Home Organization with Melanie

This coming summer Jake is going to Peru with the youth at our church.  The whole church is excited by the opportunity for these kids and are helping raise money to send them.  One of the fundraisers we just finished was a silent auction where people from the church donated a skill they had.  For instance a couple Chinese families donated an authentic Chinese meal at their home, some teachers donated a couple hours of tutoring, an IT guy offered some IT help in your home and John donated a couple hours of handyman help.  I didn't think I had anything to offer to the auction but then I was asked to donate a couple hours of home organization help.

I suppose I do consider myself organized as a whole but I know what my desk looks like as I write this and can barely get the junk drawer in my kitchen open.  Still, I had gone over to help a friend clear out a space in her basement and she raved to someone else in the church about how helpful I was and so here I am.  All I remember is that I bossed her around and insulted her stuff for a couple hours and it was still a mess when I left to meet Isabelle's bus but apparently when you have too much stuff that is what you are looking for in a helper. :)

Now that my services have been won by someone I have started thinking about my approach to organization and how to tackle the areas she has suggested we work on, the front closet, the back door and the kitchen counter.  Conveniently the most unorganized areas of my home as well so I have put a lot of thought into those areas over the years.

I have no original ideas.  I have been reading and studying organizational books since year one of my marriage and have tried almost everything.  I think the craziest thing I tried was spraying a little pam in the bottom of a couple trash cans to keep things from sticking.  Again, I don't make this stuff up, I read that in a book.  I can still remember the look on my mom's face when I told her about this.  She clearly thought I had gone over the edge.  That was a short lived experiment.  Now I just wash my trash cans once a year...or two, I didn't do it last summer.

Today I thought I would share a few random thoughts that come to mind on organization.  While I might not have ever come up with any of them on my own I do speak from personal experience in each of them.

 Clothes:  I go through my clothes every spring and every fall and put together a pile of clothes for the good will. Since I can only fit seasonal clothes in my closet I do it at the turn over.  While I don't buy a new wardrobe every year I do pick up a few new items each season.  And while some of my older clothes may still be in perfectly good shape or be items that when new were my favorites eventually the new takes over the old and no mater how good it looks or how much I loved it in the past I am never going to wear it again.  Bless someone else.  Remember, just because you own 10 pair of jeans doesn't mean you wear 10 pair of jeans.  The goal is not a full closet.  The goal is an organized closet full of clothes you wear.  If you wear the same 2 shirts on an every other day rotation because they are all that fit you then no matter how full the closet is, you only have 2 shirts.  This how organized your closet would look with only those 2 shirts in it.  And your husband wouldn't be able to say you don't need to go shopping...  Some say if you haven't worn it in 6 months then get rid of it.  I tend to lean more toward a year, I think mostly because I can't afford to shop as much as I want sometimes I am forced to bring an item back to life for a time.  And a specialty item like fancy clothes I will keep for a couple years even if I don't wear them.

Put it Away: A place for everything and everything in its place.  Usually when I have something that is always laying around the house or a pile of papers messing up my desk it is often because they do not have a place.  That pile of crap on your counter, that may be where it actually belongs within your system.  Now that you know the truth you can solve the problem.

Closet Cleaning: OK so you are ready to tackle that closet or basement storage room.  All of the books I have read give the same method, although with their own spin, you need either bags or boxes designated "give away", "throw away", "put away".  The first 2 are obvious.  The third is actually for things you are putting away elsewhere, probably into storage, not back in the closet you are working in.

Getting Rid of Stuff:  When it comes to stuff I am of the opinion that if you aren't going to use it you don't need to keep it.  Be realistic.  That is not to say I don't have storage or that at times you don't need to save stuff but you aren't a museum curator. You really don't need those '80's records left over from your youth.  You aren't going on antique road show in a few years to discover your childhood record collection is now worth $50,000 because you own Michael Jackson's Thriller album.  Let them go.

If you are in your baby years then you probably do need to save your maternity clothes and baby clothes but if your baby is 5 it is time to bless someone else with your baby's wardrobe.  Same with books, toys and equipment.  I have a small box of special stuff from Jake's youth and will do the same for Isabelle in a few years when she tires of all the toys.  I look forward to my grandchildren enjoying them someday and in the mean time they come in handy for young visitors, but I don't run a daycare here.  The rest goes.

