Time to Tackle Those Towering Terrors

After you get yourself into a regular tidying habit, it is time to get those large piles under control. Of course, you can clean up large piles without having the daily habit, but as I have said before, it will make it much more difficult to maintain afterwards!

Select a day when you plan to start and block off a significant chunk of time (I suggest 2 to 4 hours). Put it on your calendar and commit to it. One of the hardest parts of large clean up projects is getting started. If you schedule a time in advance and commit to using that time for clean up, it will help eliminate the feeling that you should be doing something else.

Spend the first 20-30 minutes really surveying the space and thinking about the types of stuff you might find, so that you have a tentative plan going in of how you are going to deal with things. If you have a larger goal of cleaning up an entire area or room, make the plan around that, but break it into subsections. Try not to make the subsections very big, as small achievable goals will help to keep you motivated.

Every subsequent week (or whatever frequency you are able to commit), carve out 1-2 hours for implementing your plan. In your plan, try to set a goal for each week so that you have something tangible to work towards and so you can observe the progress you are making. You may need to create new piles to sort things out, but make sure that taking care of those piles is a part of your overall plan. I would even recommend that at the end of each organizing session, you put away everything you have sorted, instead of letting those new piles build up throughout the project. Creating new piles to “deal with later,” will just spread your initial pile out into multiple new piles to clutter your space, which will definitely not feel like progress.

Depending on the size of the pile you are aiming to eliminate, you may be able to complete it entirely in your first time block, while other projects will take much longer. There’s no wrong answer for how long something takes you, the important thing is to really commit the time to it. I know setting that time aside does not sound like fun (well, for most people - it does sound fun to me), but the true “trick” to getting piles under control is the combination of time invested and daily habits I go on and on about. :)

If you need some advice on the time you should set aside for a specific area or need more detailed guidance on getting started, let me know. I would be glad to talk it through with you!

I would also love to hear how it goes if you decide to start getting some piles under control!