Organizing Home Tips

It depends on how many closets you have the in the house. This is a full day’s work for 6 hours. Closets for the kids, husband, and yourself, linen closets. If you’re like many of us, you probably are going to find many things that don’t belong to the closets. You will not try to organize yet. Just take things out and decide what you’ll do with them.

Start with your own closet and work to your husband’s if he has a separate one and the kids’. Keep in mind, anything you haven’t worn in 2 years need to be donated or tossed out if they’re not in good condition. Many people say donate cloths that you haven’t worn in 1 year. But I think it’s a little harder to toss out the pretty dress that you bought and never worn once. So try the 2 year rule. Put donations in one large garbage bag and thrown out ones in another. Throw out dry cleaner hangers and old plastic hangers. If you haven’t done so, buy some nice wooden or plastic hangers.

Remember, it’s a lot easier to declutter the closet on your own. If you show the clothes to your husband and ask for his opinion. Most likely he’ll like all of them and you end up keeping them all. It’s hard to donate the dress you worn on the first date with your husband. But if you didn’t wear for 15 years and it no longer fits, let it go. Someone can enjoy them as well as you did. The hardest part is to donate the nice piece that you bought on sale and never wore once because it probably isn’t your size. You can always try to sell it on ebay or consignment store. Just put such items in a separate bag.

This is the hard working day. Make sure no kids are around. Try to save 5-6 hours uninterrupted. Start with anything that’s on the floors, tables, and counters. Pick them up room by room. Toss out unwanted items and put them in the garbage bag. Save the ones that you need in the plastic bins. This will take you 2 hours depending on how messy your house is.

Next step, go though your drawers in the kitchen, home office, and bedrooms. Toss out and keep. This will take you the rest of the day. Organize items by bins and mark them using the marker.

The most important part of the day is to clean and declutter. Remember the main reason the house is messy is because you saved too much stuff. So please don’t feel obligated to save. Don’t touch the paperwork such as bank statements, bills yet, just put them in a large plastic bin. You will sort them out later on.

How many of us feel the same way? Our coffee tables are full of books, magazines, paper cups, and everything else. There are socks underneath the beds and we don’t even dare to open the closet doors. If you have been fed up by the mess in your house. It’s time to take action!

Sometimes it’s harder to get started when there seems to be so much stuff to do. But you can do it! You don’t need to hire a professional organizer. That’s true, you can do it all yourself. Just make sure the children are not around and husband is at work. Give yourself 5 uninterrupted hours to clean, sort, dump, and organize. Then do the same the next day, and the next day…

Day one: this is not your cleaning day, but a day of preparation.

• Get yourself half dozen contractor sized garbage bags
• Markers
• 4-6 Plastic bins (large)
• Cleaning supplies
• Shoe organizers if you don’t already have them (plastic or metal)
• Nice hangers
• Storage bags

Always be sure to put things away when you’re done using them. This will allow you to keep better track and better remember where things are and when you last used them. If they sit out for ages and get placed in a drawer somewhere, they do you very little good.

1. Are you left handed? Organise your closet left to right so you can always see what you are taking out. Keeps your closet organised.

2. Put an empty coloured hanger in to separate different kinds of clothes.

3. For left handers – put the shoes you use the most at the left hand end.

4. Never overfill the closet. Store things in colour coded bags. Code by season.

5. For closets with lamps – put a daylight bulb in.

6. Clean it regularly. Taking the clothes out lets you review what you do and do not want in there.

Article by Cheryl Harrell

There may be cash in your clutter. You have heard the phrase “your trash is someone else’s treasure.” A garage sale is one way to put theory into practice. Attentive marketing of your goods by doing an organized set up of your garage sale is the key to receiving the highest prices.

Sort logically
Sort your discards into logical groupings such as toys, books, tools, seasonal decorations. If customers see a haphazard mix of items, they will quickly leave your garage sale. Garage sale aficionados usually have particular items in mind when they shop and do not want to spend time sifting through unrelated stuff.

Display well
Set up tables and clothing racks to display your wares. Shoppers do not like to bend over and pick through items lying on the ground. If you do not have a clothing rack, improvise by placing a pole between two stepladders. Box your books by subject, spine up, so it is easy for customers to flip through them without making a mess of your display. Label the boxes or use large cards to divide groupings of books.

Highlight Special Collections
Display the glass items separately from your books and craft things to make them more attractive and seem special. Perhaps cover the table with a tablecloth. Make sure glassware is clean. People will be more likely to buy and pay more for wares in pristine condition. Have a separate table for holiday items. Make the display festive and group items in calendar order-Valentine’s Day, Easter, 4th of July, Halloween, etc.

Money Matters and Pricing
Use a fanny pack to hold your money. Unfortunately, dishonest people also frequent garage sales and look for opportunities to steal unattended cash. Have plenty of small bills and quarters to make change. You do not want to lose a sale just because you can’t make change. Price book categories consistently-e.g., paperbacks 50 cents, hardbacks $1. Do the same with DVDs. Sell craft items by the bagful. Label and sell the craft bags for a flat rate. Price everything clearly. Customers do not like to search for someone to ask prices.

