I really dislike feeling like I don’t have a handle on my life. Since getting home from a trip with my husband, I’ve felt myself running about twelve hours behind since we got home Monday night at around 9pm. I’ve been thinking of some processes I might have followed to help the transition back into real life a little smoother. I thought I’d write them all out for next time.
Read the rest of this entry

Alternate Title: This week is kicking my butt and I haven’t finished this project yet!

This is one of those weeks where my mantra is: “What needs to get done, will get done. Everything else will get done eventually.”

Remember last week I shared the horror that is my gift wrap situation? I loved your input on that post and was particularly inspired by the old dresser as gift wrap station. I have the perfect dresser to use even.

Read the rest of this entry

I’m back on another organizing jag. Do you ever feel like the world is set up to drown you in papers? I spend at least one hour of my day browsing papers, some junk, some from school. If I ease up at all, by the end of the day I am behind and my kitchen and dining room are covered in various papers. It’s just me isn’t it?

Funny enough this has very little to do with my post today. Today I thought I’d share a couple organizing ideas which have inspired me in the last week.
Read the rest of this entry

Do you have a house cleaning help? I do not, but wish I did. After crunching numbers and facing down orthodontic work for both kids, I think it’ll be a while before we can get someone to help. It’s not that I can’t do it myself, my house isn’t all that large, but there are two issues which keep me unhappily cleaning.

I hate that the entire house is never clean at the same time, with the time I’m willing to devote to house cleaning, I have time to do all the bathrooms or all the main level or all the upper level. I’m rarely able to commit a whole day to cleaning the entire house.
Read the rest of this entry

A couple weeks ago we had a yard sale and got rid of all the stuff we moved with us from the old place and didn’t really need to. Once that sale was over I told Logan we’d move to the basement office next because, and I don’t know why, his boxes make my anger burn with the heat of a thousand suns.

The boxes are full of nonsense, things he packed at his desk at the job before the last one and hasn’t touched in over a year. These are things he doesn’t need and yet can’t part with, no matter how many times I tell him if he ever needs a single iridescent sheet of navy blue paper again in his life, I’m sure he can locate it for purchase when the need arises.

I can’t entirely explain my unending commitment to pestering my husband about his clutter issue. All I can say is I work from home and I need our home to be a place with some sense of order so I am able to function well in it. I feel overwhelmed by chaos, which is why we had two kids rather than the three we always planned on.

As we started working on the basement I spent the Friday before doing a ‘Pre-Sweep’ of the basement, consolidating boxes and tossing out as much as I could get my hands on before my husband came home and stymied me. “Oh! An issue of Runner’s World from 1995. I need that!” I also found some items I was fairly sure he’d never miss, but was still hesitant to toss or donate. They’re hiding around the house waiting for the day he says, “Where’s that fart machine I used to have?”

Here is the mess we started with, please tell me how a human being can function in this mess?

I will admit I had several boxes in this mess. I was hard on myself, that maternity sweater I started knitting eight years ago? I am never going to finish it. All those books I packed and had totally forgotten about for the last 9 months, gone. Sewing projects I started and never finished were trashed or donated and though it was hard it felt amazing. A fresh start, I never have to look at that half finished sweater again and berate myself for spending $100 on yarn and never completing the project. I never have to look at those drapery rods I never really liked but got a great deal on and feel stupid for spending money on something I didn’t love. I whittled things down and came up with four to six bags of trash.

And then a trunk full of even more things to donate to the Salvation Army, including half my clothes I’d weeded through a week ago. If you live in the Detroit Metropolitan area I highly recommend a trip to the Royal Oak Salvation Army Thrift Store in the next week or so.

Here is what we ended up with after some threats of hiring a professional organizer, tears and slamming doors.

Nothing special really, but a good place to start planning what we want the room to look like in the end of the process. Logan’s side of the office is pretty straightforward. He needs a place to keep all the stupid tiny things he likes to look at while he works. All the junk I would never in a million years want to look at in my bedroom, like vintage Vargas prints.

He also needs the typical office supplies within easy reach and we’ll have to come up with some sort of system for all the paperwork from his freelance work he collects and doesn’t know what to do with. Not only because I like a clean work area but because his clutter has an uncanny ability to navigate it’s way over to my work surface.

I am looking for a more flexible work space where I can bring my laptop to work from the basement but I also want to use my area for things like my sewing machine, stationary and the family’s gift wrap. I may also create a bill paying station down here but maybe not.

We’ll paint the walls, and since we’re leasing, we’ll hang a fabric wall to divide this space from the rest of the basement which will serve as a small hang out area for the kids once Santa relents and buys the family a video game system for Christmas. When we own we’ll build a wall and install a laminate flooring (after we live here for a year to see if and how much a problem water is). We are using most of what we have and wall shelving to keep costs down.

I’ve been collecting inspiration and ideas over the last few months and thought I’d share them here.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at Pretty Organized and the Craft Rooms pool watching what spaces real people have created. I love the wall shelves in this piece at HGTV, though I see mine having more color. These metal binder clips hung from cup hooks would be excellent for storing miscellaneous pieces of paper, especially with school stuff coming at me so fast my head is spinning. This image of a part time home office is lovely and I think the Elfa system at The Container Store is going to play into my office space design quite a bit.

We’ll be working on the basement office over the next few weeks and I’ll give updates as we complete our office.

