clutter style

No time for a real blog, but in the meantime this is nifty - http://www.oprah.com/home/Whats-Your-Clutter-Style-Peter-Walsh-Declutter-Tips/3

Day 5 of the Happiness Challenge.

Today was supposed to be a day alone in the house while hubby took the two small children out for the day. Boy child did not want to leave the house so the day went a bit haywire from the beginning.

Remarkably I still managed to get through a significant amount of the housework catching up that I'd earmarked as today's jobs. My clean laundry is now sorted and put away, not a giant pile threatening to take over the laundry room! I made some interesting discoveries about how to clean stains from the toilet - gumption has shifted a lot of the marks, and Tea Tree Oil seemed to help lift some of the stubbornest areas.  The Tea Tree Oil was a bonus find, as I was simply trying to add a freshened-up smell to the room by pouring it into the bowl, and the chemical fizzy reaction was unexpected!  I managed to clear off the shelving surface in the entry, it is back to being functional, with only family photographs on top, not the flotsam of our lives!

On the downside I've made a spectacular mess by attempting late in the day to clean off the top of a bookshelf that was a dumping ground for all the children's craft - it now covers our kitchen table in a layer of unidentified muck, despite my having sorted and removed half of the pile already!

I was fairly grumpy by day's end, as I didn't exercise, or see my Dad today, both of which frustrates me. The intention was to do some Tai Chi tonight, but I fell asleep instead, so no exercise endorphins for me today.  And for some reason (let's blame winter) my diet seems to be firmly grounded in 'bad food' still, despite the threat of ear infection (I am prone to them if I eat too many grains), bread remains firmly at the centre of my dietary experience!

Am I grateful today? Very much so, grateful that I am making progress on the house project, grateful my children are so delightful and very grateful for the snippets of Bruce I managed to play today in the gaps between children's movies on the computer! 

Tomorrow morning I'll make seeing Dad the first stop of the day, and make sure to not only walk, but to get some peace through enjoying the beautiful surroundings I'm blessed to live near.  Yesterday evening waiting for the boys to see Despicable Me 2, I was blessed with this gorgeous riverfront dusk.

Toddler clothes revisited!

On what I'm calling post-concert inspiration Day 2, with a rainy outlok I abandoned further plans for the garden, and tackled the ever-growing pile of toddler toys, clothes and bits and bobs lying around in what I call E's space. My goal started out as simply tidying toys, but soon I'd turned it into a reorganising mission, moving her clothes into the area and giving it a complete overhaul.

This is the pile of toys, clothes and miscellaneous items that I've collected from the corners of the room. My husband's method of tidying up is to shove things towards the edge / corner. He's been quite busy in this room!

There used to be a chair here, with piles of stuff creeping up from the floor around it. This was post-cleanup about 1pm this afternoon.  By this stage, the song "Wrecking Ball" was reverberating in my head. Clearly that was today's motivational song, just as Red Headed Woman belonged to yesterday's yard work.

As I sorted through the too-small clothes, I photographed them in same-size sets, posted them on my Facebook 'shop' page and tidied them away in labelled ziplock bags for taking to the markets or charity.

This ziplock bag system for older baby clothes is something I've been searching for for years! Maybe I'm just slower than the rest, but I've often asked friends and relatives for inspiration for storage and sorting and not one person suggested "big ziplock bags". I'm thrilled, and now have a drawer full of these little fellows, totally sealed away from pests!

Drawer of  clothes ready to leave our house!

This is the pile about half-way. I had taken almost all the clothes out and sorted them; started on the toy sorting and the tallboy had been moved into the room. I was exhausted and not very motivated. Even Wrecking Ball didn't help much. So I called in reinforcements, posted progress in my Organising Energy Facebook group and made a phone call or two. What worked the most was the motivation not to leave the above photo as my last update on Facebook.  So I pushed on, and took another photo.

By the time I'd gotten this far I made some compromises. I decided to leave one box of toys unsorted but contained so that I'd get finished!

It wasn't long before I had finished! Today's big goal was sorting E's clothes - I have a drawer full of clothes bagged by size, all posted for sale, plus her drawers are in the same room so it's easy to access.

I've moved puzzles and entertaining toys up high so I can put them in the floor when I think entertainment is needed.

