Spring Organizing / Cleaning

Hello 2News Viewers! Welcome.  Here is the link to the television appearance this afternoon! http://www.kutv.com/news/features/guests/stories/vid_1286.shtml


 Here are more detailed descriptions of each tip I talked about today on the show. Happy Organizing!

 

 

Purge Your Medicine Cabinet of Expired Medicines: Throw away any empty containers or items you no longer use.  If you have unused or expired medications, check the FDA’s recommendations for how to dispose of them properly.  Their guidelines include specific directives, including following disposal instructions on the drug label and taking advantage of community drug take-back programs.

• Go through your medications to ensure you purge items that have expired. 
• Make sure you are storing your medications at the recommended temperature.
• Keep your medications up high and locked away if you have small children in the house.
• Store all your first aid supplies (band aids, gauze, ointments, etc.) in the same location as your medicines so you don't need to search in multiple places for something you need.
• Dispose of expired prescriptions: Take advantage of community drug take-back programs that allow the public to bring unused drugs to a central location for proper disposal. Call your city or county government's household trash and recycling service (see blue pages in phone book) to see if a take-back program is available in your community.
• Choose a storage system that will work for your space and that makes the best use of the space you've chosen.  
• The SUPER CUTE Chore chart I used was from the blog; Just Sweet and Simple.

 

Establish a Family Cleaning Routine or Tweak it: Spring is great time to establish or tweak your daily and weekly chores so when summer hits, your kids will have a set schedule as to what needs to be taken care of everyday. Make a chore list for yourself as well.

If you already have a cleaning schedule, now is the time to make the necessary changes so that the schedule fits your families’ lifestyle. Tweaking here and there is a must.

 

Purge your Freezer: Pull everything out of the freezer, check expiration dates and throw away products past their prime. Store the keepers in a cooler while you work.

Start fresh, stay fresh. Defrost your freezer and wipe it down, inside and out, with a cleaning solution.

•             ORGANIZE FOR EASY ACCESS

Put items, such as meat and sides, you use frequently, on their own shelves

•             SAVE SPACE WITH BAGS

Nearly all frozen food—meat, fruit, vegetables, soups, sauces—can be stored in a freezer bag.

•             MARK THE DATE

Because frozen food is often unrecognizable, label and date the containers and bags with a black permanent marker

•             ROTATE REGULARLY

Quarterly Document Shred:   Tax time is a great time to shred documents you no longer need to keep. Destroy all sensitive information including junk mail and paperwork that includes:

• Account numbers
• Birth dates
• Passwords and PINs
• Signatures
• Social Security numbers

To protect your privacy, you should also consider shredding items that include:

• Names
• Addresses
• Phone numbers
• E-mail addresses

 

Fall / Winter Organizing Tips

Welcome 2 News This Morning Viewers! Thanks for stopping by!  Click here for organizing segment this morning.

  Here is the expanded article as promised!

 Organize your car for the winter months:  Winter is the most important time to keep your car clutter free, when bulky coats make cars seem cramped. Empty trash from your car on a regular basis. Keeping your car free from clutter ensures that your passengers have as much space as possible.

·         Cold weather brings snow, ice and freezing conditions which can mean emergencies. If you have a cell phone charger in your car, be sure that's it's accessible at all times, so you'll be able to call for help if you get stuck.

·         Cold weather supplies. There are several items you should keep in your car during the winter months. These include:

o   Salt or de-icer,

o   Gravel for traction,

o   Small shovel,

o   Window scraper.

o   Spare pair of gloves

o   Chemical hand warmers

o   Small first aid kit

o   Water Bottles

o   Energy or Granola Bars

o   Sleeping Bag or warm blanket

·         Remember to Service Your Car for Winter: Be sure to get oil change, engine check, tire check, and radiator fill up. If your car is running smoothly, you'll be much more likely to get where you need to go.

