May 2010 Challenge!!
June 9th, 2010
I’ve been working my bunz off getting all the stuff I purged from my house organized for a garage sale. We’ve had a bit of fun with this, so check out the Garage Sale page that’s been added to this site.
We have some video, so you can now watch me blather on about getting it all organized. More tips and hints to come not only on the garage sale stuff, but other parts of this blog.
June 2nd, 2010
Although we’ve already gone through the 31 days to declutter, it is now available for you to start on your own. We’ve created pages for each of the sections of the Declutter Challenge. Each section will link you directly to the post for each particular day. We have broken it down into five weeks, plus some preparation posts. On the left side of this post you will find them all listed.
The important thing to remember is that the Challenge starts on the weekend. Whether your ‘weekend’ is a Saturday or not it’s all up to your schedule. Larger projects are allocated to those weekends, while the smaller jobs are set for the week when you can work on them a little bit at a time.
Your whole life shouldn’t be put on hold just because you’ve decided to join this challenge. Change is hard enough, and you will have to deal with some tough decisions as you go. So take the time to go through the challenge one day at a time for the whole 31 days. Take a break in the middle if you need to. With our new format you will be able to pick it up again when you have time.
Please make sure you subscribe to the site as we will be continuing add more organization tips and hints. Please send us your questions, comments, and even some of those before and after pictures. Sharing with others not only helps them, but it keeps you accountable for the good job you do.
So get ready to deal with all that stuff in your life that is adding to your stress. Take it nice and easy, one day at a time.
June 1st, 2010
If you’ve been following the 31 Day Challenge. You should be able to sit back and smile at your accomplishment! Take time to enjoy your new space and reward yourself for a job well done.
But don’t give up on this site yet. We have more things coming for you. Stay tuned as we offer up tips to organizing areas of your home, cleaning tips and tricks, and don’t forget how to pull together a great garage sale.
I will also be giving you a look at the pile of stuff that left my house. In retrospect it would have been great to have counted the containers of recycle, and bags of garbage that went out too. Maybe we will save that for if we ever do a big declutter challenge in a client’s home….
Also keep tuned for the e-book of 31 Days to Declutter Your Home. We’ve been working feverishly on it. To be published before the end of June…so watch for it!
May 31st, 2010
The final day to declutter your home. It’s been a long journey, and hopefully you are seeing the benefits of having a clutter free house.
This is your last day to work on those Deal With it items. Treat today as a deadline to finish up those tasks that have been sitting in the box. If you are donating the clutter you’ve removed, make sure it goes out today.
If you are planning a Garage sale, stay tuned with the declutter challenge as we go through the process of putting together a fabulous sale. Take your garage sale from normal hum-drum to a full scale shopping event.
Even though the 31 days to declutter is over for me it doesn’t mean that it is over for you. The posts will still be available on this site. Watch for changes coming. It will be set up so that you can do the Challenge no matter when you start. We will add more information and updates as we research and develop our systems. In addition to this, Michelle and I have been working on the ‘31 Days to Declutter Your Home’ book. This book will include more information and more organizational tips for you to use in your house.
One last thing for you to do today. Walk through your house and look for any little areas you may have missed. See if there are any little spots where things have accumulated over the month. Are there any places where you only did half the declutter and think that now you are in a better frame of mind to get rid of things. Take some time to do those last little touches.
May 30th, 2010
I thought I should give you a quick peek at the decluttering going on in my garage. I’ve only taken shots of the one area…because the other side is full of all my purged stuff from the house.
Enjoy!
May 29th, 2010
Use the same sorting techniques we’ve used through the whole 31 Day Challenge. Sort things into garbage, donate, recycle, and Deal With.
Areas in the garage should be set up as zones. Set up different areas to house different items. If you have a shed perhaps that is where all the gardening tools go, or the sports/play things. In your garage you might have different areas.
If you have things that don’t fit into one of these designated ‘zones’ then really think about it and decide if it should actually be in the garage. Items like paint or other liquids may be damaged if they have been in the garage all winter (depending on how cold it gets where you are).
If you have storage shelves in your garage, here are some tips. Do not store heavy items on the top shelf. Not only can this unbalance the unit, but it could be a safety issue to get it back down when you need it. Keep items that you use often in the middle shelves so you can get to them quickly. Heavy items should be stored on the bottom shelf.
