Organize This, Organize That

"Getting organized is one of the top five New Year's resolutions people make."
~Standolyn Robertson, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers

Did you make a resolution to get organized this year? I think the majority of us make this resolution in one way or another. My resolution was to set up household routines and stick to them so that I can have more fun. Part of that will be getting things organized, so yeah, I made that resolution too. :) I can certainly understand why so many of us make these types of resolutions. The new year symbolizes a "fresh start." And our external environment is often a reflection of our internal environment - a cluttered home (or work space) reflects a cluttered mind.

Since January is National Get-Organized Month, I thought I would list some tips and tools for getting organized.

Lighten Up: Feng shui experts have found that well-lit areas tend to have less clutter. Look around your home and see if this is true for you. I know it is for me! If it's cloudy or dark in the house I feel like I can get by with doing less - I don't see the dust and mess as clear as I would if it were bright in the house. Add some brighter lamps, open up the curtains - let the sun shine in.

A Home for Loose Items: We all have these areas in our homes, they tend to be the hot spots - where we set all the little things that seem to float around the house (magazines, remotes, keys). Find a basket for each type of item so that it will have a home - other than the flat surface you are trying to keep clean.

Store items close to where they are used: Does your family play games in the living room? Set a nearby shelf or closet aside to store them. Do you craft? Think about setting up a crafting area near where you craft. Storing items close to where we use them increases the likely hood that they will be put away when we are finished with them.

Websites: There are a ton of organizational websites out there for your use. Here a  few that I use on a regular basis.

• Organized Home - Clean House, Cut Clutter, Get Organized at Home!
• Flylady - Creating routines, decluttering, cleaning by zones all 15 minutes at a time. Flylady's system is done using a Household Notebook. I personally love the notebook but I pick and choose what I use from the Flylady site. It doesn't all work for me.
• My Messy House - I use this for my Weekly House Blessing (Flylady term). Flylady has WHB on hour a week, that's impossible for me no matter how hard I try. So I use the My Messy House plan to do my WHB one room (lucky room of the day) per day (Monday - Friday).
• S.H.E.'s Organized - This is the home of Pam Young and Peggy Jones' Sidetracked Home Executives™ household management system. This is where I started. I am a proud SHE. This system is often referred to as being "in the box". It's set up with 3x5 cards and a box holder. I have incorporated a lot of Pam & Peggy's system into my Household Notebook.

Apps: I am sure there are a lot more apps and computer programs you can use for helping you get organized but here are just a few I use or have tried.

• Google Calendar - You can use this in place of a household notebook. I also have a few friends that use Outlook instead of a notebook. 
• Cozi - This is a free online organizer (there is also a free mobile app). You can use it for appointments, lists, blogging and you can share with family members online too!
• Home Routines - This an app for the itouch/iphone. This is one of my favorite organizational apps. I love this app. I have recommended this app to a few friends on Twitter too and they have loved it too. It is one app that is absolutely worth buying. One friend bought an itouch just to download this app. :)
• Awesome Note - This is another app for the itouch/iphone/ipad. I just downloaded it this weekend and I love this app as well. There are so many things you can do with this app - it's amazing. It ranks right up there with the Home Routines app and I've only had it about 3 days. 

So go have some fun getting organized this year! Remember this though - motivation follows action. Don't let yourself stop you from reaching your goals. Waiting for the motivation to strike or waiting until (insert whatever you are waiting for) often results in never reaching our goals. Vision what you want and then just go for it! Once you start working towards your goal, you'll be surprised how much motivation you will find to continue. Progress not perfection - life, organizing, loving ourselves -it's all a journey!

Do you have any tips or tricks for getting and staying organized? I'd love to hear them!

☮peace.♥love.☺joy

Photo here

**This is a cross post from Typical Ramblings, Atypical Nonsense. You can read the original here.**

Organize This, Organize That

Spring Cleaning

Saturday was offically the first day of spring! I don't know about where you live but here, we couldn't have asked for a better spring day - it was sunny and 20C - don't be jealous it didn't last long, back to 8C today, but it was glorious while it lasted.  Last week my kids were off school on March Break - were your kids?  I had such grandiose plans of getting this and that accomplished...yeah, we ended up playing all week and finally on Friday I did a good Weekly House Blessing and called it good enough.  The kids are only going to be little once right? and believe me the housework isn't going anywhere. ;)

I know I have already made my cleaning plan to get things in order before summer break, and after the gorgeous weather last week I realized I really need to buckle down and make the most of my time. Use my time wisely.  Sometimes I'm not very good about that - I really like my play time.  But like I tell the kids, get your homework done right away and you'll have lots of time for play.  I need to take my own advice right? So looking at my schedule I'm a little off plan but I have until April 10 to play catch up.  That is definitely do-able if I use my time wisely.

