Here’s what InStyle Magazine had to say in their November 2009 issue about My Style Fashion Assistant, an app for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch.

“Macworld.com’s App Guide reviews more than 73,000 iPhone apps now available to download on iTunes. We’ve combed through them to find the best ones for shopping, saving and amping up your style.

We love this app, which acts as your very own stylist. It keeps track of what you have, what you wear, what you want, and it allows you to mix and match it all. It even helps you plan for trips – it’s the ultimate fashion organizer!”

Features include:

* Take Pictures Of Your Clothing, Shoes, Accessories & Bags
* Add Items To Your Closet Or Personal Fitting Room
* Mix-&-Match Items With The Revolutionary 3-Panel Slider
* Create Outfits For Every Occasion
* Window Shop Online
* Item & Outfit Calendars
* Get Fashion Feedback From Friends
* Take Your Wardrobe With You Everywhere
* Organize Outfits In Specific Lifestyle Categories
* Plan For That Upcoming Trip, Event Or Special Occasion
* Get Expert Fashion Tips
* Receive Savings From My Style Retail Partners

If you’ve ever stood in front of your jam-packed closets wondering what to wear or bought the same item multiple times because you couldn’t find the original one, this app is for you. Save money and reduce the clutter in your closets by making the most out of your wardrobe with My Style Fashion Assistant. You’ll never had to say “I don’t have anything to wear!” again.

If you don’t already know about RetailMeNot.com, trust me, you’ll want to. RetailMeNot provides 400,000 online and printable discounts for 100,000 retailers and manufacturers; more than all the other top coupon sites combined. I have personally used them and been very pleased by the money that I’ve saved. Here’s a sampling of the companies they offer discounts for:

• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon
• J. C. Penney
• Papa John’s Pizza
• Victoria’s Secret
• L. L. Bean
• Toys r Us
• Babies R Us
• Bloomingdale’s
• The Limited
• Drugstore.com
• Kohl’s
• Target
• Gap
• Urban Outfitters
• 1-800-Flowers.com
• Old Navy
• Macy’s
• Walmart
• Pizza Hut
• Sears
• Bath and Body Works
• Best Buy
• Domino’s Pizza
• Go Daddy
• Turbo Tax
• Walgreen’s
• Zale’s
• Saks Fifth Avenue
• Home Depot
• Blockbuster

Need I say more?

Bricks & mortar and online stores are both hoping you’ll spend more than you meant to and they’re expert at making it easy for you to do just that. BEFORE YOU GO SHOPPING, make a list of what you need to buy and stick to it. Watch out for the following traps:

* Free gift with purchase. If you’re spending more than you had intended just to get a “free” gift, then it’s really not so free after all, is it? Think about it.

* Free shipping. Ditto.

* It’s on sale. If you didn’t plan to buy it in the first place, it doesn’t matter what the price is, it’s not a bargain! Stop clutter where it starts…at the store!

* Bigger is better. Not if you really don’t need it in the jumbo size! And not if it takes you two years to go through a package of twelve and you really can’t afford to spare the space for them for that long!

* If one is good, two is better. Don’t buy an item in every color unless you really will use them all!

If your clutter issues stem chiefly from shopping, here are a few helpful tips to change that reality so you can conquer your clutter once and for all.

1.     Be aware of how you feel. If you use shopping, and specifically BUYING to alter your mood, notice it! If buying something new gives you an emotional high that temporarily takes you away from your troubles, makes you feel safe, worthy, loved, or gives you some other rush, it’s important to be aware of it. Once you’re aware of why you’re buying, you can take other steps to make yourself feel better besides buying. I would recommend a few sessions with a counselor, a hypnotist, or therapist to get to the root of your buying.

2.     Imagine yourself at home. When you’re OUT of your cluttered home and inside the gorgeous four walls of Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel, it’s easy to forget how stressed your home makes you. Again, that’s the idea. They WANT you to forget about your house and just open your wallet. And listen, when you really need something, great. Go buy it! But before you do, vividly imagine yourself back at your house with your new “thing”. Where in your already cluttered home will your new thing live? Who will clean it? How much space will it consume? What will it give you back? How long will it be valuable? Asking yourself these questions will help you make better buying decisions.

3.     Calculate the TIME cost. If money isn’t a motivator for you, and unnecessary spending doesn’t inspire you to reduce your shopping, think of how much TIME your new “thing” will cost you. Let’s say you make $20 per hour, and your new “thing” costs $100. In time currency, your new thing will cost you FIVE HOURS of your life. Thinking of new purchases in this way will help you decide if you REALLY need it or if you just want it to make yourself feel better.

The next time you’re out shopping, try these simple tips and see if it doesn’t help shift your shopping mindset so you can make better, more powerful choices and reduce the clutter in your life.

This past weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting article on how the downturn in the economy is affecting the self-storage industry. Not surprisingly, it confirms what I and my fellow organizers already know: the vast majority of storage units contain mostly clutter.

Since the start of the recession, occupancies at storage facilities nationwide are down 2-3%. While not a big drop, apparently it has shaken an industry that has always thought of itself as recession-resistant, if not recession-proof.

Here are some quotes from the article:

“After a monumental building boom, the United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing.”)”

“A Self Storage Association study showed that, by 2007, the once-quintessential client — the family in the middle of a move, using storage to solve a short-term, logistical problem — had lost its majority. Fifty percent of renters were now simply storing what wouldn’t fit in their homes — even though the size of the average American house had almost doubled in the previous 50 years, to 2,300 square feet.”

“Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators,” Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, told me. “Because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”

If you rent self-storage space, I dare you to multiply what your storage space costs by the number of months you’ve been renting it. Okay, now that you’ve picked yourself up off of the floor, do you even remember what you have in storage? Think about what you could have done with that money instead of lining the pockets of the storage industry with it.

I urge you to read the entire article. It’s fascinating and may provide just the inspiration you need to go clean out your storage space! Hire an organizer to help, if you need, too, but get it done!

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