I’m finally wrapping up this mini-series on Home Organization in the Real World, which I could have titled: “The-Best-I Can-Do Home Organization in the, Crazy, Busy and Messy World of a Family Like Mine.”

Frankly, I was getting bored with the whole series and as I learned from the experts at a Social Media conference I recently attended: if I’m bored with my blog, then you’re bored with my blog. (A shout out to Pittsburgh Podcamp4 organizers and campers: great weekend!)

With that said, here are my favorite tips (most stolen from actual home organization experts and put to use in my home.)

• Decorative boxes are a great way to store all kinds of things. Not only do they provide containers to organize loose items, they can serve a functional purpose in your space. I use the boxes pictured above in my living room to store stationery and my kids’ violin stuff. Since they’re stacked against my couch, they create a little side table for a cup of coffee.  I have stacked decorative boxes in many rooms of my home. (Just don’t peek inside, not everything is organized.)

• Dedicated Hooks help to preserve my sanity. I realize I have hooks all over my house: over doors, inside closets, behind walls, etc. and they each serve a specific “hanging” function: car keys, robes, swim goggles, my husband’s favorite baseball cap, my daughter’s school necktie that she needs to wear every Friday with her uniform. When easy-to-lose items have their own hook (home) everyone can find them (even husbands.)

Shelves with boxes, dedicated to specific/like items, I find are the best tools in the war on clutter. Linen closets, kids rooms, home offices, and pantries are the perfect spaces to use boxes like the ones in the photo, left. (Okay, these beauties are a little over-the-top-perfect but you get the idea.) If you also invest in a label-maker that lets you create sticky labels for your storage boxes, files, etc. well, then there’s no stopping you in your quest for organization.

• Floors are for furniture, home accessories, plants and carpets, only. I have discovered that once I start stacking clutter of any kind on the floor, it will stay there for days and then eventually adopt the space on the floor as its home. Bad move in terms of organization. I realize if the only place I have to store something is on the floor, then it’s time to scale down…

• Scale down with “Purge Days.” Devote a Saturday (Spring and Fall are great seasons for Purge Days) to going through the house and clearing out closets, drawers, pantries, toy boxes, kitchen cabinets, etc.  Do you really need six lasagna pans?  Get the whole family involved. Make piles for Donate, Sell/Craigslist and Toss. Then breathe. It feels good.

So there ya have it. My brain purge of big-bang-for-the-buck Home Organization tips.

Now my mind feels a bit less cluttered and I’m ready to blog about something else.  Please stop back.

Love Your Home,
Sue

Beautiful Dining Room by designer, Elizabeta Skorucak.

This Home Organization blog entry is not as much a tip as it is a question: “Does this happen to any one else?”

The Dining Room table. It’s just sitting there, empty, rarely used for “dining” and just begging to serve as a dumping place for all things paper: halfway completed school projects, Girl Scout administrative forms, library books due to go back and of course, mail (the overflow pile.)  Remember, this series is Home Organization in the REAL world — that’s my real world.

So, do you find this to be true:  As the dining room table goes, so goes the rest of the house?  Once it gets to the point where I see more paper than wood, somehow the rest of my home follows suit. It’s psychological I guess. Maybe it’s because my dining room is visible from much of the first floor and seeing it cluttered just puts a damper on my organizational spirit. In the same vein, a tidy table gives me a boost.

Anywho, if you can find a tip of some sort in this blog entry, that’s great. But I’d love to hear from you: let me know if you experience the same weird connection between the dining room table and the rest of your house.

Me, I’m going to clear away this week’s mess from my dining room table, which is pictured above…just kidding.

Love Your Home,
Sue

I’m envious of  this nice mudroom.  Photo from HGTV.

If moms ruled the world, the largest room in every home would be the mudroom.  Mudrooms and home organization go hand-in-hand. Those of you who already have a mudroom or mudspace (it doesn’t have to be a separate room) are saying to yourselves “Well, duh” because you know the importance this space has in maintaining your sanity.

Busy families come with lots of gear (coats, hoodies, TKD bags, soccer stuff, book bags, etc.)  A thoughtfully designed mudroom: (1) stores gear close to the family entrance so it doesn’t find its way to cluttering up the rest of the house; (2) makes it easy to find things as you’re trying to leave the house with your busy family; and (3) adds real value to your home.

Of course, not all homes were built with a mudroom.  My house didn’t have one, so I converted half of my laundry room to mudspace. I know a family who installed simple hooks just inside the door for coats but built an elaborate mudroom of lockers in their garage for all their “kid gear”: brilliant!

