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Have someone (or several someones) on your Holiday Gift List that are a little bit organizationally impaired? Here are some great stocking stuffer ideas for the recovering pack-rat in your life. The holidays usually results in a more items coming into your home than going out, and the result is clutter.

1. Time
One of the main stumbling blocks in decluttering is the idea that it takes huge amounts of time to get clean and organized. While it can take a long time to get fully clutter-free, there are many steps that can be accomplished in as little as 20 minutes! Give the gift of time; offer to watch their children/pets/plants for a couple hours. Go pick up groceries for them. Anything that will allow them to work on decluttering without interruptions for a while.

2. Professional organizer service
Want to get really serious? Give the gift of a session with a local Professional Organizer. Professional organizers know their stuff, and they know lots of great tips and tricks that will help anyone (even me!), and they help without judging.

3. Help cleaning up
More of a Do-It-Yourselfer? Pitch in and help your friend clean up personally! Having a friend around to help can be greatly motivating and can make large tasks more manageable. Just make sure to be sensitive about their messy problem; you’re there to help, not hurt their feelings by calling Great Aunt Agatha’s thimble collection or the prized ceramic horse they made in grade 4 “junk”.

4. Container Store gift certificate (or equivalent)
“A place for everything, and everything in its place”, as they say. A common reason for clutter is a lack of space to put everything. If an item doesn’t have a “home” in your house, how can you be expected to put it away? However, this gift idea goes hand-in-hand with the Clutter Control Checklist, as you get rid of clutter, you’ll have more room to store the items you truly use and love.

5. Donation to charity in their name
A gift that helps improve the lives of the less fortunate and prevents more clutter from accumulating. What could be better? Find out what charities your clutter-prone friend supports and make a donation in their name. Usually charities have cards or certificates that you can give to show your donation.

6. Plant a tree in their name
Similar to a donation to charity, but planting a tree also helps a broader spectrum of your local community. Trees can provide beauty and shade in parks, homes for native fauna, and they help clean the air.

7. Replace (or fix) a broken item they already own
Odds are a cluttered person has at least one item in their house, likely more than one, that is broken, but has not yet been discarded. Instead, it sits there as true clutter. A bookshelf with a missing can’t hold as many books as a whole one, and that busted egg-timer in the kitchen isn’t helping anyone.

Your two cents: Do you have a smart tip for what to give someone that already has “too much stuff”? Share it here!

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7 Stocking Stuffers for Cluttered People

Receive and pay your bills online of course!

Not only does doing so reduce the amount of paper mail you receive, thus saving your counter top and desk from being buried in extra paper clutter and saving that paper for other uses, but it also reduces the amount of paper you need to store. You can usually download your bill paying activities to your favourite money management software, which lets you store the information digitally. Even if you feel the need to print out some of your bills for permanent storage, you have the ability to control how they print out. You can often halve (or more!) the amount of paper used for a single bill by eliminating the “information” pages that most institutions include with their bills (think the insert with your cable bill telling you that company also offers telephone service).

I pay all of my bills online. I always know which ones have been paid and which ones are still due, and I can look up that information almost instantly, instead of digging through the pile of papers to see if there’s any left unpaid and risking being late for a payment if I can’t find the paper bill.

Paying your bills is just as safe and secure as paying your bill by waiting in line at the bank or mailing of a cheque. Plus it’s faster, which saves you time.

Time you could spend reducing your other clutter!

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A Simple Way to Fight Paper Clutter

Ta da! Even I can do that!

I really like this idea of getting dressed all the way first thing in the morning. I don’t actually put on my shoes like they want, because we don’t wear shoes inside the house, but other than that it’s really been helping.

Before I was always rushed in the mornings. Everyday things like eating my breakfast and checking my email would somehow take up too much time and leave me rushing to get dressed and put on my makeup before I have to rush out the door on my way to work.

When I get dressed first, before all those other things, suddenly there seems to be more time in the morning. When I close down Thunderbird and put my cereal bowl in the sink (that’s now empty from the night before), I’m ready to go!

Even if you’re not doing the FlyLady steps, try it out! Get dressed first thing in the morning and see what a different it can make!

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A Simple Way to Have More Time in the Morning

I tried one once, and it was a great experience! I’ll tell you upfront that the only reason I only had one session with her was because my cat ended up needing $$$ emergency surgery, which put the kibosh on any clutter-related expenses for the rest of 2007. I won’t apologize for the fact that my cat’s life is worth more to me than a clean house.

Anyway, the professional organizer I had was awesome. I hired Heidi Kachel of Harmonious Spaces, and I found her through the Professional Organizers of Canada. She was fantastic. Able to keep me motivated throughout the day, and savvy enough to know what to say to help me just let go of some items that I didn’t need anymore. By the end of the day, I’d filled 4 garbage bags with trash, and filled the whole back of her SUV with things to donate to charity.

I am considering calling her back when I move, so that I can start off on the right foot in the new place. However, I have a lot to learn (and a lot to get rid of!) before everything will fit neatly.  We’ll see how I can do on my own first!

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Professional Organizers