Organizing Archives • Page 14 of 14 • New Nostalgia

HOME/ Homemaking/ Organizing/ Simplifying

De-cluttering Our Study

My study was a MESS! I knew when I could no longer shut the doors of the study closet, that it was time to get busy and do something about it! It tends to be the dumping ground of our home, (what Flylady would call a great big “hot spot“) its located right in the middle of the house, but you can’t see it from the main living areas, so it seems to be the place that collects clutter. I’ve managed (with the help of the Flylady system) to get the rest of my house sorted and de-cluttered, except for a storage closet and some drawers, which I will be doing a before and after blog post of, once I get motivated. Being the last closet, it will be a doozy!
It’s humbling letting you see my mess, but I love before and after pictures, so I’ll swallow my pride and let you see. 🙂
I always start by making sure I have a trash bag for garbage, 2 baskets (one for stuff I want to give away, one for stuff that belongs somewhere else in the house), a duster, and a broom. Oh, and music, of course, music makes everything just a little more fun! Today I de-cluttered to Jordan Sparks, Colbie Calliat, a little Shakira cuz’ she makes me move!! For more details on how to de-clutter, check out this link.

My study is quite small, but the mess was pretty overwhelming, so I divided it into zones. I started with the desk zone, then did bulletin boards, then the bookshelf zone, and finally the closet zone.
It only took me an hour and a half! Going through paper work was what consumed most of the time. Why do I procrastinate so long, when it really does not take that much time to finish? I can’t tell you how great it is to sit here at the desk with everything in its place. It makes me want to tackle more, maybe even paint the study something other than boring beige!

About those baskets full of things to give away and put away, the DO IT NOW method is really important. In the past, I have taken a break with the idea that I deserved one, and had every intention of getting back to the baskets. Well, my “break” lasted months and I still had a bin of stuff sitting in the closet. (if you look closely at my before pics, you will find one in the closet that I sat there after de-cluttering my basement and taking a “break”:)) So this time, I did it right away! The “put away” basket is the worst, I usually just sit on the floor and make a pile for each room, then start delivering stuff back to their homes. This is a great time to get the kids involved, let them do the delivering for you!

HOME/ Homemaking/ Organizing/ Simplifying

Flylady

If you have been around me long enough, you will learn that I am a HUGE Flylady Fan. I found her website at least 8 years ago, and have been using her techniques to take my home from chaos to peace ever since. There have been times in the past where I did everything her site told me to do, (and it worked!!) but honestly, most of the time I just use some of her main points to keep my homemaking and attitude in check. I would like to get back to using the system as a whole, I did that when my girls were babies and toddlers, and it really made a huge difference in my homemaking.

What is Flylady?

Flylady is a group online that offers advice, tips and humor to assist people in keeping their homes tidier, especially for those suffering from “CHAOS” (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome). It is a group centered around Flylady.net and uses an email delivery system, so the “Flylady” can speak to and encourage you through emails. You can set it up to receive numerous email reminders all throughout the day, or there is a setting to receive them all in one lump email at the beginning of the day (this is the one I choose, I don’t like inbox clutter!). Its like having your own little cheerleader as you get your home in order. I know, cheesy, but IT WORKS!!

Subjects covered by Flylady include clutter, routines, weekly cleaning with focus on the zone of the week (five in total), self-esteem, and letting go of perfectionism. It is a free site, but she does have a small store at the website where tools are sold for organization, decluttering and cleaning. I personally love her ostrich feather duster and I use her insulated water bottle every day!

The system encourages “baby steps” to develop routines and habits to organize and maintain your home. She has you declutter and menu plan, she has “anti-procrastination” days, and she teaches to plan ahead by establishing routines. She helps organize personal finances, makes sure you take time to pamper yourself, encourages Friday Night Date Night, Saturday Family Fun Day and Sunday Renew Your Spirit Day.

Below is a great explanation of what the Flylady system consists of from Wikipedia:

Babysteps and Routines

New recruits to Flylady are called “Flybabies” and are introduced to “babysteps” – a series of 31 small daily tasks which introduce and then reinforce aspects of cleaning and decluttering which build into a daily routine, with tasks split into morning routines, after-work routines and bedtime routines.

