Organize Your Schedule

When I was pregnant with my first child I was very nervous. I really did not have much experience with babies and there was so much stuff to know. Fortunately I had my mom close to me and talked to her on a daily basis. We were talking about baby bottles and feeding. I was getting so confused on how to feed, when to feed, how much to feed, and everything else associated with feeding. It was then that I admitted I was scared. Scared of messing up which I feared would then hurt my baby.

My mom was so good. She reassured me over and over and said what I was feeling was normal and she went through it too. She told me that everything I would need to know would come to me naturally. However I did remember one piece of advice she did give me. She told me "the best thing you can do is get organized." Now I was already a fairly neat and organized person anyway. But I still took the advice and realized that in order to keep my life in order I was going to have to ramp up the organization skills.

And that's how my organizing obsession started.

I have been with children for 17 years and I am still honing my skills to this day. I am always trying to think of ways to better organize my home, my life, my day to day activities. After all, with 4 kids things can quickly get out of hand if you are not on top of them constantly.

One of the areas that I have found that has been the most difficult to keep organized is my personal and job schedule. I cannot let that get away from me because if I do, things quickly spiral out of control. I forget appointments and key activities, meals get missed, and I start to lose things.

Over the years I have used many types of calendars and lists to keep my whole life straight and have finally created one that has stuck with me over the past year.

You can access it here.

It's really simple to use and I think it covers just about everything I need to do and remember over the next week. I usually fill it right as the weekend starts for the upcoming week. It takes a few minutes for me to bring up my work calendar and home calendar. Everything I need to remember and every place I need to be is right here to remind me.

Paper Clutter

I don't know about you but a ton of mail and paperwork always flows through my house. If I don't have a system set up to handle it all, I can quickly become buried. But I am not perfect and sometimes have found myself buried. It is then that I reinforce my current systems and clean out.

The key to being free of paper clutter is to address it as soon as it enters the door of your home. For me that would be in the form of mail, kids backpacks, and email. Yes, email is a new form of paper clutter without being physical paper.

Here are a few ways I have set myself up to be as proactive as possible with this issue.

Mail

Sort through the mail over the garbage can.
Throw any junk mail away immediately. Shred if necessary.
Open up all bills and put them in the bill pile.
Throw the catalogs away (you can usually find them online).
Magazines that you truly want to read go into the read pile.
All other paperwork that you keep should be filed in an filing cabinet.

If there is not a place to put your particular piece of mail that you don't want to discard then find a place for it. The key to paper organization is finding a place to appropriately house your paper materials. The other key is knowing what you need to throw out.

Kids paperwork

I have four kids so I can quickly collect artwork, schoolwork, and other general paperwork from the school. I have set up a system to handle all of this paper that is fairly quick and simple.

I keep a folder for each child for artwork and schoolwork that I want to keep. This folder goes into the same filing cabinet as all of my other house papers. It's easy to keep it all in one spot. The easier the better. However the downside is that these folders can fill up quickly. To combat this, I purge these folders every so often. I have found that I tend to keep many of the papers that my child brings home from school but when I go back to look at these papers a certain time later I tend to discard more easily. The long term keepers are kept in a permanent airtight container that I keep in the attic for memory keeping.

To recap:

1. Papers come home from school. Some is kept and some is discarded.
2. Kept papers are filed in the child's folder in the filing cabinet.
3. After a few months, the folder is reviewed. More papers are purged.
4. The kept papers get moved to a permanent container in the attic.


Email

It's almost everyone's personal experience that email can quickly get out of control if you don't set up a system to handle it as it comes in.

This is why I really love email programs such as Microsoft Outlook. Outlook (and other similar programs) is great for many reasons. One of those is the ease with which one can create and save emails to various folders and subfolders. Create logical folders so that your emails can be stored and retrieved easily. As soon as you get an email that needs to be filed, file it!

I love Outlook because I can create a "rule". Rules are good because you can have an action taken on an email right before it hits your inbox. You can have that email filed, deleted, or something else automatically for you. This is good if you get repetitive emails.

Unsubscribe to lists you don't want to be on. This happens to me all of the time when I register for something and you give them your email address. Almost all of the time (unless you uncheck those default boxes) you will get placed on someone's email list for all kinds of ads and promotions. Most of them allow you to unsubscribe. Take the time to do this up front will help you on the back end.