I have the book pile still to go but again, books all away in one place, too many so they'll be rotated into the normal bookcase, with only a few left out.

Miscellaneous toys in the cupboard, soft toys in one box, "baby" toys in another box; I still have one box to sift through (might be a stack of tossing out?)

Now I'm writing up this blog listening to some finer moments of Bruce Springsteen's tours (Twist and Shout with Paul McCartney, I Fought the Law and the Law Won).

Its time to go and put those toys back in their boxes, as in true children style, they've seen boxes of toys and decided to raid!  A moment for some education about keeping toys in their boxes!

Tomorrow I'm not sure what great things I'll acomplish, but I am pretty confident they'll be achieved to the soundtrack of another Springsteen anthem :)

Organising tools ahoy!

Hello, a quick update today about yesterday's shopping trip to Officeworks. I was out, child-free for a change and while in Officeworks found these funky tools that I'm already getting great use from.

This little A5 zip-up folder is to put in my handbag as a portable office. I am too cheap to pay freight for FlyLady's "Office in a Bag" so I'm having a go at the version for under $10! It already has some medical bills for my Dad in it that need to be delivered to Medicare.

This groovy little sideways piece of plastic is to go on the wall beside my computer. I'm going to store current bills in it. Previously they went into piles, which grew and grew towards the ceiling. With this slender wallet on the wall there will be a limit to how many bills fit in at once, so I'll be forced to keep up to date. I really need this kind of visual reminder.

These very boring looking magazine holders are already seeing use. Back in December I photographed my cousins's sorting system where she kept these all decorated up as sorting systems for school and extra-curricular activities for children. At the moment I've already stocked 2 of them, one with my daughter's school notes, tuckshop bags, and other important documents relating to school. The second one is what I call "home and motivation" and it contains my dreams workbook, housecleaning notes and other nifty house organising references.  Once I have the system working I will decorate them and re-post.

I'm doing well with side-ways pictures today! These labels are for storage in our fridge. We are often confused about whether food has been 3 days or 5 days - which can make a difference. If we label the leftovers I figure thats one more part of life we've saved time and made easier. We both share cooking so its easier to be able to open the fridge and see whats in it. Especially good for my husband who finds it difficult to think about anything once it is inside a container unless there is a label.

And these little beauties are re-useable labels for anything. I figured my husband who loves labels can find a use for them.

What organising tools do you use?

Progress made!

Given that I spent some time in the entry this week, I decided to stay there, and aim for some cleaning that went deeper than the surface of things. And I discovered, once I emptied out the shelves, that I own an incredible amount of jigsaw puzzles!


After the photograph and the amazement of the tower of puzzles that I have, it was time to sort. I found the early parts of sorting easiest, and after making a dozen decisions or so, it got harder and more and more puzzles ended up on the 'maybe' pile.

My puzzle sorting doesn't fit in with most 'organiser' recommendations. Its unique to me and my puzzle scenario.

First were puzzles I'd finished, and had no attachment to. The 'get rid of' pile.

Then the puzzles that I either hadn't done or thought I might like to do again. A subset of this was the 2000 plus pieces and the less than 750 pieces groups separated out.

Last were the puzzles I knew I absolutely wanted to keep. There were about 6 of these from that whole tower. Scenes I like, special memories, particularly fun ones.

Now I am pretty overwhelmed at the responsibility of taking ACTION! Very grown up this sorting and deciding business. While getting children to bed, I remembered a recent article about the way cluttered people make decisions, and its true! I felt very uncomfortable making snap decisions after the first few. Towards the end, all the decisions I made had very little connection to how I felt about the puzzle, and a hell of a lot to do with how uncomfortable I felt.

Bearing all this in mind, what I plan to do is to start doing puzzles, and see if in 3 months, or 6 months I still have the same attachment to the 'maybe' puzzles. After the time passes it might seem pointless to keep them for the 'one day' when children are bigger.

In the meantime I've made offers to loan them out to friends, and I've chosen a better home for the ones I'm keeping - instead of in what was the conveniently new and empty hutch in the entry, they'll be making their way upstairs to the toy /craft area and stored in a large cupboard up there that needs a good cleanout but is otherwise unused.