Tomorrow I have a 2 year birthday party to throw for my little guy, so it'll be just the usual cleaning up and decorating.  But starting on Wednesday I will get busy spring cleaning and getting things organized.  Oh! I forgot to tell you that today I received part of my prize package from the 28 Day Organizing Challenge.  My box of Mabel's Labels arrived!

Check out the loot!  I can hardly wait to start organizing again and labeling!  This arrived at a perfect time, don't you think? I'll take pictures as I use some of the labels and show you how lovely they look - I know I'm going to love them. I'm still waiting for my BLIS to arrive, hopefully that will be here this week too. Can't wait to try that & let you know how it works. :)

So, that's whats been on my mind lately.  Are you airing out your home and freshening things up for spring? Do you have a schedule?  Happy Spring!!

Spring Cleaning

Natural Trash Can Deodorizer

How many times have you taken out the trash thinking "oh man the trash stinks!", then you come back and you can still smell that smell?? I've found a great way to clean out the trash cans using natural products. This is important to me for two big reasons. 1st - I don't have worry about having or using chemicals around the kids and 2nd - I don't have to worry about what those chemicals are doing to harm the environment.

What you will need:

• Hot water
• White vinegar
• Tea Tree Oil
• Long handled brush (an extra toilet brush works great for this)
• Baking Soda

What you will do:

• Fill the trash can about half way with hot water (I fill it in the bathtub)
• Add 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 8-10 drops of  Tea Tree Oil
• Mix that around and use the brush to scrub down the sides of the can
• Leave it to soak for 20-30 minutes (longer if you get sidetracked)
• Empty and I like to set it outdoors to dry, then sprinkle a little baking soda in the bottom before putting in a new trash bag.

That's it! It works for me. :) I hope you'll try it and let me know how it works for you!

Natural Trash Can Deodorizer

I Won! I Won!

I know it's a couple days late in coming and many of you have already congratulated me but for those not in the know - I won!

I was the third place winner in the 28 day Organizing Challenge! I was beyond thrilled when I read Laura's announcing blog post. Most people aim to win first place when they take on a project like this, I have to tell you though when this challenge was posted with the prizes, I really wanted to win third place. Yes, that's right I wanted to come in last lol! But the third place prizes are just what I wanted!  Want to know what I won?

I won a $100 prize package from Mabel’s Labels and One Year Subscription to Blis (Best Life Information System).  Both fabulous prizes and I can't wait til they arrive and I can start using them!  Go check them out if you have never heard of them - really awesome!

Go check out the very deserving winners of first and second place too! They both did such amazing jobs - seriously aaaahhh-mazing! Congrats to both of you!!

Thank you Laura and Tanna, I am thrilled! :)

I Won! I Won!

28 Day Organizing Challenge the Finale

Well, here we the last day of the challenge hosted by Laura at Organizing Junkie and I'm so very nervous and excited to show you the transformation of my bedroom. When I first decided to take on the bedroom for the organizing challenge I really wondered if I would be able to stick to it and get it finished.  I'm happy to say once I got started it was pretty easy to keep plugging away at it little by little to get it done.  I am, however, glad that we had 28 days to complete our rooms.

Are you ready to see what the room looked like 28 days ago and what it looks like now?  Let's get to it then!

View from the door before

View from the door after

View towards closet before

View towards closet after

View from bed before

View from bed after

Closet before

Closet after

Well, what do you think? I am so pleased with how clean and organized everything is. I actually love tidying my bedroom in the mornings now and I can't wait to go in there and relax at the end of the day because it truly is a relaxing space now.

1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it? I think the hardest part for me was just getting started. Also when I emptied out the closet the huge mountain of stuff that I had to go through and determine if I wanted to keep it or if I could get rid of it - that was a daunting task for sure. Once the closet was complete (that was my first step in organizing the room) I was able to see I could do this and I would be able have the room of my dreams.

