Let's Get Organized: The Master Closet

So as luck would have it I have been getting a ton of calls and e-mails about master closets. Everyone is tired of the cold and looking forward to spring and this is leading them to think about their closet. So . . . this is where we will start. I have always said I am a big proponent of making a plan. The first thing I want you to do is make a plan. Let me tell you what I mean. Get a notebook or journal; something you can use this year as we go through the phases of organizing your home. Now stand in the door of your closet and take a good hard look. Then close your eyes and picture the closet you want to have, the closet that will make you feel better about getting dressed in the morning. The closet that will save you time and frustration as you are getting ready for the day. Keep your eyes closed and think of all of the details. What kind of hangers do you want, lighting, cabinetry, anything you can dream up. Now open your eyes and write those things down. Make every word of it positive. After you have it all down you can then make a plan as to how you will get to that point. There are some basics that will be included in every plan such as purging, getting rid of wire hangers, etc. and this is where I will help you. Follow along to get organized and don't be afraid to send your questions. I am more than happy to add answers in my blog. I am always amazed with the number of people who e-mail me and say they are embarrased to ask questions on the blog. Don't be!! Others have the same questions and we are all here with the same purpose.
For this week I want you to create a plan and then purge!. How do we know what kind of storage we need if we don't know what we are trying to store? Look through your winter clothes and see what you haven't worn this season. We are close to spring (closer in the south) and if you didn't wear it yet ask yourself "why not". Purge the items in your closet first. Then if you have spring and summer clothes packed away you can purge those. We don't want to cause a bigger mess than necessary. If you pull all of the clothes out at once and try to purge chances are you will become overwhelmed and bail out on the process. Small steps will get you there quicker than standing still. Happy purging and let me know how it goes!

Getting Organized: Let's Get Started!

If you have been following my blog you can see just the mere mention of resolution sets you up for failure! But you know what I say? Start from wherever you are. Just start. If you really want something whether your goal is to lose weight or get organized; doing anything is better than nothing! One of my favorite quotes is by Calvin Coolidge which reads "Persistence prevails. Determination alone makes you omnipotent". Wow! What an amazing thought. Most of us never realize the power of our own determination to make something happen. One last thought for the day and then I promise my next entry will get started on getting us all back on the road of organizing!! A preacher appeared on The Ellen Show and discussed the power of our own thoughts. He suggested that if we take the last minutes of the day before we fall asleep to think of what we want and picture it as reality you will change your life. What can that hurt? It sure beats thinking about all the things that may have gone wrong that day.

It's Time for New Years resolutions!!!!!

I was just watching the Today Show and they were discussing New Year's Resolutions. They gave a great tip. Make small and realistic goals. This will give you a better chance of keeping them and that will make you feel better about yourself! I agree. This is the same thing I have been preaching on this blog. The number 2 New Year's resolution is to get organized. In fact January has been named GO (get organized) Month for this very reason. If it is one of your goals then great!!! I want to help make that posssible. My plan for this blog for the New Year is to take a room a month and lead discussions on how to tackle that particular space. We will take small steps and as we complete each room we will also discuss how to maintain the past rooms we have organized. Remember being organized has to become part of who you are not just something you did one weekend. I will post a new blog each Sunday. Together we will get you organized!

Kids' art work: to keep or not to keep it!

I was driving this weekend and listening to a radio talk show on getting organized. A lady called and asked for advice regarding the amount of her children's art work she had. She was overwhelmed. The host gave advice to create a zone for the art work and then set an amount like 50 and stay within the zone and the quantity. This advice is fluff. A mother doesn't think in terms of numbers or zones when looking at her kid's art; cute little fingerprint turkeys, self portraits, letters to mommy. This is emotional. There are a lot of things that have to be taken into consideration. How many kids do you have, how old are they, etc. The lady that called in said she had every piece of paper her children had ever scribbled on. O.k. this is a great start. Separate the art into piles for each child. Tackle one child's art at a time. Take the artwork and separate it again by time frames. Now take the youngest art pile and let's make some decisions. A few scribbles on a piece of paper does not make a good keepsake. Artwork that includes their finger or handprints, self portraits, drawings of family, these are good types of artwork to hold onto. As they get older creative stories become a great keepsake. Don't just go through it once. Get rid of what you can and then next year go back though it along with the new art work and continue to narrow down. Here are some suggestions if you are like a lot of my clients and need more assistance than that. When your child brings home art work pick out what you really want and then allow the cild to pick out pieces they want to give to other people. In our house we send art to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. We write a sweet note on the back and mail it off. The kids love sharing what they are doing with other people and you don't have the difficult task of throwing any of it away. And if you need more help ask a friend to be an objective voice.

Organizing your new schedule! For moms!!!

