When you are having a decluttering session make sure that whatever goes out of your house is going to the right place. There are lots of ways to ensure that you are not simply filling up a landfill site even more.

Of course, the simplest thing to do would be to dump it all in the household rubbish or take it to the tip or even hire a skip (depending on how much you are getting rid of). But with just a little planning your decluttering can be a lot greener and it might even make you some money in the process.

First of all, when you decide to get rid of something, decide whether it’s in good enough shape that somebody else might want it. Is it even good enough that someone might want to buy it?

• If you answer that last question with yes, you could either sell it on Ebay or a carboot sale. You could give your friends/family first refusal at a fair price.
• If you don’t think anyone would give you money for it, then you could donate it to a charity shop.
• If you don’t want to sell it for whatever reason and don’t want to give it to strangers, why not offer it to someone in your family or a friend who you know could use it.
• For women’s clothing, jewellery and accessories you could hold a Naked Ladies Party. No worries, nothing rude going on here. It’s a get-together of women who swap clothes they no longer want or that no longer fit. Check out http://www.getcrafty.com/home_nakedlady.php for more details.
• You can also post it on Freecycle. Check out  http://www.uk.freecycle.org/ to find your local group and once you post the item, whoever needs it will come and pick it up. It is a recycling scheme where people offer items free of charge to other people who might need it.

All of these options ensure that someone else could make use of it and it doesn’t have to go to waste.

If the item is past it, then find out whether it can be recycled, then either put it in the correct recycling bin or take it to your local recycling centre to be disposed of properly.

Only throw away items that can’t be sold on, given away or recycled. That way, decluttering will improve your home and you won’t have to worry so much about damaging the environment since you have done your best.

A friend told me the other day he had an amendment to a previous Tuesday’s Tip, the one about using a diary. He said to add the following: Make sure you take your diary out of your jeans pocket before putting your jeans into the washing machine. Unfortunately he spoke from experience.

I thought there was another Tuesday’s Tip in there somewhere and here it is. Whether you carry your diary in your jeans pocket or not, make sure you  check all your pockets before putting any item of clothing into the wash. It only adds a few seconds per load but will save you so much hassle in the long run. Just imagine my friend had kept his mobile phone in that pocket instead!

2009 is a brand new year and I bet lots of people started it with well intentioned New Year’s Resolutions. But how many of those will actually be kept? Unfortunately, they mostly won’t. Why not? Why is it so difficult to keep those New Year’s resolutions. We have all the best intentions and plans to keep them and are really motivated, aren’t we?

Well, lets have a look at an average list from an average sort of person. Let’s call him Joe Bloggs (I guess that’s an average name).

In 2009 I want to:

• Get fit
• Lose weight
• Stop smoking
• Drink less alcohol
• Get my finances in order
• Use my car less
• Do something for charity
• Get organised

Now how many of those resolutions is Joe going to actually keep? He might start out on the first of January with high motivation and best intentions but by the end of the first week, he will probably have had a few cigarettes, a greasy portion of fish & chips, postponed his running or cycling at least twice because of bad weather, and given up on writing down what he spends every day. In other words, things will have gone down the drain again, and by the end of January his resolutions will be nothing but a faint memory and life goes on as usual.

What could Joe have done differently? What would have increased his chances of keeping any of his resolutions? Should he have even bothered?

I will answer the last question first – Absolutely!! With a capital A.

Joe, like so many of us, wants to improve himself and that is a good thing. We all want to better our lives and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s just how we go about it, that makes the difference between failure and success.

What should he have done differently and therefore increased his chances of success?

