Holiday Organization Challenge : Day 1

Okay. Okay. There we go. So I'm glad you're all here. I'm Nicole, and if we haven't met, I'm a professional organizer and I run a organizing membership called the Clutter Free Collective. I work one on one with clients both virtually and in person. And I love everything all about organizing. It's a lot of fun. I'm a mom of four and. And a nana of one, and, you know, I've spent a lot of time, you know, doing the Hustle. You know, I've worked my entire career, so I was raising kids and working, and I know what it's like to juggle things. I know what it's like to go from one thing to another and never feel like we have time to finish or spend time, you know, maybe tidying up and getting things cleaned or getting things organized. I get it. I've been there. So I love working in this space because I like to help people. I like to help people find ways of working through it and finding systems and routines that work for them so that they can deal with clutter and get organized. So that's what I focus on day to day. And I've run a couple challenges, and I'm glad to see people from those challenges, but I'm. I've run them and they've been a lot of fun. And I wanted to go ahead and do a challenge that's focused on the holidays because it's so. It's so hard during the holidays when, you know, we've got so much going on. If we don't have our houses as tidy as we want and as, you know, looking the way that we want them, they don't work well. It's frustrating, and it just makes the holidays that much harder. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to go through this. I'm going to share my screen and let me share my screen with you. And let me know, can you guys. Somebody give me a thumbs up and let me know if you can see my presentation. Just want to make sure. Okay. Hopefully things are good. All right, Looks like we're good. Okay. So all about today's all about kicking off the holiday organization challenge. And I'm super excited that you're here and that you're interested in trying to get a jump start on things. I was just looking today. I wrote down how many days it is until some of the upcoming holidays. So there's 17 days until Thanksgiving. There's 49 days until Christmas. There's 56 days to the until till New Year's and it is crazy to think we have 56 days left or 55 days left in the year is just going to fly by. So I'm excited to go through this and my ultimate goal for this week is that you're able to take away some nuggets and help take the overwhelm out of the holidays. You can get jump started on some activities but you're able to get through them without any extra stress and you're able to enjoy them. So let me get started. So this week's agenda we're going to be focused on today decluttering, which is my favorite topic. This is what I coach on and I love talking about decluttering. And we can go into only so much detail, right? Because I don't want to talk your ear off. But we're going to try to hit on the the key things to focus on when preparing your home for the holidays and for entertaining. Tomorrow is all about hosting overnight guests and how to make them comfortable and how to host with confidence. Day three is all about being organized for traveling. You know, packing and make sure you've got everything in order and you can get, get set on your trip and you can start it without being stressed out and forgetting things. So day three is all about traveling with ease. Day four is about staying organized during the holidays. And you know, whether it's your getting your decor organized, whether it's knowing what to do, you know when should be working on your address list. Which hint if you're sending out any cards, you should definitely get your address list in order now. But you know what to do each day. I'll have a calendar of events that I'll give out as a bonus but you know, just staying organized on top of things for the holidays. And then day five is all about gifting with ease, how to be organized when it comes to gifting and even to the point where you know, we'll talk about how to opt out of maybe gifting and gift exchanges or maybe get some ideas for different gift exchanges you can do with friends and family to save money and just take the overwhelm out because that's not what the holidays are about. So that should be a great one. And how you know how to stay on a budget. And I will have replays available for a limited time. So a little bit about why we should declutter and I think it's really obvious but you know, we want to make sure we have a clear mind. We, we feel relaxed going into the holidays, because all of us still have to work. You know, kids have school, we still have to do everything we're doing and we're adding on act, extra activities. You're going to have extra, you know, plays or dinners with family and friends you may be hosting. Right. These are all things on top of an already busy schedule. So we really want to make sure that if we can declutter our homes and our minds, it will help us enter into those, those busy times and we'll feel better. You just aren't stressed and you just, you know how it feels. It just feels so much better. And when it comes to declutter, and again, you're not going to be able to go through a whole house declutter right now. But the important thing is to focus on the high impact areas, areas that will be seen by your guests and people that come by if you're entertaining or if you have overnight guests. So that's definitely the best way to declutter right now. So I mentioned, you know, tackling the entire house is not practical, right? It's just not practical. You know, we could