As I was going through my girlfriends storage stuff a few weeks ago she had a couple bins of decorative napkins.  Some bought for future use and still in the package but many left over from past parties.  They were beautiful napkins, we share an affinity for such things, but I asked her to be real.  Having been stored for quite some time the edges had begun to curl and she would never put out such beat up napkins for a party.  However, there was no reason not to use them to make her family feel special.  She has several varieties themed for the upcoming holidays and I told her to use them up by the time those holidays were done. (See how bossy I am.)  Another thing that comes to mind that similarly is hard to store are candles.  If you have them, burn them and then get new ones.  They don't last forever.

What are you saving for a special occasion that will never come?  What could you be enjoying now that will just be thrown away by your children after you die?  If you have something you love use it or display it.  Fancy dishes are a big one.  Use them or loose them.  Better to break one enjoying it than have them gather dust and bring no joy.

Have you seen those hoarder shows?  Those people are letting their stuff define them and control their lives.  You are more than your stuff!  Let it go.

Space Management:  When you are working on a space, like the front closet, you need to ask yourself a few questions.  What do I need to use this for?  What do I need?  What problems do I need to solve?  I use my front closet for our family coats but our guests usually hang their coats on hooks by our back door or lay them on the bed so I don't need to have any extra hangers in that closet.  I have a dresser in the entry for mittens and hats so I don't need to store those in the closet but if you want to store them in the closet you need a system, boxes, plastic drawers, shelves, something to put them in.  Don't be afraid to think outside the box.  Jake and I share an office and I was constantly rolling my chair back and running into his backpack which he would toss on the floor behind my chair.  It was annoying but that seemed to be where it belonged.  So I screwed a hook to the wall next to his desk and now it is out of my way.  It isn't a typical location for a coat hook but it is the location I needed it.

Organizational Maintenance:  The work is in maintaining an organized home not getting it organized. The organization is actually the easy part. If you designate a place to put something you have to actually put it there when you are done in order for it to help. And while it seems like so much more work to actually put the item away than to just leave it sitting on the table next to you, it will only take a moment. If you wait til the house is full of stuff to put away it will take all day. (Is that a cleaning or organizational tip? Either way.)


One truth which I am learning applies to all areas of my life is that organization is a process, a journey.  You do not get healthy in a day, become godly in a day, raise children right in a day and you don't get organized in a day, you get organized over a lifetime.  It is an ever changing, ever improving aspect of your life.  Take it one step at a time.

Reclaiming a Room

If you have kids I probably don't have to explain what happened.  I don't have to tell you how busy I am, how tired I am at the end of the day or how quickly it all goes awry.  I don't have to explain to you how this happens to my daughter's bedroom:

But sometimes walking in a room like this can be so overwhelming that you just want to walk right out.  Where do you begin?  I thought I would break down the steps for restoring order.  Not sure the steps for keeping order, that is for another day, another season in my life.  For now lets just figure out how to transform a room that looks like this:

Step one in all my bedroom cleaning tasks, make the bed.  It is big and quickly gives me visual hope I can conquer the task.

Next remove all dirty clothing, put away clean clothing.

I had dedicated a bunch of time to this project so I straightened the drawers too.  I like to stack her shirts on the side so I can see them all.  She is more likely to wear a variety when she can actually see all her choices.

So we are looking a little better:

Next remove large furniture that doesn't go in there and all the videos that accompany it.  Looking even more manageable.  And I added a helper to the project at this point.

Put helper on the shoe detail while you tackle the books.

Once the books are done the hard work begins.  All that is left is the junk.  The little random pieces that you don't know what to do with.  Normally I toss them all into a couple catch all bins on that shelf but the purpose of this project was to organize toys and cull the room of unnecessary toys and junk.  My plan is to put away half the toys so she has a more manageable amount to play with and then switch them when she starts getting board.  I will have to report on the success or failure of that plan in the future.

Today I just organized what was there and packed up some junk I am sneaking away.  A couple hours after starting the project her room looked like this:

(side note:  She has over 20 pairs of shoes.  Where do these things come from?  She has more shoes than I do!)

But then I decided I still had a little energy left and it was time to make one more change to the room.  I removed the rocking chair:

Yes, that is better.  More room to play.

Just don't ask me where I put all the stuff I took out.  And stay away from my office...

Camp Aunt Julia

Last week as Jake was preparing to leave for camp several of my friends with older children had facebook status' that read something like this, "Both girls are at camp and we have a week home alone." "Just dropped the older boys at camp and the youngest is spending a week in Chicago with Grandma and grandpa."

