Organization Quest

Cheap Eats: Dinner

Appologies to those who subscribe to my posts.  I accidentally posted this last night, and so this might be the second time some of you receive this.  Mercury Retrograde, you know.

I love this time of year:  sweater-weather.  With the days cool and crisp, it's a perfect time to cook up a big pot of soup.

The secret to really good soup is in the stock.  Happily, making stock is as easy as saving and freezing the water used to boil vegetables.  Making potato salad or mashed potatoes?  Potato water is among the most flavorful additions to soup stock.   

Last week, on my raid-the-stash kick, I used a good eight containers worth of such stock-makers, choosing freely from the water in which I had individually boiled potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, green beans, and Brussels sprouts over the past few months.  Combining these varieties made an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G stock with virtually no effort on my part.  Into the brew, I added the following*:

• 1 large diced potato
• 1 diced onion
• 1/4 head shredded cabbage
• 2 diced red peppers
• 2 cobs worth of corn (cut from the cob)
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

After simmering for 20-30 minutes, I added a zucchini, cut into rather large dice and simmered for another 10 minutes.  Coupled with baking soda biscuits just like my mother used to make, we had a nice, light dinner for less than $1.00 a serving.

*Note:  I diced up what I had on hand.  Carrots, celery, parsley, cilantro, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, peas, tomatoes, leeks,  and parsnips, as well as legumes, mushrooms, and peppers of all types are all worthy additions to just about any soup.

Cheap Eats: Breakfast

Few things in life are as shocking as the price of breakfast cereals, most of which don't even qualify as food, to my mind.  Five bucks for a wedge of Brie?  Fine.  But for some concoction that contains neon-colored . . . . objects, or coats your mouth with a sugary, cinnamon-flavored grit?  No thanks.

Breakfast foods are one of the few cases where the lower the cost, the higher to quality.  Case in point:  honest-to-God Irish, steel-cut oatmeal, the antithesis of the instant and semi-instant gelatinous goo that dares call itself by the same name.  Real oatmeal cannot  cook in two minutes.  Or five, for that matter.  Real oatmeal takes about 30 minutes to cook.  Sure, it takes more time, but ironically it's less hassle than the semi-instant varieties, which, if memory serves, require  several minutes of rather worried stirring.  With real, steel-cut oats, you boil a cup of water per serving, throw in a quarter cup of oats (per serving), cover, reduce the heat and forget about it while you take your shower and get ready.  By the time you're dressed, you have a nice, steaming bowl of oatmeal as God intended it, slightly chewy and flavorful.  I like mine with berries, hazel nuts, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.  And butter!  And brown sugar!  At $7 a 20-serving can, or 35 cents a serving, you can afford to splurge!

It's 7:00 a.m.; Do You Know Where Your Keys Are?

Early mornings seem to be a time of universal chaos.  My own reoccuring drama is of the where-are-my-keys-I-know-I-put-them-somewhere variety, "somewhere" indeed being the operative word.  So this weekend I decided to do something about it:  I scoped out a convenient spot (the top shelf of a short bookcase not far from the entry), cleared it off, and cleaned it with a little Wood For Good from The Method.  Then I used the old vinegar-and-salt trick recalled from childhood penny-polishing to polish up the wonderful copper plate Alpay had inherited. A decorative wooden box with brass hardware provides storage for nightly pocket-emptying and fits in nicely with the Near East motif. 

Is finding keys a daily hassle for you, too?  What might work for you?  A pretty basket, a bowl, or bamboo tray?  Or maybe a hook by the closet? Or maybe you're like me, and will find something you already own to re-purpose. Once you designate a place and make it attractive, putting your keys away will become a no-brainer and you'll have time to think about other things in the morning, like:  what's for breakfast?  But that's a post for another day.

You Wouldn't Spit On A Kitten, Would You?

For whatever reason, Lickity Split thinks it's his cue to jump in the sink whenever I pick up my toothbrush. Thus begins a nightly routine of pick-him-up-and-put-him-down, followed by jump-back-up-and-into-the-sink.  This is to say I've gotten very adept at cradling him in my arm while I brush my teeth, which strikes me, as I write this, as his goal.  He just loves stupid human tricks.

