You and I share at least two things in common. We both have 24 hours in a day, and our days are finite. Yet how we experience and use our time varies widely.

Perhaps you are time-aware. You know how much time you have and spend it intentionally. Or maybe you have difficulty keeping track of time, feel time-poor, are easily distracted, and never have enough hours to get things done.

If you think of your relationship to time on a scale from zero to one hundred, with one end representing a total lack of time awareness and intentionality and the other representing high time awareness and intentionality, where would you place yourself? Whether your number is zero or one hundred, several concepts can improve your relationship with time and help you approach it more compassionately.

Time Management Scale

Before I share the strategies, review the Time Management Scale to get a sense of where you are right now. This isn’t an exact science, but the scale will help you identify your strengths and challenges. Understanding your relationship with time, combined with the concepts I’m about to share, can be a game-changer for you.

How to Use the Scale

• Reflect honestly on where you are today

• Identify your target range and desired habits

• Take consistent action to improve your score over time

Remember that small choices about how you spend your time today shape your future.

3 Ideas to Encourage More Compassionate and Aligned Time Management

There are three ways to align your time in a more compassionate and powerful way. As I mentioned earlier, the time available each day is fixed. Your life and the time you have left are finite. None of us knows how many days remain. How you use this precious resource shapes your life.

1. Energy

Have you noticed how your energy ebbs and flows throughout the day? For example, I have more energy and mental clarity earlier in the day, and my energy lessens as the day goes on. Matching high-brain-demand tasks, such as planning or writing, with the time of day I’m ‘fully charged’ works better for me. Lower-brain-demand tasks, like resetting spaces or grocery shopping, can be done when my energy is less.

As you plan your available time and how you will spend it, factor in your energy. A while ago, Executive Coach Marcy Stoudt introduced me to the reframing of time management as energy management.

It’s helpful to consider how you’re planning and using your time. One thing I’ve learned is how much longer tasks take when my energy isn’t aligned. For example, when I’m tired and my energy is low, it takes me two to three times as long to do certain tasks as when I’m well-rested and in my high-energy, brain-power part of the day.

Aligning your energy management with how you use your time is a compassionate practice.

“Small choices about how you spend your time today shape your future.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

2. Priorities

Have you noticed that some priorities, especially those tied to values, are fixed while others are flexible? For example, family might always be a top priority, so you’ll drop everything if someone in your family needs you. Or, when planning, family considerations drive your choices.

Flexible priorities are tasks, goals, and commitments that matter but don’t require immediate action or have a set deadline.

Flexible priorities could include:

• Projects with open deadlines

• Buy groceries sometime this week

• Meet a friend for coffee in the next few months

• Edit belongings to downsize

• Plant flowers in the garden

• Clean out the garage this season

• Improve sleep habits

• Try a meditation app

When considering your available time, aligning your priorities with your values and clarifying which tasks are fixed or flexible can lead to a more compassionate way forward.

3. Reality

Ah, yes! The old reality check. Here’s where time management can go sideways. Many people I know, including clients, struggle to align their available time with how long tasks take. This is where optimism needs to be balanced with a realistic understanding of time.

Has this happened to you? I see it most often on ambitious to-do lists. For example, you sit down to write your daily list. You have twenty or thirty items and expect to do them all today because they’re all “equally important.” Yet as the day goes on, you’ve only gotten to a few items. It’s clear you won’t finish everything. The day isn’t over, and you’re starting to feel stressed and defeated. Believe me, I get it. Reality and intention are two very different things.

• Reality Check 1: Not everything is equally important.

• Reality Check 2: Your list is too ambitious to complete in one day.

• Reality Check 3: Optimism is great, but balance it with a realistic understanding of your available time and how long tasks take.

• Reality Check 4: Reduce the size of your list. Curate a daily list of 1-5 items. Get those done, then review the time you have left before adding more to your day.

When you stop planning for an ideal day and start planning for the day you actually have, you gain a greater sense of control, accomplishment, and ease.

Are You Ready to Bring a More Compassionate Approach to Time Management?