I was feeling a little jealous/left out so I called my Sister-in-law, Julia, and suggested she have camp for Isabelle while Jake was gone and then I could have camp for her kids the following week. Well she was all about it and so I am enjoying 48 hours without Isabelle or Jake.

What to do, what to do???

My first, and main, plan was to get control of the toy situation. I started on Monday and got all the toy sorting done. Tuesday I fine tuned our family room, hung some hooks and finished up that area, organized Isabelle's bedroom with the new set of toys I am leaving in that room and organized all her craft supplies.


Sitting at her Dora table on Monday the day before camp.


I found new places for all my books on the bottom two shelves (4 different random locations throughout the house, will I ever find something again?) and moved her toys down there right at the bottom of the stairs. Good idea or bad idea, we will see.


Those 2 black shelves will be hung next to the bookcase low enough for her to reach but above the weeble castle and hello kitty box. I would normally hang those shelves but the last time they were hung John and I weren't speaking when it was done. Hopefully it will go better this time but I have been asked not to do it.


How cute is that. All set up to play house. Jake will now walk out his bedroom door each morning and immediately lay eyes on Isabelle's kitchen. Is this wrong or just preparation for dorm living?


I didn't want to leave Jake totally out of the decor so I slid a chair, tv and the gaming systems into a corner all his own. He is shopping for his own x-box 360 (we currently have taken over grandma's old x-box) and hopefully this will be an acceptable location to play it. Since Isabelle does have a princess game for the Wii she enjoys I guess it isn't totally his own.

Over the past 4 years I have carefully tried to downplay Isabelle's presence in the lower level for Jake's sake. I have kept things in one corner or stored in another room to just come out to play and then go away again. The problem is she doesn't want to play down there when her kitchen is hidden in a little storage room and she has to haul all the weebles into the family room. So then we had lots of toys in her room but they were just getting dumped out all the time because I didn't have room to store them properly. So now her room is for books, games and dolls and the family room is for everything else. I am sure everything will still end up dumped out at times but hopefully with this new system they can be more quickly sorted and put away...By Isabelle! Hopefully Jake can live with it, if not it will be just another thing he can discuss in counseling someday.

After that I dropped some stuff at goodwill, the church and with John's mom. Then I called John to see if he wanted to meet me for coffee. As we were chatting at Starbuck's we decided to run to Home Depot to pick up some supplies for another project I wanted to do, that led to the realization that it was dinner time which led to the realization that we were on a date which led to us seeing Transformers at the theater. Turns out that movies are matinee price on Tuesday all day. Who knew? We might have to move our regular Thursday date night to Tuesday!

Today I had wanted to paint more of the furniture in the gazebo but by the time the weather was ready for me to work I just wasn't feeling it. I did paint 2 more blue squares in my office, now I just have to get some green paint and complete that project. It may be taking forever but each step is rewarding and when it is done I will really appreciate it.

Here is a shot of the new blue squares. Note Isabelle's organized art supplies under the easel, do not note the other junk on the floor.


What I did end up doing was making some phone calls to the IRS, Health Insurance Company, car Insurance Co and to re-order Checks. I know it doesn't sound like fun but while I did have to work through the phone ques on most of those they all ended up to be very rewarding calls.

I found out from the IRS that we can amend our 2007 taxes and potentially get back a few thousand dollars in taxes that we over paid (very long story full of my own laziness and stupidity). I can't wait for my accountant to return from vacation tomorrow!

And from the health insurance co I found out that the guy I talked to in May about how our travel immunizations would be covered wrongly indicated that we had a $500 wellness coverage which would pay for them. However, even though it turns out to not be true they may cover it anyway. They are going to listen to our conversation to see if he mis-represented or not. I assure you he did. I would feel bad if it wasn't for the fact that in almost 10 years of coverage we have never met our deductible and therefore never had a claim paid. I feel well deserving of $2000 in benefits at this point.

I also discovered that my car insurance won't go up this fall when Jake gets his permit, it goes up with the license.

And I battled wits with the woman I ordered checks from and dodged her fast talking that almost cost me another $20 in unnecessary fraud and identity theft insurance.

I Rock! And what a relief to have finally made all those calls I was avoiding.

John is now at fire training for the next few hours and I am feeling a spa night coming on...