Hi, everyone.
I'm all Alejandra from alejandra.tv, and in this video I'm going to show you how doing
a little bit of organizing can make a big difference in any messy space around your
house.
But first, if this is your first time watching any of my videos and you're just getting started
with organizing, there's a link below to help you get started for free.
All right, so right behind me is this wardrobe filled with clothes, and it's a bit messy.
I'm going to share with you what it looks like ... and it clearly needs to be organized.
It's not that bad, but if you look closely, there's clothes just shoved in all of the
shelves, and there's stuff at the bottom, and it just needs to be organized.
You may look at it and think, "Okay, I'm going to wait until I have an entire day to devote
all of my time and energy to completely transforming the space," and that doesn't always happen
when you're busy, you have children, you work full-time, you travel, you have other commitments
and priorities in your calendar, but I'm going to show you that just doing 15 minutes at
a time, at the end of the day or first thing when you wake up, can make a big difference
in just getting something done, as opposed to waiting for an entire day to sit down and
leisurely go through it.
So what we're going to do is we are going to set a timer for 15 minutes, and our only
goal, our only goal for 15 minutes, is to make the space better than how it currently
is.
So it's hard to find stuff on like up here and on this shelf.
This is my husband's shelf.
We're not going to touch his stuff.
I don't know if this is bothering him, so we're just going to leave it alone.
Just focus on my stuff, or your stuff, whoever's watching this video, and the goal is to just
make it better than it is.
So I'm going to put the timer right there, and for a couple seconds we're just going
to look at the space.
All right, right there.
We're going to look at the space and just come up with a quick plan, just spend 10 or
15 seconds on what we're going to do here.
When I look at this space, what I'm going to do is I'm going to tackle the hanging clothes
first.
I'm just going to shuffle them around and put them like short sleeve, long sleeve, tank
top ... or tank top, short sleeve, long sleeve, and then just create some kind of order.
Right now everything's just jumbled.
So I'll do that first.
That's the easiest place to get started.
A lot of people ask, what's a great place, where's a great place to get started?
It doesn't matter as much where you get started as it matters that you actually start.
So just pick a place and start there.
And then the second thing, I'm going to move to this shelf right here because I always
use this shelf, and it's such a mess.
I can't find what I'm looking for.
Some I'm going to go there, and then I'm going to go up here, and then if I have time I'll
tackle the stuff at the bottom.
All right, so that's the plan.
Remember, the goal is just to do what we can, make it look better than it currently is.
All right, so I'm going to set this timer.
Ready, set, and before I hit start, before I hit start, have fun with it.
It's a lot better when you just have fun with it.
So just have fun.
Have no expectation except to make it look better than it is.
All right, go.
Okay.
So I'm just going to pause the timer.
So that took a little over two minutes to shuffle all the hanging clothes right here.
You can spend your 15 minutes if you just want to spend your 15 minutes in one section
of the closet and make more progress in that one section.
I could spend a little bit more time.
I could color code it.
I could pull out stuff I'm not wearing.
I could change out some hangers to make them uniform hangers or whatever it is.
I'm choosing to spend 15 minutes all over, and just make this good enough and then move
to the next section.
So do what you like, 15 minutes in one section.
You could totally spend 15 minutes here, but do what you like.
I think it's more important that we just do it all over.
So this is good enough for now.
I have sleeveless, short sleeve, and then long sleeve winter stuff over here.
It's better than it was.
Now I'm going to move to the shelf down here.
All right.
So I'm going to pull out all of these things right here.
Put them right here, and I'm just going to quickly sort.
Put this up here.
All right.
That shelf right there, workout stuff.
That's what it was, but it was kind of messy.
So I'm just going to fold the workout stuff and start all new piles right there, and then
as we come across more workout stuff at the top of the closet, which I know there has
to be some shoved in there, we're just going to take them, fold them, and then place them
in the piles that we're creating for that shelf right there.
And as you're folding, or as you're doing whatever you're doing in your space, papers,
kitchen stuff, pantry stuff, whatever it is, just make it functional first.
So you can spend a lot of time folding this one shirt to get it just right how you like
it, or you can just fold it and make it good enough.
That's what we're doing right now.
We're folding things to make them good enough to categorize like with like, so the next
time we come in and use the space, we can find what we're looking for.
All right, so I folded everything here.
Now I'm just going to go ahead and put things back.
So I'm going to do all of the pants in the front.
This is all workout stuff.
So the pants in the front.
