Project Declutter: Spring Cleaning Challenge!

What if a magazine sent a professional organizer to your home for a huge makeover? This April’s issue of Woman’s Day kicked off the first in a four-part series called “Project Declutter.” I worked with two families, one in Illinois and one in Michigan, and we tackled their closets, kitchens, home offices and other trouble spots. I’m so excited to share the results!

Pam Lyons in Pontiac, IL, was my first visit. She is a collector of all things sentimental and meaningful, and she loves to buy things as gifts for other people she loves. I adore her generous and loving spirit! But she needs to give herself some limits so that her stuff doesn’t take over her house.

I taught Pam that she could be a collector like someone who hoards, or she can be a Collector with a capital C, like an art collector, who curates her collection carefully. One of the best ways to manage a collection is to give it a “limiting container,” so we repurposed a narrow linen closet in a hallway as her “shoe closet.” She is now limited to having only the number of shoes that will fit into that space, along with one other underbed storage container for off-season shoes.

The number of shoes in the shoe closet is officially more than enough.  I had Pam take a little challenge with me to live by the “one in, one out” rule. When she buys a new pair of shoes, another older pair needs to be donated to Goodwill® to make room.

What collection of yours could you declare to be “more than enough”? Books, videos, jewelry, pants, sweaters, toys, gadgets?  Most of us are fortunate to have an abundance of things in our lives. When you donate them to Goodwill, you not only manage your belongings responsibly, but you help other people to make lifelong connections to work with job training, job placement, and other services to overcome challenges to employment.

This spring, take our More Than Enough Challenge and declare “Enough” with the clutter!  Share your results with us here!  And you can see the results of part one of Project Declutter on the Woman’s Day website.