1. He should have had fewer resolutions. If you need to make changes in your life, don’t expect to make too many at once. You’re only setting yourself up for failure. If you need to make big changes, choose 1 thing, and 1 thing only that you are going to change. It will keep you focused and you are more likely to succeed. (If it’s minor changes, don’t attempt more than 3.)
2. Change the resolution to a SMART goal. SMART is an acronym and stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Let’s take the old favourite of Losing Weight. If you simply state, I want to lose weight, how do you know when you have achieved it? You will have lost weight once you have dropped a pound but that is probably not enough for you, but what is? And by when? Here are a couple of suggestions for SMART goals relating to weight loss:
   - I want to lose 20lb (ca 1 ½ stone) by the end of March.
   (With an average and healthy weight loss of 2 lb per week this is definitely achievable.)
   - I am now a size 16, I want to fit into my size 12 dress at the end of March by losing 9 kg.
   (This is a similar weight loss to the previous one, so again achievable.)
3. Write your goal down and underneath write specific actions you are going to do to achieve this goal. Make your plan as detailed as you can.
4. Be accountable.
   Tell a friend, colleague or relative about your plan and promise them that you are going to stick with it. You have already set yourself up for success by creating a SMART goal and creating an action plan. This step will help you by making it more difficult to give up if you involve someone else in the plan.
5. Don’t give up if you slip up.
   If you have a down day and you stray from your action plan don’t give up on the whole thing. Simply restart again the next day with fresh enthusiasm. Remember how often a little child falls before they can finally walk unaided. If we had given up at that stage, we would walk on all fours for the rest of our lives.
6. Plan a reward. Once you have reached your goal celebrate, do something nice for yourself. You deserve it.

And finally:

"We are judged by what we finish, not what we start."
– Anonymous

"It takes the hammer of persistence to drive the nail of success."
– John Mason, Writer

I am taking a bit of a holiday break, so there won’t be any new posts until very early in the New Year. Any returning visitors to this blog, please be patient until the first week of January, when there will be more organisational musings and unmissable ti ps and tricks from me.

Until then, have a wonderful Holiday Season and a very Happy New Year!

I can see 2 reactions to the title of this post, one being: "yeah right, my children want to get organised, ha ha" (in a sarcastic tone of thought), the other one being: "hmm, I wonder where this is going" (in a sort of interested tone of thought).

Well, I thought that we quite often underestimate our beloved little ones. You might have heard them make comments like the following before, just never thought they might actually lead to something productive.

I have borrowed the list from a book entitled "Organizing from the Inside Out" by Julie Morgenstern, a US organising guru. If you are truly serious about getting organised and want to try it yourself then I really recommend her book.

Here’s the list (with its original US spellings):

"My favorite toys get broken"
"I can’t play my favorite games because the pieces are lost"
"I get in trouble at school for always losing my homework"
"There’s no room in here to play with my friends"
"Cleaning up is too hard. I don’t know where to put anything"

If you have ever heard your little ones utter any of these or similar then they are ready to get organised and with your help they can achieve that. Sort with them, purge with and/or for them, organise things into suitable containers and teach them how to maintain and you will have equipped them with important skills for life.

So why do your little angels want to get organised, what are their incentives? (Another list from Julia.)

"Less fights with Mom"
"Easier to have friends over"
"No more broken or lost toys"
"Bigger allowance" (It’s OK to offer your children rewards.)
"It’ll be faster to clean up"
"Better grades in school"

Even if you suggest those reasons to your kids rather than the reasons coming from them, these are good reasons that are hard to argue with, whatever their age.

You might have noticed a box on the right side of the blog entitled "Motivational Quote of the Day". Today’s quote reads "People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. -Zig Ziglar". What a smart man Mr Ziglar was.

That is exactly the reason why I have included that motivational box on my blog. I also believe that a little bit of daily inspiration and motivation goes a long way. So today I would like to invite you to visit that little box once a day, and get your daily dose of motivation. You might just be surprised where it takes you.

Have you ever found yourself trawling through a supermarket, back and forth, front of the shop, back of the shop and back to the front again, to get every item on your shopping list? If this is the case, you probably wasted lots of time doing so. This week I’ve got a tip how you can avoid all that to-and-fro-ing in the future.

Arrange your shopping list according to the isles in your supermarket. I am certain you have been to your supermarket enough times to know roughly which items are displayed in what order. Write out your shopping list accordingly keeping like with like (so all the vegetables together, all the dairy products in one group, all the meat items, etc.).

