The baby boomer generation are the children of the silent generation (born prior to 1945) and the parents of generation X (born 1965-1981). Baby boomers have exerted significant influence on the trends seen in modern societies simply because of the pressure of the population mass.

Born between 1946 and 1964 the baby boomer generation got this name simply because there was a population explosion following the second world war. Their parents (the silent generation born before 1945) were happy that the second world war was now over and there was a renewed sense of optimism that focused on families and creating homes to raise children. The resulting baby boom bulged the demographic profiles of many countries and the cohort of individuals born between 1946 and 1964 began aging together.

So what has this got to do with clutter control?

The generation cohorts are influenced by the significant social, political, and economic trends of their formative years and during this time the attitudes, values, and beliefs that influence their way of thinking are formed. In relation to clearing clutter the two influences that would exert the most pressure would be the home and the pop culture. Therefore it becomes necessary to understand how each generation has brought these influences to bear on the clutter control habits now being seen in contemporary homes.

It all started with the silent generation. They are the parents of the baby boomers and the grandparents to generation X (born 1965- 1981). The silent generation is sometimes called the veteran’s demographic because the people in this generation were greatly influenced by the first and second world wars as well as the great depression.

With a strong view of authority influenced by the military model that suggested “duty before self”, the silent generation may to this day have difficulty with assertiveness such as saying no.

They grew up with very little variety or choices in consumable goods and were limited to what was available within a short distance of their home. Along with the purchase of goods was the expectation that the purchased item would last as long as it was needed. The silent generation grew up with the belief that if you throw something away you are a bad person because you are wasteful. Therefore throwing things away is never an option.

The mantra of the silent generation would be “Use it up, make it last,  wear it out, or do without!”

Over a lifetime the persistent pattern of thinking in the parents of the baby boomer generation led to the accumulation of more and more material goods in their home. Unfortunately their skill at clearing clutter and managing those goods did not keep pace with their skill at acquiring them.

So we can see that the homes where the baby boomer generation grew up were characterized by the accumulation of goods. This was a measure of success and reflected the growing economic prosperity of their parents as well as the changes in the variety of goods and services now available to them and marketed through the media.

The baby boomers were probably the first generation with a realistic expectation to “do better” than their parents! Unfortunately they never learned clutter control skills from their parents.  The ability to  purge their possessions or even how to be happy without them was not something that the silent generation taught their children.

The clutter in the homes of baby boomers and their families is the direct result of the emotional attachment to their stuff and the lack of well developed clutter control skills. The clutter epidemic suggests that there is a legacy from the mid 1900′s that is still exerting its influence in the homes of the baby boomer generation.

Stopping this epidemic means that the cause must be identified and understood before it can be mitigated. Clutter control  cannot be achieved unless emotional attachments to material possessions are recognized and dealt with.  The first step in clearing clutter is always learning how to purge possessions appropriately and without guilt.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/home-and-family-articles/the-baby-boomer-generation-and-clutter-control-873104.html

About the Author

Beverly Hansen OMalley is a nurse and likes to write about subjects that will help people in their daily lives and she loves to organize just about anything. Visit
www.organization-makes-sense.com where you can find out more about all things related to organized living including the real costs of clutter and view the clutter profile for the silent generation, the baby boomers, and generation X

1. BLOCK OUT SOME TIME.Restrict specific days and times of the week that you only use for fun or relaxing activities. Mark these on your calendar/diary so you don’t schedule an appointment or meeting during these time frames.

2. PUT IT ON YOUR TO DO LIST.To Do lists aren’t just for tasks and chores. They’re also for fun activities or relaxing moments.

3. SWITCH OFF.Throughout your day, do a task and then do a fun or relaxing activity. Keep repeating in this order.

4. GIVE IT AWAY. You need to delegate! If you’re always trying to do everything yourself when you can get help from a spouse, child, associate or outside source, you’ll never have time for you. There are almost always others that can help.

5. STREAMLINE.For two weeks, write down all of your tasks and how long they take you to perform. Analyze your log at the end of the two weeks and determine which tasks need to be streamlined. Perhaps you might find that the two hours it’s taking you to clean each day can be streamlined to one hour, or the time it’s taking you to get ready for work can be reduced by 20 minutes.

