Decluttering and home organization projects can be a major time management painpoint for people on the home front. To help with that, I’m thrilled to have Laura Kinsella on the podcast to help us hear about how to manage our time around it, how to do it, how to get support doing it, and more.
Follow Laura on Instagram here: http://www.instagram.com/urbanorganyze
Or reach out to Laura via her website here: http://www.urbanorganyze.com
A full transcript will appear here within two weeks of the episode being published.
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Full Transcript
Ep 85. Home Decluttering Organizing with Laura Kinsella
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey, and welcome back! Well, I am so excited for this one because we have my friend Laura Kinsella on the podcast today. Now, Laura is a professional organizer in New York City, and she is a wonderful person and a home organizer. And the reason that I brought her onto the podcast is that you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about it. On Instagram, I asked people what some pain points were, and on the home front there was a pretty solid theme of home organizing. Essentially, people said that their pain points were decluttering bigger or long-term projects like closet decluttering, sorting out the pantry, garage, things like that. Somebody else said, “Not having time for big projects like cleaning the basement and redecorating.” Some people said, “Keeping the house organized,” and others said, “Staying organized and tidy.”
So I thought of my friend Laura. I thought she would be a wonderful guest so we could dig into just the realities of what life is as a working mom. She has an eight-year-old daughter and runs her own business and also keeps her home organized, and I thought she could speak to it from the professional angle but also the personal one as well.
So a bit about Laura, Laura Kinsella is a home organizing expert, mom, and founder of Urban OrgaNYze, and that’s OrgaNYze with an NY in the middle because she’s in New York. Urban OrgaNYze is a professional home organizing company based in New York City. Since 2015, she’s helped accomplished professionals and busy families transform chaotic spaces into serene, efficient homes. Her thoughtfully designed systems are built around each of her clients’ unique lifestyle, blending style with functionality for sustainable results. Her holistic approach to organizing has been featured in Good Housekeeping, HGTV, A&E, The New York Post, and Apartment Therapy. She serves as a brand ambassador for The Container Store and contributes organization expertise to New York Family Magazine. She is also a wonderful person, and I’m so excited for you to get to hear from her, so let’s jump in!
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Kelly Nolan: Do you mind just introducing yourself and explaining how you got into organization to begin with?
About Laura and Urban OrgaNYze – 2:31
Laura Kinsella: Sure! Well, thank you so much for having me! I’m so excited to be here. I’m Laura Kinsella. I’m a professional organizer and owner of Urban OrgaNYze, which is a professional organizing company based in New York City where I reside with my husband and my daughter. We create beautifully organized homes for New York City professionals and working families who really desire more time, more space, and ease in their daily life.
Organizing has always been a part of my life. I was definitely the young kid who loved to untangle necklaces and just do things that normal kids probably don’t enjoy doing. [Laughs] But it wasn’t my first passion. I actually had a decade-long career in the arts as a performer, and I met my husband while we both worked on the Broadway musical Wicked. He’s a stage technician, so we have a very handy household. And it was a very exciting time in my life, but as I evolved and grew up, I craved more autonomy over my time and my schedule, and I just needed a change. And during that sort of transition, I became a nanny for a celebrity and her family.
And during this time, it was sort of this “aha” moment of a crash course in so many different things. Seeing this professional working mom juggle her career and her home and her friendships and relationships, and really that was the moment that I understood that organizing wasn’t just this thing of putting things in bins and baskets. It was kind of a form of therapy, and it was a reflection of my life going, “Oh, wow. I didn’t just use this because it was fun. It was my way to control my environment.” And so, I’m a firm believer when you feel in control of your environment, you sort of unlock a greater control of your mental and emotional wellbeing.
And so, anyway, during that time when I was a nanny, my employer was going through a move. And so, I kind of tested the waters of my many strange talents to spearhead the organizational component, and I saw how transformational it was and how rewarding it was because it reaffirmed my love of connecting with other humans and this deep desire to understand people and really be able to elevate the best version of themselves so they could feel supported at home and just how that reverberates through your life.
So that’s kind of where everything began, and now we’re almost ten years into this, which is kind of wild to say!
