A Travel Photo Essay or De-cluttering The Stress Out Of Life

It’s day 4 of my vacation. The travel adventures with my friend have done much to de-clutter any stress I may have inadvertently packed in my carry-on.

I found a really sweet place to run.
This trail near my friend's home reminded me of running in France.

Farm machinery inspired new ideas and thoughts of my Dad,
a farmer who liked to fix things.

My friend is one of the best laughers I know and I cannot count the times my belly ached from laughing in the short 3 days we spent together. She introduced me to Zumba PIC which I thoroughly enjoyed and think is very sexy even though I felt like I had 3 left feet. It was hot and sunny, the music was loud. We danced with wild abandon. Then wolfed down a satisfying Mexican lunch in the park.

I grew up with outhouses on our farm but it's been awhile. This one looked so quaint.

I love to swing. Taking a photo while swinging is tricky.

Then I asked some Mennonite farmers who were fishing which way to the running path. One  asked “Is there a problem?” I think he thought I was running from panic or emergency, not for fun. I bet you everyone there now knows about the lost Mennonite from Vancouver. The mutual novelty society? Was I as odd to them as they to me? 

Elmira is the city of garage sales. Everyone is having one. I decided to go to one, just to see what was clutter in Elmira. Would you believe I found this 1950’s New York plate for $1. Oh the irony. I figured why not support Canadian farmers with my New York souvenir shopping. That was yesterday. Here it is on the train with me, traveling through the plate's territory.

The sun was shining, so I took my friend's convertible
 for a drive to the Mennonite bakery.

TROUBLE, but cheap trouble.

We were foodies. For the birthday dinner, I methodically and carefully made the appies,  showing off my organizing talent with lettuce leaves and sliced olives. I thought the xox message for my friend was my piece de resistance.

Then my friend and I went for a photo shoot. What a pair. The picture doesn’t show all the laughter. Let’s just say we laughed so hard there were almost accidents. I love Margy. She is one of the most beautiful souls I know. I so admire her. It’s so easy to relax and be myself, to live without guards going up. Maybe I need to de-clutter stress via vacations more often.

My tagline is “Goodbye Clutter: Making room for what matters.” This week what matters is friends.

Garage Sale Stories

A month ago a new client called. She was stressed about her upcoming move. She knew she’d need to seriously downsize her chaotically cluttered home and she was floundering without any plan. It was a pleasure to work with her and see the change, both in her home and her energy. At the first session, I assessed her the level of clutter in her home, helped her clarify her goals, identified challenges, provided solutions and created a plan.

A few days ago she had a very successful garage sale. What was success for her? The sun was shining, she made $200 and best of all, it was relatively easy for her to let go and see so many of her possessions find a new home. In the process, she had de-cluttered, taken inventory, decided what was important, and let go of much of what wasn’t. I stopped by to see how she was doing. She was beaming. I even bought something myself. This skunk looked cute, so in the spirit of encouraging her to see things off to new homes, I paid the stickered price, 25 cents, and took it home to my animal shelf. 

Many clients want to make money off their ‘stuff’. It’s a great concept. When it works. Which doesn’t always happen. When is a good time to have a garage sale, you ask? If you are willing to put in the time and energy, have a good location, distribute adequate signage, and then have stuff that people will actually pay you money for, well then it may work for you.

My tips for having a garage sale include:

  1) strategic signage helps

  2) price to sell, not to make money

  3) know your bottom line in case you get a low offer for items you consider valuable,

  4) arrange your things attractively and show as much as you can (it won’t sell in a box)

  5) have a pre-arranged plan for  what to do with the leftovers, preferably for immediately following the garage sale

  6) interact with shoppers, be polite and friendly

  7) Saturdays are generally more profitable than Sundays

  8) have fun!

My personal experiences with garage sales have been mixed. Most have been fun. I’ve made between $85 and $600 on garage sales. Once I got cranky when an early bird shopper offered me a tenth of a posted price for an item I was still attached to (see tip #3).

