The Clutter Diet Blog

Preparing for Disaster Before It Strikes

I started writing some posts for Allstate several weeks ago, and little did I know how relevant they were about to become! The wildfires here in Texas have given everyone a huge reality check on how natural disasters can affect anyone at any time.

This article explains the four elements of preparedness to put into place to be fully ready for an emergency, beyond just water bottles and batteries. Read it here in Allstate's online community blog.

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More Efficient Errands Save Fuel, Time and Stress!

Anybody want to spend less time in your car? ME! I think about this constantly. How can I get something delivered or consolidate errands or eliminate the task altogether?

Well, I got my wish last week when my car completely broke down! Having no car at the moment is making me appreciate the daily reliability of being able to run those dreaded errands. I am buying a new car right now and looking for the most fuel-efficient one I can get (probably a hybrid).

I just wrote this article for Allstate's online community called "Car Organizing Tips for Efficient Errands and Cleaner Cars," in which I shared 11 strategies for reducing your time in the car, saving gas (and money), and keeping your car cleaner in the process. I hope you enjoy the article!

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If You Had to Evacuate, What Would You Grab?

Sure, we've always had crazy tornadoes and such here in Central Texas, but the idea of hurried mass evacuations has always been something that happens somewhere else, like to people on the coast. NOT TODAY. Within 30 miles of my own home, hundreds of people have suddenly lost theirs. Over 300 homes were just lost to wildfires yesterday in Bastrop, Texas, and about 20 miles away, at least 25 more homes were lost in the Steiner Ranch subdivision of Austin.

We're having a historic drought-- I don't think people realize how bad it is-- and Tropical Storm Lee that we wish would have brought rain to us has instead brought high winds, making wildfires almost inevitable. (Click the image above to see a larger view of a current drought map... brown = "exceptional.")

September is National Preparedness Month, and that seems all too appropriate given the recent earthquake, Hurricane Irene, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and now these Texas wildfires.

So take a minute and think about it-- what would you grab if someone said you must leave your home immediately? Our local news showed footage of people packing up their cars with everything they could.

Take 10 minutes and make a list TODAY of what is important to you in this kind of emergency situation, and then figure out how to pull it together quickly if you had to do so. What would you do with your pets? Where would you stay? What would you pack in the car and why? Here are some thoughts I've had about this today:

• Photo albums
• Pet items and our dog and parakeet
• Phone chargers and phones
• Laptops and computers
• Our PortaVault of important papers
• Some financial files for our business
• I keep thinking of more... What would you bring?

FEMA has a great checklist of what to do before evacuating for a wildfire here. For example, would you think to disconnect your garage door openers? Great idea if there is no power when you return. And Ready.gov is a comprehensive preparedness site that has multiple checklists and resources too.

Coincidentally just this past Thursday, we made as our September special in our shopping cart the Vital Records PortaVault, which has won awards from the SF Bay Area Red Cross and other associations for being the perfect product to gather all of your essential information for an emergency.  So it seems extremely relevant to tell you about that right now, since I am for sure going to be updating and checking mine! The PortaVault is a canvas binder with a water resistant case and a strap so you literally can grab it and go, including dividers and instructions for keeping all of your crucial documents together. We made it 20% off for National Preparedness Month (and members of our program get an extra 10% off). 

Overall, it's yet another reminder about what's important. As you are getting organized and making decisions about your stuff, ask yourself, "Would I grab this in the event of a fire? Is it really that crucial?"  From Bastrop resident Lisa Ross, quoted in a CNN story on the wildfires: "You learn what is valuable in life, and it isn't the stuff."

Have you ever had to evacuate your home? What did you learn? And what is an unusual thing that you might grab to take with you that we might not expect?  Share in the comments!

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How Getting Organized at Home Saves You Time & Money Every Day

We all know home organization reduces stress and conflict, but best of all, it pays off in real dollars! In this post I wrote for Allstate's Good Hands Community, we'll look at a few areas of your house where you can realize some serious savings. Cha-ching!

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Are You Sabotaging Yourself with Humor?

When our Clutter Diet® members win our monthly Success Stories contest, they get some cool prizes, such as $100 from Rubbermaid and a 30-minute phone consultation. They send us photos to enter, and recently I saw a couple of them with these cute kitschy kitchen signs, some of which were really funny.

