Last week at the 2011 NAPO Conference in San Diego, Julie Morgenstern challenged us to add one thing to our business and remove one thing.  And..be bold about it.  I walked from session to session pondering Julie’s words and drawing a complete blank.

My background includes being a Six Sigma Expert from Raytheon and 10 years NLP experience on the side.  Christopher has always been the rah rah environmental cheerleader of Reduce~Recycle~Reuse with over 14 years experience in Operations at Union Pacific.   Ok, so what?  Truly, there’s a point.

So Chris was in my head when I decided to attend the session on Green Organizing.  There were actually two different groups meeting in one room.  The room had poor acoustics and it was difficult to hear the session leader (either of them) because each was talking louder than the other.  More than a few times I sat back in the chair, rolling my eyes in frustration.  I caught words here and there…”The Story of Stuff”…”Bag It”…tours of recycling plants…various websites specializing in green organizing.  I volunteered to start a Yahoo group to help facilitate communication between the newer organizers.  Great, one more thing…but an excitement was brewing.  Our company has always utilized donation stations and recycling but perhaps there was something more here.

The next night I went to dinner with Debra Baida and Courtney King – two extrememly creative and inspiring organizers out of San Francisco.   They shared some unique ways of connecting people: organizers, declutterers, artists and recyclers.  Perhaps it was the Loco Gringo (a tasty beverage) talking, but that dinner set a new course of direction for The Queen of Declutter.

So thank you for coming along on this journey, bearing with us as we learn to write, and affording us all the opportunity to be lean and green!