Changes in Attitude...

Do you HAVE TO use an area in your home for the purpose it was designed?  If you don't ever have formal dinners in your dining room, could you morph that room into something you could use every day - an office, playroom, craft room, or homework nook?  Does it have to remain a formal dining room because the realtor, your floor plan, or a relative told you that is what the room was designed to be?

Eight years ago when I moved into my current home, I had a little baby and I was starting a new business.  I needed to be in the main part of the house and didn’t need much space, so our 1980’s wet bar was my office and my little guy’s art area.  Soon his art materials and our home schooling adventures took over my office space in the wet bar.  And my organizing business was growing to the point of me needing more than a work surface and a single cabinet.  The wet bar became an art/school area.  My office moved to (and has taken over- Hallelujah!) the spare bedroom. 

(Photo of our art/school supplies circa 2009- organized, containerized, and labeled)

Fast forward a few years and we are no longer home schooling.  The homework area has expanded to a small table in the corner of the dining room, the couch, or the computer desk – depending on kiddo’s mood and type of homework.  In turn, the wetbar, which stores art supplies and games, has really become a catch all for all sorts of – well – detritus. 

What’s an organizing Mama to do?

Find out next time!

It is time for you to get organized, manage your time, and set up systems in your home and office.  You deserve better efficiency and harmony. Shoot me an email at juliebavi@gmail.com, stalk me on twitter@juliebavi, and show me some Facebook love https://www.facebook.com/OrganizeWithJulie.  

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An exciting Announcement!

 

Hello organizing friends!  We've been doing some end of summer traveling this month.  School starts in our district tomorrow.  Can you believe it!?!

I have something new in the works for organizewithjulie!  I think you are going to be very excited to hear this news! Many of you have expressed to me that you want to set up a Home Hub or that you just don't know what to do with all of the paper work that infiltrates your home.  No worries!  Coming to Jacksonville, FL in the month of September, I am offering a FREE workshop to help us all Conquer the Paper Chaos! 

You will be able to see what a Home Hub is like in real life action. You will learn how to set up a Custom Home Hub Notebook System… and it is easy!

This is the perfect time of year to figure out: how to schedule your week, how to plan your meals, what to do with all the incoming school papers and the mail. You can get your bills paid on time. You will be able to return calls in a timely manner. Your home life will become less chaotic. This system is designed to give you everything you need at your finger tips.

With school just starting, the paper work you are about to receive will seem endless. This is my proven survival technique.

The Dates are:

Monday Sept 15, 5:30pm - 7

OR

Tuesday Sept 16, 10 am - 11:30am.

The seminar is totally FREE. If you choose to buy notebooks or supplies at the seminar, those materials will be extra.

Send an e-mail to juliebavi@gmail.com or leave a comment here to let me know that you are interested.

Spring is here!

I hope you have enjoyed spending time in your office this week. Isn’t it great to find a place for everything? I find it so calming and refreshing when office supplies, computer disks, and paperwork are all in order. If the RAFTS system is helping you, great! If it is not, let me know and we can work together to find a filing solution that does work for you. Helpful hint: Some people file by category. Some people file by month. You are your own person. Do what works best for you as an individual.

This week brings us the start of Spring! And Spring brings us egg hunts, the possibility of warmer weather, new wardrobe items, spring cleaning, and gardening. I have certainly caught the Spring Cleaning Bug myself. I have been re-organizing and re-ordering all around the house. The kitchen pantry, my baking cabinet, the office I share with a three-year-old superhero -- No cupboard is safe!

Hey, wardrobe and spring cleaning! That gives me an idea! Take a look at your closet this week. Are all of your clothes current? By current I mean the right size and style for your current body. How about the closets of your children? The average walk-in closet takes one person approximately FIVE HOURS to empty, sort and purge. Do you have it within you this week? I guess we know where I will be!

REMINDER: If you haven’t done so already, pick up items for Easter Baskets! Of course, edibles and things that will really get used are my favorite things to reduce clutter. You only have a few days left to shop before the Bunny arrives!