On a side note:  check out the cool soap my sister gave me last Christmas!  Have you ever seen a soap with a swirl?  I added it to my weekend raid-the-stash list and have been enjoying it every time I use it.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words

I went to the Paper Source website, intent on sourcing the materials I used for a project a while back, when I was stopped cold by the picture on their home page:

All I could think was:  holy cow!  How did they know!  My dream desk, complete with polka-dot file folders, color-coordinated notebooks, and adorable little luggage-like containers.  Never mind that  the wall paper is probably a Photoshop trick or that the blotter is most likely a piece of paper cut slightly smaller than a solid-colored sheet; this is a Fantasy Desk and I'll take it!

Have Fun, Indulge Yourself, And Get Organized, Too! The Raid-Your-Stash Weekend

Looking at the mail I've received in recent weeks, I'd say there's been a whole lot of organizing going on.  A reward is in order.  We all deserve a little fun, but how to get a break and yet keep up the O-Q momentum?  And then it came to me:  what we need is a raid-your-stash weekend.

Get out all those little bottles of shampoo and body lotion you brought home from your last trip. Free samples, "gift with purchase" cosmetics, the last few drops of your favorite scent or moisturizer, the shell soap that's too pretty to use--now's the time to enjoy them!  Use them up while they're still fresh or give them a toss once and for all to make room for the things that you do use. 

Items in my own stash I'm planning to raid this weekend include:

• The lovely, pyramid-shaped tea bags my sister gave me this past Christmas.  I love the accompanying tea set, complete with miniature creamer, sugar bowl, and tea bag holders that all fit on the little serving tray, all of which I've been "saving" for a "special occasion."
• Semi-translucent vellum writing paper in mesmerizing jewel tones.
• Jasmin-scented soap my manager's manager gave me last Christmas.
• Special edition postage stamps, featuring tiffany glass, tropical blossoms, and art by Mary Cassatt.
• Special scented tea lights.
• Pretty, decorated file folders I got from the Container Store as a treat a while back.
• Samples from Daniel Smith watercolors.
• My favorite hand cream, which is almost finished.
• My favorite lip gloss, also which is almost finished.
• The last few drops of my favorite fountain pen ink.

Looking at my list, I realized that my unused supplies tend to cluster into two distinct categories:  proven favorites that are on the verge of running out (the hand cream, the lip gloss, the fountain pen ink), and those things--often gifts--that are so beautiful (the tea, the stamps, the Jasmin soap), it's almost as if I'm afraid to use them, because I like them and if I use them . . . I won't have them any more.  Never mind that, for many, the very definition of a successful of a gift is something that someone else would enjoy but are too much of an indulgence to buy for themself.

Gifts are meant to be used and enjoyed, as are the other, often perishable supplies that come our way. What a shame it is to come across something--a day book or calendar, cards or stationary of some type--only to discover it is too old or creased and sun-faded to use.  Vow to use your supplies now! Not only will you have fun doing so, but you will be making room in your drawers and cabinets.  It's organizing at its best!

Tips On How To Deal With The Pack Rat In Your Life

Yesterday we looked at how anxiety and difficulty making decisions are what's often behind a pack rat's hold on his or her hoard.  Today we'll review some techniques that may be helpful in dealing with the pack rat in your life.

Remember:  Attitude is everything

Compassion is key.  The biggest factor that will affect your ability to positively influence a person who has a hard time throwing things away is whether that person feels you genuinely have his or her interests at heart or if you're merely intent on ridding them of their things.  Calling these things "junk," "trash," or worse will only kick in the desire to "protect" the hoard.

Have an open discussion about the hoard

If living spaces can not be used in the way they are intended--if chairs or couches are piled so high you can't sit down, or if desks, tables, or counters are covered with so much stuff you can't use them--or if you regularly have to twist and turn to get around things in your path, or if there are only narrow pathways in any give room, most likely the pack rat in your life would qualify as a hoarder.  It might be useful to have on hand the references mentioned in yesterday's post and start by talking about how your loved one feels about the hoard.  You might be pleasantly surprised by his or her desire to reduce the hoard and become more organized.

