Middle of November Already?

Yes, it is November! Where has the year gone? It has flown by so quickly. Soon the time will be here to reflect on the past months; to celebrate the blessings God has provided and strive to correct the things that have disappointed Him. I hope to find the former a longer list.

Since school has begun, I have been keeping busy. I substitute in our school district and have been helping the mother of a friend sort through 40 years of life in her former home. She moved out of the house a few years ago and is ready to move on. It is not an easy process to purge one's life. She must decide what she needs and what she wants and what must be passed on to others. I do not envy her position, but in order to peacefully move on to the next phase of her life, it must be done.

I continue to be amazed how "things" seem to accumulate. We must train ourselves to prevent things from piling up and becoming clutter. It is easy to toss mail or the children's school papers on the counter and think, "I will go through those later." Later doesn't always come as soon as it should and bills are left unpaid, permission slips left unsigned and the stack gets higher. Instead, plant the seed of action in your brain. 5 minutes is all that is needed to quickly go through the mail and separate the important from the junk; to see what papers need to go back to school with your signature and which go on the refirgerator. As those things enter your home, just take those few minutes to take care of them. Soon it will become a habit and you won't have days of mail and papers waiting for you to sort through. A good thing to help you along is to set up a space on your desk or near where you pay bills or whatever space you designate as your "office." Use that space to place your bills and other important papers with separate categorized slots. If you aren't sure how to get an office space set up, I'll be glad to come to your home and create one with you.

Magazines and catalogs have a way of amassing. Ones you read, ones you intend to read or browse through and ones you are not sure why they are still showing up in your mailbox. Take the time to review those glossies. Decide which you read regularly or purchase items from. Cancel subscriptions to magazines that seem to just pile up and never get read. Register with a mail preference service to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive. Or call the company sending you the catalogs to have your name removed from their mailing list. Here is the Federal Trade Commission's web-site to start that process. It includes information on telemarketing and e-mail as well. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt063.shtm

If your household is like mine, books fill shelves in your home. As my daughters have gotten older, I have encouraged regular trips to the library. Rather than buy every book that interests them (and myself), books that can be checked out and returned are a great way to go. It saves space and money! We still buy books, but not as many as we did when they were much younger. Children's books take up less space than the thicker young adult and adult books. Every once in a while, we purge the bookshelves and donate books to the library for their annual sale.

Taking the time to reduce the amount of "stuff" around your house will keep the clutter down and relieve you from the stress that inevitably crops up when surveying your domain. Not seeing piles of papers on your counters, desk or coffee table creates a great feeling. Knowing you don't have to battle a clutter monster, zapping your time and energy, is so rewarding. Don't you feel your tense muscles relaxing already?

$$$ Saver

You hear it on the news, you hear people talking about it. TV shows and magazine articles are sharing tips on how to do it. It seems as if it's on everyone's mind. What is it? How to cut costs.

This is nothing new. It is just at the front of everyone's minds right now given the current economic circumstances. Preparing for the worst-case scenario is a priority according to many economic experts and advisors appearing on news shows and in magazines. Job security is not what it was and neither is investing in the stock market.

As an organizer, it is my job not just to organize closets and rooms, but to show clients how living an organized lifestyle frees up time and money. It is my goal to change a client's way of life, not just how things are put away. Doing so leads to less stress and worry and more time and money.

Here are a few ways organized living leads to saving time and money.

• Less time is spent searching for an item when it has its own "home." I assign a place for everything and put it in its place. I know it will be there when I need it.
• Less time is spent shopping for replacement items when I am unable to find what I am looking for.
• Less money is spent when I know what I have. No need to duplicate purchases.
• Less money is spent when I am able to buy in bulk. If I am organized, I have the storage space for bulk items. I compare the price per unit and if the larger size is a savings, then I will buy it.
• Less money is spent when I am not throwing out expired food or medicine. Just as stores keep the oldest perishable items at the front, having an organized kitchen results in less waste. How many times have you thrown out an expired container of sour cream or a container with what looks to be a science experiment inside? Less food down the disposal or in the trash is more money in your pocket.
• Less money is spent on gas driving to the store to pick up only one or two items. I plan my errands so I am completing them when I am already going to be in the area for something else, such as work. The stores I frequent are near the schools and our daughters orthodontist, places I go to often enough.
• Less time is also spent when errands are planned. We live in a rural area and if I didn't plan my trips "into town", I would be spending a lot of time in the car. That's time I would rather spend doing a myriad of other things.
• Less time is spent compiling a shopping list by keeping a list on the refrigerator or nearby. Items are jotted down as they are used up or needed.

