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?