Getting dressed first thing every day can totally change your life! Here is a reader comment posted in response to the story “Improve Your Life Right Away — Get Dressed!“ [Read more…] about Reader Comments about “Get Dressed!”
organizing
Dream Laundry Room Ideas
Dream Laundry Room Ideas
From: Cindy M
This is an idea for handling laundry/clothes that I wish I would have used when my kids were still at home. It would require a good-size laundry room but save a lot of bedroom space. There would be cubbies for everyone – socks, underwear, t-shirts, jeans, anything foldable would go in the cubbies – being folded straight out of the dryer. This would eliminate the need for dressers in the bedroom and the space they would take up. Hanging clothes could either go on a rack in the laundry room if space allows, or in the bedroom closets.
I have to admit this would be my dream laundry room! Since my laundry room barely has room for me stand in I dream of this type of a laundry room everyday! LOL Tawra
My dream laundry room would have an eight foot long and four foot deep table that is the perfect height to fold my clothes on easily with the cubbies and rods above it to place things as I fold them. It also would have a place to keep the ironing board up all the time with a rod and cubbies by it to hang the clothes on. Last but not least it would have a rack to hang all those things like dirty dish rags or towels which need to dry before you dump them in the hamper.
To be honest I love laundry so much I wouldn’t mind dedicating one whole floor to a laundry room. I wonder if more people would enjoy doing it if they didn’t have to do it all in a little 5×3 closet all the time. Cooking and doing laundry are two of the main “have to do” things done in a home and yet they always make theses little tiny rooms to do it in but we create these bathrooms that are so big you could play tennis in them.
I mean how much room do you need to sit on a toilet or stand at a sink to wash your face??? They give you an 8 foot vanity just to brush your hair and put on make up and often don’t give you even one foot of space to fold clothes.
They even are now giving you an area in the bathroom so you can have a couch to sit and read on. I’m sorry but I can think of much more pleasant places I would rather read then laying and looking at a toilet that 4 male members of my family just used. Makes no sense to me. Although if you are a mom with 4 little ones under the age of 5 that might be your only place to relax. : ) : )
Jill
How To Stay Organized
Try these quick and easy organizing tips you can use to stay organized every day. Staying organized will reduce stress and let you focus on other things! [Read more…] about How To Stay Organized
7 Tips To Keep Your Home Clean And Organized
Try these quick and easy tips to keep your home clean and organized! These are just a few simple ideas, but you’ll be surprised what a difference they make! [Read more…] about 7 Tips To Keep Your Home Clean And Organized
25 Practical Tips To Help You Get Organized
It’s time to get organized! Here are 25 easy practical and specific tips to help you start getting organized and to make organizing as easy as possible!
25 Practical Tips To Help You Get Organized
If you missed Get Organized Part 1, you can find it here.
One of the main excuses we use to avoid getting organized is that we don’t know where to start. We can become so overwhelmed that it can actually paralyze us mentally so that we can’t figure out what to do. I was at that point myself the day after Christmas this year. Boy did I have a mess, plus my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was really bad. I was caught in a vicious cycle. I was too sick to clean, but sitting in a mess was making me worse and I was desperate to get organized.
Finally, I decided I needed to practice what I preached and, using sheer grit, I made up my mind to start to get organized by just cleaning off just my fireplace mantle. While I was doing that, I noticed some other things in other areas that I didn’t want to forget to box up, so I started gathering those things together. Then I figured I might as well bring in the boxes for the things I had just gathered. One thing led to another and before I knew it I had cleared most of my living room.
Just find one small area to get organized and start working on it. You usually feel so good just getting that one area done that you become motivated to do a little more and then a little more. It doesn’t matter what area it is in life. Whether it is dealing with debt, losing weight, getting organized or something else, stop looking at the whole picture. I’m not saying that you should live in denial, but when it’s time to get the job done, you’ll just get overwhelmed if you keep looking at the whole picture. Pick one small area and work on it. Once you have mastered it, then you can move on to the next one.
Instead of saying I’m going to clean all the closets in the house, just decide to clean one closet or if it is really bad, decide to do just one shelf in that closet. The same goes for the kitchen or any room. Start with one shelf at a time.
It would be impossible to cover everything about how to get organized in just one article, but here are some tips to help you get started. These ideas aren’t in any particular order and some are short tips and others are longer. I hope they help you.
General Points to Get Organized:
- If you are sick or are having trouble getting motivated to get organized, try my 5 minute trick. I make myself get up and clean during the 5 minute commercial on TV. For example, I try to bring in the laundry off of the line, wash my dishes or pick up a room. That way, when I’m not feeling good I don’t overdo it but, at the same time, I feel like I am accomplishing something.
- Start organizing the easiest area to clean or the area that is bugging you the most.
