Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Photo and Paper Organizing Advice with Darla DeMorrow | Clutterbug Podcast #129

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Discover the top photo and paper organizing tips and tricks from Professional Organizer and best-selling author Darla DeMorrow!      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. So excited today, we're doing an interview. I'm here with Darla de Morrow. And she, I have, I loved your book, Sort and Succeed. I mean, that's such a classic book. You are a bestselling author. Your new book, The Upbeat Organized Home Office, was excellent. I definitely got a sense that you are a very detailed person. So I want to talk about that and all the things that you are an expert of. But to learn more about Darla, I want you to head over to her website, Heartwork Organizing, and I love the name of your business. So welcome, Darla. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Cass. I am so glad we could finally make this work. Yeah, it's been a while. I keep canceling on you, and then I had COVID.

We're actually going to be speaking at the NAPO convention, so I get to meet you in person in a couple of weeks. Yes, exactly. I know we've been sort of in each other to orbit for a couple of. couple of years now, a few years. And I am super excited that we're going to be in Baltimore with our Napo colleagues. And yeah, it's going to be a great time. It is going to be a great time. Okay. So reading your book, I got the sense that you are a pretty detailed person. One of your expertise is photo organization, which is my worst nightmare. So are you a detailed

person? Are you a person who's pretty meticulous and loves to sort, obviously? I am. I am a pretty much a natural born organizer, but even the organized among us can get better. And I'll tell you, I was challenged. Actually, I just got back from our annual conference of the photo organizers. So I am a member of more than one organizing group, as many professionals in our, you know, orbit are. So I just got back from the photo managers conference. And my story on that is I've been organizing for about, seven years when I found out there was a photo organizing group and up until that point I thought oh I was like you I was like I don't want to organize photos because I thought it was scrapbooking and and I just uh you know Cass I know you've organized your scrapbookers before and there's all those

little piece that those embellishments and little you know cutters and special papers and I just thought oh that is not what I love to do well it turns out digital photo organizing organizing is in fact my bag. And so I have been, I have been doing that now for 10 years. And the employees on my staff, we all love photo organizing because it is really any photo organizing these days is all about getting your photos organized, the physical ones, and then usually turning them into a digital library so that you can protect them and share them with others.

and then you're down to, you know, straight up digital file organizing and all the things that are special and unique about digital photos that doesn't maybe apply to digital files. So, so yeah. Listen, you would die. If you saw, I am not a natural born organizer. The way I organize photos is I have a couple of folders on my desktop labeled photos that I drag and drop them into. and in my, I have over 16,000 unopened emails. And when my desktop gets to full,

I drag them all into a folder called desktop. Oh, Cass, you know, right there, you just get a million brownie points for me because my clients aren't even that far along. Okay. So I want to hear your tips because when I've worked with clients in the past, organizing photos I find difficult because it definitely is something that you have,

have to do like I've found my my perception is you have to do it with them because I don't know who any one in the photo is and so it's really difficult to come up with organizing systems when you don't recognize any of the people so tell me are you organizing then by date tell me your tips how is this working so I'm about to blow your mind because we actually organize better if the client's not with us when we're working on photos yeah all right and the reason reason for that is we are often just dealing with straight up data, pure data. And by that, I mean we're dealing with clues that the physical photos can give us, which are things like the size of the paper, the type of paper, whether it's in black and white, whether there's

something printed on it that has dates. And then we do get to know the client and their family. And this is, you know, maybe this is a little out there for some people, but this is one of the things, one of the lessons, like life lessons that I've actually taken away from photo organizing. We all have the same photos in our collection. If I went to look at your photos, I would see myself in a lot of them. You know, you and I are roughly kind of sort of the same ageish. And so your prom photos would look like my prom photos. And, you know, the trips that you took when you were in your 20s would look a lot like the trips that I took in my 20s, even if we didn't go to the same places. I can't tell you how many times I've turned a picture over and thought, I know that girl. And it wasn't somebody I went to high school with. I mean, it's just crazy. So, yeah, so it's a lot of fun for us to actually take something that somebody has been holding on to for 10, 20, sometimes 50 or more years.

and they're thinking, oh, I'll organize it someday, but they never get around to it. And they think they're the only ones that can organize their photos. We can turn those projects around in a week or a couple of weeks or a month. And the client is just blown away because we're not getting caught up in the story, which is usually what happens. So my biggest tip to start out with is actually if you're organizing your photos, don't try and get caught up in the story behind the photos. And then my other tip is to always start organizing based on chronology or what we today we would call on our phones.