Kelly Nolan: Oh, I love that! I love this because Laura and I are friends. We met pre-pandemic. I think it was at a conference, an in-person thing I think in 2019, and I didn’t know any of that! I didn’t know a lot of that background of how you got into it, and it makes total sense. Becoming a nanny and getting a — it’s almost better than being a mom initially because you get that more objective outside view of how things are working, and you get to recoup in the evenings maybe. [Laughs] So it’s just a really wonderful — that’s such a fascinating way to get into it, and I can totally see how that makes sense and probably helped you in your motherhood journey with organization and all of that as well. Well, thank you for sharing that!
Laura Kinsella: Of course.
Organizing vs. Tidying – 5:58
Kelly Nolan: All right, Laura, before we dig into kind of the more nitty gritty of how to organize, which is kind of where my brain goes initially, you shared with me in our pre-interview chats that there’s a good delineation that I think we need to keep in mind of between organization projects where you’re trying to revamp a space initially and then that more daily maintenance that kind of is more of that tidying up at the end of the night, that kind of stuff. And sometimes I think we confuse both of them a little bit. They bleed into each of the other, and that can become overwhelming because then you’re tidying and you suddenly start going into this huge project at 9:00 pm at night and then are like, “What’s going on? Why is this more of a mess?” And there it is for you in the morning.
So do you mind digging into that delineation and then the flexibility within it a little bit more for people?
Laura Kinsella: So there is a vast difference between organizing and tidying. Organizing is the setting up of systems, the structural vertebrae of your home where every item in your home has a designated place to live where it’s easy to find, easy to put away, easy to maintain, and it’s really based on your lifestyle, you know? How many people live in your home? How many people inhabit your space? What are you into? What are you not into? The tidying is sort of the resetting of those systems. It’s the keeping them in check.
So I like to say that my home is always organized but it’s not always tidy. I have systems that support me, but sometimes — I’m a mom, I’m a business owner — things go awry sometimes. When we all come home from work or school, the kitchen table’s a mess, but you have to live in your home, right? And at the end of the day, it’s just simply putting those things back so that you can reset your space for the next day so you’re not bringing that muck into your new, fresh day.
Kelly Nolan: Awesome, and as we talk about it, it sounds obvious, but I do think it’s sometimes those obvious things that we don’t fully absorb, and I think that it makes a lot of sense. If you are the listener trying to do, essentially, an organizing project at the end of the night when you’re tired and also it’s an intellectual heavier lift than just tidying, as you were saying, Laura, that might explain it.
Timing Your Organization – 8:11
So how do you kind of think about when’s the best opportunity to do these types of things? Obviously, tidying is a daily thing, but for organization projects, when do you think about timing when you’re working with clients or even just as a mom yourself?
Laura Kinsella: Yeah, so the first thing I would say is if you’re finding your 10-minute tidy at the end of the day feels more like 30 minutes, and your head is spinning in circles, that would be the indicator, right, that you’re not tidying, you’re trying to organize. When we have that self-awareness of that, it’s either sort of that failure of systems. So you either don’t have systems in place, you don’t have designated homes. Maybe the systems are too complicated, so if it requires a step stool and a lot of energy to lift something up to put it away, or it could be an overwhelm of stuff, which everyone is sort of a culprit of that. Living in today’s consumerism world, we all over-own items. But in terms of once you determine whether or not it’s a systems issue or not, you can designate a time so that at the end of the day, you find daily non-negotiables versus those bigger projects.
So for me, my daily non-negotiables are putting shoes away by the front door if they’re all on the floor, prepping the coffee machine the night before so that I help my future self because future me at 6:00 am is not the happiest version of me, doing those little things and those little micro habits that become automated, so you don’t have to think when you’re unloading or reloading the dishwasher. Now, if you need a system to actually make your coffee, and you’re finding the coffee pods are in one cabinet and your coffee mugs are in another, it’s thinking holistically how you go through one function to another.
So, perhaps, starting with that biggest pain point. A lot of people, their morning routines can be a really big pain point, especially if you’re a professional working person or you have children. Narrowing in on that pain point is important because we want to start from the place of, “Where do I want to be?” A lot of the times it can bog us down and we forget why we’re doing this in the first place, so we want to really clarify those goals so that we’re coming from organizing and decluttering from a positive mindset. Because then everything is reframed in thinking, “Is this supporting me,” right? “Is having my shoes by the front door, does that make sense for me? Is having my kids’ socks by the front door, does that make sense for me?” Organizing doesn’t have to be cookie cutter, but I think for working parents, at the end of the day, knowing when you have time and bandwidth.