In 1990, in Winnipeg, I was selling our house and preparing for a cross-country move to Vancouver. Downsizing for us meant a BIG garage sale. We put out everything we could find that wasn’t going to fit into our truck. We didn’t sell the kitchen sink but we did put out a toilet left over from our bathroom reno. That resulted in a comic moment later when we looked up to see a friend’s 4-year-old boy using it as his own personal toilet, as calmly as if he was in our bathroom and not being watched by about 10 shoppers. I don’t remember if the toilet sold or not, but we did have a chuckle.

Our home was a small post-war bungalow and when we'd bought the home a year-and-a-half earlier, we found a few choice items tucked up into the basement rafters. Two items stood out. Motorcycle gang colours, from The Outlaws if memory serves me, which we didn’t put on the garage sale, and a collection of big buttons with nakid men on them. Running. On beaches. We put those on a garage sale table to see what would happen. And they sold. (Okay I feel a slight twinge of guilt about my shameless teasing of the buyer.)

This Pope's Hat sold for $1209! 

Always put out anything and everything that you are ready to let go of. You never know what another person is going to buy. Or sell, which makes stopping at a garage sale kind of fun. Google 'weird things people sell at garage sales' and you will find, I kid you not, a link about a Dorito's Cheese Pope Hat http://webupon.com/services/you-bought-what-10-extraordinarily-peculiar-ebay-purchases/

I’ve also shopped at garage sales, though certainly not as much since I’ve been in the de-cluttering business. When traveling, I’ll stop at garage sales to see what people in other countries have pulled out of their closets. That’s how I found this platter in San Francisco. 

Do you have boxes piled up that you’ve been meaning to sell “Someday”? Is your home cluttered with things you don’t want? The sun’s out, perfect weather for a garage sale. Have fun with it and bless your stuff goodbye. And if we can help, by all means call Goodbye Clutter! We’ll help you make room for what matters.

Funny things I’ve found in bedrooms and closets

As a Professional Organizer I have an interesting job. I work with clients in their homes and offices, in their intimate spaces and sometimes in places haven’t been looked at in years. We de-clutter, organize, and occasionally ‘excavate’. It can be like a domestic archeological dig.

People say “You must find some interesting things”. Yes, I do. Recently I was helping a client organize her bedroom and underneath a mass of assorted clothes, newspaper fliers and what-nots was a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. I showed it to her, we laughed, and I asked if I might find a can-opener next. Another memorable moment was finding car jumper cables in a single persons bedroom! We joked about boosting their love life.

I like quirky things, like the Roy Rogers lunchbox my client used as a small boy. He put it in the discard pile but when I remarked that it was a treasure, he insisted I take it home. The dead mouse I found wasn’t quite so cute, though it did lead to shrieks, then laughter. I was sorting through toys with a client. She thought she was pulling a toy mouse out of a gift bag. She shrieked when she realized it was real. And dead, I shrieked when she shrieked and the mouse when flying through the air in the shock. Our shock, not the mouse’s.

My goal is for clients to discover the reasons and effects of their clutter, but wherever possible humour and compassion are present on the job site. Clearing the clutter can be fun. I love finding treasures.


During the course of my work, I have found bullets, cheques, cash, teeth molds, unopened mail from 40 years ago, precious jewelry, a five-year old business card from my own company, a one ounce bar of silver, and my pièce de résistance, a package (clear baggies inside other baggies) of cash, gold jewelry and a five ounce bar of gold. That’s just a small part of the rainbow of odd and interesting items found over my 12 years of de-cluttering.


I’ve been calling myself a Professional Organizer, but some days a more accurate term might be Domestic Archeologist. Got anything you want to dig up? Dig out? Dig down? Dig it man!

Clutter in our identity as women and International Women's Day Day

Years ago I presented a workshop at a Women and Spirituality Conference at UBC. My topic was "Clutter in our identity". The focus was to examine how we identified ourselves and how we were labeled by others We looked at how accurate those labels felt and how we wanted to identify ourselves moving forward.

