Where have I been for the last week? I’ve been doing a bit of traveling, visiting friends and family, and now that I’m on the family leg of my trip I’ve jumped into organizing mode cuz they definitely need some guidance. So my mom and sis are my clients for the week. I must say I’m quite proud of my sister. She’s really been taking some major initiative to get organized and de-cluttered in recent months and she has made some real progress since I saw her house last. My sister also runs a voice teaching studio out of her home so she has work specific organizing needs to get her space in order. For example, she needs a way to organize all her music books, sheet music, loose leaf music, and voice training books. Her resources go back to when she was a vocal performance student in college so she has many boxes and many mismatched file containers to store all her music. One of her biggest areas to organize is all the loose sheet music. I’m suggesting that she dedicate some time to gathering all her music together and put them in binders by music genre or by language. Having studied classical technique she has music in many different languages and her collection is surely heavy in classical. So I’m thinking dividing by language might be her best way to categorize for now. I’ve also suggested she put the loose music in plastic page protectors. When you hole punch paper we all know how easily those holes rip. Sheet protectors are an excellent organizing and archiving resource.
Now my mother needs a little more “hands on” help. I have to watch carefully when she’s de-cluttering. Her two favorite lines when deciding to keep something is “I’m saving that for when I get skinny” and “I’m saving that for when I have a party.” Now I feel that she has more than enough “skinny” clothes and more than enough party items. I’m just suggesting if she hasn’t used or worn something in the last 10 years or more, I think it’s safe to say it’s time to let go of it. I normally apply the one year rule, “if you haven’t used or worn it in a year, then get rid of it,” but she loves to save things for the “what if” scenarios. We’ve all done it, even me. But I can tell you that there is probably only one item I ever thought about and wished I had kept. Otherwise everything else I’ve ever donated or sold, I’ve never missed and never felt that I was lacking. I do cut her some slack because I know she loves to save those “what ifs” but we did have a very successful purging session on Sunday and I was very happy with the results. Two rooms in the basement are now completely de-cluttered and organized. I’m amazed.
