one of the US based Organisers I follow on twitter and/or FaceBook put this video up on YouTube. Worth a look or is it taking organisation from practical to over the top?

LessMess is the expert commentator on this week’s feature article on the InShape NewsFlash blog

“Many of us are guilty of having a cluttered household. This, not only makes it stressful to find what we want, when we want it, but it also can lead to health issues.

According to McMillan & Company Professional Organizing, some 80% of clutter in your home or office is the result of disorganisation, rather than a lack of space. They also estimate that by decluttering your home you could eliminate 40 percent of your housework.

Susanne Thiebe, an accredited expert professional organiser who holds a an engineering degree in interior architecture, says that clutter is a health concern.

“Professionally, I realised that people with a lot of clutter often have health issues,” she said. “So by helping them declutter, I help them get healthier,” said Thiebe.

Thiebe says she was motivated to develop her professional organising concept because a lot of customers had health issues.

“It occurred to me that my customers health issues might not be the reason for their clutter, but rather, the other way around,” she said. “You get depressed if you have too much stuff.”

“Just by observation, I realised that some people hold onto stuff and this includes their weight,” said Thiebe. “It’s about change management, loosing fear, embracing new ideas and following healthy routines,” she said. “It might sound like a weight loss program, but it is more of a stuff loss program.”

Thiebe believes that by starting the program and shedding clutter, people often discover that they can lose weight, and vice versa.

“I am motivated by my customers tears of gratitude,” said Thiebe.

Thiebe says that listening to yourself and making time is important.

“Listen to yourself, it’s your life, not someone else’s,” she said. “There is no such thing as ‘not enough time’. If you claim not to have time for something then you should really say that you don’t find it important enough.”

Thiebe believes in incidental exercise and using your daily surroundings to workout. She says that it is vital to maintaining your health and fitness.

“Replace driving with cycling and walking, and take the stairs, not the lift,” she said. “Also have a weekly meal plan and stick to your shopping list.”

Decluttering your life begins with your home and then it progressively develops into a lifestyle choice.

David F. Tobin Ph.D., director of the Anxiety Disorders Center in the United States, says in Consumer Reports on Health that clutter can be hazardous and unhealthy.

“Clutter might create a fire hazard or vermin infestation, or keep them [people leading cluttered lifestyles] from walking around in the house,” said Tobin. “They have an exaggerated attachment to items and that prevents them from discarding things,” he said.

“We recommend cognitive-behavioural therapy, in which we help the person identify and change irrational ways of thinking and practice new patterns of behaviour,” said Tobin.

According to a study conducted by Clutterless Recovery Groups Incorporated, a clutter addict recovery group situated in America, some 74 percent of clutter addicts felt they needed therapy. Some 37 percent of the 1000 people surveyed said they suffered from clutter anxiety, and 24 percent considered themselves to be depressed most of the time.

Karen Kingston, author of ‘Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui’, states in her book that clutter can make you feel tired and lethargic, can affect your body weight and cause confusion, as well as generate a sense of shame.

“A curious fact I have noticed over the years is that people who have lots of clutter in their homes are often overweight,” said Kingston. “I believe this is because both body fat and clutter are forms of self-protection,” she said. “By building layers of fat or clutter around yourself, you hope to cushion yourself against the shocks of life, and particularly against emotions you have difficulty handling.”

LessMess was featured in the August Issue of Prevention Magazine.
Here is the article by Sally Kuzemchak and Christina Sexton

The kitchen is the heart of your home, but it might also be the heart of your unwanted weight. Everything from the size of your plate to the wattage of your bulbs has a direct effect on what and how much you eat, according to research published in the Annual Review of Nutrition. Here are seven signs that you kitchen ins sabotaging your waistline – and simple fixes to get the scale moving in the right direction.
You Stack Mail On the Benchtop
“When your kitchen becomes a dumping ground for clutter, you tend to avoid cooking, which is a problem,” says Susanne Thiebe, owner of Sydney-based organising company LessMess.” Often, people might have healthy fresh food hidden in the back of the fridge, bought with good intentions to cook. But when your kitchen bench or dining table is covered in homework, paperwork and odd socks, it’s too easy to give up on preparing a nutritious meal and just order takeaway. About 95% of my clients keep clutter on their dining table and eat from trays in front of the TV and wonder why they’re overweight!”
Solution
Take baby steps with kitchen clutter:” Clear one area of the fridge at a time,” advises Thiebe.” This can take as few as seven minutes. When you finish plan to do another the next day, so you don’t get overwhelmed and stop.” The best advice Thiebe gives her clients? Always unpack the dishwasher. “It’s not a cupboard for clean plates! If you leave clean plates in the machine, there is nowhere for dirty ones to go except in the sink or on the benchtop. Lack of bench space discourages you from taking time to cook a healthy dinner.” Organising is a skill.”
Anyone can learn to keep their kitchen in order, but you have to want to,” adds Thiebe.

DeclutterOnline
The ABC of Organising

A live on line group coaching course aimed at people who are overwhelmed with stuff.

We tackle decluttering, organising and time management to get you back on track and give you more time to live your life.

Live and interactive. You get time during the sessions to put into practice what you learned. We don’t just talk – we DO. We get over the procrastination.

Courses are currently conducted via SKYPE.

31/08/2011    Bathrooms
7/09/2011       Wardrobes
14/09/2011    Laundries
21/09/2011    Time Management

Lessons start at 12.30 and go for 90 min. In this time you will learn the secrets and get started on your own organising mission.
You can book the whole course for $289 or book separate units for $60.
to book go to my website and find the right course under the DeclutterOnline tab – and hey, I finally figured out how to make the PayPal button work!!