definitely do that, but not when you're looking at days where it's just 56 days left in the year. So we want to focus on the spaces that your guests will be in. And I do urge you to make sure that you declutter and you don't worry about organizing. You can organize later. And the difference is if you want to, decluttering is all about ensuring that you have things that you know, that you want, that you need, that you love. Right? Whether it sparks joy or not, you need to make sure that you're holding on to things that you need and you want and you're getting rid of excess. But when it comes to organizing, once you've decluttered and you have everything whittled down to the things that you, you want, then you can organize them. But if you do it in the opposite order, number one, it takes a long time, number two, you'll be organizing things that you may not want, you may not need, and it's just more expensive and it's frustrating and a lot of times it just leads to fatigue and people give up. So I urge you to focus on decluttering and don't even worry about organizing right now. You can organize later. You can buy the bins and baskets and labels and do all that. Focus on the decluttering now. When it comes to entertaining and having people in your space, I also urge you not to get distracted when you're decluttering, right? We're trying to get in and do some really quick decluttering. And if you were like if I was presented with a box of pictures, I would get nothing done because I would be looking through them and I would get completely lost. Or even, even the kids artwork to be honest, or anything sentimental or if you have heirlooms that family members have given you, please not start there. You definitely do not want to start with that. Let's focus with the easy wins and things that will really make a difference to get your house decluttered and ready for holiday guests. I'm going to give you some quick tips on how to approach decluttering. Doesn't matter what room you're in, because the basics apply. And I also have some bonuses that I'm going to give you at the end that will help you with some, some of the really hard areas to declutter. But when you want get started with decluttering, regardless of whether you're decluttering your garage, you know, your kitchen or anywhere in your house or even your car, you want to make sure that you have three different bins or baskets or bags. You have to have a trash and a recycle, a donate and sell bin and then another bin that I call find a home somewhere else. So if you're decluttering in the dining room and you find a soccer ball, it does not belong in the dining room. Put it, put that soccer ball in the bin for somewhere else and worry about it later. Focus on decluttering the space that you're working in. So let's start with getting those three bins or baskets regardless of where you're working. I always recommend using a timer so you don't get declutter fatigue and just commit to yourself with you know, set up amount of time you want to spend in a space and just focus on that amount of time. If you want to go for more, great. But just dedicate that amount of time that you've made up and committed to yourself. Set it on the timer so that you can go through it and just bust through as much decluttering as you can in any particular setting. And when it comes to starting, like where to start, I always recommend picking up any trash and any recycle and then moving on to removing anything from the space that doesn't belong. Again, we go back to the dining room. If you have jackets and school books and soccer balls in your dining room, those things don't belong. Get those out right. Then you can focus on all of the things that remain in the space that belong in that space. And I you, you know the saying probably that everything should, everything should have a home and everything should be in its home. And it's very true. So once you remove the trash, you remove any recycle items, you remove anything that doesn't belong in the space, you can now tidy up and make sure you have the things that you want. If you still have things that don't belong, like, let's say you're in the dining room and you have, you know, seven vases. Maybe you keep your vases in your dining room and you really don't need them. You can still take the time to declutter them and maybe whittle down to just three or four. Maybe you don't need seven vases, but you want to then once you have your space where you have the things that belong there. So the dining room, you might have table linen, tablecloths, napkins, you might have serving platters, you might have vases, glassware, Those kind of things would belong in a dining room. So go through and if you can declutter and reduce the amount of stuff, maybe give them away, donate them or sell them, it would be good to remove them from the space. And then you can just go ahead and tidy up whatever you have that's remaining. And then I know that a lot of people really struggle, regardless of what room it is, is with conquering paper clutter. And I know it's really hard for people. So I have a bonus that I'm going to give you a link to in a couple minutes on how to tame paper clutter. And it's a very detailed couple sheet instruction shows you, number one, how to create a process so that when paper comes in your home that you ensure you have a process on how to handle it and it no longer builds up, right? You don't want your flat services to build up with paper, so it shows you how to create that process. It also, if you have kids, there's a process for how to deal with schoolwork and things you don't lose, birthday invitations or