Let It Go or Organize It

Getting a new dream home or condo is a great thing to come into your life. It's getting and keeping it organized that is the key.

Feng shui the Sharon Hay way includes less clutter, so the energy flow is better in the home or condo. That is not an event but a lifestyle.

"The more you de-clutter, the more comes in and opportunities and other things fall into place," Hay says.

She explains that there are nine stations of life, and different elements enhance aspects of life. Each element has a colour and a shape.

"I get their [clients'] year of birth which gives me which directions are best for success," Hay says. "I find out how many bedrooms, how long they've been living there, how old the building is?what's been going on in their life, if they just got married, if they just changed careers. We go forward to remove any blockages and enhance with the elements."

Landscaping inside and outside the home is important in organizing the feng shui way. Artificial trees, pictures and plants help to avoid the negative environmental influences. Even with a condo, you would need more pictures of flowers and vibrant colours of plants and trees.

"Too much red is too stimulating, too much fire energy," says Hay. "If someone has a lot of kids, they have to keep it fairly grounded. Oranges, beiges, taupes, yellows and things in square patterns. You can have square pillows on the couch.It gives a lot more of a feeling of security. [The parents] have to try and keep the toys under control, and if things are out in the hallway and picking the rubber ducky off your kitchen counter - things become chaotic, hard to think, hard to focus, the relationship gets stressed."

Hay says a lot about organizing is going with your gut feelings. Holding onto things you do not need can make you lose money or lose out on opportunities.

"The more you let go, the more new, fresh, vibrant energy comes in. It's been handed down through generations ? give it away."

As Nada Thomson, professional organizer with Artful Organizers, was preparing to set her parking time on her cellphone over breakfast, she added her experience to organizing a new dream home or condo.

"It was a beautiful home in Oakville?a beautiful new community there and the home was just sprawling and lovely and architecturally interesting and there was a lot of storage available in the kitchen," Thomson said. "They put a lot of thought into how they were going to organize the kitchen ? what cabinets they were going to order. So I helped them with the unpacking of their move. I wasn't around for the packing - they were coming from another city. They brought me in to help them unpack all of their stuff."

Thomson was at work with her clients to help them to use the space. She had to ask them many questions.

"Are they bakers, do they love to cook, what age group are the guests, do they have sleep-over guests, do they need a home office? All of these things I needed to know about in order to plan the storage use for them."

Thomson mentions there are two ends of the scale when it comes to storage space that is so important in organizing your new home. There are some places that do not have enough storage and others that have more than enough. The home she worked with in Oakville had more than enough.

"I've seen in other homes that have had an excess amount of storage space that there's really very little thought that goes into unpacking things. So there'll be baking material all over the kitchen, there'll be food all over the kitchen and in every cupboard. There's no flow. It takes time to find things and then things get cluttered up because people don't know where to put things back and then the next person can't find what they're looking for, and the process goes on."

Thomson found baskets at Canadian Tire that come in three different sizes to use for storage space.

"They were about three inches deep and they come in three sizes and they're actually perfect for deeper shelves," Thomson said. "We could put all the snacks into one, and all of the dog treats into another one ? so it becomes this drawer that they could pull out so they have the freedom of using the drawers without having to have custom drawers made on each shelf."

Rose Cerullo is a professional home organizer with Inspiring Spaces.

"That's the key thing about organizing," says Cerullo. "By making organizing a process so you develop a system. That makes it fun. Organizing is constant change. For example, just putting 15 minutes a day over a month is hours which is a movement towards your project which makes you feel good. People think it's going to take so long, but taking a baby step [you can] have enough energy to do other things."

Cerullo encourages her clients to organize things in 10 to 15-minute spurts. This way it becomes a regular practice that is like a journey similar to Sharon Hay?s feng shui approach.

"I've been doing this for four years and when I started, I started helping clients who were pack rats," says Cerullo. "They were collectors and didn't necessarily tune into the energy of how it doesn't feel good having all that stuff in their place. People who are organized, who are busy and are sensitive to how their environment feels, there's a common denominator with all of them. They want a better system. They have other things that are a priority who ask for your services. 'I?m spending too much time doing this over and over and over again, how can I make it more efficient?'"

Cerullo describes a client of hers that was magazine perfect when it came to her décor, but needed help with a dozen work projects she was doing from home. Her file folders were flowing.

"I asked her, 'do you use it [documents] regularly, occasionally rarely, or never?' Then I asked her to get post-its in front of the drawers that she never uses. I had her sit at her computer and identify all the broad categories of her project for the next 12 months. And all the broad categories, I had her type them in caps ? creating an index. Then the sub-categories were determined in small letters."

Cerullo left her client with 15 minutes of homework and organizing an appointment with herself. Going to one of those drawers that she rarely uses and get a banker's box to put the files in the box the order she had them in her drawer. Then they were to be labelled on the outside and relocate it to another area in her room like her furnace room, because that is where she has the extra space. The client would e-mail Cerullo, and this establishes the habit.

"The key is to schedule time and to follow through with the organizing. Then you feel energy to do something else," she says. "You can apply it to any area of your life in bite-size chunks and feel energetic after you do it ? that's the key thing you want to feel good about it."

Cerullo says she is attracting more people who see the value of being organized. They don't feel overwhelmed anymore. If you're looking for someone who could help you organize your dream home or condo, please look up the Professional Organizers in Canada for contact information to find someone right for you.