Taking care of your paper clutter is about setting up systems that work and addressing the paper right away.

Find Lost Treasure

I have been bugging my teen boys for weeks (months) to clean out their room. It wasn't until I was at the end of my rope that I realized that they have absolutely no interest whatsoever in cleaning out their room. And when they started telling me that I needed to buy them more black socks because they no longer had any did I decide to take over their room. I couldn't imagine where all of their black socks had gone. I took matters into my own hands.

I went in their room with a mission to find the 20 pairs of black socks that I knew lurked in there. I also was going to find shorts that they told me they no longer have as well. After all, clothes don't just walk away.

My approach was fairly straightforward and would work in just about any bedroom. I worked on the closet first and then moved to the bed area and then the TV area. Closet was the biggest challenge because kids notoriously do not organize or purge their clothes. I am sure there are exceptions but at least this rule is alive in my house. I start by pulling all of the clothes out of the closet. We make a few piles: one to give away, one to keep, and one to pass down to their youngest brother. The boys were a part of the process and as I held up the item we decided which pile it goes into. The decisions have to be quick and kids usually know which of their clothes no longer fit or is no longer in style. We went through the belts, shoes, and baskets. Every keeper got hung back up on the rod in an organized fashion grouped by type (shirts, pants, tshirts, etc). To my kids' surprise the baskets which contained shorts and t-shirts were crammed with shorts that still had the tags on and ended up buried at the bottom. What we also found were several pairs of black socks. I struggled to contain myself so as not to relish in what I knew all along (that the socks and shorts didn't just walk away).

When the closet was finished I moved on to the drawers under their beds. This is where they keep their underwear, pjs, and socks (which they say they no longer have any of). What I found hidden beneath the underwear were more socks! We sorted through these drawers and paired up all the socks, folded up all the underwear and threw everything out that no longer fit or was wearable.

While I was at the bed area I decided to take a look under the bed. I figured that surely I would find treasure there and I was not disappointed. More socks!

We moved on to their end table that they somehow has become a total junk drawer. I emptied the whole thing out much to their horror. The whining tone didn't sway me. We were not going to do a partial purge. Everything was emptied out of that drawer onto the floor. We went through old papers, candy wrappers, and overall junk that just needed to be trashed. I did find a few surprises that came from that drawer..money and gift cards that totalled $75 in value.

Only essential items were put back into the end table drawer and on that happy note we were finished with the purge. Lost treasure totalled $75 + the cost of black socks and striped shorts. Overall the mission was a success.

Car Organization

I am pretty anal retentive about organization in my car. There is a good reason why I am like this. The main reason is that once upon a time I used my vehicle for business purposes and would often find myself driving other coworkers or even my boss around in my car during work. I never wanted to embarrass myself in front of my peers or managers by having a filthy car. Hence my ongoing habits about keeping my car clean stemmed mostly from that.

And I think that's a good thing. But it certainly is not easy always carrying 4 kids around. They do have a tendency to drop things, leave their toys or games on the floor, or just leave the car in general disarray.

But I have discovered a few tricks that I do all of the time that help to combat these issues.

1. Keep a small garbage bag in the car at all times. I found a neat one similar to this one
and hang it around the neck of the front seat headrest. The kids know that any and all garbage goes in here. I empty it whenever I get gas.

2. Keep a small towel under the seat of the car or in the trunk. You never know when you will have a spill or a sick child. The towel can be pulled out for easy cleanup!

3. I always keep a small box of wipes in the car for reasons similar to #2. If there are any spills and you need something wet to clean up then these are perfect. Your kids might need to wipe their hands for some reason. The wipes are great for this.

4. Keep a stash of quarters in the glove box. I religiously vacuum my car at the gas station using one of those mega-powered vacuum cleaners. They are great for crumbs or for the clay that my sons drag in during baseball season. Your car will always look great when you give it a routine vacuum and you will feel visually peaceful not to have to look at cluttered floors and seats.