So the end of the day for me is more of a tidying. When I have energy during the day, even during the weekends, carving out those 15 minutes to do some small micro task. So if your junk drawer drives you bananas, 15 minutes. Set a timer. “What’s in there? Is it garbage? Does half of this stuff need to be relocated? Do I even need to own these items?” We accumulate things, and, you know, that’s life, right? We’re always kind of tossing things without really being mindful of that.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: But once you begin, you build that momentum, and you really kind of feel like, “Huh, the next day I can do this 15-minute task,” and then you start to see the progress without feeling like this has to be climbing Mount Everest for 10 hours of your day.
Kelly Nolan: I like this idea, and I like — just going to where my brain goes is I’m obviously a big proponent of calendaring everything. But in these scenarios, if you’re starting out, what I can envision happening to me is I’m like, “I want to organize the coffee thing,” and then I’m like, “And then I want to organize the junk drawer.” And then I get overwhelmed by all the things. We’re kind of jumping ahead, but if you were gonna DIY this yourself, and also just I love starting with to build momentum, the 15-minute things. I’d almost start an Apple Notes of places I want to organize and just start jotting them down, and then as I go I might prioritize them, like put some at the top that are higher. But that, having somewhere to park that idea and not feel like, “I need to do it all now or I’ll forget, and I’ll never try it again,” could really help.
Laura Kinsella: Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: And then you could calendar if you want the 15 minutes, or you can just follow your energy if you have the energy when it hits. Then you have a little place to go to of the list of the places you want to organize. So that was just a random aside, but I can just see — you know, I love bringing it to the practical of how people could track what are the areas they want to do and then set those timers and know what they’re focusing on for that 15 minutes and knowing they don’t have to think about those other spaces because those ideas are parked somewhere. They won’t lose track of them.
Protecting Time to Organize – 13:01
So let’s say you do those, and you have the momentum, and before we dig into how to do it, the steps to really think about, when would you recommend — when is the tipping point, kind of, of when someone should be like, “I need to protect an hour or two of this for the weekend.” How does that factor in, in your mind?
Laura Kinsella: I think it really depends on what you’re focusing on. So let’s say you’re dealing with a space that really feels overwhelming. So maybe in New York City that’s a storage area or maybe in the suburbs it’s a garage or something, a basement, and you’re feeling like, “I don’t even know how to do this.” [Laughs] And, you know, again, we have those good intentions. We’re like, “We’re gonna tackle this,” and then you pull everything out, and then you sit there and it’s like your brain just gives out.
So my recommendation is you first kind of want to look around the space, just become aware of what you actually own. What is the inventory? Let’s just use the garage as an example. It’s a place where a lot of things — I don’t want to say go to die, but when you don’t know where things go, that’s typically where they end up. That was my experience growing up in childhood. Where did it go? The basement or the garage. So when you’re going through a space like this, sometimes it’s really helpful to separate yourself from the actual physical part of it and just focus on one small thing.
So I like to carry around Post-Its or blue painter’s tape. If you’re in a garage space and you note something that is pure garbage, put a piece of blue painter’s tape on it. Just identifying pure garbage, things that need to go out to junk callers or the curb or something like that. Then the next thing is you can always get a different color tape or something like that. Identifying what the needs are for certain lifestyle things. Is it your snowboard or you like to go skiing, equipment. So once you’re getting an understanding of these things without even physically moving the stuff, you’re already gaining so much knowledge of what you own.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah. Yes!
Laura Kinsella: So then you can take the next step of going, “Okay, I have about 40 things I stuck blue tape to. I don’t have the bandwidth to physically lift this stuff. I don’t actually know where the paint goes.” And this is where you can reach out to resources and determine where can I get these things. So maybe you do schedule a 15-minute pocket of time on your calendar like a junk call or something along those lines so that it builds just a little bit. It takes the top off of a really daunting kind of a task.
And then from there, once you kind of really understand what you have, then you’re gonna think about the categories that serve you versus no longer serve you. Typically speaking, organizing is grouping items, like with like, right? So outdoor activities: bubbles, barbecue stuff; versus seasonal: holiday decorations, all of that kind of stuff. You want to kind of zone things out so that you’re not having to go into the garage and scour the whole area but maybe the left-hand side or that kind of a thing.