- Work quickly. Don’t pick up that cute snowman your child drew and ooh and ahh over it for 10 minutes trying to decide what to do with it. Either toss it or put it in the “memories” box.
- Have boxes and trash bags ready to use. I designate boxes for “items to give away”, “things to pack”, “things that go in another room” and “trash”. Once you have filled a box or trash bag, set it outside of the room. This makes it easier to see what still needs to be sorted, gives you more space in the room to work and gives you the feeling that your are getting somewhere.
- When you first start to get organized, do a quick once over in the room. Quickly go through and pick up all obvious trash and take out very large items that don’t belong there.
Quick Ideas to Give Your Organizing a Jump Start:
- Make your bed. (2 minutes) Don’t assume that this will take too long. Some people spend more time trying to decide what to eat at a restaurant than it takes to make a bed.
- Wash dishes and clean counters (depending on the level of the mess, 15 minutes to an hour)
- Designate a spot for keys, purse, backpacks, shoes and coats.
- Clear off the dining room table. If it is really bad, clear off the easy stuff and put the rest in a box to sort later while you’re watching TV.
- Quickly go through the house and pick up all items of clothing. Hang them up or put them in the hamper.
- With a trash bag, go through the house and pick up obvious trash.
You’ll probably be surprised to see how much difference toward getting organized it makes just getting the trash and clothes picked up… You should be able to do all the above things easily in a couple of hours on the first day. Then make sure you keep doing them each day. If you did a good job the first day, it should only take you about 15-20 minutes each day after that to keep it picked up.
Deep Cleaning or Organizing
- Start organizing one shelf or closet at a time. Don’t flit from one room or closet to the next.
- The main idea here is to purge! Get rid of it. Toss it out. Call it whatever you like. Just stop holding on to this stuff.
- If it is not adding to or making your life easier, get rid of it.
- If it is ugly and doesn’t work, toss it. (No I’m not talking about your husbands… now ladies we must be good ;-).
- If you don’t use it or if it was the wrong thing or the wrong color, throw it out, sell it or give it away. I don’t care how much you originally paid for it. Why are you keeping it — to punish yourself for making a mistake?
- Don’t use the excuse that “It will take too long to get organized now, so I will do it later.” I was waiting for something to cook on the stove the other day and, once again, noticed that my spice shelf was a mess. I thought, “I really need to clean that,” but my very next thought was “No, it will take too long.” Then this little voice said, “You know, you can have it done before your sauce is finished cooking.” Don’t you just hate it when you hear those voices like that?! Sure enough, it only took me about 3 minutes to do it.
Find out where your “mess spots” are, think about why they are that way and find ways to change them. (I know with some of you, your whole house may be the trouble spot! 🙂
Here are some examples of how to get organized and stay that way:
- I kept piling Kleenex, small bits of paper and other trash on the corner of my dresser. It drove me crazy. Why did I keep doing that? Because that was where I stood to empty out my pants pockets before I tossed them into the clothes hamper. The solution: I put a small trash can on the floor by that spot so I could easily drop everything into the trash can instead of the dresser.
- Do you always have trash overflowing around the kitchen trash can? Start emptying it twice a day instead of once a day or buy a larger can.
- Are you usually frustrated about stepping over mounds of clothes each time you walk into the bathroom? Make it a rule that no one can get dressed or undressed in the bathroom. Buy everyone robes. Get undressed in the bedroom, put on your robe, walk to the bathroom, shower, put on robe and go back to the bedroom to get dressed. This is also a great way to free up bathroom time in the morning if everyone has to share a bathroom.
- Do you have a cabinet in your kitchen that starts an avalanche every time you open the door? Ask yourself these questions: Do I really need everything that is in this cabinet? Could I get by with 15 plastic cups instead of 35. Could part or all of what is in this cabinet be put someplace else? I keep all of my mugs on one shelf. In some homes, I haven’t had room to do that, so I would keep 8 mugs that I used virtually every day on that shelf and then put the extra mugs in a less accessible place. Then I didn’t have to fight 15 mugs falling all over each time I opened the cabinet.
- Organize any cabinet this way. If your canned goods keep falling all over, try storing only 4 cans on the one shelf and putting the rest in another place, like a higher cabinet, another room or the garage.
- This applies to organizing other rooms besides the kitchen. My bathroom doesn’t have much storage space, so I keep all my extra toiletries for the bathroom in a basket in my bedroom closet and keep only the item I am using now on my bathroom shelf.
- Use the same method for organizing linens and clothes. If you don’t have a linen closet, store extra linens or guest linens in a guest room or spare bedroom. Also, store the sheets in the bedroom where they will be used.
Read Getting Organized Part 3
Clothes, Laundry and Toys
For more helpful tips to get organized and making cleaning and laundry easier, check out our organizing e-book set:
[organizing]
Preventing Bills From Getting Lost
I thought I’d share a short post about preventing your bills from getting lost. If you keep things organized you can save money on fees and reduce the stress of worrying about bills being late.
