Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Retirement Success Maine podcast. My name is Ben Smith. Let me introduce my co-hosts, the Joshua Chamberlain and George Lafayette Beal to my Hiram Berry, Curtis Worcester and Austin Minor. How are you guys doing today.

Curtis Worcester:

Right, I'm doing well, Ben. How are you?

Ben Smith:

I'm doing well. Austin, you doing okay?

Austin Minor:

I'm great. Yeah, thank you.

Ben Smith:

Historical figures, so-

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I like the theme here.

Ben Smith:

We're recording near the 4th of July, celebrating independence and history and our great country's birthday, so thought we'd throw a little history in here today. And again, speaking of history, one things that we've been talking with our clients with over time is sometimes as we have some history, we accumulate some of that history as we age. And of course, retirement is a significant milestone in one's life, and it's of course a time to embrace newfound freedom and embark on new ventures. But as I said about history, with this exciting phase comes a challenge of managing possessions that we've accumulated over a lifetime. And maybe we're going to be moving to a smaller living space. We don't need that house that we raised kids in or that we had all the friends over all the time, but we need to find balance amidst a sea of these sentimental items.

So on this podcast, we wanted to explore practical strategies, expert advice, inspiring stories that we can empower retirees, their families, and anyone interested in creating organized, peaceful living spaces. So we're going to discuss unique needs and considerations of retirees when it comes to decluttering and downsizing, helping them transition seamlessly into this new chapter of their lives. So if you're a retiree looking to declutter and create a peaceful sanctuary, a family member seeking guidance to support your loved ones in their downsizing journey, or simply someone curious about the art of organizing spaces for retirees, our show today is here to inspire and guide you every step of the way. So that's exactly what our show today is about, is organizing your space to unlock your life.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right, Ben. And as you mentioned, I will speak for the three of us here. I don't think any of us are experts in decluttering, so I think we're going to bring in an expert like we like to do on all our shows. So our next guest is a certified professional organizer, of which there are fewer than 400 worldwide. Through her adroit advice, insightful instruction, she has transformed both the living spaces and personal lives of her thousands of followers, clients, and students on five different continents. Talk about reach here, five continents. That's pretty impressive. Her current mission is to bring order to cluttered desks and overwhelmed minds with her signature course, The Paper Cleanse. In it, she teaches people how to declutter their paper piles and curate their frustrating files for a long lasting paper organization. All, I will add, without scanning a single thing.

So our guest has been featured in the Washington Post, New England Living, House Beautiful, Northern Virginia Magazine, and various news outlets. Our guest currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband of over 30 years and considers herself to be indoorsy, which I think I'm probably more on the indoorsy than outdoorsy spectrum myself. So as an Anglophile who adores alliteration, she delights in hosting friends for divine desserts, decadent drinks, and deep discussions, all of which sound fantastic. So with that, please join me in welcoming C. Lee Cawley to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. C. Lee, thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show today.

C. Lee Cawley:

Curtis, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to your people about this.

Ben Smith:

And we have lots to get into, C. Lee, so we want to obviously pick your brain around organizing and the challenges we all have. And again, there's a lot of emotional charge that happens around our things and our spaces. And I know when we talk about retirement and talk to our clients and people that are looking at retirement, a lot of these things are holding us back sometimes. So it's a challenge here. So we want to get into that today, C. Lee, but we want to of course hear a little bit about you first. So we want to get to know you for a few moments. So love to hear a little bit about your upbringing and how you're led to become a certified professional organizer. What was that journey like?

C. Lee Cawley:

It's funny you should ask. My mother was 47 when she had me. That was in 1963. It was very unusual. So I grew up with the make, do, and mend mentality, and she taught me early on that it's important to be organized so that you're not rebuying things. You're saving time and money. So that was ingrained in me in an early, early age. I went on, I actually have a fairly varied background. I got a BFA, and I was a costume designer in New York City for the Joffrey Ballet and the Julliard School. I also was a wardrobe mistress on Driving Miss Daisy. I did personal assistant work. I had a career in high-end retail, and not to be a snob, but I was really successful in all of those ventures.

We lived in England, my husband and I, for most of the '90s, and in 2000 we moved back because my mother was much older, I wanted to make sure that she had a great relationship with our daughter, and I was at the point where I got to choose what I wanted to be when I grew up. And looking back at all of my various careers, I realized the one thing that they had in common was that I could get things done on time and on budget because I was organized. And I thought to myself, "I wonder if I could teach other people." And this was in the early 2000s, when if you went to a party and said you were an organizer, they'd say, "For what, labor organization?" Especially here in the D.C. region.

Ben Smith:

Makes sense.