If you’re doing this by yourself, I think there has to be the understanding of giving yourself grace, knowing that this is not going to happen overnight. We certainly didn’t accumulate all of these things overnight. It’s not going to magically reverse themselves. But that’s okay. That’s actually part of the process. If we were to do a quick fix and just kind of go, “Okay, I want to throw everything away,” then we’re not honoring who we are. And not to say that that’s coming from — I never want clients to feel that scarcity mindset, “If I let it go,” and “This could be usable one day,” or that kind of a thing. It’s really just leaning into what can you manage, what does your space allow, and there’s always limitations with both. There’s always physical limitations of your space, and there’s always limitations with what someone could take on, what their personal bandwidth is to not only store the item but have to maintain it, have to clean it, have to remember where it is, all that kind of stuff.
Kelly Nolan: I want to just add to kind of that Apple Note I was thinking of or, you know, note if you have a different phone, that as you’re listening to Laura talk, person listening in at home, is really thinking about — I mean, to me, I love that Post-It note idea. I would just have a Post-It note and a sharpie and just write “trash” or “donate” or “keep” on things, and I love the idea of doing that because usually we just do that in our head and then we try and remember, and then we get overwhelmed, and we leave and we do it all over again next week. [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: [Laughs]
Kelly Nolan: And so, we don’t progress, and so, I just think that’s such a beautiful way to do that.
So even taking this notepad that we’re talking about — sorry, the Apple Note that we’re talking about and listing out the steps you want to do when you calendar an hour of time once a weekend to work on garage indefinitely going forward until it’s done, just that one garage, then you have somewhat of a game plan and can pick back up on where you were. You can always add to it as you go. And then when you do the next big space, you have this essential workflow laid out that you can then continue to build on. So I just wanted to share that.
Resources For Getting Organized – 18:14
Before we keep going, Laura, one thing that I think a lot of people are aware of, because as you said there are all these shows now, Netflix and stuff like that, if someone’s overwhelmed by this though already, they’re like, “You don’t understand my life. I work 70 hours a week. This is just not gonna happen. I’m too tired on the weekends,” all very valid. What are resources where they’re like, “But I still want to get organized”? What are resources out there, just so people have a heads up that they don’t have to DIY this either.
Laura Kinsella: Sure! Hiring a professional organizer even ten years ago is such a different scenario than it is today, certainly in mainstream, and it’s becoming viewed as less of a luxury service and more as a tool for professional working people to manage their time efficiently. So certainly if you’re in the New York City metro area, right outside of New York, Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut, New Jersey, I would love to help you. We can work through your space together.
But if you’re in other parts of the country, one big resource — actually, where Kelly and I met is NAPO.net is the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, and they list by region, by zip code, by state, and also by niche. There are organizers out there who specialize in ADHD or neurodivergence or executive function and all kinds of different things. So that would be one resource. Another resource is reaching out to your community: “Has anyone worked with an organizer?”
The most important thing I want to say about hiring an organizer is it’s such a personal experience. It’s very vulnerable. And so, if you’re hiring a professional, amen. That’s wonderful. It’s just like hiring a therapist or hiring a plumber. But really make sure you connect with the person. You want to know that you feel taken care of and that they listen to you and that they’re not coming in and implementing some system just because it’s pretty or something that they like. That it’s really going to be curated for you, your family, your routine, someone that, dare I say, is emotionally intelligent, who can read your cues —
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: — and understand that when you walk into a room you feel so icky, and how can we make you not feel icky, and where can we start? Certainly when I walk through a consultation with someone I do a lot of listening, asking SMART questions. What do you want your space to look like, and what do you want to feel like in your space to eliminate that stress and that overwhelm because, again, it’s not just the tangible things. It really, truly reverberates throughout your life. And sometimes I think it’s hard to remember that because they’re like, “Oh, that pile of donations –,” or “That whatever is not –,” but it’s all just extra stimuli and all extra things our brain is constantly having to sort and think about. So yeah, if you are hiring someone, that’s amazing. Just make sure you connect with them.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: Just like with a doctor or anyone else.
Kelly Nolan: And I love that because if you’re tried before and you’ve had a bad experience with someone, just like people have had bad experiences with therapists, as you said, it doesn’t mean you should just throw in the towel.
How Much Time You’ll Devote When Hiring a Professional – 21:29
How much time, just so people have a realistic understanding, because I also could see someone being like, “Great, I’m gonna hire someone. I’m barely gonna talk to them, and I’m gonna come home and my house is gonna be awesome.” I think that to get the true beautiful but also functional and tailored-to-you solution, there needs to be a lot of interaction.