6. SAY ‘NO’ SOMETIMES.You don’t have to say Yes to every single request for your time. So many people wear themselves thin by being so agreeable. So if you’re already making cookies for your daughter’s bake sale, don’t also agree to babysit your neighbor’s son in the same week. If you respect your time, others will too.

7. MAKE FUN A PRIORITY.Many people consider fun and/or relaxation to be a low priority–something they only do if they get everything else done. Having personal time is key to a balanced, healthy life. Although it shouldn’t take over, it should show up regularly throughout your day–just like your other important tasks.

Source: Get Organized Now!

Read the full story through her interview with Notebook Magazine in October 2010.

1. Measure the pieces of furniture in your room and make a scale cut out of them, for example your dining table is 1800mm x 900mm, cut out a square that measure 18mm x 9mm (this means your furniture is now scaled down to 1:100). Do this with everything in your room (using the same scale of course!)
2. Then measure your room and do the same; draw a scale outline of the room. Remember to include doorways, windows, entry ways and existing built in furniture.
3. Then taken you cut-outs of furniture and move them around your room so you can see if you can configure it to work better for you.

Remember furniture doesn’t have to be up against a wall, lounges can be used to divide a room and rugs can be used to define areas too – just play with and have some fun before you start moving things around.

The golden rule is always “less is more”!

Eating to soothe your anxiety and disappointments isn’t healthy – and neither is heading to the mall.  If retail therapy is you M.O (and your closets and drawers are starting to overflow) . Martha Beck has three little steps to help you put your purchases on pause.

It’s past midnight.  In five hours I’ll be catching a plane to Los Angeles to do a spot on daytime talk show.  I haven’t packed yet, or prepped for my appearance.  So I just did what any normal person would do; I went to the all-night pharmacy and bought travel-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a tiny tube of toothpaste, three packs of gum, two bottles of nail polish, extra reading glasses, three candy bars, a scented candle, six dog toys, five different nutritional supplements and two pens – one shaped like a cactus and one that lights up (in six colours!) when you click it.

I used to do a lot of anxiety eating.  Because I’m a typical diet-obsessed American female, I worked hard to over come that habit.  But I still do some anxiety shopping.  It may not be logical to buy new shoes for a mammogram or stock up on duct tape when it’s time do my taxes; nevertheless such things soothe me.  Temporarily.  Though tonight’s splurge was briefly comforting, it left me with less cash and more stuff I didn’t really need.  So I’m putting myself on a buying diet.  I don’t mean deprivation.  I just mean it’s time to get back a more balanced state of acquiring what I need, when I need it.

Mastering a Balanced Buying Diet

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you know that willpower isn’t enough:  Crash dieting never works against deeply primal instincts.  What goes for eating goes for acquiring too.  You see, our hunter-gatherer ancestors survived by collecting pelts, sticks, fibres, hunks of peat – whatever might keep them comfy in their caves.  Thousands of years later, acquiring,  just like eating, still flips the switch that tells our primitive lizard brains we’re well supplied for hard times.  To sustain a balanced buying diet, we must flip that switch without actually accumulating more stuff.

There are three steps to accomplishing this:  First avoid a sense of deprivation by focusing on ambundance.  Second, shield your brain from temptations that trigger near unconscious overspending.  Third, learn to splurge moderately, to keep yourself feeling well supplied without squandering cash and adding clutter.  Ready?  Lets begin.

Psych-Step One – Think Abundantly

Your nervous system goes into “fight/flight” alert whenever you’re stressed, and toggles to its “rest/relax” state when all’s well.  Each response involves hormones that, for the past several decades, have been carefully studied in all humans … except for half of us.  That right – until around 2000, human stress responses were studied predominantly in men.  When researchers finally thought to look, they found that stressed women secrete a different hormonal mixture: adrenaline and testosterone, like men, but mixed with much higher levels or hormones like oxytocin that prompts “tend and befriend” behaviours – nesting, feeding, grooming.

Can you see the connection to buying?  Men’s stress response says “Fight or flee!” Our says “fight or flee – and make sure everyone has a nice warm sweater!”  There’s a reason why, when anticipating nerve-racking social events, most of us go directly to “what will I wear?”  It’s the same (deep, hormonal) reasons we may react to an argument by re-decorating.  Anytime our stress response takes over, we buy the way soldiers fight.  “ours not to reason why”, a friend of mine once wrote, “ours but to find and buy”.  We can’t help it.  We’re victims of our own buy-ology (Sorry.  Genetic pun disorder).

