Creatively Organized Spaces
Spring fever and the extra hour of daylight spur many of us onto spring cleaning. We are still in the height of Spring Cleaning frenzy so if you haven’t yet tackled the closets, there’s still plenty of time before the heat of the summer and seasonal vacations and kids summer breaks are upon us!
These areas can be great place to start with when your doing your annual deep cleaning (Spring/Fall). These areas take very little time (a couple hours each) and can be a low or zero cost space to organize and clean when using existing containers and supplies.
In the bathroom, minimize what was on the counter…have you noticed the trend of builders to no longer install medicine cabinets, towel rods, rings and toilet paper holders? It’s not only annoying, it adds to the bathroom clutter by forcing us to put things on the counter! Instead of keeping everything out, go through and kept out the only items used daily and contained the rest. Less frequently used items can be moved to drawer, cabinets or a bathroom closet if available. Toss expired and old toiletries and makeup, if your not sure what to keep, this post has a more in depth guide to your Toiletry Toss!
Again, take everything in your pantry (or pantry cupboards) out, sort and toss expired foods. Donate food you don’t want to someone else in need. Think about how you use the space before you pu In the pantry, put items that are less frequently used towards the deep inside corners and “adult only” stuff on the top shelves. Use containers including boxes and baskets (nothing fancy) to gather kids snacks and lunch making items and beverages that are “mom approved” within easy reach for the kids on lower shelves. We moved most items off the floor but kept more utility items like paper towels, bulk drinks and pet food there due to space constraints. 
In the laundry room, we created zones on separate shelves to separate laundry, cleaning and other household supplies and made sure to keep hazardous items up high out of kids reach. If you don’t already have categories in your laundry area, pull everything out, sort, purge and give the space a good deep clean before you return items to their new zones, using baskets labels and easy to access storage.
Bathrooms, laundry, and pantries are frequently used and therefore need constant maintenance. Schedule regular maintenance that’s easy to remember like 2x/yr in spring and fall and get rid of expired food, toiletries, and medications…for your health and overall wellness!
Now that Spring is officially here, I’ve been working on a lot of Garage Organizing Jobs. It’s the perfect time to get out into that garage and whip it into shape before the summer vacations and activities are here! Taking the time to tackle the garage now, will help you prepare for all the fun seasonal activities in the coming months and get your Spring household maintenance tasks done more quickly. There’s a lot to consider when organizing a garage (and if you have a shed or workshop a lot of this can be applied there). Are you ready to take on the Great Garage Organizing Challenge?
If you don’t have a garage, maybe your challenge will be to organize the shed, the attic or another storage area. The important factors to take into consideration are; amount of time you to complete the project and type of installation, painting and maintenance/repairs involved and your budget. Will you paint the walls or floors or put down parking or modular mats, add lighting or other features? Do you want to install an elaborate custom designed system (call in an expert) or go with DIY options?
Do you have a family with lots of sports enthusiasts and lots of gear? Or do you have a lot of tools for DIY projects?
Is your car currently parked in the garage and if not (it is your 2nd most expensive asset!) do you want it to be? Do you do laundry in your garage or need a “mud room” area? Make it easy for you and your family to juggle groceries and other items as you transition from your car to the house by using hooks, shelving and benches to place things by your home entrance.
Think vertical and don’t forget overhead storage space! Make sure these systems are well secured!! Give them a good tug to make sure things don’t come tumbling down when you or the kids go to grab something. Keep kids, heavy and more frequently used items lower to the ground (but make sure they are water proof if necessary) and lighter and less frequently used or more dangerous tools mounted up higher.
Hopefully this post has you thinking about when and what you can do to create a more organized family garage. Take a look this weekend and if it feels too daunting to tackle yourself, remember you can always hire a Professional Organizer to help!