Margaret Writes:
Our bills are sorted by date–the due date is written on the envelope. Then the pile is organized by due date, with the ones due soonest on top. These are paper clipped in the checkbook. Top bill gets paid first.
-Margaret
My system is similar. I line my bills in order in a napkin holder (one that just has 2 bars to hold the napkins because I can see the bills easier), with my checkbook behind them.
Are You a Slave to Debt?
Are You a Slave to Debt? Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?
We Americans are proud of our freedom and our opposition to tyranny and slavery, but because of lack of self discipline, most of us are not free at all. We are enslaved by our emotions and our debt. Most of us would never consider agreeing to become indentured servants and yet, by our own lack of self discipline, many of us have sold ourselves into slavery. Have you ever thought about the fact that indentured servants usually had to work 7 years for their freedom and people who claim bankruptcy have black marks on their credit for 7 years? Are you a slave to debt?
By now all those well meaning New Year’s resolutions have flown out the window, but don’t despair: all is not completely lost. Here are a few money saving tips and ideas that will get you back on track, save you money and will actually work.
You say “I don’t want to be a slave to debt but I don’t know where to begin.” Just begin. Don’t over-think it. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that you have to stop spending more than you earn.
Have you ever told your child to go pick up the toys in their room only to have them start whining and crying, “But I don’t know what to do.” It’s frustrating to hear that in a child because you and I both know an eight year old knows he’s supposed to put his toys away and his dirty clothes in the hamper. He just doesn’t want to do it. That whining and excuse making in an adult is even harder to take. As in a child, it’s just an excuse to get out of doing something we don’t want to do. Stop spending more than you earn.
Stop living a life of fear. Remember if you’re an American you live in the land of the free and the home of the BRAVE. There are two things that always amaze me. The first is grown adults that cower before a child a quarter their size and who is throwing a fit while demanding to buy a toy. The second is to watch a grown adult cower when looking at a desk or table piled with papers and bills. It’s just a bunch of paper, not a snake that is going to reach out and bite you. Be brave and start dealing with the papers and bills. Get them in order. Yes you may have to face some mistakes and things you don’t want to think about, but do it anyway. Then get on with your life. You don’t have to be a slave to debt! Learn from your mistakes and don’t make them again.
Here are a few suggestions to get that overwhelming pile of papers under control:
Quickly look at each paper and lay it into one of these 4 categories:
- TRASH – Throw out and/or shred immediately.
- FILES – Put in a box and set by file cabinet to sort and put in order some other day.
-
BILLS – Sort them in order by the date that they are due. If things are really out of control write down a list of all your bills and how much you owe. This will help give you a reality check of where you stand with your bills. You need to be brave and honest with this.
Using some common sense, start paying those bills. Pay your bills first. For a while, that may mean you have no money left for fun and entertainment, but that is the sacrifice you make for freedom.
- CORRESPONDENCE – Put correspondence in a pile. Read and deal with it after you have your bill pile out of the way.
If you are a slave to debt, it’s time to get angry and say enough is enough. I will no longer be enslaved and start fighting for my freedom from debt, even if my biggest enemy is myself!
Jill
From: Dig Out Of Debt. For more easy and practical ways to save money and get out of debt, check out Dig out Of Debt and learn more about how to keep more of your money and free yourself from being a slave to debt!
Using Wrapping Paper Scraps
Using Wrapping Paper Scraps
I was cleaning out my wrapping paper today and had a bunch of “pieces” of wrapping paper. You know– all of the ends you cut off and hate to throw away. Well, recently I have been getting everything organized again. The wrapping paper has been driving me nuts so I decided to tackle it.
I was trying to figure out what to do with all the those wrapping paper scraps. Yes, you can use them to wrap small gifts but it seems like they just multiply. The kids are getting a large gift from their grandmother in Colorado that I will need to wrap, so I’m going to take all those pieces and make a quilt type wrapping with all the scraps. That way, I will use the wrapping paper scraps and get them out of my hair! Yeah!!!!
Here’s another tip: When purchasing large items like coats or bigger toys, be sure to ask for extra large bags to bring them home. These make great trash can liners! You will be able to save on buying trash bags!
Tawra
Have you ever had a wrapping paper that you just loved and only have a small piece left? It is often too small to wrap anything. I will take a large package and wrap it in tissue paper or solid paper of some kind. Then I will carefully cut out the figures or part of the little piece of wrapping paper I loved and glue it to the tissue wrapped package.
I also once had a little piece of snowman paper I loved but not enough to use for wrapping gifts, so I made what I call “Santa” sacks for my grandkids. I cut out the snowmen from the wrapping paper. Then I took small brown paper sacks and glued one on each one of my sacks. Then I filled the paper Santa sacks with goodies for the kids. I don’t do this with all my scraps of paper; just my special ones.