The number is 24, as in the hours in a day. The number of days you have left is unknown. You have choices about how to spend your time. Use understanding and compassion as you plan and decide.

What will that look like for you? Which time management ideas resonate most with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

How Can I Help?

Do you feel overwhelmed, disorganized, and time-stressed? Are you struggling to manage all your tasks, goals, and commitments? I’m here to help! You don’t have to do this alone. Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – Local feel with a global reach.

Let’s connect! I’m easy to reach.

• Schedule a Discovery Call

• Fill out the Contact Form

• Email me at linda@ohsoorganized.com or

• Call 914-271-5673

Managing your time, getting organized, and living with more ease are possible, especially with support.

My clients often say that clutter causes them stress. Clutter-related stress can come from several sources, such as:

• An overabundance of items to manage and maintain

• Too much visual stimulation or overload

• Difficulty making decisions

• Being the recipient or holder of other people’s things, such as adult kids or deceased loved ones’ belongings

• Accumulating things, yet rarely editing or letting go

• Perfectionism

• Overshopping

• Executive functioning challenges that make it difficult to plan, categorize, prioritize, or sequence

• Not establishing ‘homes’ for things

Where Is It?

I want to focus today on the last point about ‘homes’ for things. When you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s stressful and frustrating. It can make the simplest task take twice as long because you can’t find what you need to do ‘x.’ Not knowing where your things are can affect your time and relationships, leading to lateness and causing stress with family, friends, or co-workers.

The challenge of not having ‘homes’ for things can show up in various ways.

• Have you ever misplaced your keys and spent 30 frantic minutes looking for them, only to be late for a coffee date with your friend?

• Have you ever tried to cook dinner and couldn’t find the pot you needed, the measuring spoons, or the recipe you wanted to use?

• Have you ever gone to pay for your purchases at the local store only to realize you couldn’t find your wallet?

• Have you ever been about to make an important call and couldn’t find your cell phone anywhere?

Do these scenarios, or anything like them, resonate with you?

“When you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s stressful and frustrating.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

The ‘Adult Version’ of a Childhood Song

A while ago, I found an anonymous Internet meme or joke that connects to the childhood singsong, “Head and shoulders, knees and toes.” Do you remember that one? If not, check out this short, silly video.

This meme is:

“The adult version of ‘head, shoulders, knees, and toes’ is ‘wallet, glasses, keys, and phone.’”

The song helps you identify and quickly locate your body parts. It’s useful to apply the same strategy to your belongings by creating ‘homes’ for them. When you think of the object you want, knowing it has a home means you immediately know where to find it.

You can use this song to:

• Reinforce the value of having reliable homes for your belongings.

• Create a home right now for the thing you’re looking for, so you’ll always know where to find it.

• Lighten your mood and reduce stress when something is missing. A little humor can go a long way.

What Needs a Home?

As you think about your belongings, which things do you frequently misplace or don’t have a place for? Pick one and create a home for it right now. Build from there.

What is one consideration you use when creating an effective home for your stuff? Have you tried creating homes that don’t work? Can you describe the difficulty? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

How Can I Help?

Do you feel overwhelmed or disorganized? Is the clutter in your life causing stress and frustration? I’m here to help! You don’t have to do this alone. Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – Local feel with a global reach.

Let’s connect! I’m easy to reach.

• Schedule a Discovery Call

• Fill out the Contact Form

• Email me at linda@ohsoorganized.com or

• Call 914-271-5673

Decluttering, getting organized, and living with more ease are possible, especially with support.

Is your life overflowing with stuff? Even if your belongings have ‘homes’ and you know where to find them, does the sheer volume feel overwhelming? Drawing on more than thirty years of working with clients and my own life experience, I’ve seen how the accumulation of stuff happens. It’s a slow (and sometimes not-so-slow) creep of collecting. 

One day, you look around and wonder:

• Where did all this stuff come from?

• Do I still need these things?

• Are they taking up too much space, management time, and mental energy?

• Is all this stuff necessary for the life I’m living now?

