Out of hand!

How easy is it to have your house get out of hand, your life get out of control, it is too quick. It never fails to surprise me how easy it is to just get out of a routine, and how hard it is get things back on track.

I know there are different theories on how long you have to practice or maintain a routine in order for it to become a habit and not a chore to do. I am not even going to go there, I know it can take me a good month to consider something part of my daily habit. It feels great when you get to that point, you are not forcing yourself. To me it is like I accomplished something, it is a great deal.

Now comes the part I hate, you have a habit, you do it everyday or once a week, whatever your rotating schedule is, you have something disrupt your life and that is it, just like that you are back to square one. You went on vacation, you got sick, you had so much going on things got out of control.

It is scary how quick a house can go from clean and organized to dirty and messy. The more you wait and let it sit, the worse it becomes, then why bother, it is like a switch and you ignore it and before you know you are in real trouble and so far gone you can’t do it by yourself.

That works for anything, a craft, a chore, cleaning, yard work, the vehicle, homework anything that gets out of hand and you just don’t work at getting it back on track quick enough or with enough conviction.

Then comes forcing yourself to start all over again, start picking up the pieces, and push yourself to get just one more thing done, get your life, home, yard, chores, back on track.

Organizing Magic, a book by Sandra Felton

Organizing Magic is another book that I recently read, it is written by Sandra Felton. In this book Sandra walk us through 40 days to a well-ordered home and life.

The key to this is according to Sandra to read one step a day and work on implementing her tips into your life one at a time. This will allow you to make the steps function in your life.

Sandra walks you through setting goals, and tackling them. It is done in a realistic and foolproof fashion. Figuring out your personality styles and how those will affect what you are doing.

The nice thing about this book is when you read through it, you truly follow what she is saying and it is amazing when you are sitting there thinking yup, that’s me; yup, I do that; yup, I need to change that.

This book is not a big read, took me a couple of hours, there are no pictures which I was a little disappointed about, simply because I love looking at pictures of things neatly organized, and for someone who needs some more visual examples, this doesn’t have it. She does have tons of resources in the book, like where to go to stop junk mail, and determining how long you need to keep paperwork filed.

It is a very good resource to read to help you come up with your very own organized lifestyle. I recommend getting your hand on a few books and read them all, some things are very similar while other give you differences that allow you to customize your plan to your life!

“Clean House”

When you hear “Who want a Clean House?”, what do you think of? Me I think of Trish, Mark and Matt. Who can forget Niecy! She is awesome. I know there are more members of the Clean House crew, I do, but the truth is those four will always be Clean House to me.

I can’t wait to see what sort of dysfunction the find themselves in the middle of. The level of clutter and what fights they are going to have to get things done. I know many of us sit there and wonder how someone can get so cluttered. It is easy, stop doing things for a few weeks and see how fast things get out of hand.

The thing about Clean house that I like that is different from Hoarders is that these people are not to the extreme psychologically as those on Hoarders. They can talk to them in a way that you cannot address a person who suffers from clinical Hoarding issues. That is where I really get this show, there is no sugar coating anything you have to tell these people, you just tell them like it is. (or at least Niecy Nash can get away with it).

I just want to work with Trish for a few days, weeks, whatever and learn all about those awesome storage systems she puts together. (Yes, I know Matt does a lot of the builds, lol).

Clean House marathons are my absolute favorites, I love watching it all day, seeing how you can transform a place from the before to the after. Ever wonder if they keep it up? I do a lot. I want to surprise them and see what the houses look like 6 months later.

The other thing that I love is you can find the Clean House yard sales and go to them. Support you shows!!! I know they appreciate seeing all the fans and the funds that come in to help them get the job done!

I do think that these guys help those who are stuck, you got to a point that you have no clue how to fix it on your own. Sometimes you need the help and being told what to do in order to just get there. Hopefully after the Clean House crew leaves they keep things up the way they are supposed to. I would not want Miss Niecy after me if I got my house all cluttered and messy again!