If you’re not too sure about the order in your supermarket, use your next shopping trip to make notes. Then from the shopping trip after that onwards you can get yourself organised and avoid unnecessary hikes through the isles.

Keep a plastic bag in your car so that rubbish doesn’t have a chance to build up. Putting it in a handy place so that you can easily reach it will ensure that you’ll actually use it. Make sure you take it with you when you get out of the car once in a while and dispose of it in your wheelie bin before you even enter your house.

This tip is especially useful for longer journeys when rubbish usually tends to pile up.

Now and again we find ourselves waiting. Waiting for the kettle to boil, being on hold on the phone, standing in a queue or waiting for the computer to boot up. You can use those time pockets to get small jobs done. There are dozens of little mini jobs that always need doing, such as wiping up a spill, emptying/filling the dishwasher, putting a few items away, filing a couple of papers, deleting some emails that clutter up your inbox, etc., etc. Keeping on top of those little jobs using your time pockets will save you a lot of time in the long run.

In this final instalment on procrastination I want to go through some more reasons why someone might be prone to putting things off. We have already discussed the "no time" factor and reasons that might be to do with the project itself. Today I will highlight the reasons to do with someone’s personality. These could be

1. Perfectionism
2. Thriving on adrenaline
3. Lack of self confidence
4. Internalised negatives
5. Externalised positives

Let’s look at these hurdles for getting things done in detail, see what they are about and how they manifest and what you can do about them.

1. A lot of people have a perfectionist trait. Some more, some less. "I can’t start this project until I have got everything I need and until the conditions are absolutely perfect." This kind of mindset is fine if that perfect condition is feasible and you have a good track record of starting and finishing your projects. If you don’t, then your perfectionism is probably an excuse for not starting the project at all. Turn it around and ask yourself, what is the minimum I need for this project? Once you’ve got that sorted, put a start date in your diary and get that project on the road.

2. "I work better under pressure." We all know people like that and we might have used that phrase ourselves. Again, there are two ways of dealing with this. Number one, it’s a good excuse not to start until the last possible moment, and it’s simply a way to put things off. Make life easier for yourself; and divide your project into segments and do one each day until it’s done. Number two, if you literally work better under pressure, and some of us do, then make the project more challenging. Set minigoals with a shorter deadline. This way you keep yourself on your toes but are still making timely progress towards your end goal.

3. If you suffer from a lack of self confidence and feel that you simply can’t tackle the project try one of these options. Find out what the first thing is you need to do to start the project and divide the project into smaller chunks. Smaller bites are easier to digest, the same goes for project size. If you are unsure of how to do this, find someone who has done a similar project before and ask for advice. That way you get some expert help and you will soon be on the way to completing the once daunting task.

4. What I mean by internalised negatives are that you look for faults within yourself. If you do this, you will quite easily come up with negative emotions, such as "I’m lazy that’s why I don’t get things done" or "I’m stupid that’s why I don’t know where to start". First of all, I can assure you that none of this is true. You are neither lazy nor stupid or anything else of that kind. You might lack motivation or not be an expert on a particular subject but you can easily do something about that. Why don’t you think of a treat that you reward yourself with, once you have completed the first part of the task and then keep rewarding yourself for every bit that you achieve until the project is completed. And just as with number 3 (lack of self confidence) there is no shame in asking people for help and advice on how to tackle a particular project. We don’t all have to reinvent the wheel and most people are very happy to share their skills and knowledge.

5. Externalised positives are usually the reverse side of the same coin as internalised negatives. It means that you attribute anything positive that you do to outside influences and not to your skills and abilities, such as "I was lucky last time and it was easy. I could never do that again." It is usually a sign of lack of self confidence. Achieving something has most often nothing to do with luck. It is more likely to be the result of hard work and skill. Luck is good for gambling and that’s about it. And when you found something easy then you had the skills and talent to do it and nothing less. Don’t hide your light under a bush – as the saying goes and be proud of your achievements. Especially when it comes to what you tell yourself. We are usually our own worst critics and forget to be our own strongest supporters.