If you’re anything like me, you will love this contest in which you can win $3,000 in merchandise to organize your home. The contest is sponsored by Real Simple Magazine and the Container Store. You can enter once every day now through June 15th.

Image: sxc.hu.

Post from: Blisstree

Win $3,000 to Organize

Small living rules: 

Keep small collections: Set limits. Allow yourself one shelf of books. If it overflows, send some books packing before you get more. Own only the shoes than will fit in your shoe holder. Have only 10 (or choose another number) frames of pictures on shelves at any given time – switch out pictures rather than gathering more frames to dust and organize.

Live in a smaller house: Small room = easier to organize, clean, and less easy to fill with junk.

Own actual smaller items: DVDs take up less room than video (purge the old VHS movies). A smaller couch or shelf system means less to clean and dust. Tennis shoes are the ultimate small in exercise equipment – try walking outside instead of owning a treadmill. A smaller desk or file cabinet is less likely to get covered with junk and paper piles, because you’ll only have so much room to work with.

Forget bulk anything: I used to be into bulk, for the money savings. Now, I’d rather my house be less cluttered than have extra toilet paper. Seriously, unless you live in the way far out boonies, you’ll never have a serious lack of toilet paper, milk, or printer paper issue. Bulk is ok, but not if your goal is to live smaller. Also read, The Case Against Deep Storage.

Living small, living with less, living without everything you think you want is a tough transition for many. It’s a process. But the gains, once you start living smaller are huge. More time, less clutter, less to clean, and you’ll feel better. A bonus is you may end up with more cash in your saving account as well.

Need help getting started…

• Organizing by Simplifying
• Need a Bigger House, or Just Smaller Ego?
• Scaling Down Your House and Life
• How To Live Small
• You won’t go to Hades for tossing that (fill in the blank) out

For parents with stuff loving kids:

• As a parent, do you understand the impact of the need for stuff?
• Kids & Shopping – How Kids Can Be Smart Consumers

AND in case you think I’m a major hypocrite for showing products on this blog, while I go on and on about too much stuff being bad, you can read this post: If you’re so against having stuff, then why show all these products on this blog? – I wrote this for another blog, but the sentiments are the same. I’m not pro-have nothing EVER, just pro-have what you need to make your life easy or beautiful, but not in excess. Stuff doesn’t have to own you, but sadly, it does own many people.

Post from: Blisstree

Live smaller to fight clutter & cleaning issues

That said, it doesn’t work for everyone. Some people NEVER finish deciding about that maybe box. Boxes like this, if you’re undecided, basically just move around your house. That’s not decluttering; that’s called reorganizing clutter.

If this is you, if you’re stuck, you need a harsher rule. The 2 minute rule. Set a basic kitchen timer for 2 minutes. Grab one item from that maybe box. Look at it. Think. When the timer goes off, the item needs to go into the stuff to keep or stuff to get rid of box.

If you can’t decide that you need an item in 2 minutes, then frankly, you probably don’t need to keep the item.

Harsh? Maybe, but this is faster and less cluttered than moving stuff around in a box for years.

Post from: Blisstree

The 2 minute toss it rule

There’s this popular theory that I’m sure you’ve hear at some point in your life; “Waste not, want not.”That’s true to a point, but often, people can go overboard on clutter morals. If you were raised on the whole waste not, want not theory, it may be the reason behind your clutter problems.

Here’s the thing – get over it. You won’t burn if you toss, recycle, or give away your old books or sweaters, not even if you give away an entire collection of ceramic miniatures. NOT EVEN if you throw out or give away food (gasp) that no one in the house will eat.

If you do throw out food, I do hope you’ll think long and hard on your next grocery trip before you buy, and if you can, I hope you recycled used items rather than toss them in the garbage, but that’s the extent of my worry.

Discarding items in order to simplify your world is not a major (or even minor sin). The time you spend constantly decluttering, dusting, and cleaning the items you own, is time you could spend with your family and friends.  Which is the larger sin? Tossing items or losing all these life hours because you own too much stuff to take care of?

What do you think? AND if you were raised on a heavy diet of waste not, want not, have you gotten over it?

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Blisstree

You won’t go to Hades for tossing that (fill in the blank) out

Never fear, Design Yourself Interiors (DY-I) can help you to easily plan your entire baby nursery. DY-I offers kits that contain everything you need to plan the perfect space be it a living room, family room, dining room, bedroom or of course the nursery.

Here’s some basics on the nursery kit; Baby Spaces.

“Life size furniture templates that allow expecting parents to create their own safe, functional and attractive nursery with the accuracy of a professional interior designer. Baby Spaces provides the actual “footprints” for a crib, bassinet, changing table, chest and glider or rocking chair. The do-it-yourself affordable templates show exactly what pieces of furniture are needed before purchases are made — and precisely how they will fit in the new nursery space.”

High-end national interior designers Melody Davidson and Kathy Wagner are the gals behind DY-I, so the kits are professional in nature, but offer ease of use to us non-professional designers.

I love the idea of giving Baby Spaces as a baby shower gift; especially for an unorganized pal. Visit Design Yourself Interiors to see all the room kits.

[images via Design Yourself Interiors]

Post from: Blisstree

Design and Organize Your Baby Nursery

We’ve looked at basic clutter, useless clutter, and sentimental clutter but another type of clutter is clutter you own because of a fear of boredom – to put it bluntly.