C. Lee Cawley:

No, pantries and closets. But of course, over the last 20 years, people recognize... It's kind of like... People are like, "Well, who's your personal trainer? Who's your organizer?" People realize that these are not innate abilities. If we want to succeed in getting fit or getting our houses fit, it's worth hiring a professional. So yeah, I've been doing this since 2003, so I'm in my 20th year of organizing, and I did get my certification in 2007, something I'm very, very proud of.

Austin Minor:

Wow, that is quite a journey to become where you are now and everything. So diving into your business, so tell us a little bit more about how do you help people and is it different for clients in person versus virtually? What kind of people do you typically help?

C. Lee Cawley:

Absolutely. So for so long I was just an in-home organizer. I went to the people I could drive to or occasionally fly to. I actually had a client fly me up to Maine to get them all moved into their home on the water. It was amazing. But I was just doing the classic things. Closets, kitchens, pantries, paper, helping people one on one. And I have to tell you, it was super satisfying. I loved every minute of it. You walk in and there's a before picture, you leave, and it's a tangible result. It's something you can see with your eyes, feel with the extra space. Everybody was like, "Oh, I can breathe deeper. I'm like, "Yeah, because we cleared all that dust up."

But now I've actually transitioned my business and I'm working with people, as you mentioned, worldwide. And in a way it's even more satisfying. And I'll tell you, it's because with my coaching, with our community, these people are making the changes themselves. I'm not running in there with a team of 10 and a bunch of stuff from container store. They're actually really doing it themselves with our support, and it's so powerful because they're getting real change and real long lasting solutions. So the people I work with, I would say they're... We're the Boomers. They're about to retire, they've retired, really classically 57 to 75, and I'll be 60 this year, so I'm right there with them. I understand what they're going through. As I said, I grew up with much older parents, so I think I have a bit of an older mentality, if you will. So those are the people I love to help.

Curtis Worcester:

That's incredible. I love that. So you teed up my next question perfectly. Obviously we're here based in the state of Maine, we have a show about retirement here in Maine, so I love to ask all of our guests, do you have any connections to the state of Maine, which I know you just shared at least one with us, that you've been up here with a client. So I'd just love to ask any connections to Maine beyond that?

C. Lee Cawley:

Way more than that, Curtis, thanks for asking. So my father-in-law actually grew up in Skowhegan, his family. So when I first met him, he had such a deep Maine accent, occasionally I would have to ask my husband for translation. And now I'm happy to say that my mother-in-law lives in Wiscasset. So we have a family home there, and I do hope that my future retirement plan includes summering in Maine, as they say.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay, wow. I think that's one of the more... For a non-Maine resident guest, I think that's probably the most connections we've had to the state of Maine when we ask that question, so that's fantastic.

Ben Smith:

And you got both sides of it. You got the highlands and you got the coast. That's pretty awesome. Well, C. Lee, I'd like to... Obviously we want to talk about our topic today of organizing your space to unlock your life. So getting into some of the nitty gritty here, but we always want to start with basics and fundamentals and foundational. And I think the first question is why? Why are we here? And then what are the reasons that you hear from clients about why things haven't been tidier?

C. Lee Cawley:

So we're here, especially from the paper perspective, we weren't taught these skills. Our parents had three pieces of mail. It was a postcard from their grandmother, the Good Housekeeping magazine, an electric bill. Now we are inundated. Each person on average gets 300 pieces of junk mail a year. 100 million trees are cut down just provide the world with junk mail. It's a huge problem. Do you remember, Ben, when they said we would be a paper free society? You may not be old enough, but we can all agree that didn't happen. So I think that that's the biggest things. We weren't taught this by our parents. We weren't taught it in school. So no wonder we're floundering.

And then we also have so much more, so many more possessions. I don't know about you, but I grew up every bedroom in our home, it had a three foot closet. It wasn't a walk-in closet. We all have so much more stuff and we get stuff from the generation before it. Not only are we purchasing our own things, we're inheriting and getting handed down things. So I think we're in this perfect storm, really. And I also think that, to answer your question about why things aren't tidier, the people I'm working with, they have big careers. They've raised families. They are taking care of elderly parents themselves and their children. Even though their children might be grown and flown, we're so much more involved with our children's lives than my parents were with mine.

So they're busy, busy people, and it's not easy to maintain the excess. So I think that from a prioritization standpoint, those other things come first. So it's often not until they can see retirement that they realize they might actually have some time to devote to making a change. So that's why I think a lot of these problems are happening.