O.K. mom so you thought you had it all together and then your little ones are back to school or in my case starting school for the first time. I have been running my business since my 5 year old was a newborn. I thought I had it all together and then BAM! kindergarten. She has more going on in a week than I ever imagined. So now I have had to step back and re-evaualte how to do it all and keep my head above water. If you have been reading my blog then you know I am a big proponent of help. And help in any form you can find it. But I also want to be involved. This time in my girls' lives is so exciting to me and I really want to be there, but I also run a large business and the two can often conflict. First things first; prioritize! I can't be everywhere all the time. I had to make a list of everything going on and then number their importance. After I put them in order of priority I then had to look at how realistic they were. Did they conflict with other important items and if so I had to choose. After I had my list then I pulled out my planner. Let's just get this straight; if you want to get your time managed you CAN NOT do it with out a planner. This planner needs to be suited for your idividual needs and must be with you all of the time. I suggest Franklin Covey because they have so many options and you can customize your planner. Next I would suggest color code. I use red for the times I have scheduled for my kids. I want to make sure it catches my eye and that I don't overlook a practice or event. After that I use blue for work and even that is further color coded (since I run business in multiple states). I also believe in time blocks and multi-tasking. And I have had to delegate responsibilities to others. You can't do it alone! If I find something coming up I look at my time blocks and decide if I can borrow time out of that block or if I will have to add time to the end of my day. I am very protective of my time. I answer e-mails twice a day. I never answer unknown phone calls. If it is important they will leave a message. I have a great traveling file system. This helps when I am in carpool line and need to return phone calls or write checks, etc. I can go into further details about that in another blog. It saved my life!! Everyone should have a traveling file. And when I am with my children,I am with my children. I suffer from the same guilt all working mothers do, but I try to ease that guilt by making the time I have with them quality time. I don't want them to feel as if I have one foot back in the office when its their turn. And lastly some things had to be removed from the list. There are some things that I wanted to happen, but after a hard look at my schedule I had to let them go and put them on a future ideas list. Sometimes it's tough but after you let go you can better enjoy yourself and the things that you are doing. Good luck and happy scheduling! I am here if you need help deciding how to make time work for you.

In the wake of sadness

Last Sunday one of my beloved employees lost her husband. At the very young age of 28 it was a shocking and tragic loss. His wonderful wife and my dear friend is now everything she works to eliminate for others; in the middle of emotional chaos. Feeling anything but organized, she feels lost, confused, and chaotic.
Most of us walk around this world so busy with the day to day rerquirements our life places on us we hardly give a second thought to the day we will no longer be here. Having children will make that clearer for some but not others. Its definately not something we want to dwell on but there is a type of organizing that we all need to take some time and make sure we handle; the organizing of things that will come in to play in the event a tragic accident or cancer or anything else that takes us away from our loved ones too soon. Some of you may have heard of Randy Pausch and The Last Lecture (for those of you who haven't I beg of you to google him and watch his lecture - it will change your life!!), he told Diane Sawyer in an interview that his family was about to be thrown off a cliff and he had a short time to sew a net. Randy was one of the lucky ones who knew the time was coming and could prepare. What if you had no time? What do you need to make sure of? In addition to the logistical organizing of finances and a will, are there relationships that you need to fix? I had a client once tell me that her son said that when she died he was going to bring a dumpster to the house and just load everything in. That led her to call me and we worked hard on her home to make sure that she got rid of the junk, donated the things she liked but had no use for and took care of the things that were important to her. It's not an uncommon call. As people get older they don't want to leave their loved ones with too much stuff to deal with or not know that things that were important to them were not just thrown out. So whether you are 25 or 85 its time to take a few minutes and get your last wishes organized; their is no better gift for your loved ones then to have some peace and organization during a chaotic and disorganized time. And to my dear friend, who is suffering; may the hand of God reach out and touch you and give you the peace and strength you need to get through this time. My love for you is great; you're not alone; I'll be by your side; always.

Organizing a 3 year old

I tell my clients all the time that I can organize children and adults of all ages. All you need is self discipline and the right tools. I have organized my children and it has been a test of strength but it is working. The key is making it as easy as possible and not allowing more toys and games than you have space for. That being said I have a three year old who could easily turn every hair on your head grey! She is God's way of showing me that everything doesn't have to be perfect to be organized. She has forced me to think out of the box! Her name is Ava and she is an amazingly free spirited, fun loving, care free child with all the personality of an upper east side ninety year old lady who has lived a life of priveledge and is use to being catered to. If I believed in reincarnation I would be looking up records of every old lady who died the day Ava was born! She is a challenge to organize. Currently we are going through a phase where she wants to change clothes every 5 minutes. If she sees a pair of pink pajamas on t.v., off she goes and quickly reappears in her own pink pajamas. I also have a niece that suffered from this, it must be common. Of course dress up clothes will not do for her, so I decided to give her a drawer with some dresses, dance clothes, etc. and told her that she was limited to what was in the drawers if she felt the need to change. I'm not about to cut off her fun or creativity but I need, for my peace of mind, to keep an orderly home. The drawers were a no go. Ava cannot stand boundaries. She is a major test of will. At this point most of my clients give up in this type of situation. Not me! I moved the clothes that she can change into and placed them in a closet right outside of her bedroom and then I have locked her door. Of course this made her very angry. I let her have that emotion. She is allowed to be angry with me. But I explained to her that we had to compromise. Just like the fact that if we don't eat a good dinner there is no dessert; if we can't follow the rules for our bedroom then we can't go in there. She has a playroom anyway, she doesn't have to be in her room. After a few days of seeing that the door remained locked unless it was bedtime, she said she wanted to go into her room and she wouldn't pull her clothes out of the closet. I too compromised. I realize she liked looking at the clothes hanging and choosing what to change into. I let her choose a few dresses that are not expensive but that she likes and hung them low so that she could get to them and I told her that she could have those dresses to play with as long as she hung one up before putting another on. Now things are better. You have to set an expectation with your kids regarding self discipline. It will bring them far in life in so many aspects. But you must have it too.