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Are you organizationally challenged? Professional organizers frequently hear clients proclaim this as they confess, “I just don’t know where to start” or “I don’t know how things should be set up”.  Or, perhaps you are space-challenged, sounding more like this: “I’m organized but there just isn’t enough storage in my home.”

In either case, one way to begin addressing the task of getting and keeping your home, with all its charms and faults, organized is to set up zones.

As an elementary school classroom may have a carpeted area for reading, desks for writing, and an art area with supply cupboards, our homes — and the rooms within — can be arranged so that items found in a certain zone support the activities that take place there.

To make the shift from feeling as though you have everything everywhere to having just what you need where you need it, start by making a list of all the rooms you will address. List the activities you would like to happen in each room as your roadmap toward creating your dream home.
For instance:
Dining Room – eat meals, do crafts
Kitchen – cook, homework, pay bills
Bedroom – sleep, exercise

Beginning with one room, let’s say kitchen, remove all items that have no relevance to the activities you have listed. Do you see any sports gear, toiletries or giftwrap lying around?
All these need to move out.

Once you’ve removed what doesn’t belong, it’s time to address what’s left. Think about what normally happens when you do the activities assigned to this room. Do you run to get a certain supply from elsewhere every time? If so, now’s the time to bring that item in. For instance, if homework and paying bills occur in the kitchen, are the basic supplies for those activities handy? Pens, pencils, stamps, a computer charging station? How about cooking supplies? Are you headed down to the basement for pans you use each month while storing the Thanksgiving turkey plate within an arm’s reach?

After you’ve determined that the supplies you have handy are the ones you need, it is time to set up your zones. Do you have trouble preparing dinner because your counter is cluttered with pens, glue and papers? Decide where homework and bill work is done and designate drawers, cabinets, bins or baskets to house those supplies. Relocate all your kitchen items according to their appropriate zone.

The final step is to assess the amounts that you need.
Now that you have all the writing instruments gathered into one area, will dozens of pens clog the supply drawer making it difficult to find anything else you need? See if just 5 or ten would suffice. Or maybe you haven’t assigned enough space for homework and office supplies.

Do you find that you no longer cook as much as you used to? Perhaps you don’t need to keep all three cupcake pans. When you got that new coffee maker that takes k-cups, did you hang on to the last one? How about the one before that? Do you have the space for all these extra appliances that might be useful again someday but take up lots of living space today?

When your zones are complete, take a moment each day before leaving each room to glance around for items that have wandered out of place and quickly move them back into their appropriate zone.

Let go of clutter and live your dream.

If you are reading this, chances are that you will need an executor and/or will be an executor at some point in your life. An executor is the person named in a will to administrate the estate of the person who died leaving that will. The job of the executor is to make sure that the deceased person’s wishes, as described in the will, are carried out.
Here are some of the tasks executors perform:

• Inventorying the assets of the deceased: cash money, financial investments, real estate, collections of valuable objects, the contents of a home, as well as personal articles such as clothing and jewelry (this collection of assets is known as “the estate”).
• Obtaining contact information for far-flung beneficiaries and heirs named in the will, as well as notifying them.
• Identifying any outstanding debts of the deceased person and paying them off. Working with banks and other financial institutions to transfer money from living accounts to estate accounts.
• Calculating the taxes due on the estate, filing the estate tax return, and paying those taxes on time.
• Assisting an attorney, accountant, or other professional associated with the will.
• Distributing the estate to the beneficiaries and heirs after all the above has been completed, and disposing of what remains.

These tasks can be complex, full of “red tape” and frustrating, so it is important to choose the right person for the job.

A good executor is:

• Detail-oriented
• Comfortable with numbers
• A good problem-solver
• Willing to make decisions
• Patient when faced with frustration
• Able to be fair and impartial with family members and other heirs
• Available to spend the considerable time it can take to administer an estate

Too often, people making a will choose their executor based on family dynamics or out of a wish to bestow an ‘honor’ on a special person in their life. They give little consideration to the personal traits and skills needed by the executor, with disastrous results. As a professional organizer specializing in finances and paperwork, I have witnessed these horror stories when the wrong person was chosen for the job of executor:

• The sibling who was emotionally closest to the parent was chosen as executor. The executor was impatient and unable to be impartial; emotional blowups were frequent during the distribution of the estate, and assets were distributed first to the executor and then to the ‘squeaky wheel’ among the heirs.
• The will-maker chose the child who had pursued the same career, believing this ensured the necessary qualifications to be an executor. But this executor lacked the time to administer the estate and was easily frustrated when faced with red tape. The will-maker died five years ago and the estate is still not wrapped up.
• An executor with a lifelong fear of math procrastinated with the numbers and details of the estate, potentially missing tax deadlines and paying penalties and interest as a result.

The key take-away from this post is to choose your executor carefully, based on the skills needed to do the job. But perhaps, you have already chosen an executor who lacks some of these skills, and you don’t want to make waves by changing. Or maybe, you have been named as someone’s executor and feel unqualified for the job. In either case, don’t despair, because help is available. Professional organizers can help inventory the deceased person’s possessions, and can help sell and/or donate possessions not inherited by a specific individual. Some organizers specialize in the organizing of finances, paperwork and information, and can help with these aspects of the executor’s job. A good place to find an organizer to help with the administration of an estate is the ‘Find an Organizer’ link at www.napo-gpc.org.