Workshops

I am very excited to announce that I am now offering workshops!

It is a hands on and interactive way to get a few tips on how to better keep your life organized. It is geared specifically to the Mom's (aka rulers of the coop!)

     

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I hope to be adding more workshops in the future!

Negative Effects of Clutter

We all keep hearing that clutter is bad but have you ever stopped to think about why?

Clutter has many negative effects. Here are just a few major ones:

• It can cause you to feel overwhelmed or depressed
• Robs you of your energy
• Steals 50% of your storage space
• It makes life harder
• You have to look longer, travel farther and dig deeper to find what you are looking for
• Takes longer to clean
• Costs you money
• If you can't find what you need, you buy a replacement. On the other spectrum, you may be paying to store your clutter
• Makes it hard to think straight
• May affect how you feel about yourself and affect your relationships. 
• Ever felt embarrassed over the state of your house? You may be ashamed to let people see it resulting in you spending less time with your friends.
• Takes away the peace and beauty from your house. 

Clutter is a very sneaky thing. Nobody would ever suspect them of being the culprit of your lack of energy and unhappiness. What should you do to solve this problem? De-clutter and organize!

The process can be tough emotionally but that is what I am here to help you with. Professional organizers are masters of the process.

Book a consultation with me today and we can talk about your process to get the clutter out of your home.

Organizing Your Handbags

I had someone message me on my Facebook page asking how one would organize purses. Now, there are so many ways to organize your purses. I'll admit that at one point, I was pretty stumped on how I could organize my own.

So, I decided to dedicate an entire post on just that topic. It all really depends on your space and what you have, so I'm going to suggest many different options!

Starting with how I organize mine, I have a large linen bin that holds all of my purses and sits on the top shelf of my closet. When I want to switch one up, I pull it down and make the switch. I only have one designer purse and it is a cross body so I hang it on a command hook on the inside of my closet door (once I actually start to break into the designer purses, I will have to find a better solution).

Now you can do that, but I can understand if you don't want to just shove all your bags in a basket like I do, so here are a few options:

Hooks:
If you have the space in your closet, you can hang hooks directly on the closet rod and hang your purses through there (or use shower rings from the dollar store).

If you have some wall space, you can also set up a rail and put the hooks on that. This system from Ikea would work really well. 

Why it works:
Easy to see what you have
Very easy to pick it up and put it back when switching bags
Cost effective: the hooks are $2 for a 10 pack and the rail (if you choose to go with it) is only $3

Why it doesn't work: 
You need space in your closet
May not be ideal if you have a lot of bags 

Cubicles
In this case you would use your vertical space. Vertical space is often missed but it is such a waste of hot storage real estate if it is not used.

This "Park-A-Purse" is specifically designed to fit on the wire shelf in the closet. You can find it here or on amazon.

If you wanted to use the floor space in your closet, you could use this ClosetMaid cube organizer. They can be found at Walmart or any similar big box store.

Why it works:
Very neat and you can see all your bags easily
Great for designer bags

Why it doesn't work: 
It can be bulky, leaving less room for other items.

Over The Door Hangers
Sometimes, over the door is all the space you have. I use my door to store shoes. There are many different types of hangers you can get.

The Perfect Curve Bag Rack

I can actually vouch for this company because I used the cap rack for a client. It is a really neat product and keeps everything very neat.

Closet Hangers

You can find these pretty much anywhere, they just look like this and you hang them on your closet rod.

Why these work:
You use vertical space (imbed that into your mind)

Why it doesn't work:
It can be bulky and you may not like the look

Lastly, if you want to get a bit more fancy, these bins are really pretty (but you can't use vertical space with them ;) )

What would I go with? I like the idea of the cube storage :)

Organizing the Linen Closet

Organizing a linen closet is probably one of the easiest things you will organize in your home - as long as you have shelves in it. If you don't have shelves in your linen closet, you should go pick some up. You can find them pretty much anywhere that has a home section. I was fortunate enough to have these shelves already in there which made things easier.

Here is how everything is laid out:

1. Bed Linens
2. Toilet Paper
3. Towels - bigger towels on the right, hand towels and face cloths on the left.
4. Reusable Bags
5. Laundry
6. Cats

The bins boxes I used to put everything in are recycled. They once held my Sophie Conran dinnerware sets that we got for my shower. They were the perfect size to be placed in the closet. When you receive boxes like these, see if you can use them anywhere around the house. Saves you from having to buy some.

In the laundry bin, I have the detergent, mesh bags, stain spray and dryer sheets. I live in an apartment where I have to go to a laundry room to do the laundry but if you have laundry in your place, I would be putting this in that area. This is convenient for me though because on my way out the door, I open the closet and grab what I need. I usually only bring one thing at a time because I don't stay in the laundry room but if I were to have to bring everything with me, I would switch the box out for some kind of carrying caddy.

All my reusable bags are folded up in one large one but I still have it in a box to keep it in place.

Finally, the cats stuff in this closet just consists of their litter and food. I have other things like toys and clippers in a bin in another closet.

So there is one of my linen closets. I have two in this apartment which is really helpful for storage. Hope you enjoyed and got some ideas to organize your own :)

Small Project: My Coat Closet

Our coat closet in our apartment is very multifunctional because it is the only closet besides the one in the bedroom that has vertical space from the floor so it is the only place I can store the vacuum and steam mop.

While I did take measures to organize the space before, it wasn't really working for what we needed.

The shoe rack was very tall so it protruded into where the jackets hung which made it really hard to get jackets in and out because they were all bunched up. It was also kind of annoying to have to take shoes off because I had to move jackets out of the way. 

Here is the space with the new solution:

The biggest change that made so much of a difference, was this closet organizer I got from Ikea. I took the shoe rack out completely. The jackets can now hang freely while I am still able to store the shoes. That organizer is surprisingly strong too. 

Here are the key aspects of this closet organization:

• The cat's carriers are on the top shelf and easily accessible in case of an emergency.
• The organizer holds all of our everyday shoes and boots that don't fit in the over-door organizer that I have in my bedroom 
• We have this bag holder from Ikea which makes plastic bags easy to grab for litter cleaning. 
• The ironing board hangs on some hooks on one side and the broom hangs in one of these on the other door.
• The floor is left clear for more heavy duty boots (rain boots, snow boots and Brandyn's work boots) and the vacuum and steam mop 

So that is my newly organized coat project. Click here to go to my Facebook page where you can like it and be notified every time I post here and also little tid bits I post throughout the week :)

Bullet Journal

I recently found a new journal/agenda type system. It is called the bullet journal. If you are a list maker this is a great new option for you to try out. I wanted to experiment with it for a few months before sharing it with you.

While, the original creator uses a moleskin, I just grabbed a regular journal (the button fell off)

At the start of the month, you open up a blank spread. On the right you put the month and the numbers and on the left you put the tasks you want to accomplish that month.

Then on the following pages, you put each date and leave a bit of room to put tasks throughout the day. A square represents a task and a circle represents an event.

I also suggest choosing a journal with some kind of pocket because then you can easily store things like invitations or tickets.

I am so far liking this system of doing things. For bigger lists like grocery, I use an app but for the overall agenda, I think this is a great system and it can be customized to whatever suits you.

If you want to hear more, you can watch this video here.

An Organized Storage Room

A client hired me to help her organize her storage room. The great thing about this was that we didn't need to purchase one product and used what she already had in her house!