So roughly — I know every project’s different, the spaces are different. How much time do you spend with someone talking just so people can prepare themselves? I’m gonna hire someone, and I’m still gonna probably spend a couple hours, a handful of hours, maybe more, working through a space with someone or at least giving them enough instruction to run with it.
Laura Kinsella: Sure, so I would say a seasoned professional would need at least an hour for a consultation to understand the pain point of the area and the routine and how you live and who’s responsible for maintaining. They need at least one hour. Now, if we were going through —
Kelly Nolan: Per area, kind of?
Laura Kinsella: No, sorry. Well, in New York City spaces, one hour can cover a lot. [Laughs]
Kelly Nolan: [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: But, you know, I live in 1,200 square feet. Certainly, if you live in triple that you have to maybe add more timing. But if you are a client where you’re having a lifestyle transition, let’s say you’re making room for a baby or going for a move, it’s less hands-on from the client to begin with because it’s not about the overwhelm of the volume. But if you have someone who is living in chronic disorganization, chronic clutter, a lot more time has to be invested with the client because the organizer, or at least I would argue to say, is not the one to be making the decisions. They’re there to coach you through the decisions and to ask you, “Would you buy this full price again? Would you want to be walking down the street and bump into your boss in this?” all these kinds of silly questions that help formulate an answer for you.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah!
Laura Kinsella: But the investment of the client with someone who is really feeling like they’re drowning in stuff, I would say at least is a four-to-six-hour investment. That does not mean the client has to be on their hands and knees. At least with my team, you know, we are full service. But it’s just in the sense of getting to know you in your home, in your stuff.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Laura Kinsella: For people that really desire that elevated organization and perhaps are already organized to begin with and need just some tweaks and need some smart containment and systems to maximize their space or to, like I said, welcome a new baby or a new relationship, making room, it’s a little bit more turnkey. The client does not have to be present once we’ve gone through the decluttering process. For the systems, for the measuring, the sourcing, the procuring, the client can be out in Tahiti. [Laughs] They can be anywhere they want to be, and I know that a lot of clients look forward so much to that point because that’s where I think they struggle the most. It’s like, “Once I know what I’m keeping, now what?”
Kelly Nolan: Yep, and I just appreciate you sharing that because I think that, one, it’s helpful just to understand how to be realistic and what you can expect through this process. But also one thing I just want to point out (we talk a lot about outsourcing on this podcast) is a lot of the outsourcing things we’ve talked about to date are kind of ongoing: house cleaners, someone cooking meals, house managers, things like that. This is a larger up-front investment, but it’s also, I would say, I’m sure that, as you said, life changes and you might want kind of a refresh at some point. But on the whole, it’s somewhat of a one-time, up-front investment, and you can always bring someone in to help refresh it or change with a life phase.
But I just think that’s important to note because it can sound like a lot, but I think if you really want to get there and you don’t have the time to do it, it’s a great way to just put in that up-front investment financially and timewise and then reap that benefit for potentially years to come.
Laura Kinsella: Yeah, so having a fast pass at Disney world, you know? It’s like do you want to do the organizing and setting up the systems, or do you want to jump straight to the tidying.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: That’s truly what the difference would be, and I’ve helped clients through so many different life phases, and what’s funny is I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I’ll remember exactly the color of their spatula in the left drawer next to the stove. It’s like this is how sometimes my brain works.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: But once we’ve become familiar with your items, it’s so easy to snap things back in place or tweak them.
Kelly Nolan: Awesome. Awesome, well, thank you for sharing all of that.
Approaching a Space for DIY – 26:13
Turning to either let’s say someone’s like, “I am just gonna DIY this all myself,” or “I’m gonna hire someone maybe for one space but on the smaller-scale stuff, I would like to do it myself,” turning to, “Okay, we’re gonna do this ourselves,” I mean, you’ve touched on where we start is kind of the main pain points. How do you approach a space? How would you recommend someone dig into this once they decide on a space that they’re gonna dig into?
Laura Kinsella: Sure! So let’s say your kitchen pantry or your cabinet where you keep your food is driving you bananas. The first thing we would do after we clarify your goals, what you want this space to be, again, your lifestyle, what you can properly kind of maintain (and I’ll go into that in a minute) is pulling everything out of that space, everything out of that cabinet. You want to wipe down the space, kind of just identify those things that are past their prime, expired, have maple syrup stuck to them, anything that just has to go, be parted with.