Ask how you can help

Hoarders tend to have a certain constellation of personality traits that feed into hoarding; among them is something called "over scrupulousness," which often presents as an exaggerated sense of responsibility for one's things: anything that passes into one's hands, no matter how arbitrarily, is one's responsibility.  It's helpful is to talk about this. If your loved one is like most hoarders, they probably actually resent this "responsibility". A helpful attitude a non-hoarder can take is: "it's not fair to you that you have the responsibility for all this stuff.  Why don't I take responsibility for X?"  In my case, this is what Alpay did with the junk mail.  Because I tend to feel (rather ridiculously) that I actually need to open and read every piece of mail that happens our way, it tends to pile up when I'm the one who's responsible for dealing with it.  Our agreement is that when I am able to deal with the mail on a daily basis, I can do so, but once it piles up, Alpay takes over, even if it means I don't get to open up and make fun of all the solicitations we get.

Set reasonable boundaries

The mail agreement above is one example of setting reasonable boundaries, in which I agreed to a certain standard and to the consequences of not keeping to that standard.  I've also agreed to read newspapers on line and to not to have any magazine subscriptions.  I still buy and enjoy the occasional magazine from time to time, but since they just tend to pile up when they arrive week in and week out, having subscriptions is counter-productive to my Organization Quest.

The boundaries could be by type, i.e. certain types of junk mail (card offers; the stuff that comes with bills), or availability (if something is available on the Internet, it's okay to throw out).  If you don't have your own business, then you probably don't need things like old water, sewer, cable, electricity, gas, and phone bills.  Even if you do have your own business, you can throw that stuff away after 7 years.  So maybe another boundary is that anything older than 7 years gets to be thrown away.

Pack rats typically hoard things that are broken and in need of repair with the idea that they will "fix" it one day. If this is your pack rat's problem, maybe they would agree to a time limit on fixing items; once the time limit is reached, the item can be thrown away.

Establish what's okay to throw away

You can  develop the no-brainer toss technique for things like clothes, i.e. to toss those that can't repaired.

If possible, isolate the hoard

One of the reasons we decided we needed three bedrooms is so we each could have our own space in addition to the bedroom we share.  This means that Alpay's study is explicitly off-limits in terms of my stuff; it also means I'm free to do with my own study as I wish.

In Gina and Matt's case, Matt has an office just off the kitchen. An ideal option would be if this office could be relocated to an out-of-the-way bedroom with a door Gina could close. Remember that pack rats tend to fill the space they have, something to consider before the entire basement is consigned to them.

Offer to help organize what they do save

Pack rats like their things; helping them organize what they do keep can be a huge motivating factor for some.  The motto I've found helpful is "choose the best and get rid of the rest."  This ensures that I have access to the things I most value because they are no longer hidden or obscured by masses of other things I've kept over the years out of guilt or with the idea I "might need it someday."

Pack Rats: 101

Yesterday we met Gina, who has it all:  great kids, great house, great job, and great husband, who would be even greater if he wasn't such a pack rat.

What's a Quester to do?  How can you make progress on your Organization Quest when a member of the household can't let go of clothes they never wear, products they never use, or paperwork that serves no current purpose?  And why, oh why would anyone not only keep this stuff, but actually defend it with the fierceness of a mother bear protecting newborn cubs?

Yes, we will get into specific tips.  Tomorrow.  But first I think it's useful to try to understand the pack rat's world, and his or her relationship to things other people very well might consider junk or trash.

What I've learned is that hoarding is often associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which itself is subclassified under Anxiety disorders.  With recent developments in MRI imaging, they have actually documented "a unique pattern of brain activity that was distinct from that seen in either non-hoarding OCD patients or controls," according to Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., Director of the UCLA OCD Research Program at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. You can see the complete article, "The Neurobiology and Medication Treatment of Compulsive Hoarding" on the OC Foundation website, which has a great section hoarding and the effects hoarding has for both the hoarder and his or her family. 

Basically, the upshot is that it has been documented that horders have severe differences in brain function in terms of decision making.  The article also mentions that "compulsive hoarders had significantly higher anxiety . . . than non-hoarders." Which is to say that Gina's husband is not hanging onto the two-year old agenda from the fire fighters union meeting, not to mention boxes of other, equally absorbing (to him), equally useless (according to her) paper stuff, just to be difficult.  What it means is that he's scared: because what if he ends up needing it someday, only to realize he's thrown it out?