Now it’s time to take 15 minutes and.... do some REAL cleaning! This week I do not have a “Clutter Sweep” task for you. This is REAL cleaning. I know; it isn’t my favorite thing to do either. BUT… Spring is here! Let the sunshine in! Set your timer for 15 minutes and start cleaning your windows and sills! You have too many to do all at once? That’s ok. Do a little each day until they are all done!

Paperwork, paperwork, and a little note on vacay planning

March sure is a long month! In honor of March feeling so long, I have written an exceptionally long blog this week. Don’t get used to it. I say that tongue-in-cheek, as many of you know I am a woman of few words.

You have voted and we are done in the kitchen. (For you, Bekah, we will do a "pantry revisited" segment soon.) I am getting lots of questions lately regarding paperwork, so let’s start there. I do have a feeling this is leading us back into the office. Paperwork is a challenging area. It is not something you can get rid of because there is a constant influx (shopping fliers, newspapers, magazines, school papers, mail).

Newspapers, Magazines, Catalogs and the like can be sent to the recycle bin as soon as they have outlived their usefulness. Let me stress that NEWS papers are meant to inform you of CURRENT events. (Can you see where this is going?) If it isn’t current, it is no longer news. Magazines also have a shelf life – usually monthly or quarterly. Catalogs and sales fliers are replaced by their next installment as well. However, if you do not plan to order anything from a particular catalog (or shop using the aforementioned flier) it can go out immediately. If you never plan to order from said catalog, call the 800 number on the back page to discontinue it. That was easy enough. Let’s move on to something harder like…

School papers. You all know of the precious artwork, genius academics, notes home, event calendars, and endless bureaucratic paperwork. What do you do with it all? Child creations: Each day/week that creations come home, place them in a special box to sort through later. If it is especially important to display some artwork immediately give it a place of honor -- like a special frame or a special spot on the fridge for ONE week. When the box gets full (ideally monthly), it is time to go through and sort. Keep only the most special pieces. You choose one and have your child choose one for each month. Any artwork that is extra special can be saved in a binder portfolio. If there are pieces you would like to remember, but are not necessarily attached to take a picture and store it digitally, add it to the portfolio of other artwork, or make a special scrap book.

I saved the best for last. Mail. This is my never ending nemesis. For sorting any paperwork, I like to use the RAFTS system. It is especially helpful for sorting mail. Mail will fall into one of these five categories: Read, Act, File, Trash, Shred (RAFTS). How do you decide? For simplicity of explanation, let’s work backwards.

Shred: Things that have personal information and account numbers need to be shredded before they are discarded. Credit card offers also fall into this category. Beware the glue and the plastic fake cards.

Trash: Ah, the junk mail. Advertisements of no interest, sales fliers for places you do not shop, coupon books, etc. this is the essence of junk mail. (Hint: If you never use your *Handy Shopper, go ahead and toss it when it comes in.) Junk mail, is by definition, junk. Please just throw it away. *Name changed for obvious reasons. You get the idea, right?

File: This is not yet the “Bills to Pay” category. These are things you need a record of, but do not need to do anything to - like insurance and bank statements.

Act: Things that you need to act upon. This is your “to do” group. Bills to pay, things to add to your calendar, calls to make, and correspondence to return - fall into this Act Category.

Read: Things that you need to read. Catalogs you enjoy, letters, cards, magazines - this one was rather self explanatory, wasn't it?

Two more options for limiting excess mail:

Many of the credit card applications not have an opt out 800 number listed at the end of the offer. It pays to give them a call.

Thanks to Aby Garvey of Simplify 101, I have stumbled upon a new service, www.proquo.com, for limiting junk mail. I signed up this past week, but do not know yet how well it is working. Please enjoy this excerpt from Aby’s latest newsletter posted here:

Reduce paper waste. According to sources at www.proquo.com , Americans receive more than four million tons of junk mail a year! As an organizer, I have to wonder how much of that junk mail is still piled high on the counters of America, wreaking unrest and overwhelm in the hearts of homeowners everywhere.

