you want to buy something you just take a second to consider the impact this item will have on the environment, the global as well as your personal one (house/office) and you will find that most things don’t have to be bought in the first place.

Over the last three days I helped a client in Brisbane to get 5 m3 of rubbish out of her storage units at Kennard’s. That plus 3 m3 for charities and 2 m3 to actually take home and use.
We created a whole shelf for e bay items – including a box with packaging material and pre paid envelopes. There now is a “his” and “her” shelf a fold up table to work at and a shredder – ready to get rid of more paperwork.
She now has an inventory – which sounds more than it is: it’s a list of items they have in the store room, a description of the location and a  picture of the storeroom labeled with their items.
This morning before heading upstairs to the store cubicle I had a chat to the Kennard’s manager (who was getting increasingly suspicious of two females wheeling one trolley after the other into the loading zone – giggling and carrying on, taking photos of rubbish???!!!!!)
I told him of my opinion, that storage places shouldn’t be necessary at all – because I strongly believe, that once stuff gets into your offsite storage room, you might as well toss it straight away and save yourself some serious money. Wasn’t impressed, the manager, but my client agreed. So off we went to gather some more rubbish and do some more therapeutic shredding. Because it’s not just 3701, there is also 3704. But this client is on a roll, and I am positive I don’t have to fly to Brisbane to accomplish mission 3704

Every bathroom had its own theme: built environment, space, ocean, rainforest. The main colours used in the murals reflected those of the new partitions.
I refined my workshop skills over the course of the weeks and the results where brilliant. With help of the whole school community, teachers, parents we eventually finished more than 50 lineal meters of very colorful tiling.

This was a little different organising project – but different is good and I learnt a lot:
Last year I was asked to be part of a toilet refurbishment team for a primary school which had secured funds from the state government. To get the kids accountable for their own toilets we decided to get them as involved as possible and so we conducted workshops with every single class to teach them how to make mosaics from broken tiles. I thought 14 classes over a couple of weeks. We made them aware that famous Architect had done brilliant things with tiles. There are public toilets in the north of Auckland which are a tourist attraction. http://www.pbase.com/philinnz/kawakawa_toilets And Antonio Gaudi last century in Barcelona http://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/en/gaudi/park-guell.html