According to Randy Frost, Ph.D and co-author of the book, Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding , hoarders share the following traits:

• Problems with information processing (e.g., problems categorizing or making decisions)
• Beliefs about possessions (e.g., a sense of attachment to possessions, or fears of forgetting things)
• Emotional distress about discarding, which leads to avoidance of discarding

Tomorrow we'll get into specific techniques that may help Gina help Matt loosen his hold on his hoard. 

Hope For Pack Rats

Last week, we met fellow Organization Quester Marie, whose main struggle is how to find the time to organize between working two jobs and raising kids. 

This week, I'd like to introduce another Quester:  Gina.  Gina has a life a lot of people would like:  she has three cute-as-can-be kids, a highly-skilled job where she is well-liked and respected, a house in the country, and an adorable, fire-fighter husband. At times when Gina throws herself in creating the order she longs for, however, it does rather seem that Matt's adorable quotient is in adverse proportion to the sheer quantity of his stuff.  Matt, you see, is a pack rat.

The whole issue of hoarding is one I have neatly side-stepped since starting this blog.  I have, however, had perhaps a dozen conversations which all start when an acquaintance seeks me out and says: "My husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/son/daughter/roommate is such PACK RAT!  You have NO IDEA what it's like trying to organize with a PACK RAT in the house!"  At which point I usually manage to stutter:  "Wow, yes,  oh boy, sounds terrible!" And before they can ask how an organized person like me would deal with a pack rat, I turn tail and get the hell out of there. 

Because you see fellow Questers, I am a pack rat; I guarantee that anyone who has ever lived with me has suffered.  I have no doubt that a dozen or so family members, former roommates, and ex-boyfriends would eagerly explain just how terrible it was to live with my newspapers, magazines, catalogs, clothes, shoes, belts, scarves, books, files, make-up, albums, CDs, tapes both audio and video, containers, cooking gear, linens, and knick-knacks, to say nothing of the boxes upon boxes of old bills and receipts, pamphlets, user manuals, junk mail, school assignments, advertisements, flyers, recipes, to-do lists, and journal entries.  In spite of this, for years I had a hard time actually admitting I was a pack rat; it seemed so . . . . unseamly.  When forced into into a (cluttered) corner, I might concede I had a problem, but I'd also point out that it wasn't as if I was a child-beating, crack-dealing, knife-wielding cannibal specializing in the organs of toddlers.  So I'm a bit of a receipt-keeper, I'd say. So what?

That the sheer volume of my stuff adversely affected not just me and my life but those of everyone with whom I have ever lived, I just couldn't face.  But around 18 years ago or so, I did begin to loosen the reins on the horde, starting with a garage sale before taking off to live in europe for a year.  When I returned, I found I wasn't really interested in the furniture I had stored at various relatives' homes, and gave much of it away. 

It's been like that, on and off, on and off; some periods I make astonishing progress; at other times, I backslide. I've made more progress since starting this blog than I have in the past four years combined, and within a week or so I expect to be at a point in which I'll be able to say that the living area in every room has pretty been much cleared.  That's not to say that my closets aren't full-to-bursting and there aren't plenty of boxes I still need to go through, or that my Quest will be, in effect, over; rather, I'm looking forward to a new phase of the Quest in which I'll finally be able to concentrate on improving my stroke now that I'll no longer be drowning. 

Tomorrow I hope to offer some insight into the pack rat phenomenon, and perhaps offers some suggestions on how Gina might help Matt change the relationship he has with stuff that really doesn't serve him, but gets in the way of so many things, not the least of which is a high score on the adorable husband scale.

Finding The Time To Organize: The Pass-By Approach

On Wednesday we met Marie, who generously supplied us with pictures of her bedroom so we could get a look at her particular organizing challenges.  Marie is a single mom, who put herself through school while working full-time and raising four kids.  This spells A-M-A-Z-I-N-G in my book.  Now that the three eldest are out of the nest (or not?  in any case, safe to say they're no longer in poopy diapers), Marie is now working two jobs with sights on her MBA.  What can I say?  Some people are born slackers.  Marie isn't one of them.