In the winter, a properly organized, well-running car is more important than ever. Make sure your car is clean, properly supplied, and serviced before the cold weather gets here, and you won't have to worry. Breakdowns in the winter can ruin your day and slow you down. Avoiding them and being able to deal with them if they happen is just one more part of having an organized life.

Organize the Garage: After the busy warmer months, your garage is ready to be geared up for the winter months. During the summer weather, your garage becomes a dumping ground for many things. Garden tools and supplies, sports equipment and bikes are left laying around taking up room. Consider the following:

·         Your garage should be considered as a utility area, not storage.

·         Keep only what you need for the winter months out in the garage

·         Map it out. If you have sports equipment for kids, try to keep all the seasonal sports equipment in one area, etc.

·         Create as much floor space as possible. Garage floors get wet more from snow, ice and rain than any other season. Water on top of oil stains creates slippery floors.

·         Make sure the snow shovels, chains, rock salt, and battery cables are easily assessable.

·         Create zones for items like windshield wash, motor oil and ice spray.  As cold as it is, you’ll want to be able to get to these items in a hurry.

Clear out summer items from the Mudroom: Of any place that gets the most abuse in the winter it’s the Mudroom and Laundry room.  Clear out the area from the summer months of sandy flip flops, sandals and such and make way for muddy snow and rain boots, coats and other winter gear. Stay organized in less time with storage ideas for everything, scarves, hats & gloves.

A high functioning mudroom or mudroom areahas bins, baskets, cubbies, hooks, and a reachable area for each person of your family. And everything, I mean everything is LABELED!

Some essentials for the winter in a mud room are:

·         A Boot Tray: Got muddy boots? The easiest way to contain the wet, muddy mess from winter boots is with a boot tray. You can find them in stainless steel, copper or plastic. Make sure to place the boot tray close to the door to prevent too much tracking of mud into the room.

·         A bin or bins (depending on your space): gloves, mittens, hats & scarves.  

Create a place for everything by using storage bins with open tops that are easy to access. A bin for each family member works well for some families, or you can store items by category — mittens and gloves in one, hats and scarves in another. 

Super Tip! Choose bins that are easy to clean, or you can use traditional baskets with washable liners

•     A sturdy rug or two in a darker color: Choose a rug (or rugs) that are intended to stand up to water and dirt, not just a pretty indoor rug from the discount store.
•   Hooks: With all of the coats your family and friends will be shedding as they enter your home, make sure you have enough hooks for everyone. Hang coat hooks over an area that will drain well, since wet coats will drip as they dry.

Establish a Fall Routine: Fall is the second busiest season and one of the most common problems standing between you and an organized home is the ability to establish a routine. Think about your daily routine and then plan out ways to maximize your time and accomplish your chores efficiently. 

There’s a good chance your fall schedule will be busier than your summer schedule, so start off on the right foot by finding a good family calendar or personal planner to record all those important events, meeting, and activities. It could be an electronic calendar that you access via your phone or a simple wall calendar in your kitchen. The important thing is that you keep ALL the information in one place.

   

Re-organize your Closets: Fall is a great time to de-clutter closets – From clothing to medicine cabinets; you’ll want to discard items that no longer fit and switch things out from summer clothing. With the change of seasons, you may also need to change out your wardrobe and your children will most likely need a few new items for school that you missed during the back-to-school shopping rush. Plus, with the holiday season right around the corner, now is a great time to purge some of your old things to make room for new holiday outfits and gifts.

  

By planning ahead beforehand and organizing a few important areas of your home and life, you can make a smooth transition into the hectic fall months.

Hello Friends! Yes, I am still alive! What, you ask, have I been doing the last 10 or so months I've not blogged on my beloved organizing website??  I went from one child (who was the only child for 9+ years) to FOUR children in a very short 28 days!!  So my life, by definition is C.R.A.Z.Y!

Here's a picture of our cuties.