Shine Your Sink: The first task is “Go shine your sink!” By clearing away the clutter in the sink, scrubbing and shining it, the entire kitchen looks better from such a simple step, and the Flybaby gains encouragement from seeing such a clean and shiny sink and is inspired to help make the rest of the kitchen gleam, too. Flylady asserts that each room has its own “shiny sink”– making the bed in the bedroom and cleaning the desk off in the office will all have the same effect.

15 Minutes at a Time: A crucial part to the Flylady system is that you should only spend 15 minutes doing something, as otherwise you will become bored and get sidetracked. Flylady refers to people who need her system as “SHEs”– “Sidetracked Home Executives” who are perfectionistic and fear beginning to tackle housework because there won’t be enough time to do it all or it won’t be done perfectly. SHEs are in contrast to “born organized” people who are naturally very organized– but even “born organized” people can use Flylady’s system with success. Because of this perfectionism, the SHE cannot ever get started cleaning and the clutter gets worse. By focusing on spending only 15 minutes at a time on cleaning, SHEs learn that a lot can be done in 15 minutes, a task is always quicker and easier than you would imagine it to be, and you do not have to spend all your time cleaning in order to get your home company-ready. Flylady also highly encourages the actual use of a timer to measure the 15-minute increments, to measure them accurately.

Clutter Cannot Be Organized: Another important aspect of Flylady’s system is her attitude towards clutter. She tells her group that if you look at something and it doesn’t make you happy, you should get rid of it. Many people fill their houses with clutter and then try to organize it in some way. Flylady says that clutter cannot be organized, because by its very nature it’s an obstacle. Only when Flybabies reduce their clutter can they expect to be able to organize their household. This is done in Flylady’s system, 15 minutes at a time, through the “27-fling Boogie,” in which a Flybaby goes around an area and chooses 27 things to either throw out or give away. FlyBabies are also encouraged to prevent clutter to enter the home – buying less and buying only what they need.

Weekly Routines: Once Flybabies have learned the basic habits and are able to manage their daily routines, Flylady then advises including weekly routines, whereby each weekday is assigned an additional task – Monday is daily cleaning, Wednesday is errand day, Thursday is grocery day and Friday is “desk day” – sorting out paperwork and finances, as well as the day to declutter the car. One additional day can be a “weekly home blessing.” If a Flybaby has been keeping up with her routines, 15 minutes at a time, during the week, she will only have to spend a small amount of time doing a weekly dusting/cleaning, or a “home blessing.”

Get Dressed to Shoes: Flylady encourages Flybabies to “get dressed to shoes”– getting dressed in street clothes down to lace-up shoes, which help them to get moving during the day and have a better effect on the mind than staying in pajamas. For women it is also important to do their hair and wear make up as this is intended to have a positive effect on their self-esteem.

Zones: Once your home is decluttered and your daily and weekly routines established (which may take months or even years, depending on how cluttered your home is!), Cilley advises “zone work” – each month, the home is split into five zones, and a daily ‘mission’ is set in that week’s zone. Each mission covers more detailed cleaning but should take no more than 15 minutes. Some missions are repeated in subsequent months, so that the missions take less time as there is less clutter and cleaning. As this point, Flylady recommends you tackle detailed zone cleaning, which cover the kinds of tasks you would usually expect of a spring clean – cleaning skirting boards, cleaning windows etc. However, as you should only tackle what you can do in 15 minutes, this spreads the detailed cleaning over a period of time, so that rather than ‘spring cleaning’, you simply do a little bit every day and your home stays tidier and cleaner.

Control Journal: Flylady advises the use of a “Control Journal,” a notebook or binder, as a personal manual for noting one’s routines. This may also include a folder in which important papers and bills are kept so they can be worked on while waiting in public places such as doctor’s offices. A Control Journal should also include important information so it can be had at a moment’s notice in case of an emergency. Before taking someone to the emergency room, a Flybaby might grab her Control Journal, where she knows she has stored a list of medicines taken by the patient. Knowing that all that important information is kept in one place saves a lot of time, money and stress, according to Flylady, and is certainly worth the initial time involved in setting up the journal.

Flylady Reminders: Daily reminders of the routines, zones and missions are sent out when you subscribe to the Flylady groups. There is a UK group which sends out reminders according to GMT rather than US timezone, and many alternative ‘non-official’ groups.

