What could make decluttering easier?

This is not my list. While these are policies and suggestions I use all the time, brevity is not one of my skills; this is an excellent little summary which turned up in one of the updates I get in my inbox from the wise and wonderful Nina Grunfeld of Life Clubs, and I thought it was well worth passing on.

1. Find a timer and set it for 5 minutes of decluttering only. You’ve always got the option of ignoring it when it goes.
2. Get help. Other people can be ruthless with your things.
3. Don’t beat yourself up that you never went to that play or cooked that recipe. You did something else instead.
4. Trust your intuition – you’ll know if you want to keep something. Any wavering, bin it.
5. If you’re only keeping something to be tactful, get rid of it.

Any questions?

A new home for your clutter - on stage!

This is an appeal for help, but it does belong happily in a blog about decluttering.

My lovely friend Lou, who I'm privileged to have shared a stage with, is involved with the splendid (and wonderfully named) Hocus Pocus Theatre Company. They are putting out a call for various props needed for their next production; so if you've anything on this list that's getting in your way, you could do a big favour all round!

If you can help, visit their contact page for details and get in touch with Hocus Pocus direct.

Norwich based Theatre Company looking for props and set for forthcoming work - CAN YOU HELP?

Below is a list of items and descriptions that we are currently attempting to source for a project we are putting together over the summer. Maybe you have a garage or loft full of things you no longer have the need for, perhaps you don't have the time to sift through them or arrange for them to be taken to charity... most of the items we are looking for are general household things. Condition is not necessarily the most important thing, for some items the older and more well loved the better! Help us turn your unwanted items into something magical!

The items are as follows:

• Wooden hat/coat stand
• Old fabric Union Jack flag (the tattier the better!)
• Pre-1950s double door wooden wardrobe
• Wooden cabinets/bookshelves/cupboards
• Kitchen utensils - especially enamel and copper (any condition)
• Cutlery - old battered silver preferably (really don't have to be in good condition as will not be used to eat with)
• Wooden washboard (any condition)
• Tin Bath (any size, any condition)
• Jug and Bowl set (preferably enamel, if such a thing even exists!)
• Patchwork quilts/blankets
• Gramophone Horn
• Persian style Rugs - as battered and threadbare as possible if not we have ways of aging them.
• Kitchen/dining chairs - old/wooden/battered/pre 1970s if possible
• Children's furniture - esp wooden chairs/writing desk/school desk
• Wooden Dressing table - pre 1960s (any condition)
• Trunks/Old suitcases - pre 1960s (any condition - don't even need to be opened)
• Old Bikes/bike wheels
• Pre 1950s china - any condition
• Grandfather clock parts - esp face and pendulum
• Junk brass/metal pipes/engineering parts/temp gauges etc
• Rope - thick, any condition

Phew! If anyone can help us out or knows of anyone else who might be able to then please get in contact or indeed pass our contact details on. We will be performing this piece from September, details as yet to be announced but in the meantime please feel free to browse our website and see what we're all about!

Many thanks,

Hocus Pocus Theatre x

Jelly ... and ice cream

We're having something like summer at the moment, so this seems like an appropriate item to have on the menu.

My very first introduction to Twitter, and all its great business, networking, friendship and support opportunities, came from the lovely Judy Heminsley: writer of the excellent Work from Home, champion of five-to-niners, and (nicked from her Twitter bio) "happy to chat about procrastination, productivity, isolation etc. Loves cats, chocolate, colour, clarity & clutter clearing". Needless to say, it was the last one that drew me to her!

Anyway, I digress. One of Judy's great enthusiasms is for Jelly - no, not the kind that goes with ice cream, but a great idea for home workers to get out, meet others and share ideas. It's not another networking group - it's co-working, not networking - and requires a public venue with wi-fi, space, plug points and coffee. It's clearly great for the venue, too!

Judy's a writer (and I ain't) so she puts it better than me:

Jelly is a casual coworking event, where freelancers, home workers and people running small businesses meet up in order to get out of their normal space, meet some new people and work together in a social environment. Jelly is a mixture of work, chat, comparing of ideas, passing on tips and help and maybe sometimes collaboration on the birth of a new project.