Kelly Nolan: That coffee mug you always pass over and you never grab. [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: Yeah, of course. You know, we all have it.
Kelly Nolan: Yep!
Laura Kinsella: It has some inspirational saying on it.
Kelly Nolan: [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: And you’re gonna group things into categories, and I really think this is important to know, not categories that someone told you are categories, categories that make sense for you. So I always go back to — I know I talk about the pantry, but I always go back to the junk drawer analogy of store things in there that are important. What do you have to grab? I, personally, have my daughter’s hair ties and a small hairbrush in there because every time she sits at the table, her hair’s always in the pasta, and it’s easy to grab without having to walk all the way to the bathroom and back.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Laura Kinsella: So, in any event, in any space you’re handling, you want to group categories that make sense. So whether that’s dinner, snacks, kids snacks, I don’t want anyone to eat my chocolate after ten o’clock when I finally have a moment to myself category. Whatever it means to you. Then you’re gonna place those items back based on your daily usage. So if you’re always using olive oil, salt, and pepper, those are your main spices and oils and things like that, you want those, what we call prime real estate areas, areas that you can reach and don’t require a lot of movement on your part, bending, on tippy toes.
And then you can determine if your space needs containment. That’s always the part that people — I think this is sort of where people put the cart before the horse. We all love the fancy bins and containers, and certainly that’s advertised to us as, “That’s the only way to be organized.” It’s not the only way to be organized. However, when you have a large drawer or large cabinet, you’re gonna need to sub-categorize it, and sometimes having that containment really does give you that accountability so that you’re not putting pasta with your beans if it’s not in the same category for your mind.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Laura Kinsella: So once things kind of go back and you determine whether or not you need that containment, we always take proper measurements just to make sure things fit. And sometimes, yes, there are containers out there that are modular, drawer dividers that are on a spring so they can work with a few different spaces. But certainly you want to just be mindful of that, that it’s gonna fit your space.
And then, of course, sort of the styling sort of component of this is labeling. Again, it’s all about that accountability, especially if you have multiple people in charge of maintaining this space. Does one person do the grocery shopping versus one person putting away the groceries? Do you need labels in different languages, all that kind of stuff. And I’m a big proponent that, while I say organizing is not about the bins and baskets, they do help you in maintaining a space because I come from it in the element of design. When something is beautiful, you’re more likely to maintain it.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: That does not mean it has to be color coded, everything facing like soldiers looking at you labeled, 90-degree angle.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: Certainly, if that floats your boat too, you know, there’s a time and place. But what I was gonna mention before is a lot of people say, “Oh, I want my spices decanted, and I love the look of that,” and there sometimes is an acknowledgement of, “Yeah, you love the look, but do you love the other part, which is the actual maintaining so that when a spice goes empty, you have to take the back-up spices and pour it into the little, clear jar.”
Kelly Nolan: But you even have to have back-up spices somewhere else organized too.
Laura Kinsella: That’s exactly right! The whole shopping at Costco or BJ’s, do you have the space for these bulk items? It’s not a wrong/right kind of situation. it’s just what can you maintain? What do you have the space for?
So yeah, once it’s all kind of labeled and styled, then you can tweak it, right? You could always move things around. But for the most part, things are set. Once you kind of bait that home, then you kind of see how they age you in your daily life, and then you kind of go, “Ooh, what other space?” It’s very contagious.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah, it is contagious. I think you’re totally right that I have this tendency to want to roll my eyes at all the bins and all that kind of stuff because it almost seems to me like form versus function. When I don’t think they’re so mutually exclusive, I just have that cynical reaction.
Because we moved back into our house, we have this bureau thing that we put in specifically for all the art supplies in the kitchen because that’s where they end up, and it’s overwhelming. And I spent the time measuring and buying products, these acrylic bins that the crayons go here, the paint goes here, this goes here, and it is weirdly satisfying and more motivating to clean it up at the end of the night instead of just piling it all and shoving it in a drawer and not being able to open the drawer later. I hear you on finding the right balance is really important but don’t be too cynical like me because it does actually really help a little bit. [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: [Laughs] Yeah, and I would argue it’s not even just the beauty of it, which comes into play, but it’s that you don’t have to activate your brain. You’ve already decided where things go.
Kelly Nolan: Yes.
Laura Kinsella: So you’re just like, “Plop, plop, plop, plop, plop.” The end.
Kelly Nolan: Yep. Yes.
