One of my clients loves daisies. And once her family and friends discovered that she loves daisies, they started giving her gifts with daisies on them - everything from daisy earrings to daisy mittens and daisy towels.

During the process of sorting and purging, your mind may work against you. Thoughts like “I don’t know how to do this,” “this is hard,” “I want this done now,” “I’m so overwhelmed,” and “I give up” can quickly hijack the project, leaving you feeling frustrated and defeated.

When my client opened the door, I could see the stress all over her face. With a look of exhaustion, she told me things at work were incredibly busy, she was feeling a lot of pressure and working long hours.

I’ve been working with a client who has lived with her husband in their 2000 square foot home for the past 25 or so years. Career pursuits and busy lives meant that home organization fell to the bottom of the list for years and years, but now they’re ready to purge what they don’t want any longer and organize the rest.

I recently started working with a client who’s lived in her current house for 30 years and is considering downsizing in the next year or two. For the most part, she’s been really decisive about what she wants to keep and what she wants to donate. However, occasionally she’ll say to me, “A friend gave this to me, but I never really liked it. Do you think it’s okay if I donate this?”

When a client contacts me for help with an organizing project, they’ve often tried many times to get organized and haven’t been successful. By the time I speak with them, they’re frustrated, overwhelmed, and feel hopeless that they’ll ever get organized.

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.

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.