Disorganized? Lacking space? Around Dublin Blog guest contributor Pauline Wiles, owner of The English Organizer, is here to turn your chaos into calm. Pauline’s clients are busy professionals who juggle multiple responsibilities. Together, you will be able to figure out what to keep and what to toss, saving you time, money, and stress. Pauline is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers.

As residents of the Dublin Ranch Villages and other higher-density communities in the Tri-Valley know all too well, storage space is at a premium. Even after they have repurposed their garages into ad hoc storage, many condo and townhome dwellers still run out of space for all the treasures they have accumulated over the years.

Clutter in your home costs you time. Americans waste millions of hours every year searching for lost possessions, not to mention the extra effort you have to exert whenever you try to clean the room. Clutter costs you money, when you buy duplicates of items you already own, or incur late fees because you forgot about a bill you needed to pay. Why not set aside an hour and pick a small space to purge? You can do it yourself or consider hiring a Professional Organizer, who will keep you on track and help you work systematically, while remaining impartial and non-judgmental.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you consider whether to keep or to toss an item:

• Do I love it?
• Do I use it?
• Am I obliged to hold onto it, for tax or legal reasons?
• When was the last time I used it? (One to two years is a great cut-off point.)
• When do I next plan to use it?
• If I lost it in a fire, would I replace it?
• If I were moving overseas, would I pay to ship it with me?
• If I were to die next week, would my relatives wonder why I kept it?
• Is it broken, dirty or obsolete?
• Do I love the item, or just the person who gave it to me?
• What’s the worst that can happen, if I get rid of it?
• Could someone else get better value from it?

Of course, you should only aim to declutter your own belongings. Avoid organizing other people’s space without their explicit permissions to do so. After you have identified the items to discard, get them out of your home as soon as possible. Loading them into your car is a great first step. A favorite technique among Professional Organizers is to donate them the following day. Doing so gives you long enough to sleep on your decisions, but not long enough to second-guess yourself. If you do not wake in the middle of the night anxious to retrieve an item, you can let it go.