Ben Smith:

This might be... Maybe it's a too specific a scenario, but I would just gather that obviously we live in our space, we walk in our space. We know whether it's tidy or not. We know if it's organized. And I would assume that... So say we know it's not tidy, we're probably a little embarrassed about that. We're probably like, "Geez, I don't know about..." If I walked in, I might be embarrassed about this. And I would gather that maybe, especially, as I'm entering retirement and I want to have more of a social life and I have more time to have a social life, that if I knew my space was untidy and maybe embarrassing, I probably would avoid behavior such as having friends and family over to my house, and that also might be harming my social relationships. Do you find that scenario with the people that you help?

C. Lee Cawley:

Oh my gosh, Ben, we actually have an acronym for this, and organizers have acronyms for everything, and we call it CHAOS, and it stands for Can't Have Anybody Over Syndrome. You have so much stuff that... And it really affects... You might be in a book club, but it's your turn to host and you're thinking, "Oh, I just can't do it. I can't invite people over." Or people just gather it all up and hide it in the bathtub behind the shower curtain. But that's not a solution. So I think it's so important to acknowledge this and to know that you're not alone. This is not an unusual situation. Also to know that you can fix it. You can do it.

It's so interesting, I have to tell you that people have told me, "You've saved my marriage." And part of it is because nobody wants to be a bad spouse. So knowing your why, if it's to have your book club over, if it's... I had a client and her... I just want to eat on the kitchen table, and she just couldn't figure out how to get the kitchen table cleared. So when we identified that her why, that her reason was she was a good and loving spouse, and that was not a lot to ask, it made her realize it wasn't just about clearing up the kitchen, it was about being the best wife she could be.

Another scenario, I've had a client where the husband retired, so all of a sudden he's home all the time. He didn't really notice it before when he was working full time, he came home, dinner was on the table, it was all good. But now he's in the home and he wanted to create a space to do his hobbies. He wanted to do, I think those airplanes that you glue together. It was a family thing. It made sense for everybody to come together so that he could have a space in the home, so that she could still feel that she was doing her part. So knowing your why is a big reason. And I know it sounds crazy, like, "Oh, eating off the kitchen table saved my marriage," but I have been on speed dial for more than one marital therapist. So there's definitely something to that.

Austin Minor:

I think personally that makes so much sense. As someone who just finished a weekend with their girlfriend spending I think about 10 hours of strictly cleaning, I can attest that it definitely improved both of our moods. So it can be a big deal. But say I'm in a situation that Ben just outlined before where I'm in chaos and I got paper clutter piles all over the place, and now I'm retired and ready to tackle this project. So you had said finding your why is very important. Are there any other tips that you might give for getting started on tackling these projects?

C. Lee Cawley:

Oh, Austin, absolutely. So I think one of the things is knowing you can do it. So often people are like, "I just can't get organized. I'm a disorganized person. I'm a mess." I'm like, "No, you get to define yourself. Especially now, you might have been, maybe because of circumstance and situation, but you get to define yourself." And I know that I've seen literally hundreds of other people say that exact same thing and turn it around. So knowing you can do it, number one. I think the other thing is I find that so many of my students are high achievers. These are people with masters and doctorates and patents, and they're perfectionists. And one of the things I say is this does not have to be A+ effort. This can be a B+ plus effort. Good and done is better than perfect and none. And that is progress over perfection.

I admit, I'm a recovering perfectionist, and I really am trying to live this as well, but knowing that it doesn't have to be perfect, that you don't have to have all of the answers, I think is one of the biggest ways that people can overcome that and get started. And then the other thing I always say to people is trust yourself and your decisions. You are an accomplished person. You have raised children to do amazing things, and yet you are worried about throwing away the manual to your dishwasher? No, that's insane. Trust yourself. You are a great decision maker. You have accomplished so much. What's the worst that could happen? And when people put it in perspective and they're like, "You're right. I've spoken on world stages and yet I'm paralyzed by my paper. That's insanity." So yes, that's one thing to keep in mind when you're trying to get started.

Curtis Worcester:

I love that, and I really connect with your battling progress versus perfection there, and I think that can apply to a lot of things in life, but it certainly applies here. I want to ask a question honestly for myself here, and I hope there's listeners out there. So I know I typically throughout the workday and throughout the year, I seem to be doing my best work when my workspace is clean. My desk is clean here, whether it's here in the office or at home in my home office. How do you advise people to organize their desk to optimize getting things done?

C. Lee Cawley:

I love this question, and I do think that we really need to focus on one thing at a time. I think we all realize now that multitasking doesn't work. So if you can clear your desk off... And one of the first things we do in my course is I have my students clean their desk, literally the entire surface, get out a wet wipe. You can't imagine. Some of those surfaces haven't seen the light of day in decades. And people get worried. I'm like, "It's okay, trust me. Just trust the process and gather up all of the papers, put them in a box." And they're like, "Oh, I have more papers than one box." I'm like, "Okay, papers from the right side, label it right side of the desk. Papers from the left side, label it the left side of the desk." So clear the whole thing and then be really thoughtful about what you put back down on your desk.