permission slips or things you need to go through with your kids. So there's two processes on how to do that. And then the third thing is if once you put those processes in place, your paper clutter shouldn't get out of hand. But what I have is I have another document for showing you how to declutter the backlog. Because I know it's overwhelming, right? You could have a stack this big, you can have A whole room full of paper for all I know. Right? And there's a process for going through it. And if you actually do the process, you'll eventually get through it. And since you already have a new process that you put in place with the other two steps on how to deal with anything new coming in, paper clutter really shouldn't be an issue for you once you go through that process. Now, obviously I can't take you through all of that today because it would be really long process. So I will give you those links to those bonuses and I'll be here all week if you have any questions or if you want to reach out to me. But these are in my organizing. Membership paper is one of the biggest topics that I help people with because it's just something that is the hardest thing to deal with. And once we get it under control, it feels so good. So I'll have that and then a beginner's guide to decluttering so that you can learn, you know, go through the steps if you're, you know, new to decluttering, how to go through it, how to set up these bins, how to use a timer, where to focus. So I have a whole guide on that, so that'll be really helpful. And I'll give you a link to that in a couple minutes. So now what I want to do is focus on the first four high impact areas. And again, these are the areas that your guests for the holidays will be in and where you'll be entertaining from. So the first area you want to make sure is tidy is your entryway. And this is such an important space because everybody's going to come in your house. It doesn't matter where your entryway is. It can be a formal entryway. You could be entering through a side gate for all I know. You can have people coming in through the garage. However people enter through your home, you need to make sure that it's welcoming and that it's clutter free. You don't want people falling and tripping on things and you want them to feel welcome when they come to their home. You don't want them to be invited and come in with a bunch of stuff. So you should definitely make sure that you focus on the entryway, that it should be cleared, you should go through and a quick 15 minute tidy. And this works really well if you clear the floor so people have a clear way to walk in. So push aside any, you know, set up some sort of storage for shoes or remove them all together from the entryway. Anything else that is sitting on the floor. If you have maybe some bins or things, make sure they're set aside so there's room for your guests to come in. And make sure you clear any flat surfaces. So again, it doesn't look cluttered and your room is inviting. So go through the decluttering tips that I gave you and make sure. And get rid of any paper. And I say stuff, right? Could be any of the things that we typically walk in from our cars with jackets, hats, shoes, backpacks, grocery bags, you name it. We walk in with everything, and a lot of times we just put it down in our entryway. So make sure you get rid of all of the paper and the stuff, and then dust and sweep and vacuum, and then your entryway will be ready for guests. And they'll come in and they'll feel welcome. They'll see you. They'll see you smiling because you're proud of your entryway. So that's really important, and it shouldn't take too long, I think. The other thing that I just want to make a note on is that when people enter your home, you need to be ready to deal with whatever they're bringing in. So you need to make sure that you. Number one, if you don't want people wearing shoes in your home, you need to make sure and let them know, but tell them where to put them and make sure there's a designated space for them to put their shoes so they don't just start piling up. And the more guests that you come over, people be tripping over shoes. So where do you want them to put their shoes? If they're taking them off, where do you want them to put any jackets, hats, gloves, umbrellas, anything? It's. It's winter time, so they're going to have these things. So it's important for you to make sure that you designate an area. You can have a hall closet, you can have hooks. You can. Even if you need to put them on a. A spare room or even if you need to, a couch, whatever you need to do. But make sure you designate a place for people to put all those things. You know, a lot of people have purses. They want to know where to purse. People will be bringing gifts. Where do you want them to put any gifts that they bring? And then if you also. Or maybe you're having a potluck and they're bringing some sort of yummy treats, make sure you have an area, whether it may not be in your entry, but when they enter your house, they're going to have stuff in their hands, make sure there's a place for them to put the side dishes that they made or any drinks or maybe they brought you a bottle of wine. So besides making sure it's tidy, make sure you think about what to do with all of the things that people are going to be bringing into your. I hope that makes sense. Okay, focus area number two is the kitchen. You probably could have got guessed that, right, Everyone is going to be in the kitchen, because most likely you're going to be in the kitchen. So I find that it doesn't matter what space I've set up, everybody congregates in the kitchen. So