I am still teaching classes, speaking, on television, and doing seminars, but for now, the only hands-on organizing going on is at MY house! I have learned much and hope to share what I have learned with you here and there.

Thanks for following me!

5 Home Organizing Tips for the New Year (As seen on 2News this Morning)

Welcome once again 2 News This Morning Viewers! Great to have you stop by.  Here are the tips from this morning. Click on the link below to watch the segment. http://connect2utah.com/libraries/nxd/media/?data=media_player&v=377527

Calendar it: Get a new calendar and transfer over all birthdays, anniversaries and other important events. Don’t forget to add appointments that you have already scheduled for this year. Color-code each event by category using highlighters in different colors so that you can see what’s coming up at a glance. Purchase a calendar wall hanger and hang up your calendar for daily viewing.

Make a File, Shred a Pile: Start getting your files and records in order. Make a list of what you need to do to update or revamp your filing system. Don’t forget to purge what you don’t need and move other documents, like taxes to long-term storage. Now is a great time to filter through the bills and receipts of the past year and shred them to make room for new records.

Make a List and Check It Twice: Make a Christmas card mailing list. Put each name and address into Word’s label feature (under tools, letters/mailings, envelopes/labels) so that next year you can save time by printing out address labels.

 Delegate:  Assign different cleaning and organizing tasks to family members or roommates (or even for yourself), so there is a little goal every day to keep the home clean.

 

Make organization part of your life: Do a little every day. Don’t save all of the cleaning for one monumental spring cleaning spree in early April. Schedule a time for organizing in your daily routine, such as after the kids get home from school. Just 10 minutes a day can make that disorganized home seem “so last year. The slow and steady win the organizing race.

Thanks for stop us by and come back often!

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time, Tip 6; 3 Common Space Invaders

Tip 6: Banish the Space Invaders. What do I mean by this?? Common things that tend to clog up your closets, rooms, etc. Here are 3 of the worst:

1. Clothes
The clothes you wear on a day-to-day basis come from a mere 20 percent of the clothes in your closet. 80 percent of those clothes are just taking up space and never worn. Time to pair down and only keep what clothing fits and what you feel good in.

2. Small Appliances
Bread machines, juicers, all purpose mixers and other small appliances are great tools--if you use them on a regular basis. If you can’t remember the last time you used them or you have not used them in more than a year, it’s time to free up your counter space for new creations.

3. Junk Mail
Form a habit of not even letting the junkmail enter into your home. Go from the mailbox to the garbage can for any junkmail that does not have any personal account numbers on the paperwork. Create a Shred pile for those docs and shred regularly. Want to minimize junkmail? Head to www.the_dma.org and www.catalogchoice.org to be removed from their listings.

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time; Tip 5: Organizing your plastic containers

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Day 5 of "Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time" Day 5: Organize and Pair Down your Plastic Containers. Those pesky plastic food storage containers! Who isn’t guilty of accumulating far more than they actually ever use? Here are a few tips to keep this monster at bay:

• Save the one’s you use the most and that have a good lid that fits on the container.
• Discard the Rest. Unless you have a definite use for them or  you have a way to re-purpose or recycle the them, it’s time to say goodbye.. Throw away discolored or otherwise damaged containers that have missing lids.
• Invest. If you have a mismatch of containers that don’t stack well, consider investing in a set. Buy just a few sizes small, medium, large, so that all of your containers take up the smallest amount of space in your cabinet.
• Contain the Containers. Organize the containers by size on an assigned shelf. Use an inexpensive Ice Chest container or small dish rack to hold lids or store them upright by size. 

  I LOVE comments!  Share with our readers your solution for this pesky problem! Happy Monday!

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time; Tip 4 Create an Organizing Tool Kit

In this fast pace world we all need little "tools"to help us along the way. This Organizing Tool kit is one of them. Find a cute tote or basket to keep your items in and add or subtract according to your needs. You'll be amazed how handy this kit will be!   