• What will happen to my belongings when I’m gone?

• What would life feel like with less?

• What would it feel like to align what I own with the life I’m living?

There are many ways to think about clutter and the physical items that accompany your life. Let’s look at three reasons why decluttering sooner rather than later could benefit you. If even one idea resonates with you, it could be the cue and motivation you need to begin the decluttering process.

3 Compelling Reasons to Declutter Now Instead of Waiting

1. 300,000!

A frequently cited statistic in the organizing industry and media is the number of things we accumulate. Estimates suggest that the average American household may contain hundreds of thousands of items. The number often cited is 300,000. That’s a lot of stuff!

Whether that’s your number is a separate question. I don’t know what our household number is. Out of curiosity, I counted some objects in a few areas, and I was surprised by what I found:

• 778 – Number of items in the bedroom clothing closet, including clothes, hangers, shoes, shoe boxes, and some accessories. We have additional clothes and shoes in the dressers and other areas.

• 289 – Number of items in the dining room china cabinet. We have more dishes in the kitchen.

• 49 – Number of items in the desk pen cup. I have many more writing instruments in other areas and in the supply cabinet.

The 1,116 items counted so far represent only a tiny portion of what we have in our household. I'm not sure whether we actually own 300,000 items. The idea is to recognize what you have and align it with what you want, need, and use.

By focusing on specific areas and doing a quick count, I spotted several things that could go. For instance, I don’t like all the pens that have landed in the pen cup—time to declutter. Even in the china cabinet, there are several dishes I don’t want that could go. While I regularly go through my clothing closet, more could be edited out.

Being aware of how much you have will help you declutter the things that no longer matter or are not useful to you.

2. Yikes!

Clutter can cause stress and affect your ability to focus. My clients have described how clutter affects them as,

• “I have so much clutter I can’t even think.”

• “I don’t want to feel overwhelmed by my stuff.”

• “The clutter is distracting, and I can’t focus.”

• “Clutter makes me feel agitated and angry.”

• “I don’t want to feel clutter-related stress and anxiety.”

Research backs up the experience my clients describe. UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) conducted research and discovered that “cluttered home environments were associated with elevated cortisol levels – especially among women who described their homes as chaotic or stressful.” Cortisol is the hormone produced as part of the body’s stress response.

Neuroscience research on cognitive overload and attention, including Princeton University’s work, shows that visual clutter, or “competing visual stimuli,” reduces the brain’s ability to focus and process information efficiently.

Knowing how clutter can affect your stress, attention, and functioning makes a compelling case for decluttering sooner rather than later.

“Clutter can cause stress and affect your ability to focus.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

3. For love.

Recently, I came across an Instagram video featuring Alice D’Antoni Phillips, a psychologist-turned-chef. She discussed the emotional struggle of letting go of sentimental items while downsizing. Alice also described letting go as “an act of care.” She didn’t want to burden her loved ones with decisions about her stuff after she’s gone.

Then she said a beautiful phrase that stuck with me. It’s so gentle, compassionate, and loving. Alice said, “Easing the path of life for the people you love.” In that, she acknowledged that we’re all going to be gone at some point. We are born. We live. We die. That’s the reality.

The other part was about making it easier for the people you love by handling your stuff before you go. Making decisions and decluttering now are expressions of love.

It’s never too soon to start decluttering. Your loved ones will thank you.

Why Declutter Now?

There are countless reasons to declutter now, without delay. Some might be:

• Your clutter is causing undue stress.

• You have more things than you use, need, or want.

• You want to make decisions about your belongings so your loved ones don’t have to after you’re gone.

• You want to downsize and prepare to move.

• You’re fed up with all the stuff.

• You want greater clarity of mind and in your space.

What are your compelling reasons to declutter? What is motivating you? Which ideas resonate most? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

How Can I Help?

Do you feel overwhelmed or disorganized? Is the clutter in your life causing stress and keeping you from living the life you want? I’m here to help! You don’t have to do this alone. Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – Local feel with a global reach.

