Organizing Home Tips

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

We all know having an organized home allows us to spend more time doing the things we want to do. For me it is more time to quilt, for others it may be gardening, exercising, cooking, working on a hobby, or spending more time with family. So how do we go about getting our family organized?

Remember the movie ‘Field of Dreams’? Build it and they will come. It is the same scenario with organizing. Begin by organizing drawers, cupboards, rooms, closets; have designated places for everything–where they will live and sure enough those things will find their way back to their homes. Family members actually like it better when they know where things belong. Label drawers or shelves to make it easier to put things back and to find them later.

Share the responsibilities in the home with everyone. Write out a simple contract with each family member and have them sign it. This gets their commitment and chances are greater that they will follow through with tasks assigned. Put the contracts along with the assigned task in a binder that is labeled and placed on a shelf were everyone can reach it. I don’t like to call them chores because just the name sounds like drudgery.

Keep tasks appropriate to age and capability. Start young teaching organization. Two year olds and even younger can start putting a book on a shelf or a toy in the toy box. By starting young it makes it much easier as it becomes a way of life for them to be organized.

I remember picking raspberries when I was a child. My mother was picking on the other side of the row. It was hot and tiring picking one or two berries at a time and placing them in my bucket tied around my waist. Once in awhile my mom would reach through the row and put a hand full of berries in my bucket. Wow, it was such a great feeling seeing my bucket getting fuller faster that it made me get back to work and work all the faster.

Show children exactly how to do the assigned task. Work along with them until they know what is expected. Once in awhile chip in and help them after they are able to do it on their own. This is a great boost to them and they will reciprocate by helping you stay organized or doing one of your tasks.

Charts are wonderful tools to inspire children and show them not only what needs to be done but they show their progress. Rotate assignments on a weekly basis. There are many charts that can be purchased to chart their progress. Or use a dry erase board; make one out of paper using stickers when a job is completed, or use a magnetic board. Point out what a good job they are doing and how good it feels to be organized.

Make organizing fun, It doesn’t have to be a chore. Make organizing interesting, get everyone’s input and ideas on the best way to do things and use their ideas so they feel a sense of pride and ownership about the way things are done.

Notice where a family member is already organized and build on that strength by praising them. We are all good at doing some thing. By focusing on the positive and encouraging them to become organized, strengths will come out in other areas too without nagging or getting angry.

Motivating family members may be challenging at first, but it is rewarding when you see them putting things away where they belong and it takes much of the frustration out of what could be daily hassles. Not to mention all the time it saves.

About The Author

Marilyn is a creative organizer who has been organizing for over 20 years. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers.She holds a bachelors degree in Social Work. She has reared five daughters and currently lives in Utah.

Go to her website http://www.marilynbohn.com where you can find free organizing tips and interesting blogs and helpful articles on organizing.

Technorati Profile

Back to school can be a stressful time of year. Families must change from the laid-back summer schedule to the non-stop school and activity calendars that keep moms jumping from one activity to the next without a moment’s rest. Fortunately, today there is help.

GO MOM !NC, a leader in products to help you organize your busy life, provides its latest advice to keep Moms organized as they get their families back-to-school this fall. “Across the nation, busy parents are focused on easing their children into the new school year,” states Molly Gold, founder of GO MOM !NC. “My role as a Family Scheduling Expert is to help Moms focus on how they can better organize themselves to be ready for all that change and be mindful of how their own workload will evolve alongside of their family.”

Want the cliff notes on how you can get organized for Fall 2006? Take a look below:

• Plan Ahead – The only way you can command your time is to consciously map it. Simply put, use a family-oriented planner that enables you to track all family members’ schedules in one place. When you monitor your family schedule, you can then plan how and when to accomplish important back-to-school tasks, such as replacing clothes, purchasing school supplies, and attending back-to-school night. Stock your kids’ homework stations with pencil and paper basics while purchasing classroom items. Take it one step further by creating an emergency project box full of grade appropriate tools that will hold the night before anxiety at bay. Visit Target stores for an ample supply of poster board, report folders, markers, glue sticks, and an assortment of interesting arts and crafts items in small quantities to allow your child’s creativity to shine, one project at a time.

• Plan for Paper – Before you start stacking all those important school papers in a long forgotten corner of your kitchen, or on top of last month’s bills, put your paper trail in place beginning with in/out boxes for each family member. Show everyone where to place their papers and then sort them daily with your planner at hand to note important deadlines and tasks. When setting up your own filing system, check out the new GO MOM!® School Organizer. With monthly pockets for everything from school-related projects and fundraisers, to teacher newsletters and activities rosters, you can’t help but be ready for the first round of parent/teacher conferences at the end of first quarter. If it’s your house that keeps you buried, you’ll find the GO MOM!® Home Organizer to be equally as effective in helping you categorize and sort the most important papers as you manage your family’s busy days.

• Plan to Purge – We all do better with a clean, organized environment. If you haven’t yet gone through everyone’s closets, dressers, and bedrooms while evaluating wardrobes for school, do it as soon as you have your routine in motion. Make room for the year ahead by rounding up all outgrown items, discarding everything that can’t be repaired, both in the toy and clothing departments. For items in good condition, arrange for a charitable donation or enlist your kids’ help and plan a yard sale in late September. Take advantage of your clean slate and give each room a quick cleaning with an all-purpose cleaner like Mr. Clean Extra Power Multi-Surface Cleaner for even the toughest jobs. From scrubbing baseboards to replacing air filters, flipping mattresses and cleaning windows, Fall is a great time to freshen your home and welcome the change of seasons. And for Moms of older kids, enlist their helping hands as you plow through this process. Respect and responsibility for both our possessions and environment are life skills worth teaching.

GO MOM !NC is based in Apex, NC and promotes the use of The GO MOM!® Organizer and GO MOM!® Planner, unique day planner systems for everything that is family. Founder Molly Gold is a 40-year-old mother of three and the creator of the GO MOM!® product line, which will grow this September to include The GO MOM!® Wall Organizer, The GO MOM!® School Organizer, and The GO MOM!® Home Organizer. All products in the GO MOM!® line are produced via license partnership with Mead Westvaco Consumer and Office Products and sold at major retailers nationwide, including Target, Staples, and Office Max.

GO MOM !NC helps mothers make positive mothering a daily reality within the structure GO MOM!® Schedule. Organize. Grow.® Gold is known for her keen insights into Family Scheduling and has been featured both in print and on air media alike and is currently available for media interviews.

Attention busy Moms! The time is now to get both you and your kids organized for an exciting and successful school year ahead. To learn more about how you can stay ahead of the game, go to http://www.gomominc.com.
About The Author

Molly Gold currently serves on Proctor & Gamble’s Mr. Clean Team Expert Panel, Cartoon Network’s Tickle U Advisory Board, and as Family Scheduling Expert at both http://www.BlueSuitMom.com, and http://www.NewBaby.com. Her work has been featured in Parents and Parenting Magazines, Better Homes and Gardens, The Washington Post, ABC’s Good Morning America, and most recently NBC’s Today Show Weekend Edition. Contact her today at http://www.gomominc.com or via publicist Diana Ennen at diana@virtualwordpublishing.com, (954) 971-4025.