Starting small is key to getting organized
By Catherine Murrell, Special to The Courier-Journal
INTERVIEWING . . . Name: Tracie Utter and Linda Ramsey Position: Utter is president, and Ramsey, vice president, of Bluegrass Professional Organizers, a not-forprofit group of professional organizers in Louisville and Southern Indiana. Résumé: Utter began organizing as a hobby while working as a CPA. She opened her own organizing business in July 2004. Ramsey also began organizing as a pastime while pursuing another career — graphic design. She began organizing professionally in April 2004. Quote: (Utter) "Make a date on the calendar when you're going to spend two hours or four hours organizing."
Q: Can you offer some guidelines for homeowners looking to get organized? Utter: When most people think of organizing their home, they tend to look at the big picture and then they feel overwhelmed by it. I suggest breaking the home down to a room or an area of a room or just a desk. Don't feel that you have to go in and organize the whole room in one sitting. I suggest making a date on the calendar when you're going to spend two hours or four hours organizing. Ramsey: You could build in a little reward for yourself. I find that a lot of home-organizing projects are easier to tackle if you have a reward system. Utter: Also, try to avoid the temptation to start by running out and buying supplies. Start out by seeing what you need. Buying containers isn't the first part of the process. Q: How should it start? Utter: Begin by visualizing the space the way you want it to be when you're finished. Then start sorting and going through everything and deciding what you want to keep and what you don't. Different groups of items often require containers. If you're organizing your desk for example, it's great to put all your pencils in one container, your scissors and tape in another. You may discover that you have 15 rolls of tape. Once you have your tape organized and in a place where you can find it, you can use what you have and not buy more rolls. Q: What would be a realistic project to start with? Utter: A closet can be a manageable project — something you can do in a day. People often feel overwhelmed when they first open the closet. They don't know where to start. Just start somewhere. Pick the right side or the left side, and then just pull out sweaters, pull out shoes. Sort through the items you've pulled out of the closet. If you have 15 sweaters, identify the ones you've worn recently and the ones you haven't. If you can, make the decision right then that you're going to keep something or donate it or throw it away. So many people get lost at this point and fill their closets back up with items they're not sure they want. If possible, only keep the sizes that fit you at the moment. If you have a lot of clothes that don't fit you and you decide you do want them, fold them up and put them in a box somewhere else in the house.
The next step is putting things back in the closet. Use common sense in finding places for things. If you don't use something very much, put it on the top shelf. If you're hanging a group of shirts or jackets or pants, consider sorting them by color. That way, if you're standing in front of your closet thinking that you want to wear a pair of blue jeans with a red shirt today, you can find all your red shirts easily. Ramsey: In my own closet, I have an overload of black. I wear an awful lot of black. So I take it a step further. Within the black section, I separate out the dressy black and the casual black.
Q: Any final advice on how to get and stay organized in 2005? Ramsey: If you're talking with a friend on a cordless phone, you can sort through a little junk drawer in the course of a 20-minute conversation. Or you can organize your medicine cabinet. Take advantage of the short segments of time you have. Utter: If you find that you keep making dates to organize certain areas of your home and you never actually do it, then you may just have to admit to yourself that you'd rather spend time doing fun things than organizing. That's when you should consider getting some help. You can start by asking family members and friends for help. You could even throw an organizing party — three or four people work best. Of course, there are also professional organizers who can help you get started.
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