Does paperwork pile up around you at home and in the office? Piles of Paper everywhere and no system in sight…unopened mail, junk mail littering all your horizontal surfaces. There can be so many reasons that paperwork piles up but getting through your paper piles can be either overwhelming or totally rewarding! Today I share the first easy step you can take to Purge the Paper Piles in your home or office.
A lot of organizers recommend gathering everything together first, but we are going to do this a little differently. Before you gather all the Piles of Paperwork it can be helpful to identify why and how you got to your current state of overwhelm. I don’t have all those answers for your situation but I can make some educated guesses based upon my observations with clients, friends and family.
We all have our breaking points and for some of us there are more urgent things in life than dealing with a paper piles that seem so unimportant! We push them aside, figure we will have time later and we make a lot of excuses for not getting around to it, day after day, week after week and sometimes for years. When you get to this point, it’s certainly easy to understand why we are overwhelmed and don’t where to begin.
What do I mean? Instead of feeling like you need to go back through everything in the past to get started, start where you are. In my experience if you lost every single piece of paper in your house in a fire or other tragedy, there is very little paperwork that can’t be replaced. I’m not saying it’s something you want to happen just that so much of what we need to keep can be replaced with a few phone calls and emails.
First (before gathering everything in your home/office), sit down and open only your most current paper pile of mail, receipts etc (today or this week’s). Think about what you have coming in. What categories do they fit in? Here are some general and sub categories.
Next, list of YOUR categories, don’t think about what you had in the past or what you “think you should have”…just start simple. As you go through what you have, consider going paperless with utilities and bank statements or anything you can easily access online. You may still need one general category for all utilities (to keep track of account numbers etc). By simplifying your incoming mail and what needs to be filed you will create a system that’s easier to maintain.
Before you get into purging past piles of paperwork, create a “Staging” area for this project and gather your supplies:
The next step, pick up and sort through a pile to see how it fits into this new simple system. Depending on how long this first step took, you can estimate how much time you will need to sort and purge all your Paper Piles! If you don’t have a good system for your mail when it comes in the house, check out this post on Creating a Practical Command Center.
*Some people may prefer a flat filing system like the drawers below or binders, but for the purpose of purging I will focus on file boxes of some sort.
Creating Intentional SPACE is something that most Professional Organizers do regularly with their clients. Many of us use the SPACE system or something similar when helping clients with the organizing process. This system and the acronym was created by Professional Organizer and Author Julie Morgenstern and it’s a tried and true system that I follow with all my client organizing projects. I’m happy to share how what the acronym stands for below because I find it can be useful in understanding the steps and process that can help lead to a more organized and intentional SPACE.
Sort-This begins by gathering everything in one category together. By doing this you know what ALL you have and can move on to the next step.
Purge-Only when you know what you have can you start to make decisions about what to keep. Purging is really DECIDING what is needed or if you can get rid of it (donate, recycle, trash).
Assign-Now that you have decided what to keep, give it a home.
Contain-You know what you’ve got and where it will live, what would make keeping things in order easier? Do you need containers? Take measurements, make labels…commit these items to live in this space.
Equalize-What this really means is Evaluate…after living with your newly organized system, take the time after a week, a month and beyond to make adjustments as needed. This means setting an intention to maintain the system (and from time to time going back through the SPACE process).
Before you even begin this process, I believe it’s equally important and valuable to set your intention (my WORD for 2019) or reason/goal for the space! Most of us have heard the statement: nature abhors a vacuum (horror vacui) by Greek physicist-philosopher Parmenides that a void or vacuum, in nature, cannot exist, so be careful what you create, or what you leave open…which can quickly get filled with clutter (in your mind and your physical space).
Once you decide, set your intention and go through the SPACE process of implementing this system, use it to support your effort to succeed in maintaining as well! Organizing isn’t a one and done process but it is a Process that’s worth investing in and worth maintaining. How’s your SPACE? Will it be filled by something of your choosing or with clutter? Need help going through this process? Please fill out the “Help me Get Organized” form.
