Archive for the ‘Organising Tips’ Category

How many times have you determined you were going to get organized and then failed to do so?  Procrastination is one of the common reasons for sabotaging your decluttering efforts and can often be in response to feeling overwhelmed by the task around you.

Procrastination can look like the following:

• Becoming distracted before you can even get started, by some other project which seems more important
• Mental apathy and exhaustion taking you over the minute you even think about decluttering
• Getting bogged down in paperwork, before and during your decluttering efforts
• Allowing nostalgia to take you over when you’re decluttering
• Guilt at throwing away perfectly “good’ items
• Putting off action to some nebulous future date
• Continuing to buy new items when your house is already overflowing
• Indecision about where to start your whole decluttering process
• Looking for perfection and wanting to do things ‘the right way’

Feeling overwhelmed when you look at the mess your house is in can stop you from starting the decluttering process.  You take one look at the clutter and do everything in your power to not declutter.  The project seems too large and you simply don’t know where to start.

Consider Newton’s Law.  To get a stationary object (that’s you) to move, a force will first need to be applied to it (that’s your will power).  Once started, the object will then continue until another force is exerted to stop it.

To get yourself started on decluttering you will need to have a kick start or incentive, but once you start you will most likely find that you like the results and continue on.

The kick start can come in the form of a shock, or a need of some sort.  For example, family/friends are coming to stay with you for the holidays.  Or it maybe that a personal incentive that will give you the first little spurt of energy to get going.

Don’t put it off for tomorrow
Remember, tomorrow never comes and ultimately this will show in the state of your house as your piles of clutter grow ever bigger waiting on tomorrow.

Start today and do a 15-minute dedicated round of decluttering.  Continue doing this for a few days and you will find that you will make progress. You need to start somewhere, and at some point in time, so why not make the time now?

Whenever you clear the clutter in your house, you will have a collection of items that you no longer want.  Here are ideas to help you clear your clutter and your house and possibly make some money at the same time.

• Dispose of them entirely and throw them out – making sure to separate into general rubbish and recycling
• Have a family get-together and invite your family over to select what items they may want
• Give everything to a charity or donate to your local school fete
• Have a garage sale and watch gleefully as other people find items that are treasures to them
• Sell items online with auction places like www.ebay.com.au or with a free listing service like www.gumtree.com.au
• Use an eBay reseller to sell your items on eBay – they take a commission and you get rid of your items and earn money
• List your items in the newspaper – often you can get your listing for free if your sale price is under a certain limit

What you do with the items you have decluttered depends on you.  If the thought of holding a garage sale or listing items online is overwhelming or you are simply disinterested or don’t have enough time, then donating or sharing your unwanted items may be the answer.  The key is to do what is right for you to move your unwanted things out of the house and off your property.

It happens even to the best of us! You’ve decided to declutter your home and you’ve started sorting. You started with lots of energy and enthusiasm but now you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed and are considering chucking the whole thing in, convinced you are destined to be messy.

To keep moving forward and avoiding feeling overwhelmed and giving up, try these helpful tips to keep you clearing your clutter:

1. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, it means that the job you are working on is too big for you to imagine completing. So you need to break the job down into smaller goals. For example, if your original project is to declutter a bedroom, then you need to break this down in smaller, bit-sized goals. So your goals now become organising the drawers, organising the closet, organising the bedside tables, organising the bookcase. So your original goal has now been broken down into 4 smaller goals. By breaking down your organising goal into bit-sized chunks you can see the job is much more manageable and doable.
2. Ask for hands on help from family or friends. A job shared seems to go faster and to be easier.
3. Ask a friend to be your phone buddy – if you don’t want others to see your mess, than ask your friend to be a phone buddy. Phone them at the end of each decluttering session telling them what you achieved. This way you are accountable for making progress
4. Hire a Professional Organiser – not only will the job get done, you will also discover different ways to store items. By selling off your unwanted items, you can even cover the costs of the professional organiser.
5. Ask yourself what do you plan to achieve by decluttering. Make the end result so powerful in your mind, that it is impossible not to strive to achieve it
6. Do a bit each day
7. Sing while you work. When you enjoy what you are doing, time passes quickly and the job gets done.
8. Make your reward for completing the project so worthwhile that you will do what you need to do to get your reward
9. Look at the rest of life and see where you are organised. What sorts of things do you do to stay organised in that area? Can you use any of that motivation to keep decluttering?
10. Take a day off from organising. Rome wasn’t built in a day and you don’t need to declutter in a day or a week or a month. Make an agreement with yourself to take time off and set a day/time that you will start again. You will find that you return to your project with renewed enthusiasm and energy.
11. Watch an organising type show on TV and be inspired by what they do. Read a magazine article on decluttering and find at least one idea that you can use. Search the internet for ideas and videos (give yourself a time limit of 30 minutes so you don’t procrastinate by surfing the day away) and use one idea straight away.