Laura Kinsella: Instead of going, “Oh, well, should I do this, or should I do that?” You’ve already decided and trusted your instinct that this would work, and it’s not like there shouldn’t be rigidity, like if it doesn’t work you can’t pivot.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Laura Kinsella: But it’s that, at the end of the day, clutter is delayed decisions, so once we’ve made those decisions, our lives become so much easier.
Managing Kid Artwork in The House – 32:49
Kelly Nolan: I love that. Well, thank you so much. I do have one kind of miscellaneous question I wanted to ask you at the end, because one thing that I think for the moms out there listening, at least the moms of young kids listening, is how do you recommend and handle as a mom all the artwork that comes into the house?
Laura Kinsella: [Laughs]
Kelly Nolan: How do you handle that?
Laura Kinsella: It’s truly the Achilles heel of parenting.
Kelly Nolan: [Laughs]
Laura Kinsella: So my daughter’s eight now, so we’ve been through many iterations, and truth be told, as much as I wish I could be just like the ruthless mama that in my core I feel like I am and I try to own, I am a mom, so when she comes home and there are handprints on things, and you’re just like, “Oh, gosh,” the heart strings are being pulled, there’s a balance, right?
What we do in my home, certainly when my daughter was zero through five, she would come home every other day with some sort of scribble or glittery thing, and it would all land on the kitchen table because it always lands on a flat surface. We would determine right then and there whether it went on fridge duty to be displayed, sort of like console duty if it was a 3D object, or for (and this is when she was more school-aged) if you have completed worksheets, completed homework, that all just went straight to the recycling bin.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: No questions asked. Now, I will say, as your kid gets older and you have writing assignments, there might be some feeling of, “Oh, I want to see their progress,” right? So what we’ve done in my house is we’ve designated, once everything kind of gets dumped on the kitchen table, if it doesn’t get displayed, it goes in what’s called “the art drawer.” And the art drawer is just a drawer in your house that basically is a way for you to set a limit so that art isn’t piling in Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s bags and crinkling at the sides and then it’s all a crazy mess.
I feel like, besides those completed artworks or the little, tiny scribbles that go in the recycling, we really do need some perspective and time to see if these things are “important.”
Kelly Nolan: Yes.
Laura Kinsella: Because everything feels important, you know, when they come home with something that you’re like, “Oh, this is so sweet.” So the art drawer gives us — and you can designate your own time, but for us we do it twice a year. So in September when she starts school. In December, that’s usually when it’s full of things. And then I go through it, and I kind of scan the things that feel like markers of time that I want to hold onto. You can determine the limit. But just make sure there is one. And then I have different little bins for each year. So Pre-K, Kindergarten, first, second grade. A lot of people like the file folders with individually graded or aged things, whether they’re preschool all the way up through high school. I find for me, personally, I don’t love that as much because a lot of the stuff my daughter does is texturized, so it doesn’t always fit in one of those file folders.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah. I could see that.
Laura Kinsella: So we have these very slim, acrylic cases that fit a normal-sized piece of paper, essentially. So if there’s something that she glued to it, you know, it can still fit and not be all smushy.
Kelly Nolan: Yep.
Laura Kinsella: And then we put it in this little storage ottoman. It’s actually replicating a file box, right? Because at the end of the day, I don’t want to be passing along 4,000 storage boxes to my daughter when she’s 40. I think if you’re keeping it, it’s more so for you. It’s a marker of your kid’s accomplishments and parenthood, and it’s very sweet and lovely. But you need a home for the things temporarily, and then you need to set some time on your calendar to go, “Okay, what are the few pieces per year, per season that I want to keep?”
Kelly Nolan: I love that.
Laura Kinsella: A lot of people like to digitize. Again, there are so many things you could do here. You could create an artbook. Archive is a platform that digitizes your kid’s artwork, whether it’s paper, 3D. You can also gift things. I’ve used my daughter’s larger paintings to wrap presents with, as wrapping paper.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah! Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: So there are all kinds of creative ways. But at the end of the day, set a home for the things, and kind of circle back when you’re less emotional about it and you kind of have a little bit more perspective on what you want to do with it long term.
Kelly Nolan: I think that’s so smart. Unless you go digital, to some degree, letting physical container space define how much you keep, to keep you a little bit in check over the years. But I also love your point on — I do something similar with time where, as things come in, I probably keep one of every 20 or even one of every 30 pages that comes in this door. But even still, at the end of the year it can be an overwhelming amount. But at the end of the year, I’m much better able to be like, “Okay, let’s look at all of this, and okay, maybe we keep 10 or 20 of these things, not all, all of it.”
