Lea Schneider

Pensacola resident Lea Schneider helps busy people through her company, Organize Right Now LLC, manage their environments and simplify their lives with positive and maintainable changes. She teaches people to achieve a peaceful environment and ditch the long-held excuses for living in clutter. Schneider developed organization and time management skills through her work writing about food, home and garden issues for daily newspapers and while managing a busy retail garden center.

Bella: What will you talk about at the expo?
Schneider: My talk, When Your Can-do Can't Keep Up With Your Want-To, focuses on the gap between our desire to be organized and our typical less-than-organized result. Listeners will learn to plan organizing projects that really work.

Bella: In your brochure, you mentioned teaching children how to grow up organized. How early can you start that, and what is the first step?
Schneider: Begin with expectations that everything has a place and that all family members participate — followed by plenty of praise. A toddler can drop their dirty clothes in a hamper. A 3-year old can put canned goods on the pantry shelf after shopping.

Bella: What is the biggest obstacle to organization? Is it a mental thing?
Schneider: Excuses are the biggest obstacle to being organized. We repeat excuses until we actually believe they are real. "I have too much stuff, or don't have a home for this stuff or don't have time for this stuff" and my favorite, "I never learned to be organized. If you think I am bad, you should see my Mother!"

Bella: What advice do you have for woman who want a more organized life?
Schneider: Have a realistic goal. Your life is not like a 30-minute before-and-after organizing TV show. Choose only one thing to work on at a time. Accomplish that goal before tackling another project or area of your life. And, know the No. 1 rule of organizing — You Can't Organize Clutter. No matter how hard you try or how many plastic tubs you buy, it simply can't be done. You have to purge out the clutter and then organize the rest.

Tip from Lea Schneider: Decide what to NOT spend your time on. Every time you choose to do one
thing, you have, by default, also chosen to not do something else. Get real about what can be accomplished in a given time set. Learn to say no to packing in more than it is possible to accomplish.

Bella: How did you discover you had a knack for organization?
Schneider: While I was a pretty organized kid — putting away the shoes my mother had set out to wear before she could put them on — it wasn't until I was in the work force that I learned I had a knack for teaching others to be organized. Although I didn't know of organization as a career back then, I have
organized every place I have worked.

Bella: What are your future plans?
Schneider: In the future, I’d like to bring people even more ways to help themselves. This would include workshops on different organizing topics and perhaps starting a group for motivation and problem solving.