I'll do the workout tops next to it, the winter workout stuff in the very back because right
now it's summer, and then we're going to do all of the tank tops and T-shirts behind the
workout pants just like that.
We have four categories.
The sports bras we're going to put ... we'll just put in the middle just like that.
That's good enough for now.
And then we're going to move to the very top here.
Okay.
So I just took out all the clothes from the top shelf in the closet, and I'm just going
to do the same thing.
I'm just going to categorize like with like.
That's all you have to do.
Sweaters, scarf, work out top, tank top.
If you're only doing 15 minutes or if you're only doing 10 minutes, whatever it is, don't
take out more stuff than the amount of time you have.
So if you're only doing 10 minutes, don't take everything out of your closet because
you're not going to get it done in 10 minutes, and then you're going to be left with this
whole mess outside of your space.
So just take out the stuff that you know you're going to get done, or one shelf at a time,
or one section at a time, or whatever.
All right, we have five minutes left, and actually there's like seven minutes left because
I was talking and I forgot to pause the timer.
One thing you can do while you are organizing whatever space you're organizing is you can
make the time go by faster by putting on some music or putting on something to make it more
enjoyable, if you find that this is not enjoyable.
I personally find it enjoyable, so, you know.
All right, so we have ... The timer says three minutes, but we have like five minutes left.
Just keep going.
Just think how great you are going to feel tomorrow morning when you wake up and you
have an easier time finding what you're looking for in your space because it's so much more
organized, and you can just find things, and it's just going to feel so good.
All right, so here is a bunch of tank tops.
I'm going to put them with the other tank tops back there.
That pile is getting really high.
Now, this shelf right here is really tall, and this is a temporary space.
Our clothes are in a temporary wardrobe right now.
If this was a permanent space, what I would do is I would invest some more time in figuring
out an organizing system to break up this space in half like that.
They sell these over-the-shelf bins that like slide onto this shelf and have a little compartment
up there, and I can see those totally being great for small tank tops or under-shirts
or something small that you can kind of just throw in there.
But we are in a temporary space, so no use in doing that right now.
All right.
All right, and as I'm putting things back on that shelf, one thing I'm considering is
here's a sweater.
I'm not wearing sweaters right now because it's hot outside.
So what I'm going to do is put these in the back, the back of the space, so they are not
taking up prime real estate.
All of the prime real estate at the very front of the shelf is just summer clothes.
All right.
So that was like 13 minutes.
There's still two more minutes but we will stop there.
I got a lot done.
This is a big space.
I didn't finish, but I did get a lot done.
I could probably spend another 10 minutes just putting the stuff away that's on the
bed right here, but I made a lot of progress.
If you set your timer, it goes off, and you feel like you're just like in the zone, set
the timer again and keep going, or if you're going to come back tomorrow or the next day,
leave yourself a note on where you left off.
So I could just take this pile and put it over here, and then leave a note to just continue
folding or something.
Basically, leave a note for your future self in case there's any confusion on where you
left off, because sometimes if there's confusion on where you left off, we leave the space
and then sometimes there's a block on coming back, like, oh, it's been so long, I don't
remember where I left off or something, so a note is going to help with that.
I think it's important to know that, when you're organizing or you're decluttering,
it's going to be a mess while you start it, in the middle of your project, until you get
to the very end.
It's like going uphill, and then it's like ... Yeah, climb uphill and then you go downhill,
and it gets messy, and there's things all over the place.
Even in the spaces that I organize, I know you've seen a lot of ... If you've been a
part of the community for a while, you've seen a lot of my after projects or a lot of
my spaces around the house, and everything just looks so in place, and everything is
just beautifully labeled and organizing products just fit so nicely and stuff.
It really is a process.
In the middle of those projects, things were just scattered everywhere.
So if you feel like the space is messy, just keep going.
Eventually it's going to get organized and it's going to get clean.
The biggest thing to avoid is just don't give up on yourself.
Just keep going, and then just aim for function first, and then take care of all the bells
and whistles later, but just aim for function first.
All right, so I made a lot of progress.
Now it's your turn to go spend 15 minutes organizing whatever space needs organization.
Set a low expectation, just make it better than it currently is, and I would love to
hear how it goes.
If you're looking for more support, training, and videos on getting organized, you can check
out my website alejandra.tv for more tools on living a more organized life.
I appreciate you being here.
Thank you for the opportunity to serve you, and I hope to see you here in a future video
or in the alejandra.tv community.
Thanks for watching.
Take care.
Bye-bye.