Tackle Your Closet!

Yes, it’s true. We women wear about 20 percent of our clothing 80 percent of the time. Most of us have way too many clothes, yet we keep buying more. Whether you are too attached to told clothing or you have three different sizes hanging in your closet, it’s time to organize. Don’t worry; this one is easy.

 

First, take everything out of your closet. Pull out all the pieces that you never wear. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. If you don’t wear it, toss it.

 

Now, start putting things back. Hang all your shirts together, all your dresses together, all your skirts together and all your pants together. Arrange them by color, too. You’ll probably find you can put together some outfits you hadn’t thought of before. This is also a good time to try on everything. Don’t put a piece back if a button is missing or it needs hemming. Put these in a special mending basket. And if you don’t get to it within a couple of days, toss that, too!

Start to Declutter

Clutter can easily take over our lives, even when we certainly don’t mean for it to do just that. Old birthday cars, used gift bags and Christmas bows, all the kids’ art work.  Not to mention all those whatyoumacallit’s and thingamajigs that seem to endlessly fill up the kitchen drawers.

 

Some people say a well-organized home means an obsessive-compulsive housewife who has no room for fun and spontaneity. Not true. Your home should be your sanctuary, and if you can’t move because of all the clutter and you can never find anything you need, then it’s far from being a sanctuary.

 

So start today to get organized. Don’t run out and spend hundreds of dollars on shelves and containers. You can’t really get organized until you get rid of the clutter. And there are lots of ways to do that.

 

First of all, it’s okay to start small. Do one closet or even one drawer. Don’t get too sentimental. It’s okay to keep a few things, but you simply don’t need every single paper your child has ever brought home from school. Set your kitchen timer for 15 minutes. When the buzzer sounds, stop. Do some more decluttering another day. In other words, leave the party while you’re still having a good time!

 

For instant gratification, start with the area that bothers you the most. It can be easy to get overwhelmed, but just keep putting stuff into garbage bags. At the end of the session, put the bags in your car and immediately take them to the thrift store. That way you won’t be tempted to take stuff out!

Making Extra Storage Space

My family has spent quite a lot of time lately trying to help our twins get their new college condo organized for school success. Here are a few organization ideas we’ve come up with:

1.  Put the bed frames on risers. You get all those storage space under the bed.

2.  Put a shoe rack on the back of the bedroom door for our daughter and all her shoes.

3. Put a plastic shoe bag on the inside of our daughter’s bathroom closet door for hairbrushes, clips, curling iron — you get the picture.

4.  Add shelves to the utility closet off the patio.

5.  Put stacked shelves on the floor of the kitchen pantry.

6.  Store kitchen items next to the place where they’ll be used.

7. Put a wicker trunk behind the sofa for blankets and extra pillows.

8. And our very favorite: our copy-cat version of Pottery Barn’s “daily system.”  More on that later!

Time Management

I am at college freshmen orientation with my twins, and one point the presenters keep driving home to the students is the critical need to manage their time wisely. There’s even a course the kids can take on being a success at college that incorporates time management and organization. It’s not required, but it should be.

My kids aren’t exactly great at time management. Very few people are. I consider myself fairly organized, but this is definitely one area that needs work. I’m putting together a list of ideas that might help my twins with this. Any thoughts?

 

What’s Your Storage Style?

Are you the out-of-sight out-of-mind type of person? Do you cringe when you see the DVD’s and CD’s on open shelves? If you’re going to organize, you need to know your storage style.  My mother, for instance, can’t stand the curling iron laying on the bathroom counter. You’ll never find a lipstick sitting by her sink. (But then, she folds her underwear as neatly as they do at Victoria’s Secret.)  My teenage daughter, on the other hand, likes to have everything out before her. She says she will forget it exists if she doesn’t. I guess I’m somewhere in between.

You can still be organized even if you want to see it all. Corral all your photographs in an attractive wicker basket or maybe a gorgeous silver bowl. Find five baskets just alike and use one for lipsticks, one for eye shadow, one for bronzers — you get the picture. If you’re a great cook, keep all your oil, vinegars and spices neatly arranged on a lovely and useful platter.

But if you want closed storage, consider these ideas. Put risers on your bed to give you more space underneath. Look for baskets and boxes with lids. Keep your shoes in labeled shoeboxes.

It’s unfortunate that the closed organization people think the open people are messy. Actually, they just have a different style!  What’s your storage style? And is it working for you?

 

 

The Simple Life

Elaine St. James is the author of several bestsellers, including “Simplify Your Life” and “Living the Simple Life.” Her simple life is not the Paris Hilton kind we see on a reality show. Instead, she and her husband made a decision to dramatically simplify their lives.

Her books are interesting reads, and you can certainly get some good ideas. But she does overdo it some. My family would never go for eating the same menu every week, day in and day out. For one thing, some of the menus are a little strange. Blue corn chips and guacamole are dinner one day; apples, cheese and popcorn are dinner another!  Just can’t see this one happening at my house. She also has limited her wardrobe to black. While I love black clothes and I actually build my wardrobe around that color, I do have some other colors to liven it up a bit.