 Everything You Need to Organize Your Toolkit

• Sticky notes and markers: As you sort items, label the groups for daily use, often, seldom, and never. Daily-use things should get prime storage real estate, while never-use things should go out the door. 
• Grocery sacks and trash bags: Use them to sort and discard items.
• Pen and paper: Jot down to-dos, products you need to buy, and organizing ideas you may have along the way.
• Tape measure: Determine what your storage needs are. After you declutter, measure the amount of available space you are left with in order to get the correct-sized bins and storage receptacles.
• Label maker: Choose a simple and portable model to label bins and storage spaces — so you can know exactly what's inside. 

 

  Hope your New Years Celebration is a good one! CHEERS!

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time; DeCluttering your Herbs and spices

Day 3 of a new series that will go into the new year entitled “Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time”. 

TIP 3: Filter through your cooking spices and herbs. 

Most dried spices maintain their freshness for one to three years. If you cannot remember when you bought it or the contents are starting to clump up, it's a safe bet to discard the spice. Now is a great time take inventory of what you have and what you need so you don't waste money on duplicates. 

And lastly, get out your hose vacuum, suck up any excess spice spillage, clean off each bottle and clean the cabinet it is stored in. How much time will it take to complete this task? It depends on how many spices you have. The average person should be done with the entire task in 30 minutes.

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time” Day 2: Organizing and disgarding Cosmetics

Day 2 of a new series that will go into the new year entitled “Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time”. 

TIP 2: Organize and Discard your Cosmetics. Filter through your makeup. Here are the shelf life guidelines for cosmetics:

MASCARA:Every two to three months to be safe because of the bacteria that builds on the brush.

FOUNDATION: If opened 6 to 12 months. Unopened 2-3 years. 

CONCEALER: Concealers in powder and stick form can last for up to two years, while liquids should be tossed after one.

FACE POWDER:16 months max

BLUSH: Cream blush, 6 months Powder blush 16 months.

EYE SHADOW:3 months- too much bacteria builds if you keep it longer than that and you risk nasty eye infections. 

EYELINER:Both liquid and pencil, every 3 months. 

LIPSTICK AND LIP GLOSS: About a year

NAIL POLISH: 2 years (otherwise it dries out and gets clumpy).

TOOLS: If cleaned and stored properly, good brushes can last for years, but when the bristles start to fray or fall out, it's time for a new set. Give them a thorough cleaning every two weeks with a gentle hair shampoo. The best way to store them is propped upright in a glass, where they can air out and won't be squashed and deformed. Cheap makeup sponges should be replaced after two uses—one side, then the other.

I also wipe down all my makeup with disinfectant every 3 months to keep the bacteria down. This task should take less than an hour to complete from start to finish. Enjoy!

Tiny little tips to de-clutter and organize your house in record time; DeCluttering the Medicine Cabinet

Greetings Everyone! 

I hope each of you are having a fantastic Holiday Season. 

Today is day 1 of a new series that will go into the new year entitled “Tiny little tips to de-lcutter and organize your house in record time”. 

TIP 1: Clean out your medicine cabinet. Filter through OTC medicines and discard any that have expired. Remove empty boxes and empty tubes. Dispose of expired Prescription Drugs in the proper receptical. Many cities have a prescription waste disposal drop off location. Ours is at the police station. Average time for completing this task??? 30 minutes. Good Luck!

Hosting Thanksgiving this year or another Holiday Party? Use our Party Checklist and you won't forget a thing!

Double Click on image to enlarge and Print!

Here is the second article from LDS Living Magazine Entitiled: LDS professional organizer featured in A&E’s ‘Hoarders’

Linda Isom, a professional organizer in Utah, recently showed her stuff (while getting rid of others' stuff) on the popular A&E show Hoarders.

 


Scaling cliffs and avoiding feral animals are sometimes exciting when in the great outdoors. But what if those cliffs are actually piles of stuff you have to scale just to enter your home? And those figurative feral animals are harder to avoid since your family member brings them into the house by the dozens? And though you have a bed somewhere in the house, finding it is more difficult than finding shelter in the wilderness?