Staying motivated can be challenging when you are decluttering. To keep moving forward and avoiding feeling overwhelmed and giving up, try some of these helpful tips above.

Everyone needs a starting point when it comes to getting organised at home and decluttering your home. Here are some of the most popular tips for getting organized. Often the secret to getting organised is making a lifestyle change – so stop being disorganized right now and turn a new leaf with our popular clutter clearing tips.-

• When the house gets too messy, do a ’15-minute tidy,’ where everyone in the family drops what they are doing and cleans for fifteen minutes.
• Divide your house into sections and then spend fifteen minutes creating order in each of those areas when the house is in disarray. Use a timer to keep you on track.
• To minimize the amount of time spent on errands, keep a running list of what tasks need to be done, then try to do them just one day a week.
• Prioritize what is bothering you the most. Once you have a list, you can go from there and figure out what to do first.
• Assign chores with job descriptions and alternate them among children each week. For example, one child can be assistant cook one week, and part of the clean up crew the next.
• Sort and recycle mail as soon as it arrives.
• Limit your laundry duties to one day a week.
• Have a basket for small items instead of having them here and there.
• Keep a basket in the living room for anything that needs to be put in another room at a later time. Empty the basket each night.
• When you purchase one item and bring it into the house, pick one item to leave the house either through the trashcan or the charity shop.
• Have a Dumping Ground.  This is a place which you designate in a room to place all your unwanted items prior to being given to charity or sold.

Does your household include young children with piles of toys or teenagers who always seem to be complaining about having no room for their clothes? Save yourself a lot of aggravation, with our eight tips that will save you time and money and help you arrange rooms and furniture in ways that create family-friendly living spaces.

1. The first step is finding room for the stuff. Kids come with a lot of gear, from the time they’re babies until they’re out the door and into their own place. In the meantime, you have to find ways to accommodate everything from strollers and building blocks to hockey sticks and Barbie collections. When there’s a place for everything, there’s a better chance that the stuff will get put away.
2. Don’t waste closet space – use as much of the closet space as possible. Add a shelving unit and storage bins, and put up hooks on the back of the closet door wherever possible.
3. Children’s beds often come with storage compartments underneath, and nightstands can have either drawers or shelves. When children share a room, bunk beds and sleeping lofts are obvious choices for saving space. Teenagers, especially those 6-footers, may very well need a full size bed. Again, think storage space underneath or headboards that incorporate storage space.
4. Even if your school-age child has a computer desk, he or she may still not have enough room for spreading out books and binders at homework time. Consider a large desk if there’s room, or maintain an open policy about using the kitchen or dining room table for homework. If you are using the dining table, remember that a young child’s feet should touch the floor to prevent restlessness, so if the dining room chair is too tall, use a box or stool under their feet.
5. Toys and sports equipment can be kept under control by using storage chests, large plastic cubes, or shelving units with bins. Hall trees often come with a storage bench, and are a great solution for coats and boots and skates.
6. Save yourself a lot of trouble by painting children’s rooms rather than using wallpaper. Children quickly grow out of cute prints, and new paint is a simple solution for changing tastes.
7. Keep living room and family room furniture looking good by choosing fabrics with a high thread count and tight weave that clean easily and hold up to hard use. Flat weaves are better than textured fabrics for durability. The new microfibers are a good choice for surviving kids and pets, and nothing is easier than slipcovers that can be removed and washed.
8. Buy sectional sofas which are very versatile, able to adapt to any room and comfortable for everyone in the family. Add a set of nesting tables that can be handily moved from room to room for games and projects.

Don’t trip over the stuff of family life. There’s a way to make everyone happy . . . especially Mum.

-The kitchen is one of most used parts of the house as this is where we prepare food for our loved ones.  An organized kitchen inspires us to cook delicious dishes, stimulating us to whip up nutritious and creative meals for our family.-

But what if the kitchen gets too cluttered?  Will you still manage to inspiringly cook delectable dishes?  Can you create meals quickly and easily?