The formula here is simple: less paperwork coming into our homes, means less paperwork to deal with and organize. Plus, you'll help reduce the million tons of junk mail landing in mailboxes, and ultimately landfills, each and every year.

But how to do it? There are services available such as www.greendimes.com which charge a fee to have your name removed from mailing lists. I also recently learned of a new website www.proquo.com that is a free service designed to reduce unwanted direct mail by removing your name from mailing lists. In some instances they take care of it for you (with a simple click of a button) and in other cases, they make the process super simple by giving you a pdf to print, fill out and mail in to remove yourself from the list.

By the way, I removed this tip for the flow of the newsletter because I haven't tried and tested one of these services yet. I just signed up for an account on www.proquo.com this week and found the process to be super simple. At this early stage, I can't vouch for the effectiveness of the process. But, with over 100 million trees being used for junk mail every year in the U.S. alone, I wanted to include this topic in this green organizing newsletter.

If you have participated in a service to remove your name from marketing mailing lists, please tell me about it on my blog. I'll summarize your findings, the findings of others, and report on my own experience in a future newsletter or blog post. Thanks so much!

Aby Garvey is a professional organizer and the founder of simplify 101, inc. Her mission is to help you create time and space for what matters most in your home and life. Aby is the author of the e-book "the happy scrapper - simple solutions to get organized and get scrapping!" Visit the simplify 101 website for organizing ideas and to subscribe to Aby's organizing email newsletter.

Share with me this week:

What is your biggest paperwork challenge?

Let’s take 15 minutes and…. Talk about summer vacation. Yes, I understand it is not yet the first day of Spring. Summer hot spots will be filling up sooner than you can say “Pass the sunscreen.” so get your reservations made now. At least get those you will be vacationing with talking about: who, what, where, when and how of traveling. Who is going? (Is the pet going to be included?) What do you want to do for your vacay? Where do you wish to travel? What dates work for everyone involved? How do you plan to get there (plane, train, automobile, cruise ship)?

This is my personal one. Who? Just the 3 of us. What? Fishing and other outdoorsy stuff, possibly a festival, shopping. Where? Mountain Cabin. When? The date is now set. How? The wheels on the car go around and around.

It's Kitchen Week!!!

Let’s mix things up a bit and start with the now famous

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF REAL CLEANING.

Set your timer for fifteen minutes because it’s time to… Tackle that plastic ware. That right folks, find the lids that match the containers. Find the containers that match the lids. Throw out the ones that are broken or have no mate. If you can’t freeze AND microwave in it - consider discarding it, donating it, or replacing it. If it is a take-out type container consider whether it is really serving a worthwhile purpose for you. (I say pitch it!) By keeping the few things that you do use and donating the unused you will free up an amazing amount of space in your kitchen.

Personally, I have fallen in love with the new Rubbermaid line with easy find lids. http://www.rubbermaid.com/rubbermaid/product/category.jhtml?cat=HPCat280013

Oh, and the produce savers (which live in the fridge) really are working great! http://www.rubbermaid.com/rubbermaid/product/category.jhtml?cat=HPCat280019

I get nothing for promoting those. I just like to share with you products that make life easier.

Since we’re already talking about the kitchen… Look at your counter tops. Are there appliances sitting out that are rarely used? The toaster that is used once a month. The waffle iron that only gets hot on special occasions. The coffee pot used only when company is in town. These are items that are robbing you of clear space in your kitchen and calm in your life. I just realized that my toaster was out creating counter clutter in my kitchen. It has been months since my son has had his beloved (yet sadly, milk-laden) toaster waffles… so why was this contraption still in my way? No reason other than it had just been overlooked.

I am by no means saying that if you use your toaster and coffee pot daily you should move them in and out of a cabinet/pantry for each use. Heaven forbid I deprive any one of their daily caffeine fix! But take the time to put lesser used items away. No cabinet space you say? How about the pantry, nearby closet, or laundry room shelf? Now we’ve got those wheels turning!

There has been a lot of buzz about office organization and about paperwork issues coming from you guys as of late. Should we continue in the kitchen next week or move on to the office?