I love opening a linen closet where stacks of clean fresh laundry are piled neatly with only folded edges showing. There are several space saving ways to fold towels and sheet sets can be folded into neat little packages. Cleaning out a linen closet is a great way to turn old towels into rags or car washing towels. You’d be surprised what a little organization can do for a small narrow closet. A spritz of linen spray will freshen the closet and you will breathe a sigh of comfort when you pillow your head at night.
Weekly Tip
Novels, self-help, recipe, business, non-fiction, magazines! Is it beginning to look like a well-worn library in your home? Are bookshelves crammed tight with old hardcovers or torn and worn paperbacks?
Pay it forward! You can donate these treasures to your local library and if they can’t be shelved they will sell them at book sales benefitting the library for new books.
You may read it again? Seriously? How many books have you re-read? Let’s talk minimal – as in e-books. Books are meant to be read and convey information to you, the reader. That’s the special meaning behind a book… not sitting on your shelf. When you touch the book does it bring you pleasure? Perhaps it’s a limited edition or a classic. That’s fine! Keep it!
Someday means never. If you say, “someday I will read this…” you won’t. If you’ve read it, move on. If it’s truly a treasure, keep it.
There is one fun way to display nice art books… stack them in a colorful tower in a corner of the room. Just hope the one you want to read isn’t at the bottom!
The word purge indicates getting rid of something. Ho Hum. Before you get the Eeyore, complex think of the word fest. It indicates fun, excitement and a party! A purge-fest is a time set aside to purge with an organizer and your party will come when the work is done!
My client recently purchased a new closet system. She emptied everything from her old closet into her bedroom, bathtub, shower stall… it was a hot mess! But together we went through each item one by one and purged, hung, placed, binned. We laughed, we sipped, we had a blast on purge-fest day. With all the stuff this huge job only took part of a day.
The result? One happy client who reports she LOVES her closet. Everything is reachable, color coded, neat and tidy. Now as she wears clothes she’d forgotten she had, she hangs the item inside out. In 6 months, if she hasn’t worn it again, she will purge it.
15 bags to charity and 5 more to the trash? Now that’s a purge. Watching her dance in her closet? That’s a fest!
There are 7 days in a week… 30 days in a month…
Some days are professional, others active, and a few loungy. We have a hot season and a cold season. So why are there 365 dress shirts in your closet? Why are there 60 golf shirts? Do you need 25 pair of jeans? So, you have a rainbow of colored pants, do you need three in each color? 100 pair of shoes? I can live with that – it’s average.
The funniest question I have ever been asked is: “Can you make my space bigger?” While I am good at working organizational magic, “bigger” is only accomplished with a contractor, a sledge hammer and new walls. More efficient I can do. Let’s start with a purge fest!
Remember there are only 7 days in a week… 30 days in a month… and we do live in a century of washing machines and dry cleaners!
Children need toys. Children like kitchen toys. My own kids found delight in playing with my plasticware, and pots & pans. Kids just want to be where you are, Mom. I organized a kitchen for a busy Mom who seemed to be preparing meals and snacks for her little ones, all day long. Not fun with a toddler wrapped around your ankle. We gave this cutie a drawer of his own. His sippy cups, his bibs, his bowls, and even some snacks. We also placed safe plasticware in a reachable drawer just his size. The unsafe gadgets and kitchenware are unreachable for the little ones.
It’s ok if the inside of the drawer is toddler messy… he is occupied and right next to Mom all day long. Happy Kid… Happy Mom!
Oftentimes I enter a home and find a ridiculously small closet space where the door actually swings INTO the closet! Who designs this stuff? I measured one closet space to discover the door was actually larger than the wall on which it swung to! This means lack of space and causes a real problem for storage. Solution? Remove the door!
The same is true for a “reach in” closet. These make great spaces in home offices. Again, if your shelves are tidy, add a pop of color and make this space part of your room. Contain all the supplies and doodads in colorful and fun bins. Your personality will shine through and you will want to spend productive time in the room.
If you have a neat and tidy clothes closet and storage is a problem, remove the door. Store the door in garage or make a craft/utility table out of it. You will gain an extra wall in your closet and your closet will breathe with the open space.
New Year? Resolutions? Fresh Start? A great time to get organized. Office supplies and filing supplies are on sale everywhere! Get started! In today’s cyber and digital world, we truly don’t need to keep paper like we used to. I had a client who insisted on keeping paper documents and tax returns that dated back to 1973. I couldn’t talk him out of it as he was afraid of the big bad auditor! So, with respect I organized all his boxes and files into bins safely in his garage.
The important part was moving forward. I organized all his receipts and supporting documents all year through so when it was time to file, it was easy and quick to package it up for his accountant. The accountant? Loved me. My client? Sadly, passed away this year. The bins in his garage entered the teeth of a shredder. The moral of this story? We don’t need to keep old paper documents forever. Don’t leave these for your children to sort through. Seek the advice of your accountant as to what to keep and what not to keep and how long. I promise, you don’t need to keep the 1973 documents.
So, start fresh… clean out… the worn out manila file folders can be replaced with colorful ones that will make you happy when opening that drawer… use a label maker to label the folders so they are consistent and readable… get some new pens and pencils… perhaps fun colorful desk accessories… most important… file the piles and keep up with it all year long! That is a worthy resolution!
Time to store the decor? The holidays are such fun and who doesn’t like to take their house apart and decorate for a few short weeks? It’s the UNdecorating where I come in. Consider hiring a professional to dismantle the decor, wrap it, pack it, label it, and store it in heat safe, stackable containers and bins.
I recently had the opportunity to dismantle Halloween and Autumn for a client. There were 28 bins and 5 bagged life-sized characters, this was driven to a spacious storage unit where SURPRISE! I found over 200 bins of Christmas decor. Requiring a 24-foot rental truck, extra muscle and weeks of organizing this client was able to see everything she didn’t know she had. The decor had been improperly wrapped causing damage, mislabeled bins causing confusion, all resulting in many duplicates purchased over the years.
In January, I will return to UNdecorate and this time the task will be done efficiently and properly. Maybe, just maybe… I can reduce the number of bins to under 200 and next year a pickup truck may be the only transport required. One can only hope
Those extra pounds creep up, especially around the holidays. I’m not talking body fat. I’m talking clutter. Find those items you have stashed to “re-gift” and get them ready to wrap. While you are wrapping, sort through your leftovers… no, not the food, the old, recycled gift wrap, and bows. Are they crinkled and smooshed? Look like recycled? Then recycle them in that big bucket on the side of the house and start fresh. No one wants a gift in an extra loved gift bag. Sort through and organize ribbons, seriously? A 5” ribbon is going to help you?
This year while opening gifts, have a bag ready for the wrapping and if Aunt Betty wants to flatten, straighten, and save every piece of tissue, wrap and ribbon, let her. Then send it all home with her.
Ahhh… now that’s better. You’ve lost the weight!
Recently I was tasked with a supply and copy room in an office building. The manager wisely emptied out the entire room of all boxes, bins, piles and her employees sorted it out in a large empty room. When it was my turn, I had a clean slate with which to work… shelves, cabinets, drawers. I knew all the items in front of me were to be kept and it was a snap to put it all together in an organized fashion using drawer organizers and a label maker, I had the supply room looking pristine in no time.
This method is perfect for anyone, anywhere. Home, office, garage… empty, sort and organize. Always better to start with a clean slate.