And so Marie's comment in that post shouldn't come to any surprise:  the problem, she wrote, is time.  It's hard enough to come home from one job and face chores.  When you add a whole another shift, the complexity more than doubles.  And so the question is: where do you find the time?

There is one technique that has worked for me when I have been completely exhausted and unmotivated to do a single thing, much less tackle a big project:  I call it the pass-by approach.  Basically what I'll do is focus on one small area--maybe a counter or table top that is heaped with mail, accessories, make-up, and all kinds of household odds and ends, maybe a drawer that has collected clutter until it no longer closes properly--and I'll commit to picking up one thing from the pile and putting that one thing away every time I pass the counter or table or drawer or whatnot. 

Because the places that collect the most clutter are often the places that get the most traffic, the pass-by approach often works well in such areas, because every time you pass it, you are putting something away.  I can usually clear a small area quite easily this way, with pretty much minimal effort.  It works less well those times the whole place feels like a disaster zone, but in Marie's case, she can definitely make headway in her bedroom just by concentrating on one table top or one pile at a time. 

Quick Tip: Cleaning Shower Curtains

  Given that inhaling the odor of new shower curtains turns out to be a smell-at-your-own-risk venture, here's a tip for quickly cleaning your old one: throw it in the wash machine. Works great with a minimum of hassle.

Can You Imagine: One Year To An Organized Life?

After a good couple weeks of feeling under-the-weather, my organizing enthusiasm has lagged a bit, truth be told.  The living room is a wreak, I haven't done any laundry since the weekend, and Alpay, bless him, has completely taken over food prep and maintaining the kitchen.  To get my organizing groove back, I needed . . . something. I didn't know what.  And then I got today's mail. 

One Year To An Organized Life, yes, the best-selling latest from Regina Leeds, was what I found in my mailbox this evening, a gift from Regina herself! This is akin to Dave Matthews dropping by to check out your garage band, and then sending his latest CD, only better, as Regina covers home inventory lists and guidelines for when to throw out make-up, subjects Dave has yet to address. 

The book is organized into 12 sections--one for each month of the year, starting with January, although as Regina points out, there's no time like the present to get started.  She takes you through not only the main areas of your home--the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom all get their own sections, as well as "common rooms" and, intriguingly, "hidden areas" which includes the attic, basement, garage, laundry and guest rooms--but also devotes sections on travel, entertaining, creating a festive atmosphere, and paper organization.  I'm especially drawn to July's section, titled, "Fun in the Sun:  Scrapbooks, Memorabilia, Greeting Card Collections, and Your Address Book."  There are also sections on Back-to-School and Moving, both of which offer general tips and strategies anyone can apply--even those who don't have kids or are planning to move.

The sections contain an introduction, a summary, and four chapters that correspond with the weeks in a month. Each chapter opens with a bulleted list, encouragingly titled "This week you can," followed by a time estimate (you know how we love time estimates on The Quest!) The short essay at the beginning of the section introduces the "Habit of the Month," while a week-by-week summary, followed by a "Bonus tip," and "Affirmation of the Month," provides review and closure.

Having opened my mail and discovered the book, oh, two hours and thirty-six minutes ago, I've only had time to pet its glossy cover and indulge in the first, gleeful assessment of its contents.  With a vacation from my day-job tomorrow, I know what I'll be doing:  curling up with a nice cup of tea and plotting my own year to an organized life.

A Quester In Need . . .

We've all heard the saying, "a friend in need."  Well, Marie is a Quester in need.  She's also my friend; she's a person who has a finely tuned appreciation for red velvet cake, she can make anyone laugh, and she did not hold it against me when I didn't return her cherished square paper punch for months on end, a favor of patience I returned when her nine year old daughter, Kristina, attempted to groom my elderly cat with a hand vac.  In other words, friends indeed.

A few weeks ago, after I sent Marie a link to this blog, Marie wrote back; she was In Trouble.  The particular Trouble in this case is of the great-piles-of-clothes-boxes-bags-and-craft-supplies-sliding-into-unnavigatable-chaos sort.  She sent pictures, which she has given me permission to publish:

              

She seemed to be under the impression this was The Worse Mess Ever; I disagreed, having seen much, much worse messes in my own home, but now's not the time to get all competitive.  Marie needs solutions.  I promised to help scare some up.