Let’s connect! I’m easy to reach.

• Schedule a Discovery Call

• Fill out the Contact Form

• Email me at linda@ohsoorganized.com or

• Call 914-271-5673

Decluttering, getting organized, and living with more ease are possible, especially with support.

Does this sound familiar? You face a challenge that you're constantly thinking about, and it’s negatively impacting your daily life. You’re stuck, feeling like you’re taking action just because you’re dwelling on the problem, yet nothing changes. There’s no progress.

Then you get an idea that, “Hey, maybe someone can help me figure this out.” You’d like to solve it on your own. After all, you’re a capable person who knows how to do a lot. And while that’s a wonderful thing, at this moment in time, you recognize something. You can’t do it all yourself. More importantly, you realize that your best next step is to reach out for help.

You don’t want to ruminate on the problem any longer or have the energy to resolve it on your own. While you’ve been feeling stuck and frustrated, now you’re ready to accept help. This is a fabulous place to be when you can embrace support.

Guess what? I experienced this recently, and it was so liberating. I reached out to people who could help- the plumber and the appliance repair guys. Within a few hours, the problems were diagnosed and fixed. Things that had been bothering me for a while were now no longer an issue. What a big relief!

Here’s to discovering ways to feel calmer, lower stress, and carve out time for what you enjoy most.

Three Benefits of Enlisting Help as Your Next Step

1. Less Bother and Stress

When things work, you don’t give them much thought. It’s life as usual. Things flow easily. However, when they break or aren’t functioning, it can be stressful, bothersome, and costly.

I noticed that the water pressure in our house had been gradually dropping. This affected regular activities such as showering, washing clothes, flushing toilets, and doing the dishes. In addition, when our water bill arrived, it was twice as high as usual.

It took me months to recognize the problem and finally get the help needed to resolve it. Between conversations with my husband and the local Department of Public Works, we diagnosed a small pinhole leak in one of the water pipes. I made an appointment with our plumber, and he fixed it within a few hours.

2. More Time to Enjoy

Enlisting help from a pro can free up your time so you can do what you enjoy most. I so appreciate how skilled my husband is at fixing things. However, with his intense work schedule and volunteer commitments, he has limited time.

When certain parts of the refrigerator stopped functioning (ice maker and the water-in-door feature), he was going to check them out. But work and other things made it challenging to have the time to do that. After some time had passed, I decided to call the appliance repair guy. He arrived and, after an hour, got things working again.

Steve and I were able to enjoy the rest of our weekend instead of running back and forth to Home Depot for fridge parts.

“You can’t do it all yourself.”

— Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®, CVOP™

3. Having Support to Face Challenges

Every time I get a call from a potential client or work with my ongoing clients, it’s clear how much they value not having to face it alone. Their organizational challenges often feel overwhelming and insurmountable.

However, there is a noticeable difference when you seek help from a professional who

• Cares about your progress

• Can offer support around your goals

• Can discuss your specific challenges

• Can collaborate on solutions

• Can be there with you throughout your organizational journey

Getting organized can be challenging, and setbacks can happen. However, having support from someone compassionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated to you can greatly enhance your progress. Support isn’t always about doing something for someone. It can also be about walking alongside them.

I am truly grateful to be invited into my clients’ lives and to help them with their goals and organizing challenges.

When Your Next Step Needs Assistance

Are you facing a challenge that might benefit from outside help? What’s been preventing you from seeking that support? Can you describe one benefit of enlisting help?

Which ideas resonate with you most? I’d love to hear your thoughts. I invite you to join the conversation.

How Can I Help?

Do you feel overwhelmed or disorganized? Do you want to take your next step but feel stuck or unsure? I’m here to help! You don’t have to do this alone. Virtual organizing is an extraordinary path forward – Local feel with a global reach.

Let’s connect! I’m easy to reach.

• Schedule a Discovery call

• Fill out the Contact form

• Email me at linda@ohsoorganized.com or

• Call 914-271-5673

Moving forward and getting organized are possible, especially with support.