that's definitely the second area you want to make sure is tidy in your home. So you want to. One thing that I like to do and a tip that I give people when they're decorating for the holidays is a lot of times you bring a bin, right? You have all of your decor in it. So you take your decor out. I recommend taking stuff that you have in your kitchen, your everyday stuff, and putting it in the bin you just emptied. So you kind of lighten the amount of stuff that you have on your counters, your everyday decor, and you replace it with your holiday decor if you're decorating in that space. But kind of removing everyday items can really help declutter and make your kitchen more functional and just feel a lot lighter and more inviting. So that's something to maybe try if you have a lot of things or if you don't have a lot of counter space. The other thing is, is no matter what you might think, you think you can put everything in your pantry and close the door real quick and nobody will see. Right? I can guarantee you that somebody's going to want to be helping you and they're going to start opening your pantry and opening your refrigerator. So definitely just know that that's going to happen. And don't think that you can just close those real quick and nobody's going to see in them. I just want to make sure you think about that. And then the other thing is, when it comes to your kitchen, is that it's good to make sure, think ahead again, just like the entryway, think about, you know, where people are going to put stuff. People are going to want easy access to snacks and drinks. So make sure you've thought ahead about how you want to serve those or where you want to store those and that people know where to get them so they don't just start looking around, trying to find Things. And then for the kitchen, I would say at least a 20 minute tidy, right? So you need to unload and load the dishwasher, clear your countertops, right? So in clutter, clear the the countertops. Because you're going to have a lot of stuff coming in, you're going to be serving food, you need space. So you want to make sure those counters are clear before people come by. Obviously wash and wipe down all the obvious things. Your stove, your sink, your counters, your refrigerator, just the front of it. And then obviously I'm assuming you'll have somewhere to eat, whether it's in the kitchen or not. Just make sure there's a clear eating and then definitely empty the trash and the recycle before people get there. And that should just take about 20 minutes. And again, if you go through the. Also the process of any decluttering ahead of time, you know you still have. So if you have Thanksgiving coming, you have 17 days from now to kind of slowly work on getting rid of any visible clutter and anything that you have laying around. So hopefully that helps because this is a very important area that people want to hang out in. So focus area number three is your entertaining room. Now, some people would say that's your living room, your family room, but it's wherever you choose to entertain. Some people have a fixed up garage and they want to entertain in their garage. I live in California. A lot of times for Thanksgiving we could have it outside. I know that's not practical everywhere, but that is something that we can do. So wherever you're going to entertain, just make sure that you create space for your guests because they're going to want to sit down, they're going to want to socialize and relax, and hopefully you'll be able to with them. So make sure you have a designated space, make sure that they know where that is and definitely think about where people can set things down. So you want to make sure you declutter any of the areas where they can put food and drinks. So if you have a coffee table where you want people to put drinks, put your coasters down, if you have coasters. But make sure you've gotten rid of any magazines and papers or, you know, any bills or anything that's just laying around. Make sure you go through the process of decluttering to make sure it's nice and inviting and it's easy for people to put their stuff down. And also you may want to. You'll either plan to have games or maybe just people spontaneously will just want to play A game, whether it's cards or something else, or you need a space for kids to play, make sure that your space is decluttered and ready for anything, anything like that. Or maybe you'll have a side room where you want to have some space for people and kids to play. So definitely think about the wherever you're going to be entertaining and go through process of decluttering it and then tidying it up. And the tidying for these spaces will generally be pretty easy, I hope. Right? So general pickup. Make sure there's no dishes left over, any jackets, backpacks are put away. You definitely want to take some time to dust, wipe down any flat surfaces, because hopefully decluttered, vacuum and arrange your pillows and throws and you're going to have a good relaxing space for people to socialize in your house. Okay, let's see. Number four. Okay, so this is the fourth area. Now you definitely want people to have access to a bathroom. And I think this is the area you, you should focus your time on. You definitely want to designate like a guest bathroom. It may be obvious or may not be obvious to your guests. So you want to make sure and let them know, but that be. And you want to also be prepared because sometimes the bathrooms in use somebody people will just go and try to find another bathroom in your house. So just putting that out there because people will seek those out. And it's really good to