Creatively Organized Spaces
No matter where you live, it’s practically impossible to ignore and vital to prepare for natural disasters! With the change in our climate, especially if you live along the coastlines, it pays to get organized, ‘Just in Case’ there’s a natural disaster!
Do you have a plan i, know your evacuation route, and have supplies ready?
Having missed traveling over the past year I’ve needed to hone my travel organizing skills with useful Travel Tips and Tools. Some things get easier when you do them more often and a little rusty when you get out of your routine. I’ve been on the road a lot with things opening back up, visiting friends and family, and traveling regularly for business (1 week a month), so I’m sharing a few of my favorite, tried, true, and new products, tips, and tools for day to day travels and longer trips.
For more ideas check out my Pinterest board Ideas for [Travel] and here are a couple of my new favorite travel pins…
I’m sure you have your own favorite travel tips and tools and hopefully, I’ve shared a few new things to consider for your next trip. What are your favorite Travel Tips and Tools?
What is the most frightening space in your home? I’ll bet it is a closet of some kind, the place where the detritus of modern living has accumulated and grown neglected. Whatever else might be growing there is not to be ignored either. Wallace and I don’t have a garage, which I describe as the American ultra-closet for many people. Instead of renting a storage locker, many homeowners have co-opted the “extra” space taken up by the second car and dedicated it to barbeque grills, canoes, roof racks, children’s playthings, freezers, adult playthings, infrequently used tools, unfinished projects, unpacked moving boxes, wedding presents and generally redundant or bulky items that are rarely called into service, such as the trailer for the float you build for the July fourth community parade and that you don’t want to get rusty in the driveway.
Somewhere you have probably got a closet dedicated to similar use: housing family movies or slides with their projectors, sports equipment, never used vacuum cleaner attachments, orphaned framed art and bric-a-brac including that fondue set with all the skewers still in its box. There is nothing sentimental about fondue unless you enjoyed it on your honeymoon in Quebec, a lovely city.
Your reluctance to tackle the closet cleanup is not uncommon. Everyone has it and, besides, what are you going to do with all that stuff once it is sorted out? A pile in the hall is no different than one in the closet and re-distribution is a temporary solution. You have to agree with your partner to accomplish this cleanup because there may be items precious to one of you that deserve special consideration. Woeful is the partner who sends the varsity letter jacket to the second hand store without permission. Blessed is the organizer who seeks approval before, during or after a closet purge. Hoarding is another matter altogether and there is probably no agreement available to assuage the concerns of that pathology.
Supposing that you are operating as one coordinated force on this, then there is a happy avenue for de-accessioning, as the museums call it. The yard/garage sale is by far the most satisfactory because, not only do you enjoy seeing people appreciate your stuff, they actually pay you for it. It is amazing always to see the cheery buyers sifting through the crockery, books, art and cast-off furniture, ever on the lookout for treasures overlooked by the rest of the world. It is somehow satisfying to see these burdens taken on by others as if they are financial Samaritans. And best of all, the many charitable second hand stores have liberalized their acceptance policies so you are able to load up most of the failed sales and freight them over for receipt, thereby putting many disadvantaged people to work in furthering the life of these goods. That is a win-win with a tax deduction to boot!
Kisses, Celeste
Thank you Celeste! Your practical tips and lighthearted attitude will help us all laugh at our clutter conundrums no doubt!
*If you would like to hear more from Celeste please contact me. I’m sure she would be delighted to learn of your enthusiasm and I’m happy to pass your message along as well as ask her to join us again with more fun and lighthearted posts!
Spring fever and the extra hour of daylight spur many of us onto spring cleaning, especially right now while we are spending more time at home! 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!
More than once, I’ve walked into clients who were nearly in tears or having a meltdown over their kid’s rooms and stuff everywhere. This can be utterly frustrating, especially with most of us at home, almost all the time right now, living, working, eating, schooling together! Kids and their stuff, their messy rooms, and their over-bulging closets and drawers filled with way more clothes than needed can create the perfect storm for overwhelm and overreacting. Sadly what can often happen is parents beat themselves up, thinking “this is my fault, I let them have all these things and I don’t have the time and energy to manage it all!” No, No, No, it’s not all your fault!
I’m thrilled to work with parents who want to model and teach their kids how to manage the stuff overload. This is not just a problem for parents and kids, it’s something we all are dealing with to some degree or another.
Today, we will tackle one category of stuff that tends to make a lot of work for all of us, our clothes! There are strategies for parents and kids to help make it easier to choose what to wear. A kids capsule wardrobe can help reduce decision fatigue, save money, and the time it takes to get ready in the morning.
Here’s a step by step plan which works best when you can involve your kids, even the little one’s can have a strong opinion about the process!
Start with clean laundry that’s been sorted, and purged in each kid’s room which will give you a wardrobe to “Shop” from. The process isn’t that different than any other organizing one, where donations, trash, and items to keep are sorted into categories. The main thing to do differently is to create a simple and easy kids wardrobe for them to look through and purge further. Count how many items in each category of clothing they have and established some guidelines for what seems reasonable for them to pick their favorites from.
Create a Kids Capsule Wardrobe in 5 easy steps:
1. Clean all the clothes and gather in one place.
2. Sort and eliminate any that are not in good shape, don’t fit, or are impractical.
3. Look at the overall colors, styles your kids gravitate towards, and start gathering them into categories eliminating duplicates and oddballs that don’t fit with the scheme.
4. Put clothes away, hanging, and folding. You might want to try the Kon-Marie method of folding (Tee-shirt video here) or use a folding board. Arranged by category (shirts, pants, shorts, etc) and color to make it easier to mix and match outfits.
To make this work you may need to fill in some pieces if you find wardrobe gaps. Now you have the makings for a funky, fun, and easy mix and match wardrobe system! This could be a great way to simplify your kid’s wardrobe and from there, the closet’s and clothes storage might be a little easier!
Here is a general idea of what categories you might find helpful and how many of each item seems appropriate, some of these might differ for your kids:
If your kids go to a private school or wear uniforms, that will be a separate category but manage the number of each style needed. They may also be very involved in sports and have a lot of gear, so count that as another category and keep the number of items per sport manageable.
These guidelines should help you create a basic and easy kids capsule wardrobe. These categories and quantities are a starting point for you and your kids if you think it’s still too much then whittle it down further. Less is more when it comes to maintaining an easy kids wardrobe, especially when kids grow quickly and tend to need things replaced more frequently than adults. Have fun and maybe this will inspire you to create a capsule wardrobe of your own!