If you’re thinking about creating a mudroom/mudspace, here are some tips from the home organization experts (and a couple from little ol’ me:)

• assign each family member a set of hooks or an individual locker if you have the space
• think about the number of hooks you will need, then double it
• coat hangers on rods are not as practical as hooks; all family members (even husbands) know how to put things on a hook
• make sure your kids can reach their hooks
• include a sitting place or bench for putting on/taking off shoes
• if possible, include low drawers for loose items like gloves, hats, flip flops, slippers, etc.
• allow for open space on the floor to tuck away boots and shoes (see the photo above)
• build upper storage for seasonal stuff like beach towels, stadium seat cushions, bike helmets, snow gear, etc.
• if you have upper storage, make sure you have a sturdy place to stand (like on the shoe bench) so you can reach it
• mudrooms also are a great place for mail sort areas, calendars, key hooks, phone chargers “stations,” cork boards, white boards; basically they can serve as your “command central.”

If you’re in the process of building a home, think about designing a mudroom that not only is the first room the family enters but that also has a door to the backyard so kids (and pets) coming in and out can get to coats and shoes easily. (I wish my mudroom had this feature.)

So there’s my mudroom speech.  If you have more mudroom tips (I bet you do), please share!

Love Your Home,
Sue

Sorry it’s taken so long to blog, I’ve been buried under my mail pile.

The organization gurus say: “When you bring in the mail, immediately take a few minutes to sort through it, shred what you don’t need and sort the rest into organized, mail slots labeled things like: Bills to Pay, Get-Back-To, RSVP, etc.”

Yeah, yeah, that all sounds lovely.

In my world, I’m walking in the house with three kids, two heavy backpacks and the mail in my mouth to discover that the dog has gotten into the garbage. Then my four-year-old announces, “MOM, I NEED TO GO ON THE POTTY — NOW!!”   I spit out the mail onto my kitchen island and assist her in her “duty.”  Then snacks and homework all around.  Followed by the process of getting ready for Tae Kwon Do, which involves me trying to figure out (for the millionth time) how to tie that darn dobok belt.  Some time, the next day, I repeat the process.

After a few days of this, I’ve got a full-fledged mail pile.

Even though I have taken every measure possible to pay bills and receive statements electronically, the mail just keeps a’comin.

My number one organization tip: don’t stress out about it. If looking at the increasing mountain of mail bothers you, get yourself a decorative storage box that matches your kitchen decor, place it where the pile is, and hide the pile away. (Just don’t forget about it and then discover they’ve turned off your electricity.)

When you get a breather, open that lovely box and attack its contents. Use the gurus’ advice of going through the pile knowing that it will take more than a few minutes. I’ve found, even though I’m dealing with a bigger pile, the same principles apply:

• have in place physical mail slots or bins for sorting that are close to your bill paying area
• have a shredder close by (they say you should really shred anything with your address on it; it’s a pain but worth the peace of mind)
• have all your bill-paying accoutrements in one place: stamps, your favorite pen, envelopes, return address labels, etc.
• have a Post-Proceesing File System: a file cabinet close to your kitchen or home office (wherever you tackle the bills) so you can file the remaining paperwork that you can’t toss right away.  If it’s an attractive cabinet like this one pictured, it can be out on display. If it’s ugly like mine, hide it in a closet.

Bottomline: Having a mail pile doesn’t make us unorganized; it simply means we’ve got a real life to deal with. Put a few a physical elements in place that work for your space, and get to it on your own time.

Love Your Home,
Sue

Photos from HGTV

We all know them. People with perfect closets of labeled storage boxes and matching hangers.  People with pantries that look like the shelves in a gourmet food boutique (see annoying pantry photo above.) People who always have on hand a fresh supply of batteries, sorted in little compartments by size of course.

You know who I’m talking about…the uber-organized.

As much as I admire them, I’m simply not one of them.

In my world there are three kids under the age of 12, and a husband who is, and I’m being kind, the opposite of a neat-freak.  Being married with children has turned me into a hard-core realist.  Clutter, laundry on the kitchen table, unfinished decorating projects and numerous chaotic spaces co-exist with a few peaceful, organized, tidy spaces in my home on a daily basis.

Does the woman who owns the closet in this photo have another closet where she hides the rest of her clothes? The clothes that aren’t beige? Seriously.

That being said, I do believe we all deserve a home where the disarray does not stress us out to the point where we look forward to leaving it each day. I guess I’ve developed my own form of Home Organization called: I-Live-in-the-Real-World Organization. To that end, over the years I’ve read the tons of articles and picked the brains of my most amazingly uber-organized friends: Marla, Laurie Ann, Heather, Jill and Valerie.  From that, I’ve selected a few strategies that seem to give me the biggest bang for my buck when it comes to Home Organization.

So in the spirit of Fall nesting (i.e., that feeling of “Yeah, the kids are back in school, wow, my house got trashed over the summer,”) I’ve decided to provide my most favorite Home Organization tips over the course of my next several blog entries.

So please check back and feel free to provide your own tips in the comments. I’d love the advice of other I-Live-in-the-Real-World organizers like me.

Love Your Home,
Sue