Remember:  Clear One Space At A Time

Take the advice of Regina Leeds, professional organizer and author of the New York Times best-seller, One Year to an Organized Life:  clear only one section of a closet or other large space at a time.  This prevents creating even more mess and also works as a motivator.  Lastly, as you clear and organize a space at a time, you are actually creating  space to store more things.  Tidy takes less room.

First Things First: Toss -n- Declutter

Get rid of what you can.  Easier said than done, believe me, I know. Some things are easier to get rid of than others, and so to get your declutter momentum going, start with what you find easy to toss.  My personal list includes duplicates of things you only need one of; clothing that is irrevocably stained or cannot be mended; things that are broken and can't be fixed or that would cost more to fix than to replace; things that hold bad memories; things that I never liked, regretted buying, or never really worked. 

Group Like With Like

Next, group like items together:  linens with linens, make-up with make-up, accessories with accessories, clothes with clothes, craft supplies with craft supplies.  Use a general-to-specific approach:  once you group all your accessories together, separate them out by type--bags, shoes, umbrellas, etc.  Same with craft supplies.  Once you have them corralled togther, further separate by craft or by type.  As I happen to know Marie is an inveterate card maker, that means grouping together stamps, ink pads, paper, punches, adhesives, eyelets and beads, ect., as I did when I organized the craft closet. 

Make The Most Of What You've Got

Specialized containers and customized spaces are great fun, no doubt.  But you don't need to spend a lot of money to get organized.  Start with what you have:  in Marie's case, she has a lot of great containers she can use.  As she de-clutters, groups, and tidies, she will probably be able to store more in the containers she has.

You can also take a look around your house and see what containers you have already have that are being under-utilized or can otherwise be re-purposed.  I love the gift basket I got a couple years ago from my sister; when I was organzing the kitchen stuff a while back, I realized it was the perfect size for coralling the cat food supplies, including paper plates and treats.  Likewise, the wooden gift box that smoked salmon came in is perfect for storing my watercolors, and pastel-colored pots make pretty containers for my bath supplies.  Pretty wastepaper baskets can display rolled towels in the bathroom; galvanized buckets make for a decorative garden tool catch-all.  Almost anything that is hollow can be used for storage.

Think Vertical

Yes, I love my PAX set-up, but good old bracketted shelves work great.  It's amazing what just one, 36" shelf can hold:

• 80 books
• 90-100 CDs
• 8 magazine caddies (which hold 12 magazines each)
• 5 pairs of shoes
• 3 document boxes

Given this, you can imagine how much can be stored with the addition of four or five shelves. 

Don't Sell Short Prime Real Estate

Save the  prime, easy-to-access spaces--whether front-of-the-closet areas, the most convenient file drawers, or your favorite cabinets in the kitchen--for the things you use the most.  Out of the way spaces are great for storing  once-a-year holiday accessories and supplies, and for other things that you don't use all that often. 

In Marie's case, she has lots of great space that isn't being utilized above the clothing rod in her closet--prime space to store occasional-use items.

Enjoy The Process As Well As The Result

One of the things that helps me the most is when I can get myself into the place where tackling a project is actually kind of fun.  It's almost ike a treasure hunt: you never know what you'll find.  I often find things I thought I'd lost (wedding ring, anyone?); it's also fun to re-discover things you've completely forgotten about.  And in these days of hardship for so many, going through one's things is an opportunity to count the blessings of your life, and enables you to share your bounty by giving to others what you no longer need.

Why Organize?

Between all the kitten pictures and Container Store rhapsodizing, it's easy to lose track of the actual point of this blog, which isn't intended to be a what-to-buy directory or an inventory of what-I-did. Rather, the motto in the banner says it all:  making room for the important things in life.  The real reward of organizing the craft closet wasn't labeled shelves or a perfectly compartmentalized ribbon drawer, but how, after having  gone through my supplies and arranging them for easy access, I sat down for the first time in years and made a few cards just for the fun of it.  The variety of colors, textures, patterns, and materials fired up my creativity.  I could see my options at a glance, the better to imagine different variations.  Without the exasperation of having to dig through a mess to find some essential tool or supply, I was free to enjoy the process of creating, as well as the result.