have access to extra toiletries and hand towels so people don't have to go looking for those things. If you run out of toilet paper or maybe, you know, your hand towels are all wet, make sure you have easy access to those things. And when it comes to the bathroom, it's pretty obvious. There's generally not a lot of decluttering that has to be done in a bathroom. But you want to tidy it up. You want to get rid of, put any everyday items away. You know, your hair dryers, your shower towels. Like if you just showered, I would definitely put your towels somewhere else just for this one day that you're entertaining so that it's just very, you know, the space is very neat and tidy. You want, you know, so your, your, your hair dryers, your flat irons, your towels, any products on the counter, either put them in a tray so they're kind of corralled and they look neat, or if you can put them away underneath or in a cabinet, that's always good. That way you don't have a bunch of stuff on the counters. It just looks nice and tidy and it's inviting and then the obvious things, which is wipe the counter, the sink, the mirrors, empty any trash. Make sure you sweep and then, you know, wipe the base. Because a lot of people say that they go into someone's bathroom, they can see all the dust on the baseboard. So that's just a hint for you that takes just a second to do. Wipe your door handles and then make sure you stock on toilet paper and hand towels. People will open up and look underneath your sink. So just beware. Make sure it's easy for them to find those things that they're going to. They're going to need. Okay, let's see, what else is there? Okay, I wanted to give you these bonuses. So let's see. Let me just. Really quickly, I'm gonna cut and paste this. So you guys have this, and I'll also mark it with the replay. Okay. That's the beginner's guide to decluttering. That's the link to that. And here's the link to how to tame your paper clutter. Okay, now, does anybody have any questions before I continue on? I know I was going really fast there. Any questions? No? Good. Okay. All right, so those are bonuses again. I'll send those out. Okay, so I think I told you guys that there's a. A scavenger hunt. So every day I'm going to give out a clue. So today's secret phase is let it go. So what, what I want you to do is this is going to be super easy. It's not f. All you have to do is just write down Monday, let it go. And then at the end of the week, you could send me an email and I will put you, enter you in for the gift cards. I'm giving away three gift cards for Amazon, which is perfect for the holidays. It's perfect timing. So if you gather these, I will go ahead and I will enter you into the drawing. And I'm keeping it so you don't have to fill out a form. You have to do anything. Just write them down. Send me an email at the end of the week. It'll be nice and easy. Easy. Okay. All right, so. Okay, so any questions on decluttering at all? Whether it's something that I went through or just something that, you know, you're kind of challenged with at home that you want help with. Anybody? No. Nothing. Okay, then let me go through a couple questions that I got from people. So one question that I got was that they said, you know, when it comes to, when a guest come in the door, I don't know what to do with all the jackets and I don't know what to do with the purses. I have very small house. Can you help me with some suggestions? And I definitely can. So I think it's a really good idea. So one thing I like to do, and there's plenty of time for you to do it, is get an over the door hanger. You can hang on any door, even on the outside if you need to, but you can do that. And you can hang purses and jackets on that. That's. That's like a 10 to $10 item that you can order from Amazon, and that's a super easy way. And find a door anywhere, you know, I mean, probably ideally you want to put it on the inside of a door, but you can do that. That's one way to do it. If you have a guest room, you could do it even if you have a bed, just make the bed and make sure the room is tidy. But you can have people put purses and jackets and things like that on it. On a bed, maybe, or even some people will just have people set it down on if you have a spare chair or couch or table. But the important thing is just designating the space and thinking about it ahead of time so people don't have to try to figure it out when they come into your home. But grabbing an over the door hook, I think is one of the best ways. You can also hang something on the wall, just like we used to have when we were kids. You know, just a little hooks. You can hang that up. You can also grab a, a jacket hanger, like a, a stand, a standalone one that can just sit somewhere. I think those are generally the best ways to do that. You can also get a bin or something like that. But I think some of the other suggestions are better and they're tidier. So let me know if that helps. I had another suggestion somebody had with shoes. They like to keep shoes outside. And I think that that's really a tough one because you don't want your entry into your home to be super cluttered. So I would definitely suggest if you can put away any extra shoes that you and your family have just for this one day that you're entertaining people and people are coming by buy because you don't want to have, you know, your. All of your shoes plus a whole bunch of other people's shoes. So maybe if you can put yours in your family's shoes away. And I think ideally, if you can find a spot inside for people to Keep their shoes inside their door. I understand that some people don't want to