Here are a few tips to spring clean:

• Clean your winter coat and wash your hats, scarves and gloves. Store them away. Do the same for your winter clothes.
• Clean the top of your ceiling fan blades.
• Change out the air-conditioning filter if you haven’t done so in a while.
• If your curtains are washable, wash them. If they’re not, run them through the dryer on a low setting to freshen them up. You can do the same thing with your comforter. By putting comforters, pillows, and curtains through the dryer, you reduce allergens.
• Wash your bath mats. Fabric shower curtains can be washed as well. Spray and wipe down plastic shower curtains with an antibacterial cleaner.
• Go through the pantry, freezer, and refrigerator and check expiration dates. Donate unwanted items and toss expired ones. Go through your spices too.
• Clean the silverware tray in your kitchen drawer.
• Clean the oven after all that holiday cooking.
• Wipe down the computer keyboard, monitor and mouse. Don’t forget the telephones.
• In Houston, we have to spend some time pulling up all the dead plants from the Big Freeze and replanting replacements.
• Of course, declutter your space. Recycle those magazines, catalogs, newspaper, and junk mail. Weed out stained, torn and worn clothing. Donate clothes you no longer want or can wear. As you clean areas of your home, declutter as you go. Need motivation? Just watch an episode of “Hoarders” on A&E or TLC’s “Buried Alive.” That should get you going.

Happy Spring, everyone!

The best way to prep for the morning is to do it the night before. What can you do to prepare for the next day? Here are a few things you can do:

• Lay out bowls, cups, glasses, and spoons for breakfast.
• Lay out the clothes you’re going to wear tomorrow.
• If you iron, iron. If you don’t iron, run wrinkled clothes through a few minutes in the dryer.
• Make lunches. Put a sticky note on your keys to remind you that lunch is in the frig.
• Make the coffee so you only have to push the button in the morning. Yeah, some of us really need to get a programmable coffee pot.
• Shower the night before.
• Sign the school papers and make sure everything is in the folders to return to school.
• Gather up all the books and homework and make sure they’re in the backpacks.

A little time in the evening can save you so much time in the morning. Sleep tight!

But a funny thing happened when I started packing. Certain things, which had traveled to several apartments with me during my adult life, suddenly no longer seemed worthy of moving on. If I was moving to another apartment, these items would have made the cut as they have had before. In the light of moving into a HOUSE — and not just any house, my FIRST HOUSE, some stuff just seemed too dowdy, too apartment-ish, too unhip. For the first time in my life, I will have a home that I can truly put my personal stamp on. The large decorating notebook, stuffed with photos, paint chips and pictures collected over the years, has seen sunlight and again spurred my imagination. What is my style? What do I really like? What colors am I going to paint the walls?

A few of my soon to be departed things also represent an end of an era, as the saying goes. When I left the Oklahoma prairies and moved to Galveston Island, I was 22, fresh out of college, and ready to conquer the world. One of the Egyptian metal plates, hung in every apartment kitchen I’ve had, was given to me by Josie, a woman who lived in my first apartment complex. The rest were found at garage sales that Josie and I went to a few times. She taught me one secret about shopping garage sales and junk stores. “No matter what color it is, you can always paint it black,” she counseled. And that’s what I did to furniture found in various Galveston County junk shops.

The Egyptian plates served their purpose in my decorating life, but they have become more a habit these days than loved objects. It’s time for them to go. Once I realized that our relationship was over, I discovered other relationships with things in my apartment were also ending.  Knowing certain things were leaving after so many years didn’t make me sad, unhappy or anxious. I felt like a mentor who knows their student is ready to face the world and go out on their own. It was simply time for them to go.  I have to move on to my future house and home. My old stuff has to move on too. We all have new adventures out there.

Lorie’s Clutter Diet program is similar to Weight Watchers, but what you lose is your clutter. You regain your peace of mind. Membership is the price of a pizza.

Check out this fab article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/07/29/hearstmaghome457464.DTL

In one house I saw just tonight, the description read that the house was “well-maintained” and had new carpet. Cool. We walked in. Either a renter or the owner was in the process of moving out. Junk was everywhere, and I asked the realtor if I could keep the Spiderman doll if I bought the place. The carpet was far from new. In fact, it was wrinkled and lumpy. This ”well-maintained” house had a dirty and outdated kitchen and bathrooms. There was a weird door that we couldn’t open and wondered if they hid the bodies on the other side. In the driveway, a van with a heavily damaged front end sat. We didn’t stay long.

If you’re putting a house up for sale, you need to stage it. If you feel clueless about staging, ask your real estate agent for names of home stagers they use. Ask stagers about their certifications and what they did for training — much like you would when hiring a professional organizer.

