ORDER Acronym: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gVAU-lpFbvnILzfJDQudmNVVX15D5Qi http://www.ClutterDiet.com Get organized with home organizing tips from professional organizers at The Clutter Diet. Have you ever walked into a room and thought- “I don’t even know where to begin?” Or have you organized a space and watched it return to it’s previous state because the maintenance wasn’t clear? In today’s video Lorie Marrero is sharing her formula for organizing success. Following these tips will help you get clarity about your projects. These Clutter Video Tips are posted frequently here on our clutterdiet organizing channel. You can search Twitter for #ClutterVideoTip also to find comments on our organizing tips. Lorie Marrero is the creator of ClutterDiet.com and the author of The Clutter Diet: The Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. Lorie also serves as the national spokesperson for Goodwill Industries International and ambassador of the Donate Movement. http://www.clutterdiet.com http://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore Hi I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of The Clutter Diet Book and online program, today we’re talking about what you should do first before anything else in your organizing projects. We have a five-step process based on an acronym of the word “order” that is our general approach for any organizing project. “Order” starts with the letter “o” for “outline your plan,” and is a strategic planning step that just takes a few minutes that you can do to make sure that you are going in the right direction with your project. This five-step process can work for anything and be very effective, but if you want to ideally have the most long-lasting results, I would ask you to back up one step from that and think about clarity. Clutter is delayed decisions and actions. As you’re going through this process, decision-making is going to be much more difficult if you don’t have clarity. If you’re packing for a trip, it matters greatly what you’re packing, whether you’re going to the beach or the mountains. Same thing in your home– It’s going to matter if you decide that you want to have children– Don’t buy a white sofa that’s going to have juice stains and sticky fingers all over it. There are all kinds of examples of the physical items in our lives being affected directly by our choices of our career and family and all of those things. If you’re not clear on those, it’s going to be harder to do your organizing projects. Unfortunately, clarity is elusive, I have developed a formula about how to get clarity. There are certain transition points in your life when you need to think about this all over again. The formula is clarity = mindfulness, + action + surrender. Mindfulness is simply being present in your life. In our modern world we are so glued to our electronics. We’re in front of our phones, we don’t have face-to-face interactions. We take the same route home from work every day do the same job and sit in the same chair. We become disconnected and almost zombies walking through our lives. We have to make an effort to be mindful and present in our daily lives. If we’re not present, we miss the signs, signals and information that we need to get the clarity we want. The next step is action. You can’t just let clarity land on you; it’s not going to happen. You need to have a practice and a discipline of some sort moving toward that clarity. If you’re trying to buy a house, are you just going to sit and wait for someone to call and tell you that there’s a house for sale? Probably not. You’re going to take action, you’re going to have a practice and a discipline toward searching, book-marking, and going out to see houses. I suggest that one of those practices will be meditation. Meditation will help with your mindfulness and it is a practice that improves your brain health, and all kinds of response and reaction time in your life, and it helps you be more present. Journaling is great as well. You also might want to get some counseling, or talk to certain people or read certain books. The last piece is surrender. You can take all the action you want and be present, but at some point you also have to understand that getting your clarity is a process that is slightly out of your control. Most people need to go through this process with their practices and their actions and their mindfulness, and it’s going to take a little while to get there. Surrender to the fact that the “how” is not always up to you. Let those serendipitous things happen and occur, be mindful enough to notice them, that’s all part of the surrender and the letting go of the control of the whole process that’s going to let that unlock for you. If you’re stuck, and need help with your organizing project, that’s what we’re here for. We have a program at http://www.clutterdiet.com/learnmore. We’ll see you next time. May you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.