One of the first things I'm going to tell you is good lighting, especially for those of us who are a bit older, where our eyesight is bad. This will make so much difference. I'll often find people are in the dining room, spread out on the dining room, and do you want to know why? It's because there's often a big picture window that lets in a lot of light, or a big chandelier that they can turn up that lets in a lot of light. They're craving light. So make sure you have a great light. Bring the other things you need, your electronics, your charging cables. If you live with somebody, you don't need a photograph of them on your desk. One grandchild, one plant. Let's be realistic. You don't need every pen in the house on your desk. So really be thoughtful about what you put back and then try to work on one project at a time.

Oh, the other thing is get yourself a good chair. Oh my goodness. During the pandemic, I know we had to make, do, and mend. We had to just pull a dining room chair up. But that's not supportive, especially for our old bones. So if you're going to be productive, get the ergonomics. Make sure your keyboard is at a good height. All of these things matter. So really looking critically at your desk space and trying to just work on one project at a time, one folder. I'm working on getting new car insurance, and then put it away. You don't have to have it all spread out. I promise you, you won't forget about it. It's all going to be there waiting for you to take care of.

So yeah, those are a couple of my suggestions. Oh, I also have... And this is something your readers might be interested in. I have this great freebie, 12 types of papers to toss today. So this is a great way to get rid of that excess. I call them the dirty dozen. These are the papers that often are clogging up our system, and unless you can get rid of the excess, you're never going to have time to deal with the important tasks. So that's something I'm sure you'll be able to put that in the show notes for your listeners to grab a copy of.

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

I think, C. Lee, you attacked me a bit there. I got one pen, I got two pens, I got three... I got another dozen in another arms length. You're probably right. I probably don't need about 15 pens on my desk at any one given point. Noted for later. I will certainly minimize my pen storage here.

C. Lee Cawley:

Remember, your grandfather had one fountain pen on his desk. He knew where it was at all times. That's what he used to write with. Sometimes the old ways can be better.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, I got you. Well C. Lee, I know you just mentioned the dirty dozen right there in terms that... Again, we can put in the show notes, but I want to also ask about your course. So your signature course titled The Paper Cleanse. So I'm anticipating, and I know obviously I think the easy answer that you're asking folks to make their paper documents just electronic, and probably like others I'm dreading being in front of a scanner with a sound for days on end. So truth or myth, how is the signature course, The Paper Cleanse, how are you getting rid of paper here?

C. Lee Cawley:

So I am not a believer in digitization. If it already exists digitally, great. If you know where to find it, you don't need to print it out. But if I scan it, it disappears into the ether. I'm a paper person. I love to touch and feel and smell paper. I need to highlight. And they actually say that if you're doing handwritten notes, you're absorbing the information better. I believe that. I still like to read a real book. When I travel, I'll read off my iPad, but if I'm trying to absorb information, I want a sticky note, I want a... I'm a paper person, so I'm not going to tell anybody that they need to scan or digitize something because I don't do that. I would never teach what I don't do. I am a digital dinosaur.

I understand the irony of a digital dinosaur teaching an online course, but that's why I try to make it super simple. So when we're talking about Paper Cleanse, we're not talking about digitization. It's not realistic and it's time consuming. Can you imagine if I'm saying, "Purchase my course and now you need to go buy $400 scanner?" No, that doesn't make sense. And I'm sorry, taking pictures on your phone isn't going to fix it either. So I really believe that it's important to have a system to process the actual paper, and getting rid of the excess is a large part of that process and then putting the rest of the components into place makes a huge difference as well.

Austin Minor:

Yeah, so you claim as part of this paper cleanse that you have a new approach for paper management. So what could possibly be new? I feel like we have only a few choices there. We have to file it, act on it, or toss the paper. Can you tell us a little more about that?

C. Lee Cawley:

I appreciate that, Austin. Nothing new. I think it's a different perspective. So you mentioned FAT, file, act, toss. That is actually an acronym from Barbara Hemphill, who's the founder of the Paper Tiger Management System. And it's true, you are absolutely right. We are going to have to file or act or toss every single thing. But I think it's the idea about a different approach. So not that I'm saying I'm Marie Kondo, but I think that Marie Kondo's success is simply defined as what she said was think about what you want to keep. Does it spark joy? Versus what you want to get rid of. Same ideas. But she turned our perspective. So unless it wasn't, "Yes, I want to keep it," then it goes away. And I loved that. I love that idea. So my method is really just changing your perspective.