The way to get around this situation is to increase our awareness of abundance.  If you embark on a buying diet in a mind-set emphasizing lack, you’ll create a scarcity response and end up buying a Lexus on credit.  If, on the other hand, you focus on how much you already have, your buying compulsion will remain dormant.  The best way to do this is to dive into an overcrowded area of your home and wallow for a while.  I myself need look no further than the mug on my bedside table, which is stuffed with pens.  To start my buying diet,  I’ve just dumped those pens on my bed and pawed through them.  The physical act of touching them has made me feel overstuffed.  Obviously, the two pens I just bought are unnecessary.  The thought of buying even more holds all the allure of a sixth helping of oatmeal.

I find that when my children use this exercise, they not only lose the desire to buy more but can actually feel suffocated by stuff.  Warning:  Don’t decide to “go through all that stuff” right now.  Clearing out – using up or discarding what you don’t need – is the buying-diet equivalent of exercise; trying to leap from a couch potato into instant tri-athlete is unsustainable.  A more realistic strategy is to finish, toss or donate a few more items than you buy each day.  The idea is to create balance between inflow and outflow excess in either direction disrupts that balance.

As you become more used to this way of dealing with stuff, you’ll begin to meet your needs by “shopping” among things you already own.  You’ll recombine old clothes for new looks, put new photos in old frames.  This approach is far more creative and interesting that continuing to buy.  It can make you feel proudly capable and help keep your financial diet balanced, too.

Psych Step Two – Dodge the Guen Transfer

Ever forget where you parked the car at the mall?  Ever run into a store for a few necessities, only to end up oozing through the aisles clutching objects you suddenly realized you cannot live without?  Those scenarios were not accidents.  Malls and retail displays are designed to create a quasi-hypnotic state observed by social scientists, dubbed the Gruen transfer (in honor of the late Victor Gruen, the architect who designed this country’s [America] earliest shopping malls), and exploited by merchandisers.  It sounds like science fiction, but it’s real.  Humans bombarded with certain kinds of music, light, shapes, and smells go into a mindless shopping daze.  Once the Gruen transfer kicks in, we become like Aladdin on Quaaludes, groggily grasping at whatever we see.

A Gruen transfer shopping spree is comparable to an eating binge.  Like rich food, the dazzling plenty of a shopping centre is rare in nature, and we’re geared to react to it with almost involuntary greed.  But you can use these strategies to protect yourself from going gruesomely Gruen:

1. Always make a shopping list before heading to the store, and don’t buy anything that isn’t on it.  Give someone else the list and have him or her shop for you, or take a friend shopping to keep you on track.
2. As you walk into any retail establishment, take a moment to stop and notice landmarks that will help you find the exit quickly.  Picture yourself walking out briskly with on the items you need.
3. Steal yourself at checkout counters.  Items are placed there to tempt you after the Gruen transfer has had maximum time to transform your brain into a kumquat.
4. Keep those Gruen Transfer out of your house.  If you glimpse at infomercial, switch the channel.  The longer you watch, the more vulnerable you are to sales hypnosis.

Psych-Step Three:  Practice Moderation

One reason so many dieters bounce back up to their original chubbiness is that the body “reads” a deprivation diet as famine – and packs on fat to ward off starvation during the next natural disaster.  To avoid this reaction, dieters must eat enough “cheat treats” to avoid feeling starved.  The same principle applies to buying dieters.  If you start to feel deprived, you’re in danger of binge buying.  The cure is a relatively healthy cheat treat.

In this area, buying diets are easier than weight loss diets.  Your primal senses know the difference between a “treat” like salted celery and a jelly doughnut.  But only the mind sees a significant difference between a $4 pack of sticky notes printed with Van Gogh’s sunflowers and the $40 million original.  Given a choice between a $15,000 Ferrari da Varese pen and one from the drugstore that lights up (in six colours!), our primal selves will happily accept the latter.

The act of finding and taking possession of an object is all in the reward your hunter-gatherer self really wants.  Such rewards can be inexpensive or even free.  Once, on a nature retreat, I assembled a fire-making kit from whittled sticks and plant fibres that brought me as much joy as a new refrigerator.  Not that I’m advocating a return to primitive life,  I’m simply saying that by understanding our primordial programming, we can avoid buying things that will only turn our 21^st century “caves” into troves of objects we’ll never use.