An organized kitchen can make your cooking experience enjoyable and fun.  A simple decluttering can do the trick.  To make this happen, here are simple tips for organizing the kitchen.

• What’s causing clutter in your kitchen?   An easy method of decluttering items out of the cupboard is to group like items together and declutter unnecessary pieces and multiple items.  You only need one of most items so remove items that you’ve doubled up on and donate them to charity.  You can do a good deed and free your kitchen from clutter all at the same time.
• Place kitchen appliances where they are easily accessed. Place small appliances on top of the counter. It saves time and effort when appliances are positioned near its specific working area.
• Organise your preparation space.  Make your preparation area adjacent to the stove.  Organize cooking and food preparation items by stacking condiments and spices onto a 2-shelf rack for easy grasp. Store vegetables in a basket nearby and place knives and cutting boards around the same area.  You can hang often-used pots and pans near the stove for easy access.
• Systemize your food cabinets.  Place canned goods together, jars together, and bottles together.  Put powder or loose items, e.g. flour, sugar, pasta noodles in see-through containers.  Label them so as not to mistake sugar for salt; label them with date of purchase and expiration.
• Arrange cookware, chinaware, and kitchen utensils by purpose and size.  Use drawer dividers and utensil trays to put together ceramic and glass wares and position them small ones placed first in line, making it easier where to look at.
• Make use of your walls.  Racks and pegs are very functional hanging devises with which you can hang your cooking utensils and even not-so-often used pots and pans.
• Reorganise your refrigerator.  Use clear, flat containers to store food for visibility and so you can stack containers on each other to maximize space.  Label those with expiration dates.
• Clean up as you go. Place used dishes and utensils into the sink right after each use.  This will save you time cleaning up when you’re done cooking.
• Apply finishing touches.   Tidy up your kitchen after each meal and put everything back in its places.

As we say, “Practice makes perfect!”  Make keeping your kitchen organised automatic and a daily habit and you can enjoy a perfect, clutter-free and organized kitchen.

Setting your children up for success is a top priority for parents and when it comes to teaching your children how to be organised, the younger you start the better.

Structure and Organisation for Children

Studies have shown that children who have structure in their lives do better at school, are socially well adjusted and cope well with stresses.  Also once the habit of being organised is learnt, it is something your children can take with them into adulthood.

Keep these tips in mind as you promote organised habits with your children:

1. Children learn by example. Look to your own habits first. Are they up to par? Your children watch every move you make and they’re likely to repeat your behaviors. While failing to tidy up after yourself is fine every now and then, if it becomes a habit, your children will expect it is ok for them to do to the same.

Be a model for your children by being organised and tidying up after yourself. Show them that they must pick up after themselves by showing them how to do it themselves and then expect they do so every day.

2. Make be organised fun. If you make healthy behaviours fun, your children will look forward to engaging in them. Get excited about them packing away their toys when they are finished with them. Make cleaning up after themselves a game and have fun with it and reward your children for doing a great job.

3. Use repetition. Fight the urge to give up when your kids forget to pick up after themselves.  It takes 21 days to instil a habit so remember that you whilst you may sound like a broken record from time to time once your organisation habits are instilled in your kids, your home will be easy to maintain.

4. Be clear with your kids that you expect them to help you around the house and give them tasks suitable to their age.  Your children are used to being organised as they are required to put things away in their place when they are at pre-school or day care.  Continue this same expectation at home.  Your kids will soon get the message that you are serious and that they cannot get away with bad behaviours just because they are at home.

5. Turn off the TV. In this day and age, the TV plays a large role in life. Establish a no TV or video game policy during certain hours and have your children complete their chores during this time.  If they finish their chores early, encourage your children to go outside or read a book.

6. Stay involved. Get actively involved in your child’s life. If you continue to encourage them when they’re doing something good, they’ll enjoy the attention. Getting involved in this way will give your children the confidence to continue with their healthy habit.

When Things Go Wrong

People lead busy lives and sometimes you’ll realize that you’ve let some bad behaviours take over. In these situations, it’s important to stay on top of the problem and search for a solution.

Define the problem and develop an action plan that will help you get back on track. For example, if your family has fallen into a pattern of going to bed and leaving the lounge a mess, then have a family meeting and remind your family of their responsibilities.

Following these tips will keep you and your children on the right track to be organised for life.