Our remote coaching course: DeclutterOnline-  now has it’s own facebook fan page:   like us!

these are the topics and dates for next term’s Skype based remotecoaching courses.
They are a fantastic, cheap way to get started. Or to just check  a Professional Organiser out. You can do one at a time or go full throttle and book them all. We are offering them at different times of the day – if you can’t make your favourite course, please drop us a line and we’ll try to look after you next season.
All courses are just $60 to find out more, just click on the links through to  my website. Or just comment here and we’ll get back to you.

• Wardrobe Workout – how to have an organised wardrobe 20.7.2011
• Meal planning- how to keep your family healthy 22.7.2011
• Loveable Living Rooms – do you suffer from CHAOS? 28.7.11
• Tackle your timetable – time management 29.7.2011
• Better Bathrooms – how to get controle over your shampoo collection 1.8.11
• Liberated Laundries – how changing your washing basket can change your laundry 2.8.11

You know, when I started this blog a year ago, I did some soul searching, got some advice and did some planning. And I would have never anticipated, that the “product tip” part of the blog would be the hardest one to get together.
There are heaps of creations out there, I thought. People like to read about products, because most people like shopping, right? But then, when you look a bit deeper into most gadgets, they might be nifty, but are they really necessary. I don’t wan to burden anybody with more stuff than they already have. I see too many clients that have half a Howard’s Storage shop at home and still no space (I had a client some years ago, that had a whole room of empty and half filled containers). Happens too often.
And it’s about sustainability, too. From an organising point of view, there is no difference between an old shoe box and a pricey stainless steel container from Philippe Stark. As long as it fits into the space and holds what it should hold.
Have that in mind when purchasing any organising products – even the ones suggested here!
So for this post, no product tip and in case you are wondering: I do cherish good design and love Philippe Stark’s lemon press. But the lemon juice with the plastic one from Target tastes just the same

This weekend a  friend of ours popped in with, this story:
“I have been buying Philip’s irons for over 40 years, they used to last 10 years, now they just do 5. I kind of accept that loss of quality. Last week I bought their middle of the range model, and it didn’t even last at all. It was kaputt straight away. So I went and returned it – got another one, which, in turn had the same fault. Going back to the shop I was offered an upgrade to the top end model, which cost twice as much. I am very happy with what I gained, but felt the need to write to their operations manager for Australia (someone with a ‘van’ in his name, being Dutch!) informing them of my ordeal and that really this shouldn’t be necessary. I also included a copy of my travel ten (public transport ticket in Sydney) and asked for a refund of the travel cost.”
He got his refund and a better, brand new iron. This story highlights two things for me: the necessity to keep receipts, an understanding of which ones could be relevant for how long and the need for all of us to make use of our right for perfect products and customer service.
I pride myself as being a bit of a queen of refund and return: I returned stockings with a run (luckily I still had the packaging in the recycling) and last week I returned some flour to Aldi. It wasn’t flour. It tasted all right, but everything I baked was dense and gooey. I did a test with two identical loafs of bread, baked with two different flours. The Aldi one was UN edible (except Mr. 8 eats everything, so he toasted it and gobbled down the whole loaf). On returning the flour (without a receipt – who keeps that?) I got my refund and the remark: “but you are the first one returning it.” But it wasn’t what it is supposed to be – and NOBODY realised????

Aldi is my favourite grocery store. There are a couple of reasons; it feels a bit like home. I grow up shopping at Aldi and it sustained most of us when we were at Uni -  in Germany Aldi has Alcohol!!! (So do the ones in Victoria)

Nowadays I love it because it offers NO CHOICE. It’s a no brainer and super quick. Where else can you shop (almost) everything for a week in 20 min with 3 kids in tow? Where else can you send hubby or the neighbours to do the shopping for you? If the shopping list says: rolled oats, they will bring the right stuff. It’s the grocery version of an organised household.

To make the most of it I sort my shopping list. All items on the right side of the list can be bought at Aldi, everything else I need to get at a speciality shop or a normal supermarket.

I also trust their specials products, which saves on the shopping around. And they re appear in an almost yearly cycle – so if my iron is kaput, I just don’t iron till Aldi sells one. (Fantastic excuse!!)

These fridge baskets from Howard’s Storage a fabulous because:

• they are plastic which is very hygienic,
• They a long an narrow. Perfect to use the whole depth of your fridge
• They have a handle so you can take two at a time in and out of the fridge

Fridge Basket Large
Ventilated with high sides and sturdy handle. Ideal for the fridge or cupboard.
Product cod Hll100
Dimensions (Width x Depth x Height): 15 x 31.5 x 13 cm
Howard’s storage $ 4.95

Fridge Basket small
Product cod Hll100
Dimensions (Width x Depth x Height): 16.5 x 27 x 11 cm
Howard’s storage $3.95

To stop small vegetables rolling all over the drawer and eventually turning into compost below everything else…  use a plastic cutlery holder from a  one dollar shop

Did you know it takes just 7 min to sort and clean one shelf in the fridge? So don’t be scared of your fridge.
It helps when you have some categories going on in the fridge; label your shelves so everyone in the family knows.
For example,
Top shelf: mine is the meat chiller – and I store chocolates there in a separate container
First shelf: all condiments, opened food, leftovers
Second shelf: breakfast and sandwich ingredients
Third shelf: bottles
Drawer :veggies on the right side, fruit on the left?
I know a lot of people swapping the intended use of drawer and fresh food and put their drink cans in the veggie drawer. As long as it works for you
Give your fridge a quick clean before going shopping. It should be half empty (otherwise you shouldn’t go shopping)