Before you start an organizing project, or whenever you feel your energy is flagging and you're in need of motivation, take a moment to ask yourself what your real goal is--what you really hope to accomplish once the living room is cleared, the laundry caught up, the mudroom tidied.  Do you want to be able to ask a friend over for brunch or for tea?  Do you want to have time to paint, to take a walk,  or to play with your child without having some chore or another hanging over you?  Creating order creates time and frees your energy. What would you do if you were more organized?  Who would you be?  What would you have more time for?  Who would you have more time for? 

You can do this.  You deserve the life you imagine. 

Equal Time For Non-Felons

I realized over the weekend that in the exact way nobody ever gets any press for being nice, normal, and pleasant, Snapdragon has been cheated out of his fair share of online coverage. While Snapdragon is loveable, cuddly, and good-natured, he does not have a sixth sense for photo opportunities, unlike certain other kitties.  He does not gleefully jump into any open appliance, nor climb the screen door in a splayed-toed spider man impersonation, nor--with the exception of the hidey hole incident--get lost or stuck in improbable places, all of which, let's face it, is entertaining and makes for good photos.  And so, without further ado, here is the latest  picture of the Dragon, included here for no other reason than to give equal time to the non-felons of the household.

Organizing The Craft Closet: What I Found Helpful

Overall Strategy:

• I concentrated on one shelf or drawer at a time, worked through to completion, taking only short breaks if any.
• I completely emptied the shelf or drawer of its contents, then wiped out the drawer before putting things back.
• I assessed everything in each drawer, opening jars, bottles, tubes, and ink pads to ensure the contents were in good condition, and tossing anything that was no longer fresh or usable.
• Similarly, I assessed my paper supplies, ribbon, bows, and embellishments, tossing damaged goods.

Oganizing Specifics:

• Group items by function i.e. all adhesives (which includes craft and white glue, tape, monoadhesive, and rubber cement) go together on the same shelf
• Group replacement parts and refills by the item (glue sticks by glue gun; replacement blades by paper cutter).
• Group accessories with the items they are used with, i.e. sponge daubers with pastels; embossing powders with embossing gun).
• Organize colors by color family or rainbow order:  red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple, with  separate place for neutrals.
• Partly-completed scrapbook pages can tuck into page protectors along with the component needed to finish the page (i.e. pictures, embellishments, printed text or mementoes, etc.).

Details, Details, Details:

• I finally broke down and labeled all the the drawers according to content.  No more opening one drawer after another after another trying to find where I put a particular supply.
• I've found the small, clear boxes that Stampin' Up! stamp sets come in are very handy for organizing watercolor paint tubes, as well as separately-purchased stamps from other vendors.

How Long Did It Take?

• It took 14 hours over 4 days to organize  4 shelves and 11 drawers (23" deep, 39" wide).
• It took a little over an hour to make the drawer labels.
• Least amount of time to organize:  a shelf with storage boxes (9 minutes).
• Most amount of time to organize:  the ribbon drawer (2 hours and 16 minutes).

Organizing The Craft Closet: Place For Everything (Except A Certain Kitten)

Once upon a time, my art and scrapbooking supplies were completely organized:  tubes of watercolor nestled together agreeably , embossing powders were lined up in neat little rows.  My scrapbooking paper was fanned out according to color family and I always knew where my eyelet maker was. 

And then I went back to school.

Over the next two years, I used my supplies on almost daily; they proved to be useful in the art and design classes I took.  But somewhere along the way, I developed the not-really-put-away technique whereby I would open the craft closet door and stack, in no particular order, new supplies and old, along with class projects, various drafts, reference materials, and all kinds of this-might-come-in-handy-some-day bits and pieces.  And then I would shut the door. 

It got to the point that I couldn't open any of the drawers without causing a chain-reaction avalanche requiring desperate, two-handed maneuvers to circumvent. Great fun for the kittens.  Less fun for me.