In reality, hoarding affects two to four percent of America’s population. Often linked to obsessive-compulsive behavior, hoarding is reaching a point where professionals are considering distinguishing it as a separate disorder that should have its own diagnosis and treatment.

With the numbers on the rise, this new disorder has also captured the fancy of TV viewers across the nation in several shows highlighting the homes, habits, and compulsions of these people. A&E’s show Hoarders has been nominated for a 2011 Emmy in Outstanding Reality Programming. In this year’s new season, the crew has turned to an LDS woman, Utah native and professional organizer Linda Isom, who was featured in the show Monday, November 14.

Isom was contacted by the “Clutter Expert” Matt Paxton from the show. “I remember saying to my husband, ‘I’ve never worked with an extreme hoarder like they have on the show, but I think I understand the hoarding mindset,” Isom said. After narrowing the field of potential organizers, Paxton let her know she got the gig. “You seemed the most genuine and real and understood the hoarder’s mindset and seemed to legitimately care about people,” he told her.


Isom’s journey to this point was a gradual one. As a child she tried to help make sense of chaos, and as a teenager she would tidy and organize while on a babysitting job. But it wasn’t until she was put on bed rest while pregnant years ago that she realized this was something she could do. “[I] had to bring in someone to take care of my home and my family. . . . When that was over, I decided to organize everything in my home and label it all so if something similar happened like that again, anyone could come in and help.” She then began to take classes and work with other seasoned professionals before venturing out on her own, picking up tips, trying new things, and finding the best way to handle organizing.

But hoarding is often a symptom of something more than just disorganization. Typically, hoarding begins or intensifies when the individual is dealing with stress or some tragedy. “It’s almost always related to a cataclysmic event in their life,” Isom said. “Hoarding is commonly viewed in the medical field as their ‘drug of choice’ and needs to be treated like any other compulsion to truly understand where their mind is. If you think of the person as having a severe mental disorder, you can begin to understand where they are coming from. They’ve created this environment and they have built walls of clutter around themselves and have begun to shut everything and everyone else out.”

The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization has a “Clutter Hoarding Scale,” with someone who is messy falling anywhere between stage one and stage three. The higher the rating (the highest is stage five), the more it affects the person’s relationships and interactions with others. Hoarders deals primarily with stage-five clients. “That’s when hoarding becomes a problem,” said Isom. “When you can’t move from one room to another.”

“My key role was to take care of the aftercare when the show is done,” she said. “[The client has] up to six months of optional aftercare available to them from the show. They have to be the ones to make the effort to continue with the services, and they get the same amount of psychological help for that same amount of time. The show does make efforts to help the people as much as they can. This season they’ve gone in and checked on people from previous seasons to see how they’re doing. If they did not accept the aftercare provided by the show, it is likely they have continued to hoard.”

Dealing with someone who is a hoarder requires more than an ability to throw stuff away and organize. “If you are a family member of a hoarder, you need to first identify if they have emotional issues they are suppressing by buying or collecting things,” said Isom.

Even though attempts to help may start with simply cleaning and purging, that should generally be the last thing you do, Isom said, because a person needs to be internally motivated to change before they will accept help. Like a crash diet, if the person isn’t ready to change their lifestyle, old habits will resurface, causing the accumulation binge to intensify. Individuals should be ready to change and properly participate in therapy to discover the underlying issues of their hoarding first.

“The aid of a professional organizer is a great way to get started,” said Isom. “Often that first initial consultation helping a hoarder is hard, but if they see the benefit with a mountain of positive encouragement, they can find their way out of the behavior and find a much improved way of living.”

Isom’s episode of Hoarders can be viewed online at aetv.com/hoarders.
To read some of Isom’s tips for organizing your home provided especially for LDS Living, click here.

© LDS Living, 2011.