I’ve been applying buying-diet strategies for some time.  Ironically, tonight’s pharmacy spree convinced me they’re working.  Once, I’d have coped with my anxiety by rushing to the mall.  Crazed by scarcity thinking and the Gruen transfer, I’d have splurged in expensive boutiques, then felt guilty – catalyzing more anxious shopping.  So it’s a triumph that tonight I took my freaked-out self to a place where the treats were cheap and marginally useful.

As my buying diet continues.  I’ll use up my tiny toiletries and take all the supplements, while my dog disposes of his toys by eating them.  Gradually, my home will grow clearer – until, if you were to visit, you’d find me living in Zen-like purity, neither spending nor possessing excess.  I’d greet you with perfect serenity and perhaps one small perfect gift.  It would probably be a pen!

Martha Beck is the author of six books including Steering by Starlight (Rodale).

Do you keep loads of paperwork because you’re not sure “if you might need it one day”? Why don’t you scan those documents and save them to your computer. Reduce your trusty filing box by half!

When you’ve scanned them, save them into relevant folders.For Example, “Warranty Cards”, “Receipts” (expecially good if your receipt is on thermal paper, they eventally fade to nothing), or “Travel” (a great place to scan and save those articles from the Sunday paper about your dream holiday.

Happy Scanning!

This is one of the main reasons de-clutter projects never get finished because you simply don’t know how to sort or what to do with all the stuff.  It can be totally overwhelming.

You may get through a few cupboards and boxes easily, but then you run out of puff because you have struck a problem – what do I do with this??

Why bother sorting stuff out?  Can’t we just throw things into keep and chuck piles?  Well, in theory that might sound logical, but you need to factor in other things such as items you might want to give to charity, items that you need to return to friends, items that need to be stored in another area of the house, and of course, those items you want to keep.

Sorting into categories is essential, or you will simply end up with two piles that seem even more overwhelming than the original clutter.

Sorting starts to bring some kind of sense to your de-clutter project and really cuts down on your workload toward the end of the project.

There are a number of different sorting methods and we are sure that one may resonate with you when working out how to actually sort your clutter. 

The methods we have listed below are by no means a comprehensive list of every single type of sorting method; these are the methods that we have used and been most successful.

Traditional Sorting Methods

This method involves a number of tubs or large boxes labeled very simply; Donate, Throw, Keep.  You may want to add a few more in such as “MOVE” , ie move to another room, ‘FAMILY” meaning that the items is going to be given or returned to a family member.  Adding extra tubs is often useful when you are doing a really large Sort.  However don’t get too carried away and create too many tubs!  That could just as overwhelming as the clutter!

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Create three tubs labeled, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. 

 “Yesterday” – is for all items that were relevant to your past life, but no longer have a place in your life now.  The Yesterday tub can also be the garbage bin and/or the donate bin!   “Today” –for all items that you need to keep because they are essential to your life today, right now in the present. Things that you use every day or at least every week.  “Tomorrow” – are items that you would like to keep and most importantly, will use, in the future

Strangers, Acquaintances and Friends Method

Sounds a bit strange doesn’t it?  However, this method is fantastic for people who really treat their belongings like friends or “people”. 

Lay out 3 tubs and label as follows:  Strangers, Acquaintances and Friends.   “Strangers” – is for all those items you hardly ever use, see or are really that bothered about.  These items really are strangers; your life has gone on perfectly well without them.   “Acquaintances” – is for all items that you don’t see often but quite enjoy their company (or use) when you do.   “Friends” – is for items that you really cherish, just like a true friend.  These items are always useful, helpful and certainly required to help you in everyday life.   They can also be special items given to you by important people in your life.

Treasure Hunt Method

Who would have thought that de-clutter could involve a treasure hunt?  This method is particularly good for those of you who are super-overwhelmed.

Lay out 2 tubs and label as follows:  Hunted or Gathered.  What do they mean? 

