…Professional Organizer, liberating you from the shackles of clutter and chaos
for peace of mind and productivity because, when your home works,
your life works! And I have a three-point agenda this week. The first is a celebration
because I have now made half of the lectures for my new video course, which is about
amazing storage hacks and solutions for all the things you struggle with all around your home.
I’m really pleased myself for getting there and I often say to clients that we don't celebrate our
successes enough. We spend too much time beating ourselves up for the things we DON’T achieve and
not enough time celebrating our successes. So this is me modelling celebrating my success! Halfway
there! Watch this space. It is coming! Point two. I had an email from the lovely Avril this week,
asking me a question which I was delighted to have the answer to at my fingertips, able to give her,
which is, did I have any tips on recycling bubble wrap? and yes, yes I did! Bubble wrap
can be - I thought you might find this useful too, obviously. Bubble wrap can be recycled anywhere
that you can recycle plastic carrier bags. So we all know that plastics are a nightmare to
dispose of and to recycle. There's all different types of plastics and it's important there are no
contaminants and it's a bit of a nightmare but, if you've got somewhere that will recycle carrier
bags, what you can put in those carrier bag bins is all the stretchy plastics.
So that's like bubble wrap, cling film, the plastic that the cucumbers I buy are wrapped
in… As long as it's clean - it doesn't have any food waste on it – if, when you stretch it,
it doesn't tear and obviously it's not brittle - it's not, you know, squashy like plastics
one or two. If it stretches, then it's suitable for those bins. And on top of that, my local
supermarket which is a Sainsbury’s, they don't have plastic carrier bag recycling bins but
I once, years ago, asked at the Customer Service desk and ascertained that, if you just hand in
that kind of plastic at the Customer Service desk, they do recycle it. So even if your supermarket
doesn't have a plastic bag recycling bin, it's worth asking. They might recycle them. Did I say,
“Don't put compostable/ biodegradable bags in?” They can't go in as well. They usually
stay on them that they can't go in recycling. But stretchy plastics, including bubble wrap,
can all go in those bins. Of course, you can try and rehome bubble wrap. You could offer it on
a giveaway group like Olio or Facebook or Freegle or whatever but, if you're looking to recycle it,
good news! It IS recyclable. And point number three is back to pillows for the third week
in a row! They're gone. I don't have one as a prop. The three pillows that I was
dealing with have gone into the bin but I reflected that there was an additional
issue that it was worth checking in with you guys about with regards to those pillows and it's that
there's this thing that I do that causes me to have clutter and I wondered how many of you out
there do the same thing, whether you've managed to overcome it, how you overcome it… I want to hear
your examples about it. So with those pillows, what happened was some of my pillows had gone
beyond useful life. You know, they were lumpy, they were thin, they needed replacing. But I don't
like to buy new things if I can avoid it because of the environmental impact so I put it off and
I put it off and I put it off and, eventually, it was actually when I used to do Airbnb years ago,
a guest said to me, “Oh the pillows were a bit lumpy” and I thought, “Okay, look,
these have really got to be replaced”. So I replaced them. But THEN, when I got the
new pillows, my brain said, “Oh but, you know what? I probably CAN get a bit more use out of
these old pillows. Obviously they can't be guest pillows but, you know, maybe I can just, you know,
put up with them for a little bit longer”. And I didn't get rid of them! And I’ve got to be honest,
that was - it was years ago! I don't even KNOW how long ago it was! So the new pillows went in a bag
in the loft until I was ready to use them and I continued using the OLD pillows! It's ridiculous!
It's ridiculous. So I have FINALLY got rid of the pillows now but I was really curious to know:
does that ridiculous mindset play out for you too? Do you put off and put off
replacing something and then finally replace it and then still not really replace it: you just
keep the new thing as well as the old thing and try and string the old thing out for longer? And
if you do do that, tell me what you do it with to give me some examples. And tell me whether you are
still doing it or whether you've managed to push yourself through it and actually get rid of the
old thing and move on to using the new thing. I want to hear all about that in the comments below
and I will see you in the next YouTube Live. I’m just going to say, “hello” back to Diane. Lovely
to see you, Diane. Thank you for joining us. So give me a Like and I’ll see you next week. Bye.