Making Room for You: A Practical Guide to Organizing Your home

By Meghan Hill

A professional organizer with over ten years of experience, Meghan Hill helps you:

• organize your home


• put practical tips to immediate use


• develop methods for sorting and letting go


• identify and avoid pitfalls


• specify how to outfit your home for ultimate organization 
  
  This book also addresses the emotional and psychological impediments that prevent us from getting and staying organized and gently explores how to overcome them. Written with directness, insight and brevity, Making Room for You simplifies the process of restoring order to your home and your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meghan Hill
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781393621980

Book preview

Making Room for You:

A Practical Guide to Organizing Your Home

Meghan Hill

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Copyright 2018

Table of Contents

Introduction

Letting Go

Know What You Have

Emotions and Resistance

Respect and Enjoy What You Have

Lessons for Releasing

Sorting and Clearing

No More Excuses

Don’t Try This At Home

Room by Room

Well, What About This Stuff?

The End (and Your New Beginning)

Appendix

Introduction

Our stuff is one of the precious few things in our life that we can control. Think about this. Let it sink in. From where you are now, you may not see it this way but it is true nonetheless. Realize that, because this is true, it is unnecessary for your stuff to make you feel out of control. I have written this book to help you re-empower yourself and to help you take back control of a primary area in all our lives: our stuff.

I have been a professional organizer for over eight years and in addition to learning a great deal about the practical aspects of organizing, I have learned invaluable lessons about the way people live and the way people want to live. I feel blessed by all the people I have worked with who have the courage and vulnerability to let me into their homes, their belongings, and their lives. Countless people I work with are overwhelmed and afraid at first and then realize that the process is much more liberating and satisfying than they originally thought it would be. While working with clients, I have laughed, cried, gotten stern, and felt myself soften toward them as they have shared their life experiences with me via conversations about their stuff. Having these dialogues opens people up to understanding more about themselves, their things, and what matters to them. These experiences have allowed me to explore and understand the underlying principles of how we can create what we want in our lives.

To be fair, I have always had a mind for organization. In grade school, I cleaned my room for fun. I drove my friends crazy because when they wanted to play, I wanted to organize their rooms so we would have a tidy place to play. Despite these characteristics and behaviors, though, I was a saver. I saved everything: bottle caps from a fun evening, programs for plays that I wasn’t even in, clothing I hadn’t worn for years, and all manner of cluttering minutiae. It was organized but it was excessive and unnecessary. I understand firsthand what it feels like to want to hold onto everything.

When my parents moved during my sophomore year in college, I came home to contend with too much stuff. My Dad came into the room, saw the distress on my face after several hours of sorting, lovingly told me to let it go, and held open trash bag after trash bag so I could finally release 21 years of stuff that I thought was so important but that sat neglected in my closet for several years. It was a revelation. It liberated me and led to a sense of simplicity so rewarding that I feel compelled to share the steps toward it with you. I am including what I learned and implemented for over one hundred clients. Reading this book is almost as great as having me alongside you as you go through the process.

Provided you use some of the following techniques, you have a lot to look forward to. The satisfaction and internal rewards of truly getting organized once and for all are beyond price and description. Opening a drawer, cupboard, or closet to see everything in its place when you once had to exasperatingly dig around for it will add years to your life and joy to those years. During this process, it’s okay to cry or get upset. Discomfort, fear, and anger are normal responses that you may go through but I promise you, these feelings don’t last. You have to go through them to be through with them. What I want for you is to gain peace and freedom, to regain control of your life. You can do it and you deserve it. When called into question, certain items may cause feelings of panic or emergency. Anything that makes you feel this way ought to be on its way out.

Getting organized essentially breaks down into three steps which I will cover throughout the book in detail:

1) We address our emotions as they arise and as they pertain to our stuff

2) We declutter, meaning we make decisions we’ve been putting off

3) We implement solutions for what we choose to keep (where it goes and how it is stored).

This book has been written with great