And the gift of time there is great, and I think it does that — I remember with work files even, that’s a beneficial approach is giving yourself time between, “Okay, now I wrapped up this case or this project,” or whatever, and trying to decide what to keep or throw out at that point is too stressful. But if you give it six months or a year, then you’re like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, let me just keep these three things, and the rest can go.”
Laura Kinsella: Yeah!
Kelly Nolan: So awesome, awesome approach. Thank you so much! Is there anything that you wanted to add in that we haven’t covered that you wanted to share while we’re here, or we can wrap it up.
Organizing Isn’t One Size Fits All – 38:15
Laura Kinsella: I just think that organizing doesn’t have to be one size fits all. You just lean into your natural habits. If you find you’re plopping your keys somewhere, build a system around that, you know?
Kelly Nolan: Yeah.
Laura Kinsella: There are no shoulds. No one should impose a different system on you that doesn’t feel right. And if you’re not innately organized, that’s okay. It’s a skill that you can learn, and you can hone, and you can certainly get your kiddos on board with, if you have children or a spouse or a partner, and it really is truly, again, my highest form of self-care. It is the only way I think I function in the way that I do.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah! Before we wrap up, Laura, there was one story you told me that I think is just a beautiful representation of that, of embracing the realities of what you do and how your brain or your home works, is you talked about you have a coat closet, coats should go in there, and yet every day coats were on the ground. Do you mind telling what you did based on that?
Laura Kinsella: Of course! So I think our natural — everyone when they come in is you plop things, right? And so, we are fortunate enough to have a front entry closet. In New York City, that’s not always the case. So we can certainly hang our coats when we come in, but we weren’t doing that because when you come in, you’ve got a bag, you’ve got groceries.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah, you’ve got to go to the bathroom.
Laura Kinsella: You’re just going into go mode of being home, getting out of your outside clothes, the whole thing. So we were finding we were just bopping our coats on the floor or on our bench, and I was like — I kept hitting a wall with this, and then I was like, “Hooks! The answer is hooks.” And so, we hung a few hooks by my entryway, and now we don’t have an avalanche of things on the floor when we first enter. We can easily just kind of instead of plop things on the floor, plop them on the hook, and it serves as this temporary hopeful thing when you’re in a moment where you can’t actually give your full attention and time to keeping your house perfect.
But then at the end of the day, that’s part of my reset. So then I go to those hooks, and I go, “Okay, what news to be hung up in the closet,” or “What am I gonna grab for tomorrow morning?” I’ll just leave it on the hook. Because the simple act of opening the closet and hanging something up was too complicated for me and my family, as silly as that sounds. [Laughs]
Kelly Nolan: No! But I love that example because so often I think that a situation like that happens, and all we do is beat ourselves up. Where instead if you’re like, “Let’s stop beating ourselves up and just think creatively,” and just letting go of that, again, self-judgment or whatever it is allows you to get creative and be like, “Hooks!” And it can be such a simple thing that might have been right in front of you but the shame or the judgment or whatever prevents us from seeing it. I just love that example.
Laura Kinsella: Absolutely. Yeah.
Kelly Nolan: Lean into that.
Laura Kinsella: Yeah, lean into it because I’m a professional, and I was fighting my own instinct. So here I am shouting from the rooftops to tell you not to do that to yourself.
Kelly Nolan: Yeah!
Laura Kinsella: And especially the little shifts, game changers, truly.
Kelly Nolan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Laura! If someone wants to reach out to you — I mean, follow her anywhere. You share really fun stuff on Instagram, so whether or not you live in the New York City area, follow her on Instagram. And also, if someone wants to work with you, where should they look for you?
Laura Kinsella: Sure, so you can always find me on Instagram, like you said, @urbanorganyze, the OrgaNYze is spelled with “NY” in the middle. I share tips, tricks, New York City life, mom life, all that kind of stuff. You can always shoot me a message on there, but if you live in the New York City metro area or surrounding boroughs, you can always reach out on our website www.urbanorganyze.com and just fill out an inquiry form, and we’ll go from there!
Kelly Nolan: Oh, well, as always, it was so much fun talking to you. Thanks so much for making the time, for being here. And for those at home, thank you for being here as well, and I will catch you in the next episode!
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