So last week, after 30 panicked minutes in which I lost Lickity Split and finally found him tucked in the ribbon drawer only after Snapdragon ratted him out, I decided it was time to deal with the craft closet already.  I figured it'd take me an hour, maybe two.  It ended up taking 14 hours, but in the end, I'd gone through everything, threw out a ton and organized the rest.  In the process, I switched things around so the ribbon drawer was higher and installed a drawer divider to make it a less appealing hiding place for a certain kitten.

Organizing the Craft Closet

When A Kitten Gets Lost In The Ribbon Drawer, It's Time To Organize It

Whatcha lookin' at, Snapdragon?

 

When Good Closets Go Bad

As I mentioned in Sunday's post, even well-designed closets can fall into disorder after a time.  Like all closets, things seem to find their way to the floor.  The other day I decided to do something about it:  I took out everything that wasn't hanging in the double-hung closet I use for my shirts, jackets, and skirts; some organizers recommend that you take everything out of a closet you're organizing--including everything that's hanging--but that's just too much chaos for my taste.  Just taking out all the stuff hidden in the back or stuffed into the corner was chaos enough (see above right).

And yet:  it only took an hour to organize everything and find homes for the various odd items.  Before, when I had my old single-rod closet, everything was squished so tight that it would take hours to organize and even then, everything was perpetually wrinkled from being so overstuffed. These days, I try to maintain a strict, item-in-item out policy, as even plentiful closet space can become unpleasantly packed without regular culling. 

As for my general organizing strategy, I pretty much keep it simple:  I like to organize my clothes light-to-dark by color family.  I know a lot of people like to separate their clothes according to function, i.e. work clothes, evening clothes, weekend clothes, etc., but since I work in an business casual environment and because my evenings are spent pretty much the same way as my weekends, I don't see the point in separating my clothes in this way.  I'm also not much of a fan of separating out and packing away off-season clothes; I don't have the room to separately store off-season stuff, and it doesn't particularly bother me to see a sweater in July or a sleeveless shirt in January. 

*Note: this post has been edited to correct the original, which erroneously attributed the take-everything-out-of-the-closet approach as being advocated by professional organizer and best-selling author Regina Leeds.

Organizing Double-Hung Shirt/Jacket/Skirt Closet

Designing A Closet With PAX/Komplement

With the PAX/Komplement system, designing your own closet is easy. Start with the frame: choose from two heights -- 79" or 93" (6' -7" or 7'-9") and two depths -- 13-3/4" or 22-7/8".  (Note: the only interior option for the narrow-depth units are standard shelves, I believe.)  Next choose the width-- either 19-5/8" or 39-3/8".  Proceed to pick from one of the five finishes available, and you have the frame.

Now's the fun part:  customizing your dream closet with interior fittings.  For the deeper units,the choices go far beyond the standard rod-shelf-drawer options, and to include jewlry boxes, shallow pull-out shelves with dividers, shoe organizers, and wire baskets, and more, which can be combined in almost limitless combinations.  There are a total of 70 pre-drilled holes in the 93" tall unit, or about one hole every 1-1/4" or so, allowing for both great flexibility and precision in the placement of the fittings. 

When I got my units, the contractors who installed them couldn't imagine why I would want shallow pull-out shelves installed every three holes, but I knew exactly what I planned to do with it: organize my scrapbooking and craft supplies (see right). That's the beauty of the PAX system:  you can--and I do--use it for anything.  On a more traditional closet note, I designed one unit as a regular closet, with a rod hung high to accommodate long coats and dresses. Another unit is designed with two rods, one high and one low, for hanging shirts, jackets, and skirts; for both units, I installed a shelf above the rod for storage. I also designed a narrow-width unit to act as a shoe closet; another narrow-width unit houses my purses and our luggage, each piece of which is nested consequetively within eachother.

Because Alpay prefers to fold his clothes rather than to hang them, I designed his closet to have lots of shallow pull-out shelves, including one with dividers for his socks and another for his ties and belts. I liked the effect so much, I installed dividers for my accessories as well. 

When I got my system in 2005, pull-out hampers were also available, and so I installed his-and-her hampers.  Bathroom storage runs short in our condo, so I added deep drawers with dividers in the master closet to store supplies.  I even designed two of the double-wide pull-out shelves in my study to act as our tool-box.