My go-to person for organizing advice is Clever Girl professional organizer Kathy Vines. Kathy’s goal is to help her clients: "cut down on the cost of clutter in our lives."
Kathy is one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met, and her aura of CAN-DO is positively contagious. She helped me when I was writing CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, the story of a professional organizer who’s not sure that her husband sparks joy. (My working title for the book was FOLDING FRANK.)
Kathy runs an annual organizing challenge. And she’s graciously allowed me to share what she has up her sleeve for week 1: IN THE KITCHEN
GETTING STARTED
1) Have the tools you need before you get started -- trash bags, recycling, donate box, and "goes somewhere else" box (so you can set things aside and keep going, not be tempted to return things to a different space while you're working).
2) Take BEFORE photos and, ideally, AFTER photos.
Those are my BEFOREs.
WHAT TO DO
1) Clean out and Edit - Do what you can with your refrigerator, pantry, and freezer. You're inspecting things, tossing things, and maybe relocating things. Start one shelf at a time, one cabinet at a time. Pace yourself!
2) Wipe Down or wash out surfaces as necessary - We all get spills, stickyness, and random surprises when we're dealing with food. A good time to clear it out and clean it up!
3) Consider the Organization of Keepers - Where things go doesn't have to be where things have been! Are there different ways to set up your system that better serve who you are today? A good example: if you have little kids and they're now a lot more independent, but your system reflects the needs you had when they were younger, maybe now is a time to make some changes. Or if you used to bake a lot but don't much anymore, are there ways to "demote" things that have a prime location that you aren't using?
4) Create Exits for what's going - some will be obviously trash, recycling, composting. Some might be donation.
PICK AT LEAST ONE:
- Clean out the fridge by hunting for things you know you don't need any more (don't have to do a full clean out). Wipe down any spills or messes.
- Go through your freezer to make sure you know what everything is and that you'll still use it.
- Go through your pantry - at least the most-used or most-needing-attention cabinet area to edit it For a lot of people, this is the area with snacks, but it may be your baking supplies or your canned goods. Go through to edit what you just don't need anymore, what was opened and went stale, etc.
- Clean off your kitchen counter. For reals.
- Clean out your bar/alcohol stash.
Biggest challenge: the freezer. Because there are all too many mytsery containers in there without labels that I was SURE I’d recognize when the time came. But I don’t.
Is decluttering on your 2024 agenda, where will you start, and what would be your biggest challenge?
And PS Kathy has a wonderful book that takes the pain out of decluttering.