5. Clean out the surface clutter in your car every time you go home. When my husband was driving and we would pull up to our house, he would always say "I will get my stuff later" and he would then never do it. Eventually after days, it would look like a pigpen with papers and junk everywhere. I finally got him into the habit of not procrastinating and that means taking your stuff with you from the car to the house as soon as you arrive home. Try to stick to that habit and you will see how much better your car looks because of it.

6. I keep a first aid kit in the trunk of the car. It's like insurance. Hopefully you will never need to use it but in case you do, you will be not be sorry you did it.

A lot of these ideas are not difficult or costly to implement but the benefits are so tremendous. You will soon find that your car is no longer a junk pile and will no longer be embarrassed to have people riding in it.

Being Organized Does Not Mean Perfect

I am organized, yes it is true. But I am not perfect in any way shape or form. I know this for a fact as well. I don't pretend to be perfect but I do strive to be as organized as possible. It's a balance act because I have four kids and it is impossible to be clean, organized, and orderly every minute of the day.

To me, though, being organized is not being totally clean, totally decluttered and totally organized. After all, it's unrealistic to expect a 4 year old to never drop a cheerio on the floor or never spill his milk. It's unrealistic to expect two teenage boys to keep their rooms neat. It's the furthest thing from their minds and I am too busy keeping the house running to spend a lot of time trying to get them to comply with my organizational ideas.

For me organization is a state of mind. It's about me forming habits and systems in my home, car, and life that help me to get through my day a bit easier. It's about not wasting time looking for items that should be easily found. It's about filing important paperwork in an orderly fashion so that if I need to find an insurance paper or pay stub or tax return I don't have to waste precious hours looking for them. That's what organization means to me. As a consequence of the many hours I have worked toward having an organized life my home is generally neat and clean, not perfect though.

If you walked throughout my house today you would see clothes on the floor in my teens room. You would find too many stuffed animals on my daughter's bed. You would find about 50 hot wheels cars thrown about in my 4 year old's room. You would find a handful of old magazines in the basket of my bathroom (my husband reads those what can I say?). So indeed there is always room for improvement. But what you will also find is an attic where every box is in place and labeled for easy view. You will find a key rack inside the laundry room where my keys are always hung. Since hanging this key hook I have never lost my keys. Not once! What a huge time saver that one was. You will also find that my bed is made EVERY morning and there are NO dirty dishes in the sink. Those are two very important "non-negotiables" for me that help to provide visual peace when I walk about the house.

Organizing yourself and your life is not a one day project or even a one week project. It's a way of life. It's a way to plan and create habits within your life that work for you and that help to create some free time to do the fun things that we like to do. Isn't that what all of us are looking for?

Birthday Organization

I have a pretty good memory when it comes to birthdays so remembering them wasn't my problem. My problem was keeping them on my radar so that I would send a card or gift in time for the person's birthday. With my busy life it gets more and more difficult to keep things stored in my brain...things I have to remember. Forgetting is becoming more and more common.

I have been forced to turn to technology to help me remember many of these important dates. So for birthdays and other important dates I turn to my favorite program of all - Microsoft Outlook.

I love Outlook. It has every function I need all in one program. I can read, sort, delete and folder email all right there with one drag and drop. I can set up my calendar there and there are so many user friendly tools that go along with the calendar. I can set up a birthday on the calendar and have it recur year after year. I can set up a reminder so that Outlook reminds me weeks in advance of the birthday. I can color code the appointments so that I can glance the calendar weekly view and quickly see what is happening for the week...doctor appointments are colored in yellow, kids activities are colored in green, school activities are colored in blue, and so on and so forth.

I can also create a task list in Outlook. I love this feature because I can create a task and then assign it a start and end date. Outlook stores these tasks and I can view them on a side bar. When the task becomes overdue it turns red. This is a great function for keeping all of your more important tasks in order and stored.

I know there are probably more functions within Outlook. I cannot imagine it getting better than it is. I know that every program has its critics. Not everyone is sure to think it is perfect. But for my use I happen to love it. And I am sure to not miss a birthday ever again.

What do you use to keep your appointments straight? I would love to know. Send me a comment.

Easy Email Organization

There must be hundreds of blogs and articles that have been written on how to organize your email. They tell you to go to your inbox and create folders and then when you get an email put that email in the appropriate inbox just as you would a sheet of paper in a file folder. Ok....I get that. I think we all get that. But there are many other ways to be organized with your email.

