Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
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Hello! I'm Janine Adams - a certified professional organizer based in St. Louis, and the creator of Peace of Mind Organizing®. If you're ready to declutter with a purpose and add more ease to your life, you've found the right blog - and you've found the right company.
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2w ago
10 years ago (almost to the day!) I wrote this post which I think offers sound advice. I’m happy to say that I’ve heeded this advice over the last decade, making my current downsizing project easier than it otherwise would be. Now seems like a good time to run this again!
It’s basement season for my business. I’ve been in a lot of basements recently and my teams have helped make them much more enjoyable and functional spaces. I keep seeing the same sorts of items, so I decided to a create a quick list of items that I frequently see people unnecessarily hanging onto in basements (and other par ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2w ago
Our yard sale was in the basement.
For years, I’ve discouraged clients who said they wanted to hold a yard sale. I always told them that it was a whole lot of work for not a lot of reward and it would be easier to just donate the stuff they were ready to let go of. If the client insisted they wanted to try a yard sale, I’d extract a promise that they would have a charity pickup scheduled for the day of or the day after the sale.
That was before I’d held a yard sale. I just had one and guess what? My advice hasn’t changed. We’re getting ready to move and we’re letting go of a lot of stuff. We ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
1M ago
I received some great feedback on the idea of using a bingo card to make downsizing easier. I’m so glad it struck a chord!
I used a bingo card for a few days last week and then realized that the strategy wasn’t going to be effective for my particular downsizing project. While I was motivated to do five minutes of decluttering at a time, striving for the bingo didn’t help because my projects are scattered all over my big house. So now I’ve reverted to a more traditional approach of working in one area of the house at a time until I run out of time for that particular session.
A huge success of ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
1M ago
My husband, Barry, and I decided last week to sell our house and move into an apartment. We have rented an apartment starting in July, which gives me a couple of months to go through our accumulated belongings and figure out what we want to move and what to do with the rest of the stuff.
I love managing clients’ moves, but it definitely feels more overwhelming when it’s my own move I’m managing!
We have lived in this home 23 years and we’re cutting our living space in about half, so I have my work cut out for me. I really want to avoid procrastinating on the decluttering. So I’ve set up a litt ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
1M ago
I was delighted to be asked to be part of an article on GQ’s website titled, 6 Ways to Create a Healthier Home Routine This Spring. The article details six different ways you can introduce new, healthier habits into your life. I was interviewed along with four other experts in various arenas. I especially love item #4, with advice from Michael Easter, to remove barriers to getting exercise so that you make it easy to integrate exercise into your life.
It’s a great, short read with some terrific advice. Check it out ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2M ago
This is the third in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I rerun it periodically. Part 1 (I might need it some day ) was published on March 18 and Part 2 (I paid a lot for that) appeared March 25.
The third common excuse we hear for keeping an unloved or unused item is that it was a gift. This is a tough one. People tend to have a difficult time parting with items that were given to them. (As an aside, this has completely ch ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2M ago
This is the second in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I periodically run it again. Part 1 (I might need it some day) appeared last week. Stay tuned for part 3 next week.
The second most common excuse we hear from clients who want to keep something they don’t use of love is that they paid a lot for that item. I get it. It feels terrible to let go of an expensive item that turned out to be a foolhardy purchase. But you kno ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2M ago
This is the first in a three-part series of posts debunking the three excuses we hear most frequently from clients for wanting to keep items they no longer use or love. The series originally ran in January and February 2017 and I rerun it periodically. Stay tuned for parts 2 & 3 in the coming weeks.
When we work with clients on decluttering, we discuss their goals and motivations for letting go of excess. They understand that it makes most sense to hang on to meaningful items, not those that are sitting idle. Yet it’s not unusual for a client to want to keep an unused item that’s perfectl ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
2M ago
I have been using a Bullet Journal to keep track of everything in my life since December 2021. I’m on my 13th handwritten journal. (I love B5 size dot grid journals. My current favorite is from Scribbles That Matter 120 GSM Dotted Journal – Pro.)
I like making my Bullet Journals pretty without going overboard. I tend to write with a black pen but use a lot of Zebra Mildliner highlighters (I use both brush and chisel points) and Sharpie S-Note Duo for color when I need it. (Check out this October 2022 post about my bullet journals for more details on how I journal.)
After careful trial and err ..read more
Peace of Mind Organizing Blog
3M ago
I’m tickled pink to congratulate my employee of four years, Beth Hunyar, on becoming a Certified Professional Organizer®. She passed the rigorous exam yesterday.
This is a big achievement. In order to qualify to sit for the exam, an organizer must have 1500 paid client hours or 1250 paid client hours + 250 substitute education hours in the past five years. This is a solid credential that recognizes knowledge and experience.
The CPO® credential was established in 2007. At that time I didn’t have the hours to qualify for the exam, but I took it the following year and became St. Louis’s first CP ..read more