I created a simple exercise and asked the 40+ women present to share labels they'd been given at any point in their life. I wrote them all on a blackboard. I don't recall if I was anticipating the powerful catharsis that unfolded. The list started 'mildly' with words like mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend, lover, teacher, writer, artist and got fun with things like cookie, chicky-babe, sweet-lips, pumpkin, smartest in class, class clown, future prime-minister, and then went in a more disturbing though honest direction to bitch, slut, whore, cock-tease, ice queen, dumb blonde, arm candy, eye candy, cock candy, douche bag... I asked what we thought of ourselves and out came: not good enough, exhausted, burned out, inspired, funny, smart, capable, unstoppable, strong, weak, powerful, powerless, depressed, passionate, sexy, determined, soft, warm, sensuous, female, girl, lady, woman...

It was an eye-opening process, to see the words appear, till every inch of the blackboard was full and we were a room full of women looking at our collective identity. I then talked about clutter in our homes, offices and lives and the effects clutter had, how it kept us from seeing clearly, how the treasures got buried in a sea of un-important stuff, how as time passed our tastes changed and sometimes our favourite item faded into dusty oblivion, and how we kept things because of guilt, oppression... not because it lifted our spirit and added to the richness of our lives.

Using clutter as an analogy, we 'de-cluttered' our identity, and let go of anything we thought didn't fit, that we no longer wanted (or would stand for) and made room for what was near and dear to us. There were cleansing tears and lots of laughter and I was honoured to have created this de-cluttering experience for those precious few. I'd love to do that for women all around the world today. Perhaps I could start with myself and use International Women's Day to re-examine how I identify myself and be the me I'd really like to be.

In honour of IWD, and the special women in my past, I have three virtual gifts for you today. Three links. One features Judi Dench and Daniel Craig (like you've never seen him before, in heel higher than I've ever worn) in Bond defects to the other side Then there is That Girl's Marlo Thomas article The Movement about her experience in the 1960's and 1970's reminding me of the button I used to wear "I am the woman your mother warned you against". And lastly, Time's photo essay of 16 of History's Most Rebellious Women reminding me that once upon a time in the late 70's I was a rebellious biker chick myself.

There is so much more on the internet about women, our history, IWD, our heroes... Enjoy the surfing, and remember....

Goodbye Clutter! We make room for what matters. Today you can too!

I must be hungry...I'm thinking about restaurants

It's Sunday morning, I've had my pre-gym workout fuel, a yummy, healthy flax bread with banana, but perusing the WestEnders Best of Vancouver awards, I once again have food on my mind.

Recently I was delighted to read that two of my favourite culinary experiences have been recognized with awards: Deacon's Corner, for best Breakfast restaurant, and the Secret Garden Tea Company, for best Teahouse.

I met Kathy and Erin Wyder, two sisters who run the Secret Garden Tea Company a few years ago through their mother, Helen Burnham, an incredible woman in her own right who received the Order of British Columbia in 2000 for her work as founder of Avalon Women's Centres. Kathy and Erin wanted some help organizing the office where they ran their highly successful, very busy restaurant, the Secret Garden Tea Company, at 5559 West Boulevard.

These two motivated, focused, high energy women managed to run a bustling, popular tea house out of a very small office, 4'x8' at best. It was one of those organizing projects, like many, that are 'fun' and have the best work memories. They were a dream to work with, providing me with a fascinating look at the behind the scenes operations of a restaurant. Occasionally I even convinced Kathy that a few of their exquisite mini high tea sandwiches were clutter and of course they made their way promptly to my stomach. (Just trying to be helpful, as always.) Since then, I have enjoyed several delicious high tea sessions, yummy lunch soups, and tasty tea's at the Secret Garden Tea Company.