Since I’ve pried my daughter off my head and sent her to school, the adjustment has been rough for her, it’s time to add my second column to Ordering Disorder. I thought today I’d share what I’ve done with my inbox and my bookmarks to make my job easier. I write for several blogs so my work space is generally my computer, but I think what I’ve done can easily be utilized for anyone who uses email and the internet for their work. Which you do, unless you’re my mother and still boggled by your vcr.

This is a very helpful article over at Freelance Switch outlining great tips for bloggers trying to track their work and stay organized. I’ve utilized their bookmark organization with great success, as I see something of interest I add it to a folder or create a folder for these ideas. Currently my research folder for my column at AlphaMom.com is the most organized and full of potential ideas.

Additionally I try to keep everything in a folder, keeping my work folders at the very top of the list. Once I have 5-10 un-filed bookmarks I start to feel anxious because I have a touch of the OCD. Currently I have just two un-filed bookmarks and I’m not telling you what’s in my ‘private’ folder even though you’re now dying to know.

I’ve also organized my feeds in Bloglines to maximize my ability to research for my columns each day. It’s not all work feeds there of course, but I find keeping everything in different folders allows me to read what I need at any given time. If I’m reading for pleasure I go to the personal blog folders. If I’m reading for work, I go to those folders and read up during my ‘work hours’.

Finally over the summer I made a limit for my email inbox, after years of being entirely overwhelmed by its contents. I like to keep no more than 20 unfiled emails in my actual inbox. To do this I’ve set up several filters using my mail program’s ‘rules’ function so a lot mail goes to specific folders immediately as it comes in.

I also try to answer email quickly so I can delete it, if I can’t immediately think of something to say in response to a note, I leave it for a week. After a week, if I haven’t responded, I’ve given myself permission to decide I have nothing witty or clever to say and I can let it go. If I truly want to respond to something but need more than a week, I file it in a folder titled “Respond to these”. This morning I had 42 emails in my inbox, now I have 8 and the joy and calm this gives me is sort of embarrassing.

Now if only I could apply these rules to my husband’s clothes, I might actually have room for my clothes in our room.

This weekend my neighborhood is hosting a garage sale, accordingly my next organizing piece will cover garage sales. Once the garage sale is complete the real fun can start, you’ll watch over the next few weeks as my husband and I have fist fights over the condition of our new shared office in the basement.

You will pity me when you witness the power of my husband’s ability to cling to the most ludicrous of his belongings and I’m not even referring to his underwear drawer.

But I will if you want.

Wow, you are all full of excellent organizing knowledge. I spent most of this past week unloading boxes and finding places for things so I haven’t had time to make a trip to Ikea, Bed Bath and Beyond or even to browse The Container Store (can you believe we don’t have one in Michigan?). But last night I decided to see what I could do with my cupboards with what I have already as a first step. I only tackled my two tall and deep cabinets, the spices are still crammed into a very small space, though I did manage to find chili powder without maiming myself.

I had a couple baskets, a wire shelf and lazy susan which used to be in our linen closet. The new linen closet is yet another disaster for now, so I took those items out to use in the kitchen. You remember the before, right?

Here is the left cabinet. You’ll note a lazy susan on the top shelf, my pre-existing rice container (with label!), a tomato/pasta shelf and another basket which holds cans and bottles related to anything Mexican in nature we might cook. The very bottom shelf holds a container for cat food and bottles waiting to go to the garage and, eventually, the store so that we might collect our 10 cents a bottle like good Michiganders.

Here is the upper cabinet I’ve decided to try to use for paperwork and my bill paying station. We’ll see how that works, the file and box are from Real Simple’s line at Target. The white boxes are magnetic but in this house we want to keep our fridge clear of clutter, so I’ll likely be coming up with a new bill paying method.

The right cupboard I’m using for snacks and foods the kids will most likely want to get to. I used a basket for snacks like pretzels and tortilla chips. Another plastic basket holds some of the cans of stuff my little boy likes for lunch like Spaghetti-Os. I could label this shelf, “Madison’s Rung Of Hell” because she will never allow any of the contents of these cans touch her lips. Ever.

Why yes, I do have a shelf containing homemade snack mix from a neighbor, microwave popcorn and Pocky. Doesn’t everyone?

I’m not done in there but this makes at least more sense for now. I did some browsing like I mentioned and found this Flickr group, Pretty Organized which is lovely for inspiration. Like this drool inspiring pantry. Wow.

As far as what I’ll be purchasing I found a few items I think we’ll end up using. If we weren’t leasing for this year and not certain we’ll be buying when our lease is up, I would simply buy these great roll out cupboard inserts. At $40 a piece that’s a $400 solution and I’m not sure I’m up for that, not when I have a living room waiting for a sofa.

For spices, I think I might use this pull down shelf and install it on the shelf above my existing spice shelf. The only thing I don’t like about that solution is the fact that it seems a little inefficient to take up 2 shelves in a cupboard just for spices. Something which attaches to the cabinet door may be more space efficient, like this.

I used to keep my calendar attached to the side of my fridge but as I mentioned, we’re not sticking things to our refrigerator anymore. I realize I have a computer and many applications meant to replace the traditional paper calendar. But I can’t help it, I enjoy seeing my calendar in front of me. At Pretty Organized someone shared this idea, using the inside of a cabinet door as a message center and handy space to stash paperwork. I’m thinking I could just use this hook to attach my calendar inside the cupboard without any installation marks to the cabinet since we’re leasing. This will make it easily viewed by everyone in the family.

Not that this means my husband will stop asking me 42 times when exactly we’re leaving on vacation.

Back to cooking next week, I promise.