Personally, I love Microsoft Outlook as my email manager for many many reasons. First of all, I love that I can sync the calendar with my el-cheapo Nokia cell phone. Just use the download cord and away it goes.

But the calendar is for another day. Today I am relishing in my emails and how glorious it is to always have a clean inbox.

One thing about my email that can quickly get out of hand is the junk email. I get so much of it because I shop and do many activities online and each time you have to create a username you must give an email address. I try to remember to uncheck all of those boxes that ask you if you want to receive information or promotions but I am sure I don't get it all. I make a concentrated effort when I get a junk email to go to the bottom of the email and unsubscribe to the list. It takes a few extra clicks but once you take this first few steps you can usually get rid of the junk right away.


The next tool in Outlook that I like to use is the Rule Tool. For me this works out great for my work email. You can have certain emails automatically circumventing your inbox and filed in pre-determined folders like your "to be read" or "action needed" folder. You can go crazy with this feature.

To get to your Rule Tool simply click on Tools and follow the instructions.



You can choose from many different options such as moving certain emails to folders. You can have emails sent directly to your deleted folder. You can have an alert sent to your mobile device when an email comes to your inbox. Play around in this tab and see all of the things you can do.




In addition to using rules you can also control your junk mail by using another tool that is found by going to the Tools tab and clicking on Options.









You can manage your junk email very nicely from this folder. You can designate safe email senders and senders that should be blocked.

Do you use Outlook to manage your electronic mail account? If not what do you use?

No More Rush Days

I am always thinking of ways to help simplify my already chaotic and busy lifestyle. Earlier this year I was growing particularly frustrated by so many days where I would come home from work without having had one thought of what would be made for dinner that night. Needless to say just starting to think about dinner at 6pm was way too late for me, unless I was from a European country where everyone eats dinner at midnight.

So I started brainstorming and trying to come up with better ways to plan out my day. I thought of planning the night before which was still way too late for me because I usually would need something for the next day's meal. I backed up even further and started thinking about how to plan a week in advance. I created a list for each day of the next week and what my plan would be for dinner. Once I did that and got the habit going, I expanded on the list and started adding food items I would need to keep the weekly menu plan. I started to include a column for my kids and personal activities I had to plan for throughout the week.

I came up with a great worksheet that I now create on Saturday for the upcoming week ahead. I address the meals I am going to prepare and that allows me to identify my grocery list for Sunday grocery shopping. I incorporate my work calendar and personal calendar into my activities column. I also add in any other things that may affect the weekly plan. When I am finished with this worksheet I put it up on my refrigerator for the whole family to see. No more guessing what's for dinner. It's all planned out ahead of time. Of course there will always be those days where things don't always go to plan but at least I have minimized those days by trying to forsee what's up and coming.

I have attached a copy of my worksheet.

Weekly Planner

Feel free to download it and tell me if it works for you. Today just might be the end of rush days for you.

Purge Now

It's getting very close to Christmas and there will be new gifts coming. I use these types of holidays to prompt me to go into the closets and drawers with garbage bags in hand to purge everything. And I mean everything! Old papers, clothes that no longer are fit to wear, old shoes, toys, and books. Anything and everything.

It's up to you if you want your kids to participate. I usually don't let mine mainly because if I left it up to them they wouldn't approve of anything being purged and it would be a battle I would not want to fight.

I do my purging when the kids are out of the house or asleep at night. When it comes to toys I don't get rid of stuff that I know they love and play with. It's usually the toys and books they no longer look at and probably would never miss it if I gave it away. The same holds true with clothes though those are easier to explain away because clothes get old and kids outgrow them.

Have fun with your purging and clearing your clutter. It will be a great feeling in the end.

Organizing Your Kids

It's a subject I have been thinking about for some time now. As my teen boys grow into adulthood I am beginning to help them with some of those life skills that will be necessary once they leave the house and go off on their own. Organization is one of them but it's a struggle. It's hard enough to get them to study and do their homework. But I keep pressing on hoping that something will rub off on them and when they do get to college they will at least take a small bit of organizing knowledge with them.