We'd call it the timeline, right? So the phones today organize our photos oldest to newest or newest to oldest, depending on which way you're scrolling. And that's the funniest thing. When people start organizing their photos, they want to break them up. Oh, this is college or this is high school or this is, you know, by people, right? These are, this is kid number one, kid number two, kid number three. well, that system breaks down really quickly. So the first thing that we do is we put your photos in order.

And your photos have a lot of your older photos, the ones that aren't digital. They have a lot of clues that allow us to do that pretty darn quickly. And the ones that are digital, of course, well, they come with dates on them already. That's true. Because the cameras assigned those dates when you took the photos. So, yeah, so there's a lot of information in the photos themselves and somebody like myself who deals with those all the time. We know where to look. I love that. I think you're right. It's so intimidating. And I love that you offer that service because I'm even thinking for myself as a professional

organizer, I love doing the big projects, but those little things, it's something that I will procrastinate forever. And what a burden that's just always in the back of my mind. Man, I wish I could get my photos organized or my files organized or my inbox organized. And this is exactly the type of thing that we should pass off to other people who are experts in this. Yeah, exactly. And you know, you and I, of course, we do digital photos and I have a team of people that works for me and we all, you know, we all enjoy doing this. We love going in and doing the basements, the addicts, the kitchens, the garages, just like you do. So we do that as well. But the cool thing about, you know, a kitchen, a living room, a basement, it's going to get, you know, it's going to get used.

and disorganized and you're going to have to come back and reorganize it again. The cool thing about the digital data is that once we sort of organize it and back it up, it's now protected from things that we all worry about. Fire, flood, tornadoes, you know, flood in your basement. I don't live in a crazy weather area, but I have had a flood in my basement. And I hope nobody else ever has to go through that. But that will screw up your photos if that's where they are. You know, we've all had photos passed to us from other generations, from our parents or whatever,

and we don't necessarily know who's in those photos. We don't have to deal with that anymore. The cool thing about the digital data is we can back it up and we can sleep soundly from here on out. I love that. Yeah, when my second daughter was born, we had all of our photos on a hard drive and it actually failed. and we didn't have it backed up at the time, which is crazy pants because we were paying for a backup service, but my husband wanted to put it on a new drive. So we had switched it, but he hadn't hooked that up to the back. And we lost everything. Thank goodness for Facebook. So sad. But now we've learned, even though I don't have them

organized, the importance of backing it up. And I think this is a really important message for people to know, because computers do fail and hard drives do fail. And your digital photos, we think, you know, they're safe in Facebook, but we should be protecting our memories. That should be such a high priority, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that is, I'm so sorry to hear that. And I'm glad that you were able to get some photos back, like you said, from Facebook or from family. But, you know, Facebook is not a photo storage service. I mean, it's, it's great for other things, but that's not what it was designed for. And it's, it's not a backup. There is a difference between a backup and a think, you know, people get confused on that. At least twice a year, I go into a client location and

they'll say to me, I get points, right? Because I have a backup drive right here. And it's still shrink-wrapped. They've never even opened the package and plugged it into the computer because they maybe, you know, are too afraid or afraid they're going to plug it in the wrong place or whatever, the reason. But yeah, it's so easy to protect. to our data now. And the thing is, Cass, you and I are growing, I mean, our kids are growing up in this brave new world. It literally is a different world where our kids are growing up now. We did not, we do not live in the same world as our teenagers. And we're, you know, a lot of us are still trying to figure out where the data is and where we should keep it and where we should put it.

Kids today just assume that, hey, it's digital, it's out there. It's going to be there when I need it. neither one of us are right. I mean, we all need to do something with our computers because you're exactly right. You said it. It's not a question of if your computer will fail. It's a question of when. Right. And your phone, you could lose. There's just so many, you know, we all take pictures on our phones now, but if we're not organizing them and protecting them, it isn't guaranteed. It really isn't. So I love that you're doing that. I love that. It's never going to be my thing. Let me tell you, I'll never be organizing anyone's digital anything. But I think that's the real blessing of organization, especially hiring professionals.