BUT... I don't want those signs to be there! They are negative messages masquerading as humor-- messages that continue to sustain someone's identity as an unorganized, messy person who doesn't have it all together. We are always talking about how important it is to reinforce positive messages when you are trying to change! (See previous posts,"The Mental Clutter of Defeatist Language," and "TRYING to Wish You a Happy New Year," among others)

Thoughts become words which become beliefs... I mean, I understand making a joke, but when you're really serious about making changes in your life, maybe these are not the jokes you should have around you every day.

Here are some examples of these funny signs I have collected on the internet. You can laugh for a second, but then consider the message that lingers:

• I’m creative; you can’t expect me to be neat too! (MESSAGE: Creative people can't be organized.)
• I clean house every other day…. Today is the other day! (MESSAGE: I don't keep a clean house.)
• If you write in the dust, please don’t date it! (MESSAGE: I am not going to clean for a long time.)
• I would cook dinner but I can’t find the can opener! (MESSAGE: I don't have it together to even cook a meal.)
• My house was clean last week, too bad you missed it! (MESSAGE: I am not going to clean again for a while.)
• A clean house is the sign of a wasted life. (MESSAGE: Cleaning and organizing is not a worthwhile activity.) 
• Dull women have immaculate houses. (MESSAGE: If I get things organized, I won't be an interesting person anymore.)

I vote for having this sign instead, from a great catalog called Femail Creations:

Are you sabotaging yourself with jokes like this at your own expense? Share in the comments!

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("Bless This Mess" photo above is a vintage wooden sign for sale on Etsy.)

Organizing Checklists Everyone Should Have — 5 Best Lists

Are you having trouble "keeping it all together?" Anything you do repeatedly can be captured for next time to make processes easier. When you think about it, recipes for the kitchen are really just procedure checklists, and we know how useful those are! Think about all of the processes common to your family where having a "recipe" might save some time and stress.

In this Good Housekeeping Home Style blog I'll show you a few crucial checklists that can give you a "recipe" for success.

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Get it DONE with our new FREE 7-Day Quickstart Program!

I am so excited! I have been working hard for weeks to implement this new 7-Day Quickstart program, and I am really proud to offer it to you. It's a FREE week of focused guidance from me to help you choose an organizing project, get started, and get it DONE!

With the 7-Day Quickstart you also get an additional week of full access to our Clutter Diet® program that's helped thousands of people in 18 countries! Essentially, doing the 7-Day Quickstart means that you have a 14-day free trial of the Clutter Diet program, which we've not offered this way before (we previously had a low first month price instead).

Now there is no reason at all that anyone should wait to get help from our team of organizing experts! We are ready to help you. We're getting a great response so far, would love to have your feedback! Click here to read about how it works and watch a video from me about it, or you can go directly here to register. Each day you'll get an email from me with a link into our member area for a special video and instructions for that day.

Enjoy! I can't wait to hear about YOUR successes!

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3 Laws of Organizing Success

I was so fortunate to spend a weekend recently attending a Brian Tracy seminar in San Diego. He taught us about many natural "laws" that work in our favor if we understand them, and several of them stood out to me as being very relevant to organizing.

Here are my three favorites of Brian Tracy's Laws (there are many!):

• The Law of Correspondence:  Brian says, "As within, so without," and "Your outer world is a mirror that reflects what is going on in your inner world." Obviously your home and your surroundings are part of your outer world-- are they cluttered and neglected? What could you do to feel more peace? Your first reflex is probably to answer, "Clean everything up and get organized," but consider this: Everything starts with your own thoughts. The inner world helped create this outer world. What thoughts got you where you are today? What thoughts could you change to keep from getting here again?

• The Law of Control: Brian says, "You feel positive about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life." When you feel like demands are pulling you in all directions, you have no time for yourself, and your physical environment is chaotic, you feel very little control. What could you do right now to get more control?

• The Law of Habit:  Brian says, "In the absence of a specific decision on your part to change some aspect of your life, the natural tendency will be to go on the same way indefinitely. 95% of what we do is habit." You can have habits that move you toward your goals, or away from them. What could you specifically decide to change right now? Staying organized means changing your habits to keep your systems maintained, even little things like hanging your keys up when you walk in the door.
  

If you're interested in more of these Laws, you can check out Brian Tracy's book, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. (Kindle version here) What will you do this week to change your "outer world?" Share in the comments!

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How Many of Your Dreams Have Come True?

