Organization for the New Year

December 28, 2015December 27, 2015Leave a comment

Wow! Christmas is over! Can you believe it!? We had a wonderful family day on Thursday, just the four of us. On Christmas Day, we spent the morning at the animal shelter helping out and then spent the rest of the day with my husband’s family. On Saturday, we went to my parents for the afternoon and evening. I got to spend time with my 2 favorite great-nieces (Hi girls!!). I had so much fun playing with them and reading books with them. The 3 year old was so excited about one of her presents, she actually squealed! So fun to have little ones around again!

But now, back to reality. Time to get organized! At least this is when I usually tackle it. I leave my Christmas decor up until New Years Day, so I have these few day to get all my paperwork in order. My husband and I already went through our files of documents, such as warrenties, policies and receipts. Now on to my overstuffed cupboard! See all those papers piled there? Yeah…I have my work cut out for me.

Once I get the papers separated, they will go into these binders. I know most things are on the internet and Pinterest now, but sometimes I just like to sit and go through a book of ideas. I guess I am old fashioned that way. I have a binder for crafts, travel, recipes and parties, and decorating.

I have these fancy schmancy dividers!! I am just so fancy like that!

Ugh! This is what I pulled out of the cupboard and a few other random places. I divide it up by categories as best as I can. I have a few pieces of chocolate to help me get through! We do what we have to do!!

Now it looks even worse, but I have gone through it and divided it up into categories and placed the papers that go into each binder, together.

I pull out each binder, 3-hole punch the paper and then place it into the correct spot. This year I really went through the old stuff and cleaned it out. Anything outdated, or I know I will never do or try, or it’s just not my style anymore, got thrown into this huge pile on the floor. Hello recycle!

So my binders are all updated and placed back in the cupboard. It really feels good to get that done.

One last tip to show you. If you have pets, which we have several of (ahem), keeping a pet medical file is a huge help. I used to have to go through the file cabinet to find when they last had shots or other information, but then a fellow dog person in 4-H showed me this wonderful idea. Take a 3-ring binder and divide it up by each animal. Hole punch each paper that goes with that animal and put it behind their name. Ta-da! No more searching. I have all the vaccine information, micro-chip numbers, any meds they take, all at my fingertips.

Here is the front. Duke is no longer with us and I have to add Scamp and Rozy.

Here is Ezzy’s section. Behind her picture are all her medical records, starting from when we got her through today.

Even the micro-chip records are in here. Putting in a plug for micro-chips. Get it done!!! It helped us find Chica once when she was lost.

So there you have it! Just a couple of tips to help you get organized for 2016! I hope you all have a safe and happy new year!

Why Can’t I Find My Hammer?

August 24, 2015August 24, 201516 Comments

Why can’t I ever seem to find my hammer/screwdriver/nails when I want them? Because my cupboard where I keep them is always a mess! I have tried different organizing methods, but nothing really seemed to work. My last attempt was some fabric boxes with jars inside, but the tools never seemed to find their way back into the right spot. I would find the hammer off to the side or the screwdrivers at the bottom of the box. Here is the jumbled mess:

I also had some hanging on the door in a shoe organizer. This didn’t work well either. The small screwdrivers made holes in the bottom of the pocket and the glue leaked and pieces were stuck to the bottom.

I removed everything from the cupboard first and threw some things away and moved others to the workshop. I kept just the things I use the most inside the house. I remembered that Haley had reorganized her closet and had taken down a piece of slat-board.

I measured how tall the cupboard was and then Lauren cut the board into 3 pieces.

I placed the pieces into the cupboard, one on the side and two along the back. I then went in search of some hooks. I ~~stole~~ borrowed one with hooks for screwdrivers from my husbands workshop. The rest of the hooks I had from Haley. Now I just had to figure out the best way to organize it.

It’s not perfect, but I am hoping it is just temporary. My husbands job site is redoing some of the buildings and I put in a request for the old lockers. I am keeping my fingers crossed! They will go in my laundry room and these tools will be one of the things stored in there.

Here it is! So much better! Each tool has a hook so it has a place to go. I hung a few little boxes and bags of things too. There are still a few jars holding the little things.

I even managed to get all the pieces off the door.The glue has its own jar so nothing else will get stuck!

That’s it! Nothing fancy, but hopefully it will stay a little neater and it will be easier to find what I need when I need it. Do you have a special way to keep your tools organized? I’m always looking for ideas!

Guest Post: Declutter 101: Strategies to Cut Clutter

July 23, 2015July 25, 20154 Comments

We have a guest today! Say hello to Anna Aamone! She owns a small cleaning company in Kensington, London and has some great tips to cut clutter. As you know, Lauren and I have posted a few organization and clutter busting stories too. So if you struggle with clutter in your home, here are some good basic ideas to help you get started on cleaning up!

Anna: Clutter is a serious problem, which could make you and your family feel very uncomfortable while living in your own home. The lack of good organization and time are usually the main reasons for the appearing of this problem, which over time could affect seriously your life. However, you can easily avoid the complications by adopting the great strategies we will present to you in this article. There are some basic things you need to know, which will certainly make a difference. No matter how cluttered your home is right now, we can promise you that thanks to our effective strategies, you will solve this unpleasant problem before you know it.