It's recognizing what is our weakness and being okay with that and having somebody else come in and help us where we're really struggling. So I love that. I love that. Also, home office is a place that I struggle. Are you a paper organizing expert? I am. the in the book, the upbeat organized home office, of course, I have the two other books out there sort and succeed and one focuses on home in general and then the other one focuses on kitchens.

But I'm a former corporate, you know, I talk about being a corporate refugee. So I came out of the corporate world and I've worked at home for 30 years now because I worked in a corporation where working at home with something we did 30 years ago where it was still pretty weird and strange in other organizations. And I wrote this book because I saw people trying to bridge that that home and work environment. You know, they'd be working at home one day a week. This was before COVID. Okay. So funny story. That book on how to work at home as a professional was published in January of 2020. Two months before the entire world went home to work. So it was really good timing.

And my purpose in writing the book was to help people bridge the home and office because they would, people would call me and say, you know, my office at work is fine. But I have this office at home that I just never spend any time or it's a disaster or, you know, I have this beautiful office that's off the kitchen or whatever. And we just throw things in there. Like there's no way I'd sit and work in there. Well, you know, everybody changed their. habits pretty quickly in COVID times. Some of us had home offices. Some of us didn't. And my goal was to

make sure that, hey, if you were working at home six or eight or 10 or in my case, some days, 12 hours a day, I wanted to be as comfortable in that home office as you are in the rest of your house. And to do that, to get your home office under control, you really need to be working on three fronts. One is the space and the furniture. Make sure that that that, is comfortable for you and it and it does its job. The second is your productivity habits and that's stuff like, you know, are you actually able to stay on task and not get distracted all day long? And then the third one is around technology. And I have so many people say, you know, I'm just no good at computers or no good at email or whatever. You don't have to be

great at any of this stuff, but you have to be able to get along because as we found out during COVID, we're living in digital times now. So I don't want people to be, you know, to continue to tell themselves they can't work in at home because they're no good with email or no good with figuring out where their files are. There's only a few things you have to know. And digital filing is is not that hard, but I'm out here teaching people how to do it. Yeah, I need to be taught how to do it. Listen, I'm not, I'm not good at this at all. But I, I have found So many of my clients say to me, because I talk a lot about the different organizing styles, they'll say, at work, I'm so organized and at home, I'm a mess. And what I've really found is

their system is in place at the office that have been put in place, oftentimes by other people, too. And we're kind of going with the flow and we're adapting to a system. But at home, we haven't set up systems. We're systemless. And so we're sort of floundering around. And it is really, just about it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be detailed. But taking the time to set up a system, whether it's a digital system or a home office system, a place is for your paper to go. It's so life-changing. And for me, I'm not a detailed person, but just having a spot for bills that needs to be paid, paper that needs to be filed, having a simple system was the difference between paper clutter and no paper clutter. Yes. And you know that I just love you. And I think that we are

sisters from another mother because I do believe that having a system is everything. It doesn't mean that your life is always going to be perfect or that your desk is always going to be clear. But there's there's paper on my desk right now. And there is every time I'm sitting here working. So this is not about trying, you know, a great home office is not about what you see on Instagram. You and I both know that. And also what I love about what you do, what you do, you know, teach people, what I teach people is it's a heck of a lot easier to change your environment than your habits. So figure out what your habits are and what you need to be successful and then change your environment to support that. So if maybe you have a beautiful home office, but you know, it's got

I don't know, maybe if you work in the middle of the in the room and you work at night and there's no light, or the lighting isn't adequate, you know, that environment can be changed. so easily. But many people just fight it because, oh, well, that means putting a lamp in the middle of the room. How am I going to get electricity over there? You know, it's a problem that can easily, easily be solved. That environment should work for you, not the other way around. I love that. Okay. I have to ask because I just am very curious. You're obviously a very detailed person. Do you think you're a visual person? I'm just seeing behind you, but mine's really visual, so I can't judge by that. Or do you prefer things behind closed doors? Or does it depend on the space?