There are other ways I save money on groceries. I buy meat only when it's on sale and freeze it. The store I prefer for meat usually has a great sale on different meats weekly. And the sale price for larger quantities is certainly worth the price per pound. So, I might be spending more one month because I am buying larger quantities, but the average spent over a year is less than when I was buying meat fresh as a I needed it.

When I buy meat, I will put a dinner's worth in a freezer bag, remove as much air as possible and flatten the bag out. Less time is needed for thawing when it's flattened out. I do this for chicken, pork and hamburger. Hamburger, though, I go a step further. I will season and shape for burgers, meatballs and meatloaf. The rest I put about a pound per bag in freezer bags. Sometimes I will add a marinade or dry rub to the bag before freezing. The meat then marinades (or absorbs the rub) as it thaws.

Other perishable items that can be bought in large amounts, such as vegetables, I will also freeze. I don't always use up peppers and onions as quickly as I should, but I still buy them in large quantities when they are on sale. Peppers and onions can be diced or cut into strips for soups, stews and stir frys and then frozen. When I need them, I just shake out the amount required. It's especially great when I am throwing things together for a crock pot meal before I leave the house for the day.

Another grocery cost saver is to scan the store circulars weekly and clip coupons. If you don't have the pantry or freezer space, plan your meals around what is on sale and the coupons you clipped. Coupons that are buy 2 or 3 to get the savings (such as cereal), use them when the item is on sale. You'll save even more. I clip coupons and scan ads during breaks at work or while waiting for an appointment, saving time.

More on coupons: Many manufacturers have on-line coupons. Check labels and ads for the web-site address. Sometimes the coupons are even better than those in the Sunday paper!

Here are a couple of web-sites to check out for more printable coupons:

www.couponsuzy.com Free coupons.

www.couponmom.com Membership required but free.

Coupons for other things such as eating out, movies, furniture, clothes, etc. are also available on-line. Using your favorite search engine, type in what you are looking for and you may be surprised at the savings available.

E-mail me if you would like to save money. I'll be glad to help you get organized and on your way to saving hundreds of dollars!

Happy Savings!

Another Custom Job

I had a small shelf for printer and other paper, created specifically to the dimensions of the standard paper size. It was 3 shelves high with a back extending higher than the top to keep the paper from falling off the back side. It worked well, but took up table space. After surveying the scraps and leftovers in our basement, I found enough materials to create another custom shelf to fit over the printer. See picture below. My motto is, if you can build up, build up! There never seems to be enough work surface, especially when you share the room with 3 other people! The same day I made this shelf, I put up a board with hooks to hang scissors, rulers and other cutting tools up out of the way, but easily accessible. I found a good use for the other shelf. In a cabinet where I keep craft supplies, I put the "paper" shelf on the upper shelf. It now holds cards for every occasion, categorized accordingly. This freed up space in the cabinet. I call this custom job a 2-for-1. I have also included a picture of my storage units for all of the small craft items, most are labeled.

A Happy Client

Pictures from a client's home. She had a space in her basement that was intended to be her space for scrapbooking. She has a counter for a workspace and cabinets for storage. Unfortunately, it is at the bottom of the basement stairs. As you can see in the before pictures, because of the proximity to the stairs, it became a catch-all. Things made it to the basement to be put away later, but later became later and later and soon it was all piled up on the counter and around the counter and on the floor.