If you ask your friends, you will notice that each of them has his/her own way of coping with the clutter at home. The most important thing is to choose a strategy that works for you and which you will be able to follow. Remember that you will probably need at least a couple of hours to put everything in order, so better start planning early. Except time, you will have to be more organized and concentrated, otherwise you won’t be able to achieve the results that you want. You may even have to change some of your habits, but we can assure you that it will be all for the best in the end. Here are some strategies you could try:

• Make a weekly schedule – You will be amazed how fast you will solve the problem with the clutter with nothing more but good organization. Instead of wondering how you will be able to declutter the whole house for a day, you can save yourself a lot of troubles by spending a couple of hours every day in cleaning and organizing of the rooms. This is a great strategy because it prevents the accumulation of unnecessary things in the different premises of your place. Since you know best how much free time you have, you can create your weekly schedule any way you like.

• Don’t leave today’s work for tomorrow – Simple habits, like deciding to go through the pile with mail later for example, could be responsible for the mess in your home. That is why we advise you not to leave today’s work for tomorrow. No matter how busy you are, try to spare a couple of minutes of your time to sort through the mail today. The same applies to all of your other tasks for the day, like the cleaning of the wardrobe, the organizing of the kitchen cabinets and others.

• Divide and conquer – No matter how hard you try, however, it is not always possible to declutter your entire home in one day. In order to speed things up, you can purchase 3 empty boxes. One of them you can use to store the things that you want to keep after the decluttering. The second one you can use for the things that you could donate or give away and you can leave the third one for the stuff you plan to toss out. This is a simple sorting system that will save you time and will allow you to maintain your home always organised. You can go through every room of your place with the boxes and when you finish cleaning, you can decide what to do with the things you’ve collected.

You will see that it will be a lot easier to avoid the mess with the previously mentioned strategies. They may look simple, but we can assure you that they really work and you will achieve great results from the beginning. Don’t wait any longer, but start decluttering your home right now.

<a href=”http://www.cleantoperfection.co.uk/end-of-tenancy-cleaning-w8-kensington/“>TenancyCleaning Kensington</a>

Thank you Anna, for all your great tips! Hope everyone has a great rest of your week!

The Messy Side of Life

June 15, 2015June 15, 2015Leave a comment

I have quite a few projects going on right now and during the summer I try to get my scrapbooking done from the past year. I am kind of behind since I haven’t even done vacations from last summer! But my goal is to get caught up! This is the desk where I plan on scrapbooking.

Nice and neat.

My friend L commented how my rooms always look so nice and neat and how she wished her house looked that way. Well, I set her straight right away! Friend, I only move stuff out of the way or into drawers when I take the picture so it looks that way! Isn’t that the life of a blogger? So, to show her the real thing, here is the desk today! No, I didn’t add stuff to make it look worse, it really is this bad!

What a mess!

There is so much stuff here, it’s going to take awhile just to clean it up before I can even get started on the scrapbooking! There is stuff from Haley’s graduation (almost a month ago!),

Graduation stuff

A pile from redecorating my bedroom. I am not sure what I am doing with this yet.

More!

Here are some papers Lauren used for a school project (a month ago), some clear page protectors and my paper cutter I used to cut out tags this past weekend.

and more!

And this is just a pile of random papers I need to go through! Yeah, I think I have some work cut out for me! I will let you know my progress. Hopefully it will only be a few days! 🙂

A few days later…..

It’s done and ready to go! It really didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I just needed to put things in their proper places :). The graduation things are ready to be scrapbooked, the piles are no more, even the pile on the floor is gone. Now it’s ready for some serious scrapbooking!

Much better!

Scrapbooking time!

I have more projects coming soon! Stay tuned!

March Organization-Part 3-Hallway Closet

March 9, 20155 Comments

Hi all! I thought I would share our third post about organization today. I actually had this done for February, but then Lauren decided to post about her fabric, which you can see here , and our first project here, and I didn’t want to bore you all with our messiness! It’s pretty warm here in Central California, so I won’t be needing my scarves and gloves anymore this year, but I didn’t have a good way to find the one I wanted or an easy way to put them away. Pretty soon, it became a jumbled mess! This is the closet in the hallway. It stores our coats, vacuum, wrapping paper (some day, I want to come up with a place to put a wrapping station), other misc. stuff, and my scarves and gloves.

Not too easy to find the scarf I want!

Haley had cleaned out her closed a few weeks ago and gave me this shoe organizer. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I could use it for, but it was such a nice bag, that I kept it and hoped inspiration would hit! Sure enough! While trying to pull out a scarf one morning, I thought, “This is ridiculous! There has to be a better way! Wait, the shoe bag from Haley might work!” I can’t believe it took me years to figure out that there was an easy solution.

First, I removed everything off the door, including the old hanging rack. I had some overdoor hangers, so I didn’t have to make any holes in the door, but you can just as easily hammer in a couple of nails or put in some screws. I hung the shoe organizer and I started with the gloves and mittens and put them in the top pockets. Then I took each scarf, rolled it up and placed it in a pocket. I also had a few of the small nylon backpacks that I added to a few spaces.

Lauren knitted this blue one for me!

Love these colors!

Tassels!

And that’s it! Pretty easy and it didn’t take very long at all! Now everything is put away for the year and will be ready for next winter season. What are some of the ways you stay organized with your winter wear?