Create a photo book with your child’s Art!

Photo books are such a great way to keep memories together. I recently started putting together a book of all of my child’s artwork. It is amazing how much artwork they create and how much space it all takes up.

There are a few places you can go to do this, I picked Shutterfly. I had made photo books and calendars through them before. I took pictures of all of my child’s art, and then started the task of creating the book. It took a few hours, mostly, the longest thing was taking and uploading the pictures. Once I decided on the style I wanted for the book, I just started dropping the pictures into place. You can determine how many pictures you want on a page, as little as one, as many as 8 or more.

I would say since I broke this up into a few days, I spent a total of 6 hours on the one book, that book had 20 pages and another 8 hours on the second book, that book had 40 pages. That is taking pictures, uploading and producing the final product. It also ships in no time, so within two weeks I had the book in my hands.

My child loves the book, it is special and just for her. She doesn’t mind that the artwork is gone because she can look at it right in her book. It is easy to store on a bookshelf, and will always look nice as opposed to artwork that gets destroyed over time sitting in boxes.

It is not something that I can talk much about other than to say it is a great way to keep treasured memories, it is not really expensive, and just looks great. You can use this idea for any pictures you have and create so many different style books. Go ahead take a look.

Back in the saddle

It has been too long since I wrote a blog. Life has a way sometimes of getting out of control even for those of us who strive every day to make sure every aspect of our life is organized and just so.

I have spent a few weeks searching for another job while trying to focus on organizing and keeping life going. I am a micro-scheduler. (if that word even exists). I like to try to schedule every little thing on a daily and weekly basis. It helps me to make sure I am meeting my goals, and therefore have time to just spend having fun with my family.

I make my lists, I try to stick to them, and if I have to put something off, I try to make sure that I do so in a manner that within a week it is done. Well, hah, none of that has worked in the last two weeks. I am at this time trying to get back on track so to speak, went through and re-organized my calendar and to do lists, because although I have been running in circles I have achieved quite a few things. I have made sure to account for all the things that I have accomplish, as well as those that are almost there.

House Works, a book by Cynthia Townley Ewer

I have read  lots of books lately about organizing and cleaning. One of my favorites so far is House Works,  written by Cynthia Townley Ewer.

This is not a review, this is just me telling you that wow this books is great. It tackles organizing practically in every part of your daily life. I have found that there are ideas I want to carry out in my life!

Cynthia goes through this book with step by step methods to organize, clean and plan your home life. She walks you through quick steps to do every day, how to decide what you should do weekly and monthly. There are descriptions of the different cleaning supplies that you can use to clean everything in your house from the floors, toilet, sink, and windows, to the different tools to use to do the cleaning.

She walks you through determining what kind of organizing/clutter personality you have, how to make good choices to let things go, and how to make sure what you keep you use and doesn’t just add to the clutter.

Hoarders

So have you watched Hoarders? I love that show. There are actually some friends who don’t understand my fascination with the show, but it is just a good tool for me to seeing how some people live.

It is amazing to me how something can affect your life to the point that it will start this compulsion, obsession, whatever you choose to call it. You can go from a normal lifestyle to a life of never letting go of anything. How you can get to the point where throwing away literally garbage is crushing to your psyche. How can you get to the point where trash, among so many things becomes a part of your life so much you don’t get rid of it, but hold on to it.

This is a great show for insights into how you can handle situations like this. Mind you I said insights. This is not the kind of organizing project I would dare take on without training and maybe even interning. The process of cleaning out for so many of these people can be so devastating that you have to really know how to come across and help take care of things. I have seen some professionals push too hard and almost seem to lose the fight, and I have seen some professionals that I wish had pushed a bit harder. Of course we don’t always see everything to know why they may be going the route they do. When you are in the real situation it is sometimes easier to see how you have to handle approaching a person.