I spotted one of her Jelly comments on Twitter this morning, and rather foolishly enquired whether there was such a thing in Norfolk. I should have known. Back came the reply with blistering speed:

Haven't heard of one yet. Why don't you start one? Loads of info in my Jelly guide & it's great fun :-)

So down goes the gauntlet. I love this idea. Any of my within-reach-of-Norwich colleagues want to join in? Leave a comment on this post so we can see how much support there is, let me know if you have any suggestions for venues (needs: powerpoints, wifi and coffee!) and we'll see what we can do!

You're more than just a number...

Edited and updated September 2012

I've just seen another heartfelt cri de coeur on Facebook: "please everybody contact me with your mobile numbers, I've lost my phone!" I see it so frequently, and every time I think: save yourself worry, trouble and time: back it up!

It isn't always easy with a mobile, though. I'm not going to start chatting about backups for your computer data here - that's for another posting; but mobile phones are so small, and vulnerable, and easily lost or broken.

So how to do it? Well, there are various ways, depending on the sort of arrangement that you have with your mobile phone company: do you use the internet on your mobile phone?

Internet

If you're one of the increasing number that use your mobile for internet browsing and viewing your emails, it's actually very easy to use an OTA (Over The Air) backup service. Here are a few suggestions.

GoogleMail: not only your phone numbers, but your whole address book. This is my solution of choice: I keep my master address book on GoogleMail, set it to synchronise automatically with my iPhone, and the whole lot are then available in both places.

Mobyko: will back up not only addresses and the rest from your mobile, but also videos, photos and text. A simple interface allows you to edit on your computer and then sync from computer to phone. Please note that this is not a free service: it's presently £24.99 per year. However, £2 per month isn't a lot to pay for peace of mind.
Soocial: synch & share your contacts Presently $4.99 (around £3) per month.
iCloud: if you're an iPhone / iPad / Mac user you've probably already met this option. So, so easy to do.

No internet

You're probably a PAYG user; you wouldn't dream of using your mobile to pick up emails; you need the phone to make and receive calls, and nothing else. Online backup, therefore, isn't for you.

If you're a Nokia user, they have their own software (Nokia PC Suite) that allows you to synchronise your phone with a variety of PC software, including Microsoft Outlook. Until I started using mobile internet, I used this for many years and it worked like a dream. I kept my address file up to date on the PC, and periodically connected the phone to the PC for synchronisation - all done.

NB: This technique also has the advantage that you can use the PC-based address book for many other purposes (labels for Christmas cards, anyone? Mailmerge? Inserting addresses straight into Word documents?). It might be a big investment of time to get it set up, but believe me, it pays for itself - time after time. [I haven't used any mobiles myself other than Nokia and the iPhone, but a quick Google shows me that Samsung - for example - have an equivalent PC Studio Suite; it's worth checking whether your phone is able to use something similar.]

Finally, if you can't face the thought of a complete computer-based address book but still need those mobile numbers backed up, there are still a few SIM card readers on the market - little gizmos that will accept your SIM, plug into the PC via a USB port, and allow you to copy over the data. It will often come as part of a device that can read other sorts of data cards, too - such as the SD cards used in digital cameras, for example - and they tend to be fairly cost-efficient. Check out IWOOT, Amazon or Maplin.

***

Does this sound like a good idea - but you find the technology a bit scary, or the time short, or your keyboard skills need a bit of help? Contact me today and we'll get it sorted - and you'll never lose another phone number ever again!

What do I do?

Decluttering. It's a funny word, and one that is actually a bit misleading. If somebody asks what I do for a living, it's the best word I've been able to come up with - and it's generally used by folks who share my industry.

At a ladies' networking group last week (the splendid Coffee at Caistor, welcoming women in businesses from the Norwich area), I mentioned this problem. When I asked "If I say 'decluttering', do you immediately think 'throwing things into a large skip'?" The answer was a resounding yes.

An extra few words made it clearer: people think "decluttering" is all about what you throw away but it's more about managing what you keep!

I've worked with many clients who have needed a skip - or at least, several trips to the dump and/or charity shop. However, it's equally common for the amount of "chuck-out" to be minimal, because what we've done is to deal with finding the right places for the things they are keeping, and to help with processes that get things done.

So I'm looking at how I describe my profession. It's a noun that's needed. If you're a hairdresser, people immediately know what you do: you cut and colour hair. If you're a plumber, you install and repair plumbing. If you're a vicar, you take church services and provide pastoral care. (Obviously there's a lot more to all these job descriptions, but you know what I mean.)

