Professional Home Organizer’s Favorite Podcast!

We enjoy a weekly podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin.  She discusses how to build positive habits into our daily lives. Here are some of Gretchen’s awesome tips.

• Gretchen says: “Don’t accumulate excessive amounts of things“: free mugs, rubber bands, plastic take out containers, soy sauce packets, chopsticks.  These things have perceived value; you’ll never need more than 10 rubber bands, so come up with a max number and only keep that amount.
• Gretchen’s one-minute rule: to help yourself keep on top of small annoying little tasks. To keep clutter down, consider setting a microwave timer for one-minute:  you can pick up a few toys, or hang up coats, put away a pair of shoes, or recycle junk mail, or put dishes in the dishwasher. If you do this a few times a day, or even once a day, you will notice more peace and less clutter around your home.
• From research, Gretchen found that when people are under a ton of stress they go deeper into their habits whether they are good or bad habits…so it is important to have good habits to fall back on when things are tough. For the same reason, it is important to teach our children good habits starting when they are young.
• Another Gretchen mantra is: “Outer order contributes to inner calm.” Clean up or organize one small area in your home. 10 minutes. A drawer, or desktop. You will feel control over the stuff of life and you will feel more calm and satisfied, and energized.
• “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” A quote from Voltaire used by Gretchen Rubin in a recent podcast. We love this quote. In short it means we shouldn’t strive for unobtainable perfection, but rather, be honest with ourselves about our available time and energy. This applies to clutter in many ways. For example, some moms dream of creating beautiful custom scrapbooks for each of their children, but haven’t been able to get started for years, all the while hanging onto to every piece of their child’s memorabilia making the project more daunting by the day. Some folks hang on to broken furniture or appliances with intention of repairing them. As a result, they may lose the functionality of a garage or closet where the item takes up much needed storage space.