Do you feel you’re the only person in the world who can’t organize their home and declutter? Have you tried many times before and feel like you’ve failed each time?  Are you currently in a mess and looking for help to get you started on decluttering. Here are 5 tips to get the most organizationally challenged amongst us started on decluttering your space:

Think small

To begin with, you need to think small. Don’t try to dive into the deep end before you can swim otherwise you will find yourself giving up before you have even started, and may even create more confusion than when you started.

Don’t tackle the worst cluttered room in your house first. If clutter is an issue for you and you have tried to declutter before without success, tackling the biggest decluttering job in your house is probably the worst thing that you could do for yourself at this stage.

So think small. Start with something as simple as a magazine stand or a sock or underwear drawer. These are manageable things that you can finish quickly and get a sense of satisfaction about.

Each time you complete a small declutter job, you will feel a sense of triumph at having reached out and taken control of your life. This will, in turn, help you create a solid self belief that you can achieve success with your worst cluttered room.

Set a Time Limit

Before you start, set a time limit on your decluttering efforts. Commit to staying with your job (and decluttering) until the time is up.

As a beginning declutterer on a small job, the ideal time is 10-15 minutes. After you get into the swing of things, you can then up the ante and set your time limit higher. If you feel invigorated and want to do more, then do so by all means. The only thing here is not to become dispirited and leave it before your allotted time is up.

Be Thorough

Don’t do a slapdash, slipshod job. Be thorough about what you’re doing, otherwise you will just end up having to do it again.

And there’s nothing more depressing than feeling like you are decluttering the same things over and over again when there is no visible outcome.

Be Ruthless

If you haven’t used it, worn it or even remembered its existence in the past year (two years at the most) then you really should get it out of your life.   You have the option of either throwing it away, donating it to charity if it’s still in a good condition, or placing it for sale in a garage sale of your own.

Keeping Momentum

When you finish you first decluttering task, you should then plan to move on to the next one. You don’t need to start a new project straight away but you do need to set a day and time when you will start your next project.

In Conclusion

The key to decluttering is to start small and give yourself a time limit.  Stay with your decluttering project until you have completed it or your time limit is up and set a day and time when either you will complete this project or start a new project.  Little by little, you will achieve your decluttering goals and feel fabulous about yourself again.

Being unorganized can make life tough in a number of ways. Lack of organization in your home can cause an unending, overall sense of stress, because you’re lacking a certain amount of order in your life. It also causes unsightly clutter and makes it hard to find things.-

The good news is that with some easy home organization tips, you can have your home whipped into shape in no time. It may seem like an impossible task right now, but when broken down into smaller projects, organization is inevitable.

Try these simple organization tips:

• Get rid of your clutter. There’s no use in organizing items that you’re not going to keep, so getting rid of them first is a good initial step. It’s best to live by the rule that if you haven’t used an item in over a year and it doesn’t hold sentimental value, you should probably consider letting go of it.
• Make piles for trash, donations, and things to sell. You can use websites like eBay, Gumtree, or Craigslist to sell unwanted items for extra cash.
• Start small. It’s important to set small goals for yourself, room by room, throughout your house. When you focus on everything as a whole it can get so crazy that it might just seem like a lost cause.
• Try starting in your bathroom, or better yet, just start by going through the cabinet underneath your bathroom sink. Throw out old items and organize the rest. Afterward, you can call it a day and then work on another small project another time.
• As you move to new rooms, maintain the organization of the rooms you’ve already done. You don’t want to complete a few rooms only to find out that your bathroom cabinets are disorganized again.
• Learn how to store things. Just because you’ve gotten your things out of sight, it doesn’t mean that you’ve got an organizational method. Plan a strategy to store similar things together in marked storage bins.
• Once you follow through on your storage strategy, then you’ll know where things are. You can also benefit from learning how to store things in sight. Make good use of shelves, baskets, or furniture with built-in storage space to keep things neat and where you’re likely to need them.
• Create a cleaning schedule. Once you have your home in order, it’s all about maintenance. You’ll need to find a way to keep things in order. Make a schedule to keep track of what chores are done and when. You can even schedule in a time to deal with clutter to get everything back into its proper place.
• Dividing up the cleaning tasks throughout the week will make it easier to maintain the order you worked so hard to attain. This limits “chore time” to short increments of time. Instead of spending an entire Saturday cleaning, clean a room each day, and then you can have fun on the weekend while your home is still neat and tidy.
• Establish the habit of picking up as you go. When you take something out of its place to use it, put it back when you’re done.

If you really want to change your life, you can make it so. Even if you’ve been unorganized forever, use these tips to help you turn things around and enjoy the lovely home you’ve created.