So how do you teach them? For me, it's all about making organization easy and fun. For example, my oldest son could never get his clothes into the hamper. But by chance I took him to Target one day and there were some nifty cool hampers there. He wanted one but when I pointed out that I wasn't going to waste money on something that was not going to get use. He assured me that was not going to be the case. I gave in and bought it for him and I have found that he does use it. Problem solved. One down and only 200 more to go. LOL

As for the other teen organizational problems my intent it to blog about it in a series entitled "Teen Organization". I hope to be able to provide many different suggestions on how to keep your teens organized from my own experiences as well as other people's experiences.

How do you get your kids to be organized? Leave a comment if you have any kind of ideas.

My Perfect Pantry

So excited! My pantry is featured this week here.

Check it out and also check out my other organizing blog in general. I would love to have you as a reader.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Declutter A Space

Do you look at a space that needs to be decluttered and wonder where to start? You just look at the space and scratch your head in disgust and then put it off for another day? It’s easy to get into this kind of situation especially if you let the decluttering process overwhelm you. But I have found that the most effective approach to decluttering is similar to dieting. If your goals are too extreme and seemingly impossible you will never get to the goal. You need to make your goals simple and small and do-able.

Let’s use the kitchen as an example. The entire kitchen needs to be decluttered including the cabinets, drawers, refrigerator, and pantry. Instead of trying to tackle all of those areas, concentrate on the drawers first. After you are done, you can either stop or move to the next area. It all depends on your comfort level. Try to remember that the clutter didn’t happen overnight so it won’t be overnight that it will all get cleaned up. It takes some time and patience but the rewards are really wonderful.

So let’s take the drawer example. Like any decluttering or organizing job, the first thing you need to do is completely empty the contents of the area you are organizing. In this case, you should completely empty the drawer (s). You will then need to start going through your items and setting up two small piles, one for trash and one for keep. You might be asking how you know which pile to put the item in. While I plan to write a future post on this, a good general rule of thumb is that if you have not used the item in the last 6 months, chances are you will never use it. Throw it out. If it doesn’t work such as old batteries, dried up pens, or anything that has not worked in a long time throw it out.

Now take the pile of saved items and start returning them to the drawer. To be really super organized, I put drawer organizers in each of my drawers whether the drawer is for silverware or forpens/pencils/batteries. You can buy those at any local hardware or Target store for a reasonable price.

Put the items back in the drawers in a logical fashion. Pens go together. Batteries go together, knives go together. The key to organizing is to make things simpler and easier to get to and get around so that you don’t waste a lot of time sifting through drawers and searching through piles looking for that one item that is “around here somewhere”.

Organizing Tip For Today

Everywhere I go there is always something that pops into my head that I must remember whether it is remembering to pick up milk on the way home from work, mail a special letter, send someone an important email, RSVP a party, etc etc. When you have kids the list is endless. I don't carry a PDA so instead I carry around a small notepad in my purse to document just those things that pop into my head at a moments notice. When I get home I then transfer the activities to my Outlook calendar as reminders. I have found that this is such a timesaver and it helps me not to forget some important reminders going on in the day.

Saving Money On Groceries

All of us are always looking for ways to knock a few bucks off of our grocery bills. The grocery game promises you just that. It's so easy and fun and you even get a trial month to figure out if you want to continue. The weekly savings alone pays for the monthly fee many times over. The methods used are tried and true but you have to try it to believe it.

Because of the lists and message boards on this site that have taught me so much on how to save I have cut my grocery bill down from $200 a week to $100 a week for a family of 6. And I don't sacrifice quality of food. I am still able to get quality meat, good fish, fruits, and vegetables.

I hope you try it and comment back to me and let me know how you did.

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Tuesday Tips on Vehicle Organization

Most of us are so busy that we probably don't think much about organizing our vehicles. They just end up messy too quickly so it's always feels like a wasted effort. But if you are organized in your vehicle, you will create a sense of peace and tranquility on the road. I have a few tips that I have learned along the way that help me out tremendously.

1. Keep things in their proper place - actually this is Organizing 101 but always an effective tip to remember. It is true for your car also. We tend to let so much stuff from the house wander into the car like food, containers, toys, games, sporting equipment. My rule is that anything that is in the car needs to have a purposeful function on that specific trip or else the item goes back to where it belongs.

