How to Get Organized and Stay Organized - Strategy 6 SORT

Does the thought of going through all your stuff in order to get organized make you feel anxious and overwhelmed?

You are not alone. What I’ve learned over time and in talking with a lot of moms is that getting started is HARD because we think we have to get rid of a lot of our stuff in order to get organized and we’re just not ready until we are ready. Up until a couple of years ago I had every piece of artwork that my kids ever made stashed away in tons of boxes and bins shoved here, there and everywhere!

And truth be told, I still have all the daily reports from when they were in day care! I kept them all!

They’re all 3 hole punched and stored in binders tucked away in my closet.

Minimalism seems to be all the rage right now. They say, just get rid of your stuff. It’s so much easier to keep your home tidy and organized. While that is a true statement, it is in fact easier to be organized if you have less stuff, it’s not a requirement. You can be organized and keep your stuff. Isn’t that a relief?!

As someone who is or feels like they’re just starting their home organizing journey you want to be set up for lasting home organizing solutions, right?  In order to make that happen you’ll have to do something different than you’ve done before or what society tells us.

Instead of starting with cute bins and resolving to just get rid of everything, you can start with SORT your stuff. In this episode I’ll share with you what it means to SORT your stuff, why you need to and how to make it happen.

Let me start with telling you what SORT is. 

SORT is also known as decluttering. I like to call it sort because in your home organizing journey, that’s the physical task that you’re doing. You're sorting through the things within your right sized home organizing project. Sort is the first of the 3 building blocks of home organization. The second and third are Organize and Sustain. I’ll hit on each of these in the next 2 episodes so make sure you follow or subscribe to this podcast so you get notification as soon as new episodes are available.

Why are you sorting? So that you have a clean slate. Once you’re sorted through all the stuff you’ll have a clear and clean space. Again, instead of using the word declutter which our society uses to tell us to get rid of our stuff, use the word SORT so that you know you’re in control of making the decisions.

How do you make it happen? How do you create a clean and clear space?

You do need to pick up each item and make a decision on what you’re going to do with it. You may be familiar with the traditional categories. I call them SORT categories and I have 2 untraditional categories that will help you move forward, make progress and build momentum. Let’s start with the traditional categories. They are Keep, throw away, donate and sell. Years ago when we built our home, we wound up shoving a ton of stuff into the basement. All the extra stuff from my home or my husbands home, it was a ton of stuff. Stuff we didn’t use regularly. Stuff from high school or college. Stuff from our childhood homes. Stuff from our first jobs. Oh my word it was a lot of stuff!

I would work on it sometimes when the kids were home. As I’d find something I wanted to keep I’d take it upstairs to put away but then I’d get ambushed by the kids and find myself playing with them instead of doing the hard work of sorting through all the stuff! So, there’s another category that helped me keep my focus, I call it MOVE. If you are keeping an item, but moving it to another spot in the house don’t move it right away. You’ll likely get sidetracked or ambushed and lose your focus and momentum. Another SORT category that really allowed me to keep going is DON’T KNOW. It’s perfectly fine to not know what to do with something. Instead of forcing yourself to figure it out right at that moment or waiting on someone else to help figure it out, set it aside into a DON’T KNOW pile. You don’t want to use that for everything, but it is a way that you can continue moving forward and making progress.

I would get started in the basement, come across something that I didn’t know what to do with and get stuck. Much of what the problem was is that it was my husband’s stuff. He was at work when I was doing this so I couldn’t move forward until he had time. 

So, those are your SORT categories. Keep, throw away, donate, sell, move and don’t know. When you tackle your right sized home organizing project you start by sorting all items in that space. You literally pick each item up, make a decision and set it in the proper pile based on your sort categories. Once you’ve sorted all the things you’ll have a space that is cleared. You can take a moment to clean it in preparation for the next building block of home organization, Organize.

You can dive deeper into sorting through your stuff with me by your side. Sign up for The Secrets to Lasting Home Organization at www.homeorganizingforbeginners.com .

Join me next week as we dive into strategy 7, Organize. I share what sorting is, why you sort your stuff and how to do so effectively.