In today’s world we have the ability to own so many choices – 100s of DVDs, CDs, and books, boxes of art supplies, 23 board games, piles of magazines, and more. Many of these items are enjoyable, it’s true, but how many extra items do you own that are purely in your home to fight potential boredom?

Here are two examples from my own home and life. I LOVE vinyl (records) and own many. I recently realized that I listen to about 25% of the same records over and over, while I only occasionally (if ever) take out the other 75% and listen. I just like having them around in case I need a choice at some point, but frankly the odds are I’ll keep listening to the same old records, not that other 75%.

The other example is books. I had hundreds of books (before I moved). However, I re-read or actively use only about 30% of them. The other books just sit on the shelf, because I like to think, well, if I get really bored I can pull out so and so book. In reality, I won’t pull out some book I haven’t read in 10 years all of a sudden – it’s not my style.

These are items I was only keeping to fight off some potential boredom – or maybe I kept them around to have more choices. It’s a waste of space though. It’s also creating extra clutter, and makes moving to a new house harder than necessary.

What might be better:

It might be nice to be bored once in a while and see what your brain comes up with. You could go outside into nature and hike, or maybe play a good old game of hangman with your kids. If every single item you own is something you love, that might be very cool.  Owning too many items that you feel only lukewarm about is a clear path to clutter.  When I moved this month I used this thinking to scale down both my record and book collection and to be honest I don’t miss the ones I gave up – they were just lukewarm likes of mine, nothing serious.

The next time you do a house sweep for clutter ask yourself if an item is something you love and will use, or something that’s only hanging around to possibly one day fight a boredom streak.

Also read: 

• Organizing by Simplifying
• How To Start Getting Rid of Stuff – Get Rid of “Maybe” Items

Do you own extra items that are around to fight boredom, but you honestly never use them?

Post from: Blisstree

Organizing problem: you fail at organizing because you’re scared of boredom

Your home may be in dire need of organizing. You might not be able to find anything in the clutter. You just might be feeling a little nutty due to the mess. However, don’t just jump right into organizing. Your first step should be to conquer day-to-day routines.

Keeping up with daily dishes, laundry, mail, and basic pick-up (think kids rooms and living areas) needs to be second hand to you or your organizing project efforts will quickly revert to an unorganized mess. If you need help staying ahead of clutter and mess create a simple chore chart. Work at it for a month or so. Once basic cleaning and organizing becomes a habit, it’s time to tackle the bigger issues (garage, attic, closets, and so on).

Post from: Blisstree

Quick tip: One of the first things you should do before organizing your house

What do you think?

I’m not sure I prescribe to this motto. I think you should do the fastest task first; here’s why. Let’s use a home office as an example. Let’s pretend it’s a disaster, and needs some organizing and cleaning. In fact, we’ll pretend it’s my home office. I’d clean and organize in the following order:

1. Pick up anything on the desktop (it would be rare for me to have a mess on my desktop, there’s likely just a pen or two sitting there, so super easy).
2. Clean laptop, mouse, and keyboard.
3. Dust top of desk and the bookshelf I keep next to my desk.
4. Clean out current box.
5. Take all extra files, books, and any other items that have ended up on or near my desk, and put them where they actually go. Note that all my extra files would need to be filed in my large filing cabinet, so it’d take a while.

This list starts with the easiest and quickest part of my desk clean-up, and ends with the most obnoxious part. Why I do this is because if I don’t happen to finish cleaning in one space in time, at least, hopefully I got the first 3 or 4 items on the list done. At least a lot of my office space is now clean, and more user friendly. I tend to do this with other tasks as well. I take care of stuff that’s fast and easy first, and put off the harder and longer tasks.

For me this works. That said, if you know that you ALWAYS put off the hardest tasks of organizing then maybe doing the worst first is going to be key to your success when it comes to organizing projects.

Now you tell me – which is better for you; organizing the worst or easiest first? 

Post from: Blisstree

Organize the worst first – yes or no?

Here’s a little about the book and Monica:

Book Description

Are you jealous of the neat and organized cubicle next to you? Do you look at the files and folders and papers piled around you and wonder if you’ll ever be buried alive? Now you can turn your organizational nightmare into a dream come true with the help of professional organizer Monica Ricci and Organize Your Office In No Time. By using step-by-step instructions and easy-to-follow to-do lists, Monica shows you the best ways to tame a messy desk, overcome an impossible schedule and take back precious time in your day. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, either. Monica helps you find the type of organization that works best for your personality, work style and needs, and then she recommends specific products to help you get on your way to organizational bliss. Get the tools that you need to take back your space with Organize Your Office In No Time. An organized office and more productive day is just a book away!

About the Author

Professional organizer Monica Ricci helps people simplify their chaotic lives through her company Catalyst Organizing Solutions in Georgia. She teaches people how to simplify their lives by de-cluttering their homes and streamlining their office spaces. She has been showcased as the expert organizer on several episodes of HGTV’s MISSION: Organization. Monica has been a speaker at National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) conferences and moderates two popular online forums. As a motivational speaker, she presents seminars on time management, overcoming procrastination and getting organized. Some of her clients include Earthlink, Longhorn, US Court of Appeals, and GE Capital.

There are also a few other books that are apart of the “In No Time” series that I know you will find helpful. They are:

Organize Your Work Day In No Time

Organize Your Personal Finances In No Time

Organize Your Home In No Time

Organize Your Garage In No Time

Organize Your Family’s Schedule In No Time

Wow I have a lot of reading to do!

Source

Post from: Blisstree

Organize Your Office in No Time