So I approach paper organization, I call it the KARMA of paper management, it stands for K-A-R-M-A, and it's based on knowing what the paper is will tell you exactly where it goes and how to deal with it. And it's just turning the chart a little bit. So very briefly, K stands for the crud. I know I spelled it incorrectly, I had to do it for my acronym, but the crud, as we've talked about, is what clogs up the system. So you really need to deal with that first. That actually only leads four types of paper, and that's A is action items, active projects, R is reference, M is memorabilia, and the final A is archive. And every single piece of paper that you're keeping will fall into one of these four categories. The categories change, but when you know if it's action, that's something you need to take an action on. That should be on your desk.

If it's reference, people often call that filing. But those are the reference papers that you're filing away that you will be referring to. Memorabilia, I think you know what this is. This is the stuff that speaks to your heart, the playbills, the ticket stubs. And then the archive is the just in case, to cover ourselves in case of a problem. It's generally financial, medical, property. You guys understand that as financial people. So I would think in the finance world there's probably not a whole lot of memorabilia, but those are the actions that we need to take, the references, perhaps our past performances in different categories. And then the archive would probably be the tax and financial records. So I think you could apply these to what you guys are doing in your office as well. Although my system is really based a residential system, if you have a home-based business or something like that, all of these apply as well.

Ben Smith:

So C. Lee, I could see where... So somebody's trying to apply this on their own, so here's the KARMA system, and they go through, and I could see where they go, "Nothing's crud," and then they go through the letters like, "Everything's archive, just in case. We just want to have everything is just in case. I might need that one paper one day that I paid the electric bill in August of 2004. I might need to prove to the court that I paid my electric bill if they ever came back to me." I think from a psychological and emotional perspective, how do you break through and go, "Is that really an archive," versus, "Hey, there's maybe a little bit of hoarding or something going on around that." How do you break that out a little bit?

C. Lee Cawley:

So I feel like, again, we need to be realistic. And often people at this age and stage of their lives have inherited other people's papers problems. I know I've cleared out my mother, my sister, my father. I still have my mother-in-law, and she has two homes. It's overwhelming. So if you cleared out somebody else's papers, then that alone should be your reason not to ever do that to anybody else. First and foremost, if that hasn't happened to you yet, if you haven't had the joy and honor of clearing other people's papers out, then you may not realize and you might say, "Oh, I'm just going to archive it all. It's all just in case." But it's not realistic. Your home is only so big. And when we get to the point where we need to downsize, then we need to look at it critically.

So I'm encouraging people in my course first and foremost to deal with the action and active projects. That's the stuff of life. Eventually we're going to get to the backlog, and chances are the backlog has timed out. And that's where I circle back to trust your decisions and think about what's the worst that could happen? What is the very worst that could happen? And I think we've seen people whose homes have been ravaged by fire and flood and tornadoes. They don't have their backup papers. So the worst that's happened to them, what's the worst that's going to happen to you? And when you think about that, then it makes you really realize that it's just paper. And if paper is standing between you and the life you want to be living, then I'm here to say change your perspective.

So when you start to think of it in big picture terms that you'll realize, "Oh my gosh, that electric bill from 2004." So one of the things I often encourage people to do is to have meta decisions. You have decided that you're not keeping your bills paid from 2018 forward. We're in 2003, so you've made that decision. Trust that decision. Write it on a giant post note, put it on the wall, and then if you see something dated 2015, you can let go of it. So I know there's a temptation just to make it all archive, but you're not doing yourself or anyone coming behind you a favor. And I think that people who come to me are ready to make the decisions. They're really ready. So I guess that's part of it.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. I want to rotate a little bit or I guess move on from maybe just paper to everything here, and you teed up a little bit with inheritance here. So I know one place that... I know the people the three of us talk to every day, certainly something they struggle with over time is when they inherit items from loved ones. And obviously these items represent very complicated feelings, sometimes of love and grief and more, but we probably already have a home full of our own things at this point, so may or may not have a place. So how do you help organize people after they receive their loved one's things?

C. Lee Cawley:

So one of the first things is not to receive them. If you can prevent yourself... So one of the things I tell my students is if someone says no twice, then you need to believe them. So if they're downsizing and they're saying to their daughter, "Do you want my mink," and she's like, "No, mom, I don't." "She's going to want it. I know she's going to want it." Two years later, "Sweetheart, I'm ready to give you my mink." "No, mom." You've heard it twice. The answer's not changing. So trust other people when they say no and think about yourself when it's time to inherit this stuff. Think about what it means. I have so many stories, but for instance, I had a client who... The matriarch died. The dad was moving to the home in Maine permanently and left five children, and he was a diplomat here in D.C., beautiful home, literally five full sets of China for 24 people, because he entertained at home.

