Organization Project: Craft Supplies

I have a major organization project that has been hanging over my head the past few weeks while I've been doing other things, such as preparing for our yard sale.

My daughter loves to make crafts, and loves to make a mess doing it. When she asks if she can paint and I say no, she'll go ask her dad, and he'll say, "Sure," and she'll go and do it herself. Same with playdough, glueing, cutting, you name it. Fortunately, she's reasonably neat:

We've been storing our craft supplies in the buffet cabinet in the dining room, and all crafts are supposed to be done in the dining room (we don't have a separate breakfast table, our house is on the smaller side). Since my daughter's birthday in August, the crafting situation has gotten a little out of control. Not everything is fitting in the cabinets, and what's worse, all the fun new craft supplies are mixing in with the broken crayons, dry markers, and empty glue sticks. My procrastination on the project has just given it time to get worse and worse!

Today, time was running out before I host a family get-together tomorrow. I just didn't have time to go through all the supplies, sort them, and get rid of the dried yucky playdough and the markers that don't work anymore.

My friend recently gave us gifts inside two reusable shopping bags from Ikea:

The best thing about these bags is that one of them zips closed. I decided to use the zipping bag to store all the nice fresh craft supplies that aren't fitting in the cabinet. The black and white bag would hold the completed projects (mostly paintings, but a few 3-dimensional endeavors as well. (The interior of the cabinet will have to wait for another day, as well as a plan for storing completed works, which are in several locations throughout the house currently...) The rest of the items were either put away, recycled, or trashed.

My other organization tool was a basket that I originally bought to store items on top of our refrigerator. It was just a bit too tall to fit between the fridge and the cabinet, so I had to put it aside. I decided to use it to store my daughter's current craft project: a princess storybook.

It fits underneath the buffet, and now I have a place to quickly pitch all the supplies and bits of paper that she is using for the project when it is time for dinner and I want to clear the table. There's even extra space for all the new things she thinks of to add to the book next time she works on it!

Now I have a functional dining room, just in time for tomorrow's gathering, and I have all of the craft supplies corralled in two bags so that when I do have time I can get everything sorted and restocked.

Narrowing this project down to the very simple step of clearing the area helped me overcome my procrastination and make some small progress on the project. I handled the mess while still giving my daughter access to her current project!

Linked to 52 Weeks of Organizing at orgjunkie.com!

Organizing Project: Yard Sale Prep

There's nothing like a neighborhood garage sale to bring my organizing projects to the forefront! I know that if I can get myself together and put in a little effort, I'll be rewarded with a less-cluttered house come next week, which will make it easier to find a place for all the items that we decide to keep. Items that we don't need anymore will be connected with people who need them enough to pay for them (hopefully), and items that no one wants will be donated, where it will be put to good use--if a use can be found.

And hopefully none of the sale items will reappear inside the house somewhere. Oh, and hopefully none of the stuff from my neighbor's sales will end up at our house, lovely items that they are. (Gee, I wonder who might be the culprit of such activities? If it isn't me, it must be one of my dear family members. I might have to lock the house and subject everyone to a search before they are allowed back inside!)

Here is my plan to get ready for the Big Day:

In the week leading up to the sale:

1. Designate a Yard Sale Spot. For me, this will be the table in the basement. It could be any area in your home or garage where you can put all of the items that you are planning on selling in the sale. This is where I will collect everything together for the sale so that I can price items and get things organized by category, etc.

2. Purge. I'll grab some boxes and then move through the house collecting items for the sale. I'm going to use last year's checklist to be sure and hit all the hotspots in my house:

• My closet and drawers
• Daughter's closet and drawers
• Son's closet and drawers
• Linen Closet
• Large kitchen cabinet 
• Pantry
• Buffet in dining room (aka Craft Storage)
• Toy Cabinets, DVD Cabinet
• Basement Play Room
• Garage
• Storage Room

3. Get the family involved. I'll do most of the purging, but I'll encourage the kids to pick some items from the sale (and promise them the money) and I'll beg my husband to find a few things to part with. (I already have a few things in mind!) Another project for the family may be to make signs for the big day.

4. Sort. Before I start pricing items, I want to get things sorted into categories so that I can get a better idea of what I have and what is the best way to price things. If I have a lot of smaller items, I might put them all in a box with a sign that says '25 cents' or similar. Sorting before pricing avoids the situation of pricing two like items the same, or pricing a higher quality item lower than a lower quality item.

5. Price. I use stickers, some of which are blank, some have pre-printed prices on them. Many people like to haggle at yard sales in our area, so I think of prices as a starting point. If I have a lot of small, low price items, I might pile them in a box and put a sign on it that says '$1 each' or similar.

6. Get Change. I'll make a point to go to the bank and get a roll of quarters and a large number of $1 bills, probably about $50 worth of change total.

The day before the sale:

7. Advertise. This is a neighborhood yard sale, so several neighbors are taking care of this step for me. Ordinarily I would post an advertisement on Craigslist.

8. Set-up and Transfer. The day before the sale I'll start set up tables in the garage and transfer everything to that location. (I don't want to do this until the day before the sale because it's rainy here this week and I would rather park my car in the garage as long as possible!)

9. Extension Cord and 'Broken' signs. It's a good idea to have an extension cord set up for the sale so that people can test items with electrical components. For items that don't work well (such as my old Oster stand mixer) or that no longer work, I include a sign stating that fact. You would be surprised at what people are willing to buy even when it doesn't work! I guess they might fix the item, or use it for parts for another item.

The day of the sale:

10. Open Early. Be prepared for the first shoppers to arrive even before your advertised opening time. I typically have shoppers looking at items while we carefully carry tables out of the garage to the driveway (which is why I like to set everything up the day before!)

11.Hang Signs. Post signs at nearby intersections to direct local drivers to your sale. I typically end up doing this after the Early Bird rush is over.

Linked to Top 10 Tuesday and WFMW!

Organizing with a Friend: Toddler Closet Project

 My friend and have come up with a plan to help one another work on organizing projects. Both of us have areas in our homes that make us feel too overwhelmed to tackle by ourselves, so we're teaming up to support each other and get things done more efficiently. (As an added bonus, our children are doing a great job distracting one another so that they interrupt us less!)

This week was Bedroom Week: in addition to working on my daughter's bedroom, which had become completely out of control, we tackled her son's closet and clothes supply.

Storage space is not an issue here, as my friend has a roomy closet and TWO dressers!

First off, we set some goals for the project:

• Sort through her son's wardrobe, remove too small/too big/too worn clothing
• Identify how much clothing she has in the next size up to determine what, if anything she needs to purchase for this fall.
• Store the clothing in an accessible way for her 3-year-old to reach himself. She wants to limit what he can reach, yet give him choices on what he wants to wear, because he is in that endearing yet time-