“Hunted” – treasures you have hunted down in the space you are de-cluttering and you absolutely have to keep.  “Gathered” – are items that are left behind

Quick Tips

1. Don’t waste time, this is not the time to reminisce over photos or mementos.  Handle each item once and don’t put it down until you have made your decision (“I don’t know” is not a decision).
2. How much stuff is going into the rubbish pile, this should be fastest growing pile when doing a sort.  The bigger the rubbish pile, the less work for you later on. 
3. Don’t stop until you are finished, and when you are, move all the items for rubbish or donation out of the house immediately.  (You can put the donation items straight into the boot of your car.) 
4. If you are working with family members and you can’t decide jointly what to do with a particular item, don’t argue about it now, set it to one side to calmly discuss later on.

If you hire a Professional Organiser to help you with your de-clutter project they may well have a different method entirely. 

 It really doesn’t matter which one you use, as long as you get the result or reach the goal you have set for yourself.

1. Toss 10. Grab a garbage bag. Find ten items in your home that you no longer need or want and put them in the bag. Toss the bag in the wheelie bin or put it in your local charity bin (eg. Lifeline) if they are items that can be recycled. Don’t look back.

2. Clear a surface. Find at least one cluttered surface in your home, like a kitchen benchtop or a dressing table, and completely clear it of all clutter. Place all the unwanted items immediately into the bin.

3. Toss out old magazines. Gather any old magazines or newspapers that you have already read and haven’t looked at in the last couple of weeks. Recycle or donate them today.

4. Weed out. The thought of thinning out and organising your entire filing system may seem daunting to say the least, but anyone can weed out just 5 file folders at a time.

5. Go through a junk drawer (everyone has one of these in their home). Whatever you can’t identify or is clearly junk (meaning you’ve never used it and never will) gets thrown out.

6. Toss anything that has past it’s used by date. Go through your fridge and medicine cabinet, gathering anything perishable that has expired. Hint – a good day to do this is on your rubbish collection day so your items will be collected straight away by the garbage man.

7. Throw away junk mail. Don’t be tempted – immediately toss out anything that is clearly junk mail.

8. Put things away. While carrying a basket or large bag with handles, go through your home putting at least half a dozen items that are not in their correct place in the basket or bag. Then, deliver those items to their proper homes.

If you had to leave your home with as little as 5 minutes notice what would you take?  Of course you would take family members and pets, but what else?  After the event, what other items would you wish you had taken?

Is it possible to have an emergency plan in place that would prevent the confusion if an evacuation became a reality for your family? 

Thankfully in the electronic and digital age we live in, there is quite a lot you can do to be prepared for such an emergency.  Let’s get started.

Photos

This is the number one item that we all want to save; especially older photos which cannot be replaced.   Thanks to the digital age this has now become super easy. 

Here’s what you can do:

• Older (pre digital) photos where you don’t have negatives, can be taken to a photo specialist to be scanned.  You can also do this yourself if you have a decent scanner.
• If you have negatives you can buy a great little gadget to quickly and inexpensively turn your negatives into digital images.  You can also take these to a photo specialist to be done for you.
• Digital images are the easiest to preserve – you probably have them currently stored on your computer hard drive, right? This is ok for easy retrieval; however we do recommend you store them away from your hard drive or laptop as well.
• Once all your precious photos are in digital form, you need to make a couple of backups.  We would recommend portable external hard drives or USBs.  The reason we recommend two is that technology does have its failings and if one of these devices should malfunction, you have a back up.
• These should be stored together in an easily accessible location in the event of an emergency.   We suggest with your computer for easy updating when you have new photos.

Do you have any elderly family or friends who don’t have access to this technology?  Family history can be lost forever in a disaster.  My parents don’t have a computer, so I’m going to transfer their precious images into digital form – just in case!  Is there anyone you can help with this?

Important Papers/Documents/Records

These days we all have so many bank accounts, service providers, insurance policies that it is near impossible to remember the details.  What would you do in an emergency?  What about certificates, passports or awards?  Could you access them quickly?

Here’s what you can do:

• Keep track of your service providers by creating a very simple document which lists the name of the company, your account number and their phone number (don’t list passwords and user names in this document, for obvious security reasons).   This can be in a spreadsheet format, or if you are not into computers, you can put this information into an address book.  If you use the spreadsheet option, save this document where you have saved your photos.
• For Certificates, Passports and Awards, you can scan these just like the photographs above – at the very least you will have all the details you need to order replacements.
  Save the scanned copies of these documents to the same device you have stored your photos.
• Another quick way to have a copy of important information off site is to email the scanned files to a relative or even your gmail or hotmail account.  This is not a recommended permanent option, but can be useful in an emergency.