2. Keep a trash bag in the car. I have a great handy trash bag that clips on the headrest and hangs in the middle row of seats in my van. It is perfect. It's not too big or too small and holds all of the trash that we accumulate between gas fill-ups. Remember to empty it at each trip to the gas station and make it a habit for everyone in the car to use it. You will be amazed at how less trashy your floors look. Here is a link to this trash bag pictured below.


3. If you have small children always keep a ziploc bag tucked in your seat pockets with an emergency pair of shorts, underwear and shirt. If you have potty trainers you will undoubtedly fall upon those times where there are potty accidents. Be prepared with a change of clothes just in case.

4. Always keep a small travel size container of wipes. This is a must. You will always have the occasional spill or mud or some kind of accident that needs to be cleaned with a wet nap. The travel sizes are perfect for this kind of application.

5. Carry a towel at all times. You never know if you need it. I have found that a towel comes in handy on days when it rains, if you happen to have a sick child, or any other mishap that might happen inside or outside the car. Keep the towel tucked away either under the seat or in the trunk.

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Organizational Tips for Getting Your Kids Ready in the Morning

Organizational Tips for Getting Your Kids Ready in the Morning

I have four kids ranging from 16 years old to 3 years old and over the years I have developed an efficient working plan that will get my kids out of bed, fed, dressed and out of the house in just under 30 minutes. My plan also leaves me feeling less stressed and ready to start my workday.

Preparation and organization cannot be expressed enough when it comes to organizing especially if you have kids. Most of my preparation comes the night before and it really does pay off.

Laying Out Clothes

Every child in my house lays out his or her clothes before they go to bed. This includes sock and shoes and they are all put in a central location near their beds. My younger kids aren't concerned with getting a morning shower so they are expected to get dressed immediately upon waking and making their bed. Even if the older ones take a morning shower, they are to lay out their clothes as well so that they don't search for any missing items during the course of the morning. This is a huge timesaver and eliminates unnecessary waste of time by having to look for socks, shoes, belts, etc. Laying out clothes is not only for my kids. I also do this for myself including shoes and jewelry which saves me from standing in my closet and wasting time trying to figure out what to wear.

Preparing morning breakfast the night before

This might sound very strange but it really does work. My kids eat cereal and drink milk for breakfast so this one is pretty easy to implement and since my kids like to make their own breakfast, this one is a big help to me. Before I go to sleep the night before I put out the cereal boxes, bowls, spoons, and cups in the kitchen where they make the breakfast. When they awake in the morning the only thing I need to take out is the milk while they are already preparing the cereal bowls. (I don't pour the cereal in the bowls the night before so I don't attract bugs). I never thought this would be a huge timesaver but I have been doing it now for several months and it works out really well. It also is a big help to the little ones who want to pour their own cereal. They don't have to search in the kitchen for bowls, cereal boxes, and spoons. As a motivation to have them do it themselves, I give them a sticker on the mornings that they do this task.

Backpacks near the door

I have installed several hooks on my laundry room wall. This is the first room that we walk into through the garage when we come home from school. As soon as my kids walk in the door, they hang their backpacks on those hooks where they remain until the next morning when we leave. I implemented this a few years ago when I would waste countless minutes looking and searching for backpacks. I thought that it might be best to have them hanging in a location that was easy for them to reach. Incidentally this is where I hang my car keys and purse so I never have to search for them either. This is a definite timesaver.

Shower the night before

I totally understand that there are people who need to shower in the morning. I am not one of those people and do just fine showering and drying my hair right before I go to bed. This is the biggest timesaver for myself. I used to think that if I did that I would have to spend more time trying to fix my hair the next morning. However that turned out to be a false concern because even though my hair is a mess when I wake up, it is nothing that a spritz of water and blowdrier cannot fix. All that I need to do is wash my face, put on my makeup, spruce up my hair, put on my clothes, jewelry, and shoes that I laid out, and help my kids with the milk for their cereal.

If you are looking for any help in the morning, I suggest you try one or all of these tips. I think you will find that a little bit of preparation the night before will be a big help in how you start the next day.