When a person asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a professional organizer, often they’ll comment, “Your place must be SO ORGANIZED! Do you put labels on everything?”

My significant other and I used to live in a 500-square-foot apartment above a two-car garage. Five hundred square feet may not sound like a lot of space, but it felt spacious to us.

One of my earliest childhood memories is visiting the library with my mom. As an avid reader, my mom passed down her love of books and reading to me.

If you ask most people, one of the worst parts of taking a trip is unpacking when you get home. Many people leave stuff in their luggage for days afterward because they dread emptying the bags.

I choose to live with less and embrace living more simply for many reasons. Here are my top three:

Funny story…. After my sister read my most recent blog post about my getting rid of memorabilia, she sent a text expressing her surprise that I had kept my creepy-looking babydoll all these years (25+). As you can probably guess, I have a reputation within my family for not keeping much of anything! Her text got me thinking about why I had held onto these, and other, childhood relics for so many years and why it was so easy for me to part with them now.

In terms of organizing projects, memorabilia can be the most difficult category to tackle. We keep tangible objects to remember an event, a place, an experience, a loved one, or just because it makes us happy.

Nearly everyone has a box (or more!) of memorabilia - special items they want to keep in order to remember an event or a person or a trip. Greeting cards and letters fall squarely into this category.

One question I get asked most frequently by my clients is: "So Shannon, have you ever donated or thrown out something you wish you had kept?" And I always answer this question the same way…

As a small business owner, I wear many hats (bookkeeper, writer, editor, marketer, presenter, networker, volunteer, web designer, and, MOST importantly, professional organizer). Plus, I, like most people, have a plethora of items that need to get done at home. The result of this is a seemingly never-ending list of items that need to be completed. But to-do lists are a way of life for most, if not all, of us.

Many people store photographs in plastic bags, shoe boxes, envelopes from the photo developing company, and in those old albums with sticky plastic pages. I was no exception, until two years ago when I chose to remove all of my photos from the various photo albums I had acquired throughout the years and transfer them into…

Since I live in a small space, I need to be incredibly intentional with the items that are kept, especially when it comes to holiday decor. The rule in my house is simple: I only have decorations for Christmas (no other holidays) and, aside from a small, three-foot artificial pre-lit tree, all of the decorations must fit into one large plastic storage bin. That's it.

Bathroom storage can perplex the best of organizers. Personal care products take up space! I'm lucky because my bathroom includes a vanity with three drawers and under-cabinet storage.

This past weekend, I embarked on a project of epic proportions: I started to organize my digital photos. And it is truly epic. You see, I’ve got about 13,000 digital photos to purge, sort, and organize. Eeeeek!!! For years I'd been procrastinating, and I finally got to the point where I'd had enough of the procrastination. I just needed to get started.

The kitchen is an area of the home where storage can get tricky. With our small kitchen, space is at a premium, so we need to be selective about the appliances we own.

When we decided to quit our jobs and move from Indianapolis, Indiana to Portland, Oregon neither of us knew a soul in Portland, we didn't have jobs lined up, we didn't have a place to live - it was a complete leap of faith. What we DID know was we didn't want to take a lot of stuff with us.

When we made the decision to move across the country the first of two times, we were living in a 530-square-foot apartment, so downsizing wasn't too terribly overwhelming. Limited space = limited stuff.