 Sentimental Objects

You may have precious pieces of heirloom jewellery or artwork that has a lot of sentimental value. 

Here’s what you can do:

• Knowing where to find these items is the key.  Often we will do a de clutter project for a client and find boxes of heirlooms that haven’t been sighted in over ten years.   If you have some seriously sentimental objects, then you should know where they are and they should be easy to access in the event of an emergency.  Obviously we are talking Jewellery, small ornaments and the odd piece of art work.  Furniture items and your entire art collection unfortunately can’t be taken in these situations.
• For antique furniture and art collections that are of sentimental and monetary value, we recommend taking photos of these items and storing with your “family” photos.  As well as giving you a memory of these pieces, it will also assist with any insurance claims.
• If smaller items are of significant monetary value it would be wise to consider a small safe in the home (see next section) or a safety deposit box at your bank.
• The location should be somewhere that all family members are aware of, and if possible, within easy access.  Preferably not down in the back garden under the slab of the shed.

Purchase a Small Fire Proof Box/Safe

Naturally this is a good option if you are in an area prone to bush fires, but equally if the box is small and light it can be one of the items you do grab in those 5 minutes.  You could also keep your passports in this box.

Create an Emergency Evacuation list

If you are asked to evacuate your home, panic will usually set in immediately.  Our mind can often go blank at this moment and all well laid plans can disappear.   The best idea is to have a list of what to take and where to locate each item. 

Here’s what you can do:

• List the items you want to be able to take and where they can be located.   We suggest the following items however feel free to add in anything else you want to take.    
  • External Hard Drives or USBs – In computer desk top drawer 
  • Address Book – in computer desk top drawer 
  • Fire Proof Safe (If removable and small enough)or contents of safe – in main bedroom wardrobe 
  • Medications – in pantry cupboard 
  • Phone Charger – in computer desk top drawer 
  • Transistor Radio – in emergency kit in bottom of pantry
  • Batteries – in emergency kit in bottom of pantry
  • Torch – in emergency kit in bottom of pantry
  • Water – in pantry
• Laminate, or put this list in a plastic sleeve, and keep either on the fridge or somewhere central.
• When the time comes to evacuate, get a laundry basket and quickly grab all the items on your list.  If you have time to grab other things do so only after you have located all your priority items.  These are the things you will need the most. 

We absolutely understand, that whilst some of these concepts might be great in theory, they just won’t work in a real life situation; having seen four of my friends’ homes flooded I definitely know this.

However, here at Blair Lifestyle Management we do believe in being prepared, so if you do have some time to put this plan in place, it might just save you much heartache and hassle in the event of a disaster.

To ensure your details are always up to date make sure you review this plan on a regular basis – at least annually.

Being organised is not as expensive as being disorganised – check our Fact Sheet “Cost of being disorganised”.

You can use items around the home to store your items, be it an old shoe box, a vase to hold kitchen utensils, a rock as a paper weight (more on that in a second). You may choose to invest as little or as much as you wish in getting organised from purchasing a few simple containers from a Reject Shop through to engaging a Professional Organiser.

Oh, regarding the rock, I have a gorgeous rock I picked up on a beach in Chile that I use as a paper weight, each time I look at it I’m reminded of the holiday. I think it is better to use keep-sakes than shove them in a box in the garage.

It’s all too hard

Being is organised is simple, although it is a little time-consuming at first, but spending time now means saving time later on; time for yourself, your friends and your family! It’s simple because there is only one place to put things and one place to retrieve things, no stacking papers on top of each other “cos you don’t know where they should go” etc. You’ll appreciate this concept when your daughter burns herself and you can put your hand on the first-aid kit and the ambulance phone number in 2 seconds.

It’s just being tidy, isn’t it?

Ummm, no. There is a major difference between being tidy and organised. I can tidy things in a flash by shoving clutter under beds, in the cupboard or even in the garage, but you still aren’t organised are you? You still can’t find the first-aid kit when you daughter needs it (refer above).

On the flipside, you can be messy and organised – yes it’s true! But you MUST have logical places for everything, group like items with like and always put things away (even if it’s messy). Who cares if your sock drawer is messy – just the socks I suppose!

This article was inspired by contents of “Ready, Set, Organise” by Pipi Campbell Peterson