And the children wanted none of it. They were all in their 40s and 50s. They don't entertain like that. They don't have staff to hand wash the Baccarat crystal. And we were literally giving Baccarat crystal to the cleaning lady, the chimney guy came to clear out the chimney. I'm like, "Do you want..." They didn't want it. And luckily he wasn't insulted. He was still alive. If both of your parents are dead and you've got the family china, think about, do they want you burdened? Are you going to use it? If you've got it, use it. Don't hand wash it. So what if the gold chips off? Enjoy it, break it up, and make it a mosaic and make a table out of it, repurpose it, or just take a photograph of it and tell the story about how your parents were married in 1945 and it was the end of the war and their sisters and brothers banded together to get them a set of china for four, or whatever the story is. That's what's powerful. It's not the China.

And just as an aside, for anybody who's listening, if your mother collected it, china, crystal, linens, figurines, anything from a feminine perspective, it is probably worth very, very little, because the market is inundated right now. It's not just our parents, but Baby Boomers, they are getting rid of the stuff... I've been married 30 years, luckily I chose a china pattern I eat off of every day, but a lot of my contemporaries are trying to get rid of that stuff. It's very little value. If it's something your grandfather or father collected, advertisements, pipes, watches, those tend to have more value in the resale market. So that's just a little advice. Of course, your mileage may vary, but when you're looking at things, you think it has so much value and there's just so much of it.

My own example, for my 18th birthday my best friend gave me a green vinyl, Jimmy Jimmy 45, and I never played it. It was collector's item. Fast forward 30 years later, I go on eBay. Oh yeah, 99 cents. There were over a dozen of them on eBay for 99 cents. She paid $18 for it as a gift for me in 1981. So use things. The value is so very little, you have to find a buyer to post it on eBay. I wish I had played that green vinyl, Jimmy Jimmy 45. Anyway.

Ben Smith:

I want to ask the same question just a little... Let's add a little more emotional weight to it. Obviously we have a very young country relative to the world. You go to Europe and you're talking about thousands of years of history versus just a few hundred here. But I've just heard and personally have this situation of... Say my great grandfather had this possession and it was handed down, here's possessions maybe, or it was just handed down one after the other after the other. And then it's to the point of, to what you just described of here's the current generation holding it and they're going to give it to the next generation, but the next generation doesn't want it. How do you counsel that? I'm going to break the eight generations of giving this family thing down, but I don't want it, but I don't want to break the family tradition that's been going on for 100 or 200 years.

C. Lee Cawley:

No, Ben, that's a fantastic question and it's a hard one too, because you think, "Well, maybe the generation after that, these fictitious grandchildren that don't exist yet, maybe they're really going to want it." One of the things I say is honor the past, plan for the future, live in the present. So yeah, we want to honor these things, but is honoring them holding onto the physical object? Would it honor it more to... So I have a great example. I had a client who inherited this huge, gothic, dark, carved, Germanic sideboard that her great-grandparents shipped from the old country, and she had a clean minimalistic home. It was an important family piece. So we honored it. She had the formal portrait of them, and we hired a photographer to come in with a lighting and she told the story, videographer, and she saved that one photograph of the grandparents' portrait with the piece, and then she sold it for $10,000, because it really was a valuable piece.

But she had the photograph to honor it. So she honored the past, but she was living in her present. It didn't fit into her present. And planning for the future. She took that money and she donated a big chunk of it to one of the foundations that they supported. And that really was just a beautiful way of honoring their memory. Yes, that possession was important to them, but if it doesn't serve your present and it becomes a burden, your ancestors did not want you to be burdened. When your great-grandfather had that steamer trunk, he used it to travel the world, and those are the stories that need to be told. The steamer trunk doesn't need to be saved. Maybe if you can repurpose it as a coffee table or something, but if you're downsizing and you're living on a cruise ship for the next two years, that's probably not going to happen.

And I don't want anybody to spend a dollar putting something from a parent or grandparent into storage. That is just burning money. Don't do it. Or find their alma mater. I grew up in upstate New York and when my father passed away, he was born in 1922, he was in the Navy in World War II. He had some amazing pictures of being on the Hawaiian islands with his Navy buddies. He had some amazing pictures, his parents grew up in Endicott, New York, of his parents and grandparents. I didn't know any of the people. If it wasn't a picture of my father or my grandfather, I didn't know any of the people. He was active in the Legion and the Elks. I took boxes of these old pictures into those places and I was like, "Maybe you know the people here."

And they had a ball looking through them. Those old guys loved it. And they're like, "What do you want us to do with it?" I'm like, "It's okay. Enjoy them. Throw them away. They aren't going to help me." if they were at a nursing school, maybe the nursing school's interested, the local historical society might be interested. But if they say they're not, it's okay. I'm giving you permission right now. If you're hearing this and this is resonating with you, I'm giving you permission to let go of it, because if you can honor it in some way, make sure you've got the story of it. Now we can take videos of it. In a couple of years, we'll be able to create a hologram of it. We won't have to keep that stuff anymore because it'll be able to exist that way. But it's the story behind the item that's so important, not the item itself.