Deacon's Corner attracted my attention by it's name. It sounded vaguely familiar. On my first visit, I learned why. The owner hails from the Winnipeg area and just outside Winnipeg, on the TransCanada, if memory serves me correctly, there is an intersection named by locals as Deacon's Corner. With this connection to my home province, and then the incredible biscuits and gravy on the menu, this restaurant jumped to the front of my line for breakfast places to patronize. On all my visits, the place has been busy, with a clientele mix including police officers, actors, and generally zany creative looking folks. It's at the foot of Main Street, by Alexander, so I don't frequent it often but if you're ever wondering where you can take me for breakfast (I'm free next Saturday!) this is the place: Deacons Corner

Today's blog may not have much to do with organizing, but then again, next time you're asked to organize a breakfast or high tea, you'll be in the know of two popular Vancouver places to go. Plus, after your strenuous spring cleaning session that I know you have planned, you'll need fuel, try one of the above, or both.

Here's my slightly altered tagline for the day: Goodbye Clutter! We make room for what matters. And what matter's today is biscuits, gravy and high tea.

A bear in the bathroom...

Have you ever had an item in your life which has gone from the 1) I love this! So cute! to the 2) hmm is this getting dated stages but you still want to keep it? I have that from time to time. I start to question, is this clutter? but like the thing and want to keep it, but...but...

Here's my item in question:

Bear was sent to me as a get well card in September 2010 after a very nasty fall down some stairs (Note: avoid checking email on iPhone when walking through dark lobby with dark granite steps albeit in lovely green.) My fall was traumatizing (ok so stunningly painful I thought "it can't be broken because then I'd feel something and this hurts so much I can't feel my leg!!") with almost broken bones and more than almost knee injuries, halting my marathon running in mid-stride (darn! bummer! just 3 days after a hilly 10k on Bowen Island to celebrate my 51st!)

The bear card was a warm and fuzzy reminder of my real teddy bear that helped me get through trauma at age 30 (a blog post for another day.) So I loved that card. It caught my breath when I opened it and I felt like I'd just taken a visual hit of Rescue Remedy, immediately feeling soothed. Thank you Janice at www.sendacardeverytime.com for your timely, perfect card.

But then it was January... February, and my clutter radar was beeping.

Now, clutter isn't clutter anymore if we can re-purpose it. On a trip to my medicine cabinet to get a bandaid, my organizer light bulb went off and I knew Bear was staying. His place was going to be with my few first aid items, as my personal Dr. Bear. Voila! From clutter to happy moments. He now gives me a hit whenever I open the cabinet, and as needed, my booboo's are pleasantly eased with his cute presence.

Here's his home now with before and afters. Fitting him in gave me the opportunity for a quick de-cluttering session in another corner. So he stays but actually there were a few items in the cabinet that had to go.

How about you? Do you have any items you think might be clutter but you'd like to re-pupose? Maybe I can help. That's what I do at Goodbye Clutter: I make room for what matters.

Paper paper paper!

I'm one of those who doesn't like paper. Are you with me?

It's tax season once again. That means its the time of year that I get to work with clients who either are fighting off the beast of home-office-paper-gone-wild, or have carefully collected (read procrastinated) stock pile of unorganized business and personal tax paperwork.

Generally, it started out with at least some semblance of a system (how did shoeboxes become the favoured system?) but over time deteriorated. Sometimes badly. I can relate. In part. My own business paper isn't always a pristine, organized, colour coded, expression of harmony and calm. What I have is an in-between. With regular purges. Usually in December or January. And an ongoing distaste for paper. I'd rather be traveling, running, making jello, flirting...

I prefer my paper organized, in attractively coloured files, with consistent labels, and in reality, more than 75% of my paper ends up that way. The other stuff? Well a little less organized, a little more piled up on my table. Current projects, current client files, current marketing, the papers I want to have visible, those are my challenge.

For me, it's kind of like ...(insert your bias here men/women/)...I'll pick men. Can't live with em, can't live without em. That's me and paper.

Now, purging paper is a whole different story. I love that past time! And that's something I'm really good at. Into the shredder/fireplace/ant composter it goes.

So there you go, confessions of a Professional Organizer. Hope you weren't under the illusion that all organizers are uber-organized. We're not. Some day I'll tell you about the Professional Organizer who's teenager threatened to expose her if she didn't hand over the keys to the car. Until then, I've got some filing to do.

But remember, Goodbye Clutter! We make room for what matters. And sometimes that's jello.