It does depend a little bit on what I'm doing. I tend to be a bit of a chameleon. And the way that I organize is like you, you know, I go in and I try and see what needs to happen in that particular situation or in that particular case. It's funny because you'll see a lot of color in my designs and in my office. I do have a signature color I like to use. But I'm not particularly, particularly color driven. I can work in any space for a while, maybe longer than the average bear, but eventually I'm going to stop and I'm going to make it pretty. But it won't be the first thing I do. It has to be functional first, and then I'll take the time to make it pretty. And usually that's a reward, which is part of, you know, the system. And again, things I love about you, things you love

about me. I love that you've developed systems to help explain to people what works for them and what doesn't. You know, the clutter bugs are just brilliant. I really love that. And I'm trying to diagnose you right now. I'm trying to diagnose you. So I have to ask you one more question. So if you have bills to be paid or like something you have to deal with, do you generally leave those out as a visual reminder or do you prefer those things sort of out of sight? I do. I do generally leave things out, but I limit the amount of things that can be left out. So as an example, I have a little, I have a very long, it's like a 13 foot run of counter space in my kitchen. Very, very long. And at the very end of it is my back door, like a lot of people have. And I have this little space.

It's about the last six inches of my countertop that I put things on that need to be done. errands I need to run or things that need to go in the car, I need to take back. And nobody else to get to put anything there. It's just me. And so I do put things out and I leave them out as visual reminders, but I make sure that they move. And that's what a lot of our clients don't do, right? They put them down and they forget why they put them there or they have too many things and they get overwhelmed with, oh, everything's out or some people just stop seeing things in their environment. I love that you said that because that's exactly it. So there are definitely people who are visual organizers. I don't know if that's you. I think you sound very crickety to me

if I had to diagnose you, but I haven't seen your home. But even if you are a visual organizer, everything can't be visual. It has to only be the important things that you use all the time. Because what happens is if everything's visual, nothing's visual. And you become really clutter-blind because you're so distracted by all the things that you're not seeing your every day. And this is really hard for me to get across to people who are visual, who are like, yay, I'm visual, thank you. I feel so heard. I can leave all my stuff out all the time. I'm like, that's not what I'm saying.

Leave everything out. You won't be able to find anything. And it will just clutter attracts clutter and you'll just end up with a very messy home, which isn't what we want. But we do want you to feel okay with leaving the bills. need to be paid out so you can see them and having a bulletin board and having I was just going to say two words for you bulletin board it's true right it's a it's a trap bulletin boards of traps right because they seem like they're a good idea but uh studies have shown that when you leave something

in the same space for more than two or three days you stop seeing it so bulletin boards in order for them to work that you have to actively move stuff around and most people are not willing to do that. You're so right. And I think that's whether you are a person who uses a Sunday basket or like I like having a command center. What's what really comes down to it to have success is the system. And that's setting a date with yourself every week. This is when I empty my system and start fresh again. You have to go through and deal with things and then have a spot for the papers that have been dealt with. And they can't be mixed in with the things that have to be dealt with. And they can't be mixed in with the things that have to be dealt with. And it really is as simple as that as moving your things along. And it's not just for

paper. It's for all the things we touch on a regular basis. The important things have to be dealt with and then move to their location, move to their home, whatever that looks like. And I think well, you probably see the same thing. That's really where I'm seeing people fail, is the system of moving things to that home. Yeah. And that's what that's why I develop. the sort and succeed system. And that's an acronym, S-O-R-T and succeed. And it's just five steps. You know, step one is start with a written plan. Step two is organize into groups. Step three is reduce, release, and reset. Step four is tweak your space. None of this is revolutionary, right? But now it's in an acronym, people can remember it. Step five is the new bid. And for most people,

what they think of as organizing is something they have to do. It's a chore. It's no fun. It's like you said, you have to keep things moving along, and that sounds like work. Step five, succeed and celebrate. So I, you know, want the crickets, the butterflies, the ladybugs, and the bees and all of the rest of us out there. I want us doing a little bit of organizing at whatever pace makes sense for us, and then celebrating the success and not the completion because, organizing is ongoing. As long as you're alive, you're going to be organizing your space. And we're all blessed that we can do that and that we have spaces to organize. What we're celebrating is the progress. Right. So, and celebrations can be, I would say that it can be a glass of wine in front of your

favorite TV show tonight. And maybe you were going to do that anyway. But if you tie the organizing effort with some type of reward, then it tends to be a lot of, then it tends to be a lot of, to stick and you also feel better about it. Your brain, the brain chemicals kick off and you think, okay, I can do this. I did do it. I'll do it again next time and it'll be easier because your brain starts to build those neuro pathways and the neuro pathways then are essentially habits. That's what a habit is. It's when your brain gets used to doing something. And so I really get a kick of out of and really get enjoy when people tell me, you know, the organizing feels like it's getting easier. Well, that's because you're doing more of it. You're feeling better about it. You're succeeding.

