I confess: I am not a good housekeeper. I’d much rather
spend quality time with my kids than to clean or to fuss at them constantly to
clean their rooms, for example. But with four people living in a small house, I
find myself stretched to my limits of being a carefree housekeeper.
So I have a friend of a friend who is a professional home
organizer. (And she is now my friend.) (Here is her blog, check her out.) After overcoming some emotional
obstacles I had about her coming in to my house, and realizing her consultation
was free, I decided to give it a go. After her first hour of consulting, she
begins to charge. But within that hour, I gleaned a lot of useful
information—information that I’m still working out, but still, it was relevant
to the way we live.
I have no foyer. Many families I know use their foyer for
organizing coats and book bags and so on. But what happens in my house is that
it all goes to the floor right near the door. So the first thing she suggested was a reorganizing
and cleaning out of the hall closet—which I accomplished within two weeks.
Sound like a long time? It is. It would have taken just several hours, but I
rarely have that big a chunk of time away from everything else.
I bought a closet extender so now I
have two rods—one that hangs off the top rod. Also a
plastic shoe bag holder. It now hangs over the closet door and holds hats,
gloves, and scarves. ((Just how many hats does one family need? Sigh.)
Will this work? Well, winter will tell us.
The other thing she suggested was moving my scrapbook
supplies from my writing office and keeping them closer to where I actually
scrapbook. It made a lot of sense. But man, I am still working on it. I THINK I
now have all my scrapbook stuff in my dining room in a nice cube-storage area.
But there may be more lurking around in the nooks and crannies or the rest of
my house. I still have to create some kind of curtain to cover that. But it
really has made a difference in terms of the time I’ve been putting into my
scrapbooking. It’s so much easier, now to get the stuff out and put it away.
Talk about your light bulb moments.
Still, there’s a long way to go. The next big project is to
organize my office. I may need her to help with this one. But I’ll start it myself
and see where it goes. After all it’s a work in progress, kind of like life.
You just never know what you’ll find or what will happen next.
How about you? Do you have any good organizing tips?
6 comments:
Organizing my house and decluttering is a never ending project. Here's an important tip so you don't feel overwhelmed: focus on one site at a time. Start with a closet, or a mound of papers, or the stack of old board games in your cabinet. Some folks recommend sorting things into different piles: one for disposal, one for donation, one for keeping. But there's no question that you feel better when there's less clutter around.
Good start! I am a misorganized mess. I think most creative people are ;) Good luck on the project. I am good at starting organizing projects. I just get too distracted by a new project. I am sure you understand!
I remember reading that clutter is delayed decision-making. Boy. My decision-making instinct is seriously slow.
Thanks everybody for commenting. Yes, Nancy, you do feel so much better when there's less clutter around. Yes, Merry, I am right there with you--getting distracted, frequently! Wow, Joanna, I really need to think about that one...not sure what I think about it. I guess I need to decide...LOL.
Organization? What's that? Maybe I'll figure it out one of these days...
I'm afraid you're organization person would have a heart attack if she went into the room where all my yarn supplies are, or she going skidding across the floor on one of the many Michael's bags full of yarn.
Now that I'm writing two series with yarn in them it's only going to get worse.
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