It amazes me how frustrated people can get with the situation, maybe because I have never had to deal with it on a personal level. I guess maybe when you are so close to it you may not be able to look at it and see this is a clinically proven disorder. Not something you can just take care of and walk away from. People have lost homes, children, entire families, jobs, and so much more. Can you imagine how distressing it must be to them that the threat of losing so much is unable on many occasions to help them break the cycle. If there is anything I wish I could say to the family members of the hoarders family, or their friends is that it is not something that simple to fix. I think if they could change it that easily they would do it right away.

It can sometimes be a hard show to watch, but if you want a show to scare you and make you truly think about keeping an organized home. Watch this and remember it is like flipping a switch sometimes how easily you can go from put together to loosing control.

Went Shopping

Just a quick one here guys, I went shopping. OMG shopping when you love to organize can be fun, and then you come home and put what you bought to use!

So what did I do, I got 2 shelf’s to make a shoe system, when I moved last time I left a lot of stuff behind, so I have been trying to replace and improve on things I had. Well my shoes really needed a good home, I can’t stand not being able to just look and see what is there and pick shoes. I am a girl, hello we have a lot of shoes, and I push the space I have to the limit, If only I had more room. One day =). I went and got two shelves that stack on top of the other. They each have two shelves, so I have plenty of room to organize shoes. They took 10 minutes to throw together and no time to make the shoes pretty, especially since I was so excited to do it.

I got some office stuff too. I love how we are expanding on filing systems, we have boxes and trays like never before. It is great. So yes, I got a few document boxes and magazine holders that match. Here is a hint, the magazine holders work to put files in. Everything has more than one traditional use. The boxes also come with removable dividers inside. So you can have one be for documents and one be used to organize supplies.

I am also so excited about my last purchase. Yes I am the girl who goes shopping in the home department and office supply stores, etc, and am happy beyond belief. (and since you can always find something that needs to be organized I will never be bored) My last purchase is an item I had been trying to find for some time. I kept finding similar but not quite what I wanted. I got one of those bucket style trays that you keep your cleaning supplies in. The thing that I love about this one so very much is that it actually has a built-in spot for a roll of paper towel. It has a slit on the side, so that you can just pull at the roll and tear paper towel off. So now I grab my tray and just get to go room by room cleaning, and I do not have to go back for supplies, it all comes with me.

So, I love shopping for organizing supplies and am sure I will share more stories as we go along!

Getting rid of clothes!

Hey all, it has been a few days since I have written anything for the blog. Life has been slightly crazy and overwhelming. However, funny thing is when you make a decision in your life to change something or fix something, things start to fall into place again and you get back on that wagon and just keep going.

I wanted to just talk about what I have done this weekend, it is something I recommend doing often. I tend to have two levels of attention that I gave this task. What task you ask? Well I have spent the last two days working on going through things and disposing of what I do not use. I tackled the clothes last night and shoes and purses. I was brutally honest with myself about what I haven’t worn in too long, if I haven’t ever worn it, or if it has just started to show its age.

Closets and Drawers

The most necessary spots to review in your house as far as I am concerned are those pesky drawers and closets. Do you know how much wasted space can be there! The process of setting up shelving and closet/drawer systems that are efficient can cost a little money, or none if you use some do it yourself methods, but when it is done it is so worth it!

I have been going through the house one room at a time trying to see what the best ways to use the spaces can be without making it a cluttered mess and having it be efficient, so that when you open it to find something, it is right there. There is nothing worse than having to dig through stuff to find something, and then when you have to put it away chances are that it will just be added to the pile to avoid digging through things to put it away.

Shelving is a must in closets, if you can do a shelving system even better. It allows you to divide the space accordingly so that you don’t have wasted space. (Can’t say that enough). It is great to be able to have a spot for shirts, dresses, shoes, purses, pants, folded items. The sliding drawers that can go in closets systems are awesome!