Expect to Be Insulted
Expect people to give insulting offers for your things. That is the nature of garage sales. Decide on your goal for your garage sale ahead of time: Do you want to make money or get rid of stuff? You usually will get less for items you sell at a garage sale than you would at an online auction. But you also do not have to go through the hassle of listing, taking photos, and shipping items.

Free Attraction
The word “free” is magic. Have a box of free stuff out front with a large FREE sign on it to attract people to your sale. Include toys to keep children occupied while the parents shop.

Plan What Not to Do with the Leftovers
DO NOT bring anything back into the house. The stuff is in the garage sale because it is time to move on. If you do not get reasonable offers for your more expensive items, you may get more for them as a tax write off for a charitable donation than you would if you take a low ball offer. Call for a pick up by a charitable organization.

The keys to a successful garage sale are organization and a realistic attitude. If you set up your merchandise in an attractive way and greet customers with enthusiasm even when they offer you 10 cents for a $2 item, you will be counting cash instead of hauling away clutter at the end of the sale.

© Copyright 2009 Cheryl Harrell all rights reserved worldwide

Cheryl Harrell is a professional organizer for All Sorted Out, LLC. She sees every organizing project as a puzzle to be solved with simple solutions. You may sign up for her monthly organizing tips at her website, http://organizeatlanta.com/.

Article by Jill Borash

Organizing a home office for little or no cash is all about being creative with what you acquire. That means searching for things that you would commonly toss out and thinking of the way you might employ them instead. More free assistance for your home office at http://www.yourhomeisorganized.com/HomeOfficeOrganization.htm

Article by John Lavoie

Article by: Jill Borash

As our economy looks to remain on the falling spiral that it is on, discovering means to preserve cash is invariably on all of our brains. Because of that, it is not really likely that you desire to consider expending cash to get your home office organised. It is less complicated to make due with what you have. But what if organizing your home office did not cost you a dime? How? a little of time and some creative juices is all it takes.

Making supplies for your household office means getting creative about items which you usually conceive as rubble. Before you toss any package, jar or container of any kind, ask yourself how you might use that to aid you make coordinated. A shoebox can form a great inbox for your filing. Sturdy cardboard boxes might be cut and stapled together to make a desktop filer. A baby food jar or any other small jar can be great for holding paper clips and elastic bands. A middle-sized sauce jar might be used to hold pens and pencils. Huge rocks may make tremendous bookends. Look at everything which is in your household and ask yourself how you could employ it to aid you in getting organised.

While making all of these items in your household that were junk to assist you in getting your household office coordinated is great, you are emphatically going to want to trim them up. A set of paint and some stencils or sponges may be a fun method to make them appear pretty and to likewise personalize them with your own original imaginative touch. Some good wrapping paper may as well aid in jazzing them up. Attempt to have fun with it and acquire methods to individualize the things you have discovered for organizing your home office.

But what if you need something huge like a bit of furniture to perfect your house office organisation undertaking? You may be able to get something for free or at the very least quite inexpensive on Craigslist, at a garage sale, or at local thrift shops. You might have to do some hunting down to find what you require but it will certainly be cheaper than purchasing it new. Once more, it pays here to get creative with what you find. You may not find just what you are searching for but seek to think of how you might apply what you do discover.

Article by Carolyn Anderson

Do you always feel that everything in your life seems to move towards failure?

The ancient Chinese art of feng shui is said to attract the positive energies around us that will dramatically improve the way we run our lives. We most often see feng shui being practiced in homes, businesses and offices to obtain harmony, comfort and balance in our lives.

We spend most of our times in our homes and in our offices, thus feng shui focuses on drawing the positive forces of the nature by bringing harmony into these places, which eventually bring you a positive disposition in life. Especially if we often deal with demanding jobs, busy lifestyle and troubles in finances, or you want to change careers or there are changes in the family, or you want to have changes in your goals in life, drawing positive energy through this ancient art may not be a bad idea after all.

The idea of putting the elements in feng shui in organizing your home is to make the things at home in harmony to each other. It may involve the colors and the shades as well as bringing in the elements of feng shui. It is organizing the home that by bringing close attention to the little details and every object in your house and how it will bring harmony between you, and the space you live in These simple changes in the way you put things in your living space may create big differences in your life.

Organizing your home with this ancient art will involve creating more space, selecting colors, and putting enhancements to create harmony and allowing positive flow of energy. It usually includes putting in the elements of feng shui into your home to create attract the positive energy called Qi.

Each element is said to have a positive and destructive effect on our lives and these are well considered if you want to have balance and harmony. Feng shui recognizes these five elements in organizing your home.

1. Water. Water can have both a positive and negative meaning. It may mean good prospects in career or in wealth or it could be poor health.

2. Fire. The fire element means passion and creating happiness and good energy in the home.

3. Wood. The wood element can be used to improve health, a balanced family life, motivation and inspiration.

4. Metal Elements may represent creativity.

5. Earth. The Earth element represents stability and permanence.

These elements of feng shui are also symbolized by different colors. That also makes color selection essential in bringing this ancient practice into your home.

If you think the elements of feng shui may just be what you needed in your life, you can however find good resources or an expert on this ancient art to help you with it. It does not mean getting rid of everything in your home and bringing in all the things that is recommended, but it can help you organize and arrange what you already have or bring color to your living space that will make it a good place for you to imbibe the positive things in life.