I went to her home and spent about 15-20 minutes surveying the scene, taking measurements and discussing her needs and what was planned for the area. Her husband was in the process of building shelves at the foot of the stairs to store some of the objects that were currently piled up on the counter space. At home, I analyzed the situation and decided what needed to be done and purchased to clean-up and organize the area.

On another day, she and I went to work, sorting and purging. Objects that had a home but had not made it there were sent to it. Other objects that were no longer needed were set aside for a garage sale she had a week later. Others were donated to several non-profit resale shops we have in our county. Still others went out to the trash or recycling. After sorting and purging, we went shopping together and purchased a hardware storage container with drawers of varying sizes for some of her supplies. She already had a couple of small shelves available that we were able to put to good use. She was happy to have a space exclusively hers to spread out and scrapbook. With the completion of the shelves her husband was building, the space is no longer a catch-all. And there is leftover space for additional supplies. We spent about 2 or 3 hours total time to give her back her space.

A Confession

Even the organizer get disorganized!

As evidenced by the photos below, I allowed the storage area of our basement to get out of hand. I generally try to keep up, but living with 3 other people and by convincing myself that I was too busy (really unmotivated), this is what happened over the summer:

Boxes piled up, some empty, some filled with legitimately stored items, no access to the shelves. What a mess!

Well, now things have calmed down a bit in my work schedule and I took advantage of some time off from substituting in our school district. I sorted, I threw out, I decided to recycle a lot of corrugated cardboard and I purchased two small, clear, storage bins ( I will touch more on that later) and now have back a clean, easily accessible storage area:

I store all of my seasonal decorations in the colored bins. And yes, even those bins are organized on the inside! Each is labeled, and in the case of multiple bins for one holiday or season, they are very specifically labeled with their contents. For example, when I begin decorating for Christmas, I start with the outdoor lights and garland. I know exactly which bins contain the lights, another has the garland. They are also stacked in the order I will take them down. Otherwise, with as many bins as I have, I would be constantly moving bins around in order to get to the one I want.

The clear bins I purchased to replace a couple of cardboard boxes were a deliberate purchase. I have consumables in each bin. I can take a quick peek to see if anything needs to be replaced. A small one contains bows for packages; a larger one for tissue paper, gift bags, ribbon, etc.

On the lower shelves, I have a clear bin and an orange bin. Each of these (one for each daughter) contains the projects and some schoolwork that our girls have done since they first picked up a crayon or a gluestick. I have sorted through them in the past, but the next time I do so, I intend to create a scrapbook (or scrapbooks) of some of the smaller projects and take photos of some of the larger, bulkier ones. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Not counting the time I took to drive to the recycling center with the cardboard and the store for the bins, total time for this reorganization project was approximately 3.5 hours.

Some ways I have organized our garage

Most people have limited garage and basement storage space. One way to maximize the floor space available is to get as much as possible off of the floor. I am all about maximizing the amount of space I have (perhaps having grown up with 5 brothers and sisters in a small house) and having room for the things I want. In the case of the garage, space for our vehicles. We already had some shelves in the garage, but things were just being thrown on the shelves without any real rhyme or reason. The result was things were "missing" or the item one needed was on the bottom of the pile. I'm guessing that many of you know exactly what I am talking about. I'm also about using the materials I have on hand and not spending much. We had 1 x 6's that I was able to employ and for about $21 I purchased screws, hooks and brackets. The pictures below show the results. It was an easy project giving us more space and more importantly, the ability to locate what we needed quickly and easily. We always had room for our vehicles, but now I am able to walk completely around the front of my van when it is pulled in. My next garage project will be installing a pulley system to hoist the bicycles up out of the way. School starts next week, so that may be a project put on hold!

One other thing that is a good idea in a garage. Having unfinished walls can be used to your advantage. Not only do you have the studs exposed, but if you look closely in the pictures, you see that I was able to have bulky items set back further in between the studs. No bumping heads or knocking things off!

I also put items closest to where I am more likely to use them. For example, the sports equipment is right next to the garage door opening. We can just grab a ball and head to the hoop!