Do you write your goals down? Why not? It's been proven and demonstrated over and over again that writing down your goals makes them much more likely to happen. And reviewing them regularly makes it even more likely!

I was just reviewing mine, and I found an old list from 2005. I was astonished at what had come true! I had forgotten that I wrote those particular things down. Some of them are too personal to share, but there were a bunch of BIG ONES that I didn't realize I had written down that long ago and I have done! Here are a few examples:

• I have skydived (yes, that's me in the photo- click it for larger view)
• I have created a significant way to give back my time and talents to a charity
• I have visited Italy (exactly the cities I wrote down)
• I've gone to many Broadway plays
• I've visited Hawaii
• I've seen a live volcano (in Costa Rica)
• I've published a book
• We landscaped the backyard

I felt incredible reading that list over! And of course, there are many that are not done, but they are well underway which is also interesting. And some of them I hadn't thought about for the whole six years, but reading them again made me realize they were worth putting back on my radar.

So over this Memorial Day weekend, find a peaceful moment and sit and write your goals down. I like to use mindmapping software to do mine, because you can pour out your thoughts more easily and rearrange them. My current goals map looks like this image I have posted here below. I have been using MindGenius Business software as long as I can remember, but I also like MindManager. These are expensive business applications, but there are other less expensive mindmapping software products... here is a list of them.

It's helpful to have a list of categories to jog your thinking-- here are the ones I like using:

• Family & Relationships
• Contribution/Legacy
• Travel
• Personal Development
• Achievements 
• Health & Fitness
• Home & Possessions
• Business/Career
• Financial

The "Home & Possessions" category is where you'll write down your organizing goals like having an organized closet, garage, kitchen, etc.! And "Personal Development" is where you'll write down how you want to learn better time management skills.  :)

Enjoy dreaming! And maybe several years later you'll have some nice surprises too when you look back at your list. Do you write down your goals? Do you have different categories or a different way of doing it? Share in the comments!

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Which Voices Are Talking Inside YOUR Head?

I recently had the pleasure of doing an audio interview for our private member area audio collection with my friend Wendy Lipton-Dibner, bestselling author of Shatter Your Speed Limits: Fast Track Your Success and Get What You Truly Want in Business and in Life (Kindle edition here).

One of the things we talked about on the interview, among MANY, was the "Internal Crew" of five people we all have speaking to us inside of our heads. Yes, you heard me correctly, we all DO have five voices inside our heads (at least five, maybe some of us have more...?). Here are the crew members:

• The Critic: He is the one passing negative judgment on anything and everything. He keeps us from doing things, which can be good for keeping us safe, but can be bad if his influence is holding us back from positive efforts. The Critic might say things like, "You never do anything you say you're going to do, stop kidding yourself."
• The Analyst: He is a lot like Spock-- completely logical. He looks at the facts and helps us put together the resources we need to get where we want to go. The Analyst might say things like, "The trip is going to cost $400, which we can easily save in four weeks by taking these steps."
• The Actor: He is the one who keeps you from saying what you think and makes you "play nice," which is good for your social life. But he also causes you to "fake it" and be inauthentic and incongruent to your desires by making you stick to rules that no longer serve you. The Actor might say something like, "Sure, I'd love to volunteer for committee chair (because I have to be accepted and liked)."
• The Cheerleader: This crew member is our greatest ally. The Cheerleader might say something like, "You can do this! Keep going!"
• The Force: This crew member is the most important and powerful, and is the source of our desires and the core of our power and strength. 

All five Crew Members need to be aligned and know where they are going in order to coordinate their voices. They need to be following the same RULES. Wendy covers rules a lot in her book and talked about them more in this interview as well... these are the unspoken and often unconscious rules we've collected throughout our lives that tell us how to behave. Here are some examples of Rules: "Don't make mistakes," "Don't trust," "Don't play," "Don't talk back," "Be just like your brother..." There are Rules that serve us and those that don't, and we need to be conscious of those Rules and restructure and revise them so that our Internal Crew can be working from the right roadmap.

The members of our program can listen to the entire interview with Wendy in our member area on the Audio page, where they can download the MP3 file and put it on their iPods to listen to as they do their organizing projects! In the interview, Wendy reveals the "Action Formula" for getting what you want in life.

Which Crew Members' voices are dominant in your head? And what Rules are they operating from? Share in the comments!

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