Unless you have money to burn, chances are you are looking for ways to save all the greenbacks you can. Did you realize that organizing your home and your life can help you save a lot of clams? That makes great (dollars) and cents!
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Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today I’m going to share with you seven ways that organizing saves you real money. I know it’s hard sometimes to get motivated to do your organizing projects, and it’s more tempting to run off and get ice cream or do something more entertaining, but I want you to know that there is a real pay-off involved in doing these projects, and I want you to hear that little “cha-ching” noise in your head when you’re tempted to procrastinate doing these things. So here are our seven big ways that you get that “cha-ching”.
The first one is that organizing helps you know what you have already so that you don’t spend money you don’t need to spend. If you already have two or three black turtleneck sweaters hanging in your closet, you’re very unlikely to go out and buy another one. So it’s that having a sense of inventory and a proper shopping list that helps you manage your spending.
Number two: Organizing helps you use what you have. So, particularly in the area of food waste in the kitchen, this is a big expense for lots of families. I’ve seen pounds and pounds of pantry food and produce go out because it just wasn’t used, there wasn’t a plan for using it. So doing your Sunday planning, as we have a video about, and planning those menus out helps you know that that celery in the refrigerator is for this meal, and it’s not going to get wasted.
So cha-ching number three: Organizing helps you find actual money that you lost or things that you didn’t know that you had. We have a story from a client one time we worked for where we found over $5,000 in un-cashed checks and cash. And, of course, that was a little bit of an exception, but we always find in our work, $20 gift cards, little rebate coupons, cash laying around, and that’s stuff that is just found money. So why not organize and get some of that back?
Okay, cha-ching number four: Organizing your finances helps you reduce costs. So when you stay on top of your paperwork and your bills, you see that you’re paying late fess that you shouldn’t be paying. Maybe you’re paying for some kind of gym membership or something that you’re not using and you can cancel, and you can get that real money back every month.
Okay, cha-ching number five is that organizing saves time. And everybody knows that time is money. If you’re spending hours searching for your bills or searching for your keys and you figure out an organizing system to make that not happen anymore, when you’re saving that time, you have that time back to do more productive work, or spend time with your kids, or spend some time just for yourself, something that matters to you.
Organizing cha-ching number six is that you can get a great tax deduction. If you live in the United States, we get deductions for donating household goods and clothing. And, of course, I would love for you to donate that to my non-profit partner, Goodwill, and when you do that you can use a website like charitydeductions.com or itsdeductible.com to help you itemize the things you donated and find the fair market value for those items so that you get the proper tax deduction that you’re allowed. Most people save hundreds of dollars doing this, and it’s very worth your time.
And organizing cha-ching number seven: Organizing reduces your stress. So we all know that illness is caused by stress, and when you’re losing time from work and you have all those health costs involved with stress-related illnesses, when you’re organized, you save at least a little bit of that stress. So there’s less conflict in your home. There’s less rushing around because you’ve lost things, and you generally make your life a little bit easier.
So if you want to save even more money, I’m very proud of the program that I’ve created, because when you hire a professional organizer – which is a great solution, it’s the very best solution – it does cost you some money and it’s not in everyone’s budget. So I created The Clutter Diet for people who want to get some advice from an expert, but they really want to do a lot of the work themselves and just get un-stuck. So we do that. We’ve been doing it since 2006, and we’ve helped thousands of people in 18 countries around the world. And we do that for about the price of a pizza. So I’m thrilled that we’re able to help people in that way. And you can check us out at clutterdiet.com/learnmore.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
You may have been searching for ways to save or make money or benefits of staying organized.
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