Perfectionism leads to Procrastination: According to the FlyLady system, the most frequent reason for procrastination and inefficacy is perfectionism, as people won’t start a task if they think they don’t have the time or the ability to do it perfectly. Some frequently repeated sayings in this respect are “good enough is good enough” or “housework done incorrectly still blesses your family”.

I have loved Flylady, and what I have learned from her influences what I do and how I do it, everyday. I will be talking about her from time to time on this blog.

HOME/ Organizing/ Simplifying

Over The River And Through The Woods To Grandmothers House They Go!

Have you ever dumped the kiddos off on the grandparents and took yourselves a little trip? We are super blessed to have wonderful grandparents who let us do this. Once a year, my husband and I go out of town to a conference with his workplace. When we do, I pack for the 2 of us in normal suitcases like normal people, but when it comes to my kids clothes, I have found this system to be simple, easy and fast. I keep the clothes on hangers! We hang most of our clothes except for jammies etc, so their clothes are already on hangers in their closets. I just have to grab the outfits and off we go!

For my younger 2, I like to wrap the hangers of each outfit together with a rubber band. I also put little signs on them with their name and what day of the week to wear that particular outfit. My youngest has a field trip to the pumpkin patch while we are gone, so I made sure the outfit for that day had layers because it will be a chilly, turning warmer in the afternoon, kind of day. It also helps to keep them from grabbing their “pretty” outfits and wearing them to school instead of to church. Having them labeled really helps keep them straight, and hopefully will help grandma when it comes to the girls getting dressed, without needing her guidance each morning. This time I wrote little love notes on the back of the labels for them to read each day, they love sappy stuff like that!

As you can see, my oldest is too cool to have mom put together her outfits, so we just rubber banned her shirts together and her pants together. She’s already doing the typical female “I’ll decide what to wear the day of, depending on what mood I am in” thing. She’s only 10!! She is pretty good at the whole fashion thing, so it is easy to give her a bit more freedom than her sisters.

The rest of the packing is a breeze and they do it themselves for the most part. They love lugging out their little suitcases, picking a special stuffed animal to take, and trying to sneak whatever they can into their suitcases without mom seeing. 🙂 I told them to make their stuff pretty so I could take a picture for the blog, it made me smile to see what they did, everything laid out just so. They have been watching me take pictures of our life for this blog, and were pretty excited to be a part of that process. Too cute.

When it comes time to load the car and take it all over to grandmas, we just pile the hang up clothes into a laundry basket, and unload it right into the closet when we get there. Easy Peesy!

FUN/DIY/ HOME/ Organizing/ Simplifying

Art Bags

My girls’ favorite thing to do is art. All 3 of them do some type of creative art every day, it is just in them. Ever since they were little, we have always made sure paper and colors are available for them to use whenever they want. As they have gotten older, I have worked hard to make sure they have access to age-appropriate supplies, so that they can create whatever their little art brains desire.

We have rolling carts with labeled drawers upstairs where we keep all their craft supplies and use them a lot, but I also wanted to have basic supplies handy on our main floor that they could just grab and start creating with!
My solution was to make them each their own little school supply bag. I shopped for these at the beginning of the school year when all the supplies were super cheap. I found the bag at Wal-mart in the craft supply section. All of the bags are black, but I made them distinct with certain supplies that were all the same color (my youngest daughter likes blue so her scissors, pencil sharpener and pencil erasers are all blue.) This is how they tell which bag is theirs.

I keep the bags in a very central location (our dining room) right by the table, not only because they are in view and the girls will use them more if they see them, but also so I can make sure they take good care of their bags (even though the supplies were cheap, they add up when you times it by 3!) and put them away properly. Our table is also where they do their homework so the bags are very handy for that! I am pretty strict about keeping them in the dining room to use at the table. I only allow them in the car for trips that are longer than an hour, just because it seems like something always gets lost in the car!
Before, we had supplies on all 3 levels of our home and showing up in places where they didn’t belong! I grew weary of questions like “mom, where’re my little scissors?” and “mom, where’s my tape?” Now that they are in one area it has worked so well. They know right where they are, and find them daily, sitting on a shelf waiting for little creative hands to grab and use them!

Newer Posts