Ben Smith:

So C. Lee, I'm going to ask a question which I think you already have positioned it in terms of how to do it, but I think it's a slight angle. I think there's a situation that people might get something out of. So again, thinking about paper items, especially historical documents or something meaningful, it could be family meaningful or maybe region or town, so that we have it, but maybe we don't value it, but we know someone somewhere might find it valuable. So I could see where there it creates a hesitation that we don't want to throw it out or destroy it. We don't just put it through the shredder and then just move on, because maybe, again, I don't want to hold it, but I'm sure somebody somewhere might need this or want to account for it. So I guess how do you handle this without just waiting for the right opportunity to find that one person that might find this interesting to give that paper item to? How do you advise people in that situation?

C. Lee Cawley:

So again, it's this fictitious person or these fictitious people who might in the future gain something from it, that if you feel responsible for people that you don't even know, I'm going to encourage you to let go of that responsibility. So much of it depends. In Maine, a lot of families go back generations. So that's when using some type of online source, Artifex, Ancestry, it might be worth it to scan that stuff in, so that there is some documentation somewhere, somehow. That might be where digitization is the key, so that it doesn't disappear, it still exists. But you have to make sure that the people in the future know how to find it. So here's a great example. My daughter majored in classics and near Eastern languages and cultures. Back in the '60s and '70s some man went to Syria and took thousands of actual photographs, and his family found Dunbarton Oaks here in D.C. to donate the photographs to.

Now they've all been digitized. Her job was to identify and categorize what they are. But it took a nonprofit foundation that can afford to hire an intern. It's a whole lot of work. So a blessing, because a lot of those things in Syria don't exist anymore, for future scholars. But that is a pretty unique situation. So I want you to really take a critical look at these things that you've been handed down, that you're holding onto. I had a wonderful, wonderful woman as client and she had not dealt with these types of historical documents from her parents and she thought she would, and time got by, and then all of a sudden she needed to downsize. And she had her own very impressive career here in D.C. and then the whole thing was magnified and doubled, and she felt some guilt that she had never done this for her parents.

But I pointed out to her that her career and her things were much more important and much more illustrious, and it didn't take much, a couple of phone calls, and she was able to donate them to her alma mater, because they recognized the importance that her things would have and that... We literally packed them up, insured the box, and waved them goodbye. And the relief, it was like losing 50 pounds. She'd let it go into the future for somebody else. But it didn't take a whole lot of time. So if you don't have that kind of illustrious heritage, and if it takes more than maybe a week or two of phone calls, I'm going to give you permission to let it go. I know it's hard to hear. You're like, "Yeah, that's for somebody else, but not for me."

Austin Minor:

I actually think it's great. I like the permission, so thank you. I'm going to go home and get rid of some stuff.

C. Lee Cawley:

Amen, Austin, I love to hear it.

Austin Minor:

So let's say I do go home and throw out some stuff and I start getting organized and the process is going great and I know others that might benefit from the process, but it would feel like suggesting to others are a bit messy or might be insulting if I tell them they should go get some help with this. How would you suggest that someone gift the process of getting organized, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

C. Lee Cawley:

Austin, that's such a great question. So you never say to somebody, "Wow, this place is a mess. Let me get you some help." No one wants to hear that. I think we have to lead by example. So you've done it and you say to somebody, "I just spent 10 hours cleaning and it was worth every hour I spent doing that. I've gained 10 times knowing it's not nagging me. Now we can go away for the weekend knowing that that's taking care of." So leading by example is the very best way to do it. I have so many students who... One of my students said, "My sister walked into my office and she looked around and she was like, 'wow.'" And my student said, "Yeah." And that that's all it took. She realized, she saw, she could feel the energy, the excitement of not having all of that excess. She could see my student was spending a lot more time volunteering. Where'd that time come from? Yeah it was because that stuff was taken care of. She gained enough time to start volunteering.

So I think you can say, "Wow, this really changed my life. I felt so free once I let go of grandma's china. I'm just so glad I took that weekend to take care of those excess papers because now every weekend for the rest of the summer's freed up." Use your own self as an example, and people are like... People are listening. People are paying attention. They want what you have. They want to be able to... Oh, this is a great example. So I had a student who took The Paper Cleanse. She had so much paper, and it was piled up in piles, and I don't know if she got everything as paper statements, and they had little holes as if they're supposed to be put in binders. So she was like, "I'm going to put them in binders." I'm like, "Why? No, that's insane."