Jill
Photo By: voxtheory
Organizing Kids’ Rooms
Organizing Kids’ Rooms
I posted a few tips about getting kid’s rooms decluttered but once you get it together, how do you get them to keep it that way?
One thing is to place a chart at their eye level. We often put the chore charts in the kitchen, which is fine, but you might consider putting a chore chart with just bedroom chores in their rooms. Write or place pictures of things like make your bed, pick up clothes, pick up toys and so on and, as with other charts, be sure to give lots of praise, stars or stickers when they do a good job. Kids tend to respond better to things that are put in writing (or in pictures) than they do with barked orders.
Train your kids. Show them how to do a chore. Then show them again and then show them again and again and again. We often think if we show children something once, twice or even three times they should be able to do it on their own but they can’t always learn things that fast. When I start a new job, if they show me how to do a job I have never done before for just one or two days, I can’t always get it. I would become very overwhelmed, discouraged and stressed. A good company will train you for at least two weeks every day. Our children need the same training and more.
Be specific when you tell a child to do something. Their idea of a clean room and yours are worlds apart. If you say, “Pick up your room,” don’t be surprised if they pick up two things and call it good. You need to say something like, “Pick up everything off of your floor.”
Work with your children. Whether you are an adult or child, you feel so much more motivated to do a job when you have someone helping you or encouraging you on. How many of you come to our website for encouragement and motivation? Children need encouragement from their parents so when you can, work together on their rooms, especially if they need a big clean up.
Make any cleaning up project a game. I was watching my grandkids today while Tawra was at the doctor’s office and told the boys I would race them to see if they could pick up all of the toys in the living room before I cleared the kitchen table and counters. You never saw any kids move as fast as they did trying to beat me. Of course I let them win.
I also get them to see if they can clean their rooms in less then 10 minutes or we all see how fast we can pick up 10, 15, 20 items.
We all do a better job if we have the proper tools, so buy small sized cleaning things for them like little brooms, dust pans, small dust rags (socks made into hand puppets are fun) and stools so they can reach things.
The biggest factor in helping control kids’ rooms is to get rid as much excess stuff as you can. They don’t need 50 race cars, 25 dolls or a shoe box crammed full of crayons. I used to have one box of 24 crayons in my room and you had better believe I took care of them because I didn’t want to lose that “special” color. If you don’t think your children have that many things, lay out their dolls, cars and other toys and count how many they have. I think you will be shocked.
Be sure to check out our Saving With Kids e-Book Series for many more tips like these.
Warning: Don’t become discouraged. It may be that only a couple of tips from this article may work for you. It has been a never ending battle throughout the ages (well maybe for the last 50 years) to get kids to pick up their rooms and to find functional ways to store things. Bigger people than I have tried to find the answer and so far have failed. Even if they get the storage down to a science, getting the kids to use the storage has failed.
The main thing to keep in mind is not to give up. It takes patience, time and work. This is one area where you won’t see the rewards of your hard work for many years – like about 20-30 years, but it will happen. It comes when your 20 year old son takes your trash out without being told. You sit there in amazement and wonder, “When and how did this happen?” Then there is the phone call from your daughter bemoaning the fact she can’t get the kids to keep their rooms clean.
Ahhhh, the sweet sweet rewards of seeing your offspring being tortured in the same way they tortured you years earlier! : ) : ) : )
-Jill
5 Minutes to Organized
Hi I really appreciated reading how to clean and organize in 5 minutes. Timing yourself to do tasks is a great idea – I never thought about it quite in that way.
I have done something similar – for example, if I am waiting for something to heat up in the microwave (my coffee) – I think to myself that I have “found” 1 minute to do something – so I clean the front of the microwave, or take the rubbish out – some little chore rather than standing there watching the coursel go round.
It almost becomes a little game – gee – it only took me x seconds to do that. Also, I use ad breaks – another slot of “found” time. When I have stuff to do, I will watch a TV program, and the start of the ads is my signal to get up and do a little chore. For example, I might have the dish washing to do (I don’t own a dishwasher), so in the first ad break, I run the water and put the glasses in to soak. In the next break, I wash the glasses and put the plates in to soak and so on. It’s amazing how much gets done. Or, you can do a little bit of dusting or vacuuming in the break.
Cheers for now Kate in Cleveland, Queensland, Australia
Hello Kate,
I love to hear from our readers from down under. As a matter of fact I am reading yet another book that is set in Australia. I just love to read about your country.
I did the same type of thing you mentioned when I was really sick. I couldn’t clean the whole bathroom but I would make myself get up and clean the sink during the first 5 minute TV commercial and then the toilet during the next. That way I didn’t over do but at the same time I manage to get huge amounts done. I totally agree with what you said. Thanks, Jill