Get Rid of Clutter to Gain an Hour a Day
Clutter costs the average American nearly an hour a day. We share four tips to get rid of clutter, so you have time for more important things.
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We discuss the high cost of clutter on The BIGG Success Show. Here’s a summary of that discussion.
We recently fell back an hour. It made us wonder how we could gain an hour every day. So we opened the BIGG vault of timeless treasures. We found a Newsweek article which cited this stunning statistic:
The average American loses nearly an hour (55 minutes) every day searching for things they can’t find.
Clutter can be costly in other ways as well:
If bills don’t get paid on time, there may be additional late fees.
If appointments are missed, relationships can be damaged.
In some places, clutter is so pervasive that people have been injured when they tripped over it!
There is hope. If you’d like to add an hour to every day of your life, rid of clutter. Here are four tips:
Use it or lose it
If in doubt, throw it out!
Many people approach their de-cluttering project from the opposite mindset. They keep it unless they know they won’t use it.
You’ll never eliminate clutter until you get past keeping things you MIGHT need SOME day.
Marie Kondo is THE expert on tidying. She suggests that, when considering whether to keep something, you ask:
If not, get rid of it.
Here’s another way to make a decision: Apply the six-month rule.
Have you used it in the last six months?
Do you KNOW that you’ll use it in the next six months?
If the answer is “No”, then lose it!
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A place for everything, everything in its place
Once you’re done de-cluttering, you should have a lot fewer things to put away. But that’s the thing – you HAVE to put the remaining things away.
Find a place for everything you keep. Then keep it there.
It’s the old “put it back” rule. When you use something, put it back immediately after you’re done with it. Make it a habit.
Call on a pro
You may not be the “do-it-yourself” type. Or maybe you just want some professional help.
Check out the National Association of Professional Organizers. At their site, you can search for organizers in your area. You’ll also find some great tips on hiring a specialist.
Daily delights
You’ve de-cluttered.
The key now is to make sure you don’t re-clutter.
Daily maintenance is the best way to insure against that.
Create a system for handling incoming items like your mail, newspapers, and periodicals.
For example, you may open your mail over your shredder.
Sort any mail you save by action date and file it appropriately.
When today’s newspaper is here, yesterday’s is gone. Same with magazines.
Marie Kondo offers this helpful advice: Visualize the life you want and what you’ll need to get there. Then, don’t allow anything
Focus on keeping your path clear, for your BIGG success!
Here’s to your BIGG success!
George “The Professor” & Mary-Lynn
Co-Founders, BIGG Success
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/biggsuccess/01031-110220.mp3