do that. I think just make sure that there's, you know, whether you can maybe turn a bin upside down, you can put it on top, or maybe you just. People can put their shoes in a bin. But I think just making sure that it's clear what your expectations are and generally people will comply. So that usually works really well. And then the third question that I had was about, you know, how to declutter paper clutter right now. And if you have a lot, it's, you know, the holidays are upon us. So I just suggest that you, you try to set aside time aside every day, day, and that you try to do a little bit. And that's generally the best way. Unless you're the type that's like a weekend warrior and you just want to just bust through it in a. On the weekends, which is great if you can really dedicate that time. But right now, time is busy. So if you can set, you know, 10 minutes aside, you will be amazed at what you can actually accomplish in 10 minutes. You can get a lot done. So I definitely recommend that you do that. And you just set aside and just set a timer, put it in your calendar, and make sure and honor it. I did put the bonus up on how to go through paper, and honestly, the process is really simple and I'll go through that very quickly. But what you do is you have three separate bins and you have a bin for like shred or recycle. And then you have a bin for put, you know, things that you want to keep and take action on. And you literally pick up a bunch of papers and you just touch it with once, once. And very quickly you make a decision. This is trash, this is recycle. This is something as a bill I need to. Need to pay you put it in the take action bin. If you get something, you just don't know what to do. Stick it in the take action bin, okay? And go through all of your stuff. You want to corral all of your paper together and go through that separate process. And you have to make very quick decisions. Pick up a piece of paper, make a decision. Trash, trash, trash, shred, take action on. Right? And, and again, if you don't know, just immediately don't get stuck on something. Put it in the take action bin. That's the safest bin. And then what I do is once you go, you go through everything, then what you want to do is then take the pile, your take action bin again. And go through it one more time, and you'll find things that you're like, you know what? I really don't need to keep this. Or it's a duplicate because during the process you saw something else. Maybe it's a reminder for a bill or something. Make sure you shred those. Keep the one that's important. But if you go through that process and, and again, you can have your bin set up and every day you can do 5, 10, 15 minutes, right? If you can do that, you're going to get through it. And if you put the process in place to ensure that the, that the new paper coming in the house doesn't get, you know, stacked up and you put a process in place so that you can maintain it going forward, you're going to get through it. And so you have, have, you have 17 days till Thanksgiving. So if you do 15 minutes, that's 255 minutes going through. If you were able to do that starting today by Thanksgiving, right? And if we did 15 minutes times, let's say you're doing a New Year's Eve party or something like that, that's 55 days away. That's 825 minutes that you would be able to do in just little small chunks. Every day you will get through all of your paper clutter. So I, I urge you that you have to be diligent. You have to be in it for the long haul. And if you go through that process, and again, I have the bonus with everything documented, you'll get through it and you will, you'll be so happy. It is one of the most satisfying things I love to help people with. And when I coach one on one, this is, this is the thing that makes such a big difference in people's lives. Because clutter, I mean, paper is everywh wear and if it's out of control, it can just be stifling. So I definitely would love to help you and answer any questions, if you have any on that you can ask, ask me questions throughout the week. So I'm happy to do that. And like I said, I also have my membership where I help people with this on an ongoing basis. So no worries. Amanda, I see that you had to reinstall. I actually was going to try to join from my laptop and I also had to reinstall Zoom and it wasn't working, so don't feel bad. So we got through everything and I really appreciate everybody. So I know a couple of you started late. I'm gonna post the replay. I put the bonuses in here. Let me just re. Let me repost the bonuses so that people who came later get those. And also I'll give you the quick, here's the, here's the secret phrase for today. So just write this down. Just put Monday, let it go. And at the end of the week, if you have all five of them, you can email me and I'll put your name in the drawing for the three, three card Amazon cards. And it's a great time to get, you know, whether you're buying for gifts or you can buy some fun storage product, which is what I always love to do. So. Okay, ladies, this has been great. I hope this has been helpful. And tomorrow is all about how to host guests with confidence, right? Because I know that sometimes if you, you know, you're just, you know, you don't feel organized, you don't feel on top of things, you're worried about forgetting things. We're going to get ahead of the game with hosting guests, if you're hosting guests. And I hope to have some great tips for you and bring your questions. And I look forward to seeing you all. So thank you. Thank you, Sheila. I appreciate the feedback. And take care, everyone. See you tomorrow. Bye.