Skip to main content

Simplify your life

As you know, I am working on starting my professional organizing business. I just love helping people simplify their life by brining order to their spaces. It is truly rewarding!
Several of you asked if I would share some organizing tips on my blog. What a great idea! I will start doing that today.
Over the years, I have ready many many organizing books, watched show, practiced in my home and in other people's homes. One of the more inlightening books I have ever read is one my dear mother gave me years ago called "Organizing from the Inside out" by Julie Morgenstern. Julie offers a simple plan for organizing any space you may have. The one statement she has in her book that has not only stuck with me but also shaped how I organize myself and others is this "keep it where you use it." She relates this idea to a kindergarten classroom. The art supplies are in the art center, the books are in the library, the building supplies are in the building center, etc. It makes total sense, yet, I have found that there are a lot of people that get caught up in trying to do things the way they think they have to. Or they are trying to make their house look like that picture in Better Homes and Gardens. People! We LIVE in our houses. Make it yours. Make it liveable. Keep it where you use it and make it Usable for the people in your space.
One major challenge we have had at our house for a LONG time is movies. We love them, but the kids canNOT seem to put them away. It is apparently a very hard thing to put a movie back in it's case. When we had VHS, I cut all the titles off the movie cases and taped them to the actual tapes. Now that we have DVDs, we have the same trouble. Nobody can put them away. SO! my lates home organizing solution has been to purchase a few DVD binders and put all our movies in them. I found them at Target for about $18. Each case holds approx 280 movies. There were several different options for DVD storage to chose from. The way I made my decision was to think about:
* How we would use them
*Where we would use them
I picked these because when open, they display 8 different disks, they fit on my shelves and they have a strap to hold them closed.
If you think this might be a good solution for you, be sure to ask the above questions before you go and buy. I actually bought a couple different options and brought them home to compare and ask the family about before I committed to one.
The best part?? I have LOADS of empty shelves!! It is amazing how much less space the movies take up this way! Love it!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bradley

Sunday, my best friend died. My sweetheart of 20 years died suddenly from diabetes. We didn't know he had diabetes. It came quick and took him from me. Brad was more than just my husband, he was my best friend. I relied so very much on his strength to guide me and my children through this life. I admit I feel a bit lost without him, already. I had planned on much, much more time with him. Brad and I met on January 28th, 1989. We were both at a nightclub for under age night with our friends that had dragged us there. We were both ready to leave when we were talked into one more dance. That dance changed our lives. We hit it off right away and danced the rest of the night. In face, we were together from then on. I remember that after that night, I waited all day for his call. It was love right away for me. I felt something I had never felt before and knew that he was the one for me. We dated for six months before Brad went to Texas to go to school. We talked a lot on the phone, and I

Bloggers challenge and candy

I know I said I would post some blog candy yesterday but I didn't even get near my computer! What a crazy day! I had planned on doing it the night before but...I was in the kitchen doing the dishes and I was so dog tired that I laid my head down on the counter for a minute. My son came into the room and said, "go to bed mom, dad and I will do the dishes." Now, who in thier right mind would turn down that offer? My boys HATE to do anything in the kitchen that doesn't involve eating. I immediately turned off my water(boiling for herb tea) and skedaddled upstairs and went to bed. I'm no dummy! The kitchen was not cleaned to my standards, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth! Speaking of gifts, I have a little blog candy offer today. In honor of my 8000 hits, I am offering the following: A simply scrappin kit "Just Delightful", a stamp set "Delight in Life", three mini spools of ribbon, some acrylic tiles AND a copy of the latest

Doubles with candy!!

Today is another fun summer day at my house. The kids are running here and there and I'm just trying to keep up. I realized I hadn't sent out Father's day cards yet, so that is what I worked on today. I tried to keep these nice and clean and manly. I remember going to a demonstration at a Stampin' Up! convention years ago where Kevin Theeson and another guy(I forget his name....) talked about 'manly' cards. One of the things they stressed was that guys don't like cards made with pastel cards. They prefer bold bright and earth element colors. I'm not sure if they suggested we stay away from florals too, but I kind of figured that was a safe idea. ;o) For this card I started with some textured Wild Wasabi cardstock cut to 10-1/2 x 5-1/4. That gave me a 5-1/4" card when folded. The striped paper across the center is from a retired SU simply scrappin kit...primary colors I think it was called. I added a strip of Real Red to each side of the stripes for