What's my badge, then? I'm going to be looking for input on this before I settle on something, but at the moment I very much like the suggestion that came from a couple of my colleagues: "stuff management". Your stuff may be important or unimportant, it may be beautiful or unattractive, it may be kept or thrown away - but it's all your stuff. The help I can give you doesn't anticipate what, if anything, you might dispose of; it just helps you to manage your stuff.

What do you think? I'd love to know!

It's not about perfect

I picked up a novel today that I've had around for a while. It's a while since I read a novel by Kate Atkinson, but I remember enjoying previous encounters with her work, and When Will There Be Good News seems to be following that trend.

A short way into the book, I found a paragraph that sums up beautifully what I try to help my clients to achieve. The young girl, Reggie, acts as a 'mother's help' in the household of Mr & Dr Hunter, and in her observation of their domestic situation, Reggie comments that "they weren't housework Nazis or anything, but they knew the difference between comfort and chaos..."

That's exactly my aim. I'm frequently asked "will you make me throw everything away?", and that is so not the point. The purpose of my work is to help you move from chaos to comfort: from feeling negative emotions when you walk into your place of work or your home (anything from a mild dissatisfaction to downright panic) to a point where you can truly enjoy your surroundings - which, incidentally, includes being relaxed about imperfection.

The aim is not to start panicking about whether the CDs are in alphabetical order, or whether you'd measure up to the standards demanded by Anthea Turner's white gloves (and I'll tell you right now: I would, personally, fail in spectacular fashion on either of those). However, what we will do is to look at disposing of items that are not helping you - either practically or emotionally - leaving room for the things that you need or love to be found more easily - and then to help you find the best ways of storing the things that you choose to keep.

Yes, there have been clients who have, as a result of work we've done together, taken loads of things to the dump, the charity shop or the auction room; but there have been just as many who have thrown away very little, achieving just as much by re-thinking the storage options. It's all about making your life easier - not enforcing a minimalist regime.

And it's definitely not about becoming a housework Nazi.

Memorabilia: Keep or junk?

I've been reading a very interesting article on the Mail Online, which I was directed to by my fellow declutterer, Beverly Wade from Cluttergone, via her link on Twitter.

The question I'm probably most often asked before starting a decluttering job is "Will you make me throw everything away?" The answer is a categorical no. As Bev rightly says, "Decluttering is about discarding the stuff you don't want, need or use. Ray, keep your precious memorabilia." The most successful jobs I've undertaken have been those where, far from forcing a client to part with items which are genuinely precious to them, I've been able to help them make decisions about exactly what is precious - and what isn't.

I clearly remember one lady whose study contained several boxes of random "stuff", left over from a long-ago house move, and she had no idea what was in them. About 75% of the contents were real junk - old newspapers, travel brochures, advertisements and the like - which were doing nothing for her, either for today's life or yesterday's memories. What we did find, when all that stuff was cleared, were a couple of books, a few CDs, and best of all, a small ornament that she pounced on with cries of glee: "I'd wondered what had happened to that! I really loved that ornament..." The china item was placed proudly on her (newly decluttered) shelf, which had previously contained real junk, and she got huge pleasure from that tiny, rediscovered item.

I was reaching the end of a day with another client, sorting out the desk in her office. We'd done well, and had got rid of a lot of redundant items that were simply getting in the way, when I looked at a small decorative box on the desk. "Shall we go through that?" "Oh, don't bother - there's nothing important in there" she replied. "Well, let's finish off," I said. "It won't take long."

As she suspected, most of the contents were standard desk stuff - erasers, paperclips, pens, notepaper - but from the bottom of the box I produced... her passport. She went rather quiet, said "I was about to accuse my ex-husband of maliciously hiding that, and was going to have to order - and pay for - a new one..."

So remember - decluttering is NOT, repeat, NOT, all about throwing away your memories. It is all about getting rid of real junk - the stuff that is, to coin the favourite phrase of every declutterer, neither useful nor beautiful. If it is useful or beautiful, getting rid of the other stuff gives you a chance to find it, use it and appreciate it. The writer of the Daily Mail article might appear a bit paranoid about the positive side to decluttering, but he does in fact get it exactly right: ... the more we searched for objects to throw away, the more we rediscovered delights we hadn't seen for years, mementos newly treasured and therefore kept - often now in a newly vacated pride of place. Exactly so. If you hadn't searched, you wouldn't have found the precious stuff.

Oh, and one more thing: if you cherish your memories, how much respect and love does it show them if they are buried in dusty piles or boxes; and how can you wallow in your memories when you can't even find them?