Flourish Organizing

Part 3: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit: Setting Boundaries with Non-Household Members

11/6/2020

This is part 3 in a series about not using your home as a storage unit. In part 1, we discussed how your home should be for living; it should be filled with items that you use now and enjoy having around. In part 2, we reflected on whether or not we were storing any items for non-household members and what our motivations were behind those decisions. If feelings of resentment surface, this is a sign that it may be time to make some changes. In part 3, we will discuss how to set boundaries with those non-household members.

Your home is your home. You have the right to choose what to keep there. You get to decide if other people’s items get to take up space in your home. As you reflect, do know that it does take time, space, and money to store other people’s things in your home. You will need to spend time keeping up with them, organizing them, and cleaning them. You pay for all of the space in your home, whether you are renting or owning. You can choose to do so. But you can also choose not to. These reflections are not meant to make you feel bad about your choices. They are instead meant to help you to take a step back to look at the situation, to sort out your own feelings and to ultimately be confident with the choices that you are making.

White image with green square border. Black lettering says

Part 2: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit: Are You Storing Other People's Items in Your Home?

11/2/2020

Are you storing other people’s items in your home? People who don’t actually live there?
… a grown child’s toys and memorabilia
… your brother’s furniture that doesn’t fit in his current home
… clothes or tools you borrowed from a friend
… items you inherited from deceased family members
… your great aunt’s furniture that you really don’t like

Working as a professional organizer, I find that many people do have other people’s belongings stored in their home. The reasons are vast and varied. (Link to Part 1: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit.)

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having other people’s items in your home. But if you feel resentful about it, it may be time to take a closer look at why:

What is your motivation for keeping other people’s items?

Part 1: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit

10/28/2020

Our homes are meant for us to live in… to do life in. They are meant to be filled with things that help us to live and things that make us happy while we are living there. Our homes are not meant to be a storage unit... filled with boxes or piles of things that you don’t actually use.

Take a moment to reflect on your home... are you using it the way you want to? If it feels more like a storage unit, it may be time to reassess and declutter.

Bringing your VHS memories back!

8/20/2020

Guest author Soledad Buznego shares tips on how to digitize your VHS family videos!

This summer I challenged myself to bring back all my childhood memories that were sleeping at my parent’s house in boxes and boxes. If you are an 80s kid like me, you will then know that the only format that can give testimony of how you looked, how you moved, how you played and how you sounded are VCR videos.

I did know it wasn't going to be an easy task – not because of the IT part, as I consider myself a bit nerdy on that aspect – but because it meant bringing back vivid pictures that captured the essence of so many people whom I loved and who are sadly not here with me anymore (my grandpas, aunts, uncles). So, I prepared myself for an emotional task – oh yeah!

Photo Credit "In Joy Organization"

Bottom of VHS cassette tape; black with white circles; background is a light pink wall

Photo credit Pexels

KonMari tackles sentimental items (such as photos, memorabilia, heirlooms, etc.) as the last category of the tidying festival, because when you reach to this point you have already honed your spark joy sensibility and are in a better position to decide whether an item will serve a good purpose in your life. By the time I did my tidying festival -I have to be honest- I didn’t check these cassettes (shame on me! I know) but mainly because I had forgotten they even existed and because they were not 100% mine, they were my whole family’s.

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From the desk of Laura

Part 3: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit: Setting Boundaries with Non-Household Members

Part 2: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit: Are You Storing Other People's Items in Your Home?

Part 1: Your Home is Not a Storage Unit

Bringing your VHS memories back!

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