She was so overwhelmed by the paper, she really had no idea about her net worth and she couldn't go to one of you guys. She couldn't go to financial advisor because she had no idea. So we just worked through it slowly, and we... And she was a single woman, so her retirement, she wasn't going to be making any more money. She had her TIAA-CREF, her investments. We broke it down. I said, "All you really want to know is how much you have and how it's changing month to month." So we took a 8 by 12 piece of paper. This was not a digital solution. We listed the month, January through December, the eight different categories, her IRA, her 401K, her TIAA-CREF, that she had, her stocks. And every month when the statement came in, she opened the mail, she saw the number and she wrote it down so she could see a trend. If she started seeing a trend, then she would look a little bit deeper. "Oh, maybe I should shift some of this from one place to another."

Once she finally was able to deal with all the paper, I'm like, "That stuff is in the past and especially now, things have been so volatile with investments. What is it today? I mean, that's in the past. Let's shred all that stuff and let's just move forward." Once she had captured this information, she was able to take it to a financial advisor who said, "You don't need to worry. You can retire now." She thought it was two or three years off. I mean, what kind of tangible result is that? And he's like, "It doesn't have to be... You can retire and travel. You can retire and have fun." She wanted to take a niece to Europe. He's like, "Book the ticket. You can do it."

I mean, that's a tangible result. So I say to people I'm not excited about paper organization. Let's face it, that is not sexy. I'm excited about what getting your papers and your stuff organized can make for you. Time to travel, to volunteer. I've had students start nonprofits, businesses, read a book. It doesn't have to be huge. It can be like, go to the beach, read a book, have better relationships with their parents, their spouses, their kids. That's what gets me excited. So anyway.

Curtis Worcester:

I love that and thank you for sharing those examples. So unfortunately we've reached the end of our conversation conversation, C. Lee, I do have one final question for you before I take both my hands and wipe everything off my desk and start reorganizing in here. So obviously the name of our show, it's the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. So I have to ask you a retirement success question. So we want to ask, how are you going to find your personal retirement success?

C. Lee Cawley:

Well, Curtis, I'm living it. I am living it. I am pretty much retired from going into people's homes. I'm taking on this because I can teach this digital course from now to the day I die. I can still share all of my knowledge, my 20 years of knowledge, I can share it with people and help them get the results that they're looking for and I can do it... We went to Europe for three weeks this spring. Things were just fine, my students were fine. I did do one Q&A from Berlin at 1:00 AM, but only because I thought... Well, I promised I would and I did and it was fun. But I'm living my retirement. I'm hoping to spend some more time in Maine and just... As you say, I love decadent drinks and deep discussions, and I have the time and ability to do all of those things and to help people. So I'm living the dream already.

Ben Smith:

C. Lee, that's a fantastic answer and I'll add, just listening to you during our show today, the passion you have for the people that you help and your clients... Again, that organizing is the gateway to finding happiness. And I think that's been, for the three of us in our team at Guidance Point, that's been the fun part too, is the organizing of their financial lives. Is that having purpose to putting things into its place, what fits, what doesn't fit, putting all to work in conjunction, which I know is a spatial thing too for you. So I think we totally get what you're getting and where you get your joy and how you're providing happiness to your clients, because it's something where we see it on an individual basis too. So we applaud that. Thank you so much for coming on our show today and sharing your expertise. I think we learned a lot. And also from... Again, you're one of 400 out there in this world, so we appreciate you coming on our show and sharing a lot of what you have with our listeners today. Thank you so much.
C. Lee Cawley:

Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

Ben Smith:

All right, take care. Really excited to have C. Lee Cawley on today from just... Again, organization, it feels a very nerdy thing, where it's like, "Yeah, just organize your place and just go through." And I think when you go... Especially as we age and how much it's important to do and especially I think each stage that we go in through our life, we accumulate different things, that is necessary for maybe that particular stage. We're always adding and then maybe the purging is something we don't do as much. So again, good to get a certified professional organizer on the show and just have that conversation. So we got a few things we want to highlight in there for you is that C. Lee has a masterclass, and as she talked about, she's teaching a lot now. So she has a masterclass, it's typically every quarter.

So you can go to her website. We will link her website on our blog. She has a giveaway, a download that you can download the 12 steps there of organizing your space. So we'll have that available for you. And also, again, she has her signature course, The Paper Cleanse, too. So we will have that all linked for you, if you go to our website blog.guidancepointllc.com/87, for episode 87. And you can find a little more about C. Lee there, our show. Again, those links and the transcript will be there as well. Really appreciate you tuning in today. It was a lot of fun, I think, from the three of our perspective of getting her insights into things. Really appreciate you tuning in. We'll catch next time.