But what I do like about her books is that she consciously looked at every aspect of her life to see how she could scale down. Think before you buy; do I really need something else to clutter up my house? Lower my expectations; the kitchen sink does not have to shine like Martha Stewart’s every day. Cancel the newspaper subscription; most of it is depressing anyway and we can certainly get all the news we want from the Internet.  I especially liked “sell the damn boat.” We have ours for sale now. It requires way too much work and way too much money.

I can’t go all out for Elaine St. James’ thinking, but I like the way she gets ME to thinking.

Urgent, Just Not That Important

It’s difficult to get a handle on time. It seems to get away from us even quicker than money! I’ve found it really helps for me to make a list of what I hope to get accomplished. But I usually don’t limit the list for one day. Take right now, for instance. It’s Friday. I made a list Wednesday night for what I wanted to get done Thrusday and Friday. I don’t feel so stressed that way. And having it down on paper does help. Yesterday, about noon, I felt I had been working at the speed of light. And I had! Yet, when I looked at my list I had only done one thing on it. The rest of the time was spent on those little, somewhat unimportant tasks that take up so much time.

Someone once said we often do the urgent instead of the important. How true that is! Yesterday, it was important for me to do some writing for a client, yet it was urgent for the laundry to get done. So guess what got my attention?

And we had a repairman here doing some work. Once again, I needed to write, but here he was asking me about stuff. Not really that important, because there’s no rush to get that work done. But, because he was here (and we were paying him to be here!) the urgent took first place. Not the important.

One of my goals is to get my life focused enough to do the important. The more organized I get, the closer this is to becoming a reality.

What about you? Do you take care of the important? Or, the urgent?

Get It Ready to Sell

We have been thinking about putting our house on the market within the next year. Our twins are leaving for college in a few weeks, and this huge house — all 5,000 sq. feet of it — will just be too large for us. So, we’ve been doing some minor and major repairs, and I’ve been trying to declutter. It’s occurred to me that the moving mentality is a good way to help get a person organized.

I’ve been pretty ruthless, and so far, I’m not missing a bit of it. Oh, my family would have a fit if they saw some of the stuff that went the way of the thrift shop, but since they’re not even aware the stuff is gone, I’m assuming they didn’t even need it in the first place!

Another good idea is to box up stuff you’re not ready to give away, but think you can live without for just a while. Put it all in boxes, seal the boxes and put them in the attic. Date the boxes. If you haven’t needed to open them in a year’s time, toss them. WITHOUT opening them, that is!

Organize With a Binder

Notebook binders are absolutely fantastic organizing tools. I use them for just about any project. Don’t spend your time looking for fancy notebooks to suit each topic. Just get yourself to the office superstore, buy some cheap binders, paper, index dividers and a three-hole punch and start organizing! Here are some ideas:

1. Personal Cookbook: Print your favorite recipes you use all the time. Label index dividers with your categories, such as appetizers, main dishes and desserts. File each recipe in the appropriate section. Use plastic page protectors to save your recipes.

2.  Household Information: Add all the information you need to run your home. You might have your pest control contract, names and telephone numbers of teens who can cut the grass, the plumber’s cell number.

3.  Health Information: List all the family doctors and their telephone numbers. Keep prescription numbers for drug refills. Include health forms your kids need for school.

4.  Car Information: Include copies of car warranties, the tire and oil maintenance schedule and the names and telephone numbers of good mechanics. You should also keep newspaper and magazine clippings of cars you may be interested in purchasing.

5.  Home Decorating:  Are you involved in some decorating projects? A binder will become your best friend. Include pictures, paint chips, fabric swatches and any random ideas you have. Take the binder with you when you’re shopping.

Think Before You Buy

We’ve all got too much stuff, way too much stuff. Years ago, my husband and I attended a financial planning seminar. The speaker suggested that if you wanted to buy something to write it on a piece of paper and date it. If you still really wanted it 30 days later, then buy it. This is a great way to simplify your life.

That makes a lot of financial sense, but it also makes a lot of sense when it comes to organization. I’ve really been trying to resist the temptation to bring more stuff into our house. Sure, I’ve given bags and bags and more bags to Goodwill, but if I’m bringing new stuff in at the same rate, what good does it do?

Think of your goals. Are you trying to save for a new car, a new house? Hoping to put the kids through college without any loans? Maybe you’re just trying to have a little extra for a rainy day. Every time you feel tempted to buy something, ask yourself this question: Is this getting my closer to my goal or further away?

We come in with nothing, and it’s sure we’re not taking anything with us when we leave. Many years ago, my Great-Aunt Susan died. My mother went up to the house where the daughters were in the attic going through all the boxes of things Great-Aunt Susan had saved. Cards, ribbons, thank-you notes, dried up corsages, yellowed and torn newspaper clippings. She had saved it all. And the daughters were pitching it out without a thought, because, of course, it didn’t mean anything to them. I’m not saying it’s bad to be sentimental. I’m just trying to convince you it’s not necessary to save it all. If you throw out a birthday card, that doesn’t mean you didn’t appreciate it.

Think about it. Now, go get a trash bag.