For those interested in tackling home staging, here are a few tips:

• Remove personal photos and mementos. You want to make sure people can picture themselves in the space.
• Remove unique artwork and collector’s items. The stuffed deer head and the nude statues should find a happy temporary home somewhere else until you move to your new place.
• Remove extra furniture and decor that makes the place feel too crowded. If you’re not sure, ask a friend for their opinion about what should come out of the room. For example, guest rooms should have a bed and a bedside table. Anything else can be too much. If your room looks too crowded, it is.
• Clean out the closets, drawers, and medicine cabinet. House buyers are nosy. They’re going to open cabinets to see how much storage you have. Several years ago, I went to an open house with two friends who were house shopping, and the historic house was overstuffed to the gills. I opened the bedroom closet, and the stuff stacked in the closet came up to my neck. No wonder the place wasn’t selling.
• Finish your DIY jobs. Have cracks in the wall from your repaired foundation problems? Patch them up. Need to finish putting the baseboards back on? Do it. Take care of those odd jobs.
• Clean up the front and backyard — particularly the front yard. You want to have good curb appeal. Trim the trees, plant some flowers, and cut the grass. Keep the lawn looking good.
• Paint the walls a neutral color. If you choose colors such as beige, mocha, and sage, you’re on the right track. I know you loved your walls of many colors, but buyers want to see the house, not your artistic side.
• Take out your trash. Light candles the day of showings or bake some cookies to create good smells in your home. If you have pets or smoke, your house will stink. You may not smell it, but visitors do. You may want to have friends keep your pets while the house is on the market, and smokers should light up outside. Some paints now come with odor removers just for smokers and other issues.

Several HGTV shows feature home staging tips. Also check their website: www.hgtv.com. Bookstores feature many tomes about home staging. By staging your home, you don’t have to worry about a potential buyer like me become totally appalled at a “well-maintained” house filled with junk, icky carpet, and a dirty kitchen.

I gathered up the clothes and belts and threw them on the bed, in hopes the apartment maintenance guys could come today to fix it. One of my canvas boxes holding non-breakable memorabilia (yes, even organizers have memorabilia) tore, and the plastic clear drawers from The Container Store splintered, sending tiny shards all over my closet floor. After clearing the debris, I had to get ready for work.

The apartment workers were working on broken air-conditioning units, which in 100 plus degree heat is an emergency. My closet can wait. At least for a couple of days.

In the meantime, the pile of clothes are now in the living room so I can sleep in my bed. I’m taking the opportunity to go through them and pull out anything that I no longer want. Everytime you experience a small disaster — a flooded bathroom, a kitchen renovation, a hurricane evacuation, and a closet mishap, take advantage of it. As you’re picking up the pieces, sort and purge before putting it all away. Make a little more room for yourself. Until the closet shelf collapses.

As I deleted thousands of e-mails from a client’s inbox, she stood behind me, directing which ones were good to go. She said, “Why can’t I do this without you? You make me less afraid of deleting e-mails.”

I’ve come across this with many of my organizing clients. When organizing by themselves, they’re more afraid of throwing things away, more afraid of making the wrong decision. When we work together, the decision-making process is crystal clear. My goal is to help them make those fearless decisions eventually by themselves. As we say in the organizing world, a lack of decision-making results in clutter — whether its paper or electronic. It all adds up.

But you don’t have to be alone and afraid to make your own decisions. You can learn to make fearless decisions on tossing paper and other clutter and delete e-mails and other electronic clutter. Here are a few ways to make those decisions without fear or regret:

• Have I ever used this? If you can write your name in dust on it, you haven’t used it. If you have e-mails from 1998, do you really need those in your inbox?
• Will I really ever need this? You have to brutally honest with yourself. Are you ever going to use that ice cream maker or fondue pot? Are you going to read all of the articles you have in your RSS feeder? It’s time to get real and pare down.
• Can the information be found elsewhere? No need to keep the phone book if you look up numbers on the Internet. No need to keep e-mails from a long dead project when you have the project completed. Companies usually keep updated policies and other information on their websites so you don’t have to keep it yourself.
• Are these attachments important? I frequently find attachments in a client’s inbox. Instead of using your inbox as storage, detach those attachments and store them on your desktop or server. If you want to keep the photos of rainbows and kittens for stress relief, detach them and delete the e-mail. Attachments take up too much room on your e-mail.
• What’s the absolute worst that can happen if I get rid of this? It’s amazing. Many times my clients and I have deleted or thrown something away, and the world keeps spinning and no lightening struck.  

When you have no one looking over your shoulder, you can make those decisions about what to toss or delete without fear. Be fearless. Be clutter free.