You're celebrating those small successes and whatever your style, visual, hidden, detailed, simple, you know, you can get further if you reward yourself. I love that. Yeah. And for me, I just started really being proud of myself. So I'm a recovering super slub and it was hard. It was hard. But every time I would do a small drawer or something, I gained so much confidence. And I started thinking maybe I'm not a messy person. Maybe I'm not a bad housekeeper. Maybe I'm not, you know, a natural disaster, which I might still be a little bit. But when we have that little bit of confidence in ourselves, that, that's such a wonderful thing. And it really trickles down to every other aspect of our life. But the way to get that is through practice. It really is. I mean, when we're bad at something, we just need to try again and keep trying until we find something that works. Okay, before I let you go, I have to just ask this one question because my favorite part as a professional organizer is the decluttering. I just love working with clients and yelling at them until they get rid of stuff. I know they should get rid of.

Like that is, that brings me so much joy. Every time somebody says, oh, fine, I don't need that. I get almost a little high. Like I'm like, because I know it's going to change their life. But I'm curious what your favorite part of being a professional organizer is. Oh, my favorite part, similar to you. I really enjoy the transformations. I mean, sometimes I got to hang on there for, weeks, months, or years to really see the big transformations. But I mean, clients will come back. I do a lot of work on money and lifestyle choices and that sort of thing as well. And so, you know, I've got clients who literally had no money when they hired me. And one client, she said, I have no money, but I'm hiring you anyway. I know I need to do it. She's now making six figures, living just outside in New York City and affording, you know, everything she wants

to afford in her life. I've had clients who are making space, literal making space in their closets for the love in their life that they expect to come along. I've had clients tell me they have better relationships with their kids, that they have. I had one client who changed careers. He actually took a sort of a step down, but he was able to do that because we had worked all year and he was working. I finally got him to go and talk with this financial advisor, which he'd been putting off for years. And because he was financially ready in all the other areas of his life, when the moment came, he was able to grab his dream job, which took him down a peg in pay for a moment, but he has a bigger plan. You know, it's, it, it wasn't a negative. I just, I, I've worked

with so many people who've started businesses because they never had. had time, they never had focus. One of the things that I'm doing now is coaching people so that it's not so much about moving the files around as it is, moving the ideas around in your life. So just all these transformations, I'm with you. I love being able to step back and say, look, look, see, isn't it pretty? Didn't we do a good job today? But I'm also always trying to get the folks that I work with to see kind of the bigger picture because it was never about the cabinet. It was never about the, you know, the bathroom closet or the whatever, you know, file drawer we were in that day. It's always about something a little bit bigger. And that's what I get

really excited about. Oh, I love that. And I agree 100%. It's life changing. Organizing is life changing. Your home is the foundation for your entire life, your finances, your relationships, your self-confidence, your self-worth. And when you have it under control, you can't help but get control in all other areas of your life and just feel good about yourself. And that is you're right, the very best part of organization of being able to help other people and just see the transformation. So thank you so much. Make sure that you head over to share your socials with us. How can we find you on Instagram and let us know how we can find more about you?

Absolutely. You can find me on, well, my website. site, heartworkorg.com. I'm a real person. I actually answer the phone and answer emails. So you can certainly reach out to me if anything, you know, you're in Canada, right? And I'm outside of Philadelphia in the U.S. So certainly reach out to any professional organizer. We all love to hear from our, you know, anybody that we can help. I'm on Instagram, Darla Demarro, and I have a Facebook group. You're welcome to join. But really, I've got all sorts of resources over on the website. You can find me there.

Thank you so much again. It was lovely talking with you. And to all the listeners, thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.