2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order? I decluttered a lot from the room. That was the biggest change for sure. We had way too much stuff for the room.  I love my bedroom now and I'm no longer using it as a dumping ground for other items around the house.  I also have stopped buying things without a purpose. And I've started a dream journal for decorating the space.  I think that having an idea of where we want to take the room next will help me keep my bedroom clean and organized.

3. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space? A lot of the stuff that I purged has been donated, sold or trashed. I had a full black garbage bag of shredding to do too! Who keeps that much stuff around that should be shredded?!? It was amazing seeing the amount of "stuff" we just kept holding on to and it was never used or even thought about. It was very liberating letting go of things we didn't use or love.

4. What creative storage solutions were you able to introduce in order to create additional space as well as establish some limits and boundaries? We installed a new closet organization system ($40.00) to help better utilize the space we had in there. We decided to put the baby's clothes in bins in the closet ($2.00 each) so that we could take the dresser out of the room and create more space and leave less space to "hide" things. We decluttered our dressers so that we can easily open and close the drawers.  That should help with getting our clothes put away and if we buy something we now know exactly what we have so we can decide if we really need it or not.

5. Why do you think you should win this challenge?


I think the before and after pictures speak for themselves.  The transformation of the bedroom is really amazing.  I am so proud of the work and the results.  I feel excited to start tackling other areas of our home so that all of our rooms can make me feel just as happy as our bedroom does. The rest of the house doesn't even come close to the state this room was in, but now having the experience of really being ruthless when it came to decluttering I feel like I can take that to other areas.  We really do have a lot of stuff that we really don't use and I know I have many things I don't love but just keep.  Thank you Laura for hosting this challenge and teaching me that it's really okay to let go of things. Things don't make us who we are.

28 Day Organizing Challenge the Finale

Fate & a New Hallway Rug

Remember last week how I was saying I would love to get a new rug for the hallway?  Well, when we went to our big box store to get supplies for the bedroom closet organizer, my darling husband said "oh look there is a clearance section over there". You have to know it didn't take me long to steer the cart in that direction and I swear it was fate!  Look what I found!

This gorgeous rug! You'll never believe what I paid for it. 11 dollars!!  This was the only rug on that table that was marked so low. Every other one was marked much much more than that even on clearance. The colors are perfect for what I am envisioning for the hallway and the odds that the rug would be that price - fate I tell you, fate! :)  This rug was meant for me. :)  We're going to go this weekend and price up the cost to build the console table and that may get built this weekend.  Very exciting things happening here.

Fate & a New Hallway Rug

Organizing in the Bedroom Continued...

It's been a long week but at the same time a very quick week. Ever have weeks like that? I've been sick this week, not sure if it's just a run of the mill cold or the flu.  It hit me hard and fast which makes me lean towards the flu. Somehow I lost a day too.  I thought for sure today was Wednesday, but surprise it's Thursday! So that makes me feel like the week has flown by.  I haven't really done much work in the bedroom this week. I'm not quitting though. :)  I did take a little time Monday or Tuesday (can't remember now) and cleaned out the cedar chest in our bedroom.  Originally we bought it to store extra blankets and such, and maybe one day I can actually us it for that.

So here it is before crammed with a bunch of junk. Okay, it's not all junk.  There was a lot of the kids school papers and such in there, along with a set of dishes I haven't used in oh maybe 5 years. All of that stuff came out.  Papers will be sorted through and put into a Banker's box for each child.  That will be stored in their closets once I get to decluttering their bedrooms later in my "plan".  The dishes are going to consignment shop and I think just about everything else was donated or put into it's proper place.

Here it is after.  I decided for now to store all of our books in here. We're going to be building bedside stands (hopefully this spring or early summer) that will have plenty of room for both of us to have our books displayed, so I decluttered some but kept the ones we really love. Also kept extra wooden hangers, I didn't want to get rid of them because eventually we'll be moving to a bigger house and I will need them for guest's coats in the coat closet.  I also put little E's stuff in here that will be displayed on shelves once he get's his own bedroom.

This project didn't take more than 20-30 minutes I think.  It's amazing how we let things go and then it doesn't take very long to get it tidy and organized.  Too bad weight loss wasn't the same haha.

How are your organizing projects going? I haven't done too much this week, but I am planning on spending some time today working on decluttering and organizing dressers and the armoire. Should be do-able even though I am sick. :)

Organizing in the Bedroom Continued...