Organizing Tip: A good idea is to keep an empty bin in the garage for things you are getting rid of. This is handy for keeping your house clear of clutter. Place things in this bin that you are continuing to purge out of your house. When the bin is full, you have one of those ‘deal with it’ days to get it emptied.
This is the last big area that requires your attention, so keep pushing through the challenge and soon you will be feeling the benefits of all your hard work!
May 28th, 2010
At this point in the Declutter Challenge you have hit every room in your house. The cleaning and purging of unneeded items has left your house with a new, tidy feeling. Today you still need to work on those ‘Deal With’ boxes. Make some of those decisions today, but that is not all.
Take a walk around your house. Are there spots that have missed out on your declutter? A drawer here, or a bookcase there. Are there areas in your house where you didn’t actually clear out as good as you could have? Take some time to go over some of these places and finish these little spaces up. Walk room by room and check to see if you’ve missed something.
This weekend is the last stage of the 31 Days to Declutter Your House Challenge. We will be getting into that garage and/or garden shed. Prepare for that today. The last push to purge!
May 27th, 2010
We’ve entered the digital age. People post pictures on Facebook, on blogs, and can stream them through their TVs. Getting all of your media on the computer not only gets it all in one place, but there are many ways you can keep it all organized. Many programs are available to help organize photos on the computer. You can repair old photos, fix red-eye, crop, and adjust your pictures easily.
One of our favorite programs for manipulating pictures is Microsoft Photoshop Elements. There is quite a bit of training available for this program, and you can easily fix your pictures as well as embellish them. You can create wonderful ‘scrapbook’ presentations using fun virtual papers and stickers.
To help with your organizing and your scrapbooking one software package that consistently gets rave reviews is Photoshop Elements by Adobe. For more information or to order your own copy choose your link;
If you are located in the US you can use Amazon.com
If you are in Canada, you can use Amazon.ca
And for transparency sake, we do get a small commission (and we do mean small!) when you purchase any products via these links, but it helps us cover costs and it makes us smile, so if you were planning on purchasing it anyway, why not do it here and now!
On a PC you can go into the properties of a picture file (.jpg format) and add information. You can add a title, subject, or comments to the picture. Our example is a class picture. It’s been scanned, converted to jpg, and sorted into the year file it represents. Entering information into the properties of the picture keeps the information with the picture. In the example we’ve entered the child’s name, whose class it is, the school and year, and listed the names of all the kids in the picture under comments. Now it’s associated with the picture forever. If I send this to someone, the information I’ve attached to it will stay with the picture.
You can take all those old photos that are sitting in boxes and scan them into the computer. There are services out there that will do this for you. Make sure to have them scan them at least 150% or 200%. This means a small 3.5 x 5 photo can be printed out on at 4 x 6 with little loss of quality. It’s a more expensive option, but going through the work and then having a small resolution photo to work with is less than gratifying.
Organizing Tip: I love to keep all the pictures and crafts that my kids have made…but I know I can’t. So I’ve started to be more selective. Some pieces I will keep for scrapbooks, but the bulk of the work that I want to keep I scan in on the computer. Now they have a record of the artwork, or note that they’ve written, but it doesn’t take up any physical space. I have a file folder for each of the girls, and I try to date when the work was done. -KB
Also on the rise is the use of software to organize your ancestry. There are many programs out there to assist you in creating a digital family tree. Many of these have areas where pictures or documents can be scanned and stored for history. You can have your family tree out on the web for other family members to add to. Having pictures in digital format is required.
Recently my husband’s parents have passed away. So I have collected all the photographs they had. I have books with those sticky pages (which actually distort the colours in the pictures), and hundreds of loose pictures. Many of these pictures I have no idea who the people are. So what do I do with them? Many of them are old black and whites that I feel should be recorded. –KB
If you find yourself in the same situation, you could scan in pictures and send them off to members of the family, and perhaps someone will know who the people are in the picture. By entering the information in the properties of the picture you are securing the information.
I had one client who took a box of old pictures to their mother and asked her to write down the names of all the people in each of the pictures. She did – right on the front of each picture, and very often over the faces. –KB
You can move all those old pictures on to the computer, even old family videos can be converted onto the computer. Digital scrapbooking is on the rise, and the options are unlimited as to what kind of media presentations you can create using the computer.
May 26th, 2010
Sometimes life throws you that little curve ball and you just have to try your hardest to hit it out of the park. Look at me using sports analogy! Anyway we are nearing the end of the month, we have just a few days more. Keep your energy going!
Even after such a busy day, the kids are in bed and I can go and take an hour just to go through one of the rooms for this week. They are easier ones…right?
Tomorrow will be your day to deal with those pesky Think About things. I will send out a little update I’ve been writing on how to organize your memories.
May 25th, 2010
The next areas that you need to work on might be quite simple. Living Room, Dining Room, Media Room. Now if you have a Living Room and a Family Room that means both of them. This is your opportunity to sort through things that you display in these rooms and decide if you really love them or not. Go through game drawers, movie collections, books, and other items that you keep in these types of rooms. Always remember the FUNCTION of the room. Keep that at the top of your mind as you sort through the stuff you have in the rooms.
Is the room inviting? Is this a room that people see when they first come in your house? If so, then think about the presentation that you show. First impressions mean so much.
I recently located a dance teacher of mine from back when I was 16. I was very excited to find out she had her studio close to where I teach Jazzercise sometimes. So one evening after class I stopped by the studio to just say hello and let her know that her teaching eventually led me to what I’m doing now. When I stopped, the studio was closed, so I looked through the windows. To my horror the first thing I saw was her desk. Reception style, but so piled with junk and shoes. It literally looked like they threw all the garbage in that area. I was very disappointed that someone who I looked up to could have such a poor first impression. It makes me think she’s not organized, and doesn’t care about the details. –KB
Choose quality over quantity of display items. Keep in mind that you still have to dust these little treasures that you keep out for people to see.
If you keep your magazines and reading material in this room. Go through and recycle what you have already read or if they are out of date. Magazines are notorious for hanging around the house long after the information in them is old.
To give you an idea of how periodicals can pile up… my grandfather kept every issue of a Saskatchewan farming magazine. Every single one. When my Mum cleaned out his house to move him into assisted living, she recycled an entire closet full of them. That’s two piles deep and eight piles wide, almost six feet tall, with a few more piles on the shelf above as well. Think about the weight of that! And the potential safety hazards! Yikes! -MK
Use this room for dining. Yes, sometimes they get used for a dumping zone especially when located close to the front door it’s easy to just set things there. So first of all remove anything that just doesn’t belong in this room. Either sort it into your boxes, or put it away in some other room of your organized house.
Then go through any storage furniture in this area. Do you have good dishes? Do you love them? Are you keeping any of them out of a sense of responsibility or guilt? If so, then they are taking up more space than just the physical space you see in the cabinet – they’re taking up space in your head and heart. We’re not suggesting you chuck Aunt Sophia’s crystal into the trash bin, but maybe see if there is another family member who would happily use the set. Or package the items up properly for archival purposes and store it way at the top of the shelves in the storage room. But get them out of your dining room.
If you have something that is a collectable make a decision if it’s worth you collecting it, or should you sell it to a true collector.
I have an antique tin cat. It’s a wind-up toy. I expect that it’s worth quite a bit of money. I don’t collect this type of thing (postage stamps for me) but there are many people who do. Is it worth my time holding on to it if I don’t intend to display it, or am I just hoarding it because it’s valuable. I have the same thing with a collector doll still in it’s packaging. I don’t collect them, so I’d rather sell it to someone who does and who will look after it properly. –KB
Sort through the linens for your dining room and let go of any that are stained or damaged. When you set your table for guests you want it to look crisp and clean.
Do you have a room where the family watches TV or movies? Go through drawers and cupboards in here and remove anything that doesn’t need to be in this room.
Organizing Tip - You don’t need to keep your movies with your TV. Here’s a great idea to use some space that might be sitting empty in that nice clean storage room. Space between rafters is always under-utilized. We installed small shelves so that we could house our rather large video collection. As the Video Tapes get replaced by DVD’s the amount of space required is much smaller. It’s like going to your own personal video store. –KB
If you have lots of movies, take a quick look through them and pull out any that you have decided you don’t really like, or perhaps the kids have outgrown. The same could be said for any console games that are outdated.
While you are doing the declutter here, take a moment to gather up all those snuggly blankets that you keep handy. Throw them in the washing machine. They will be all nice, clean, and soft next time you get all wrapped up in a movie.
There are other options for your CD’s now. One of the smartest inventions this decade brought us the I-Pod. You can take all the CD’s you’ve collected over the years, and get them on to your computer. Once there you can create a library for all your music. Using the I-Pod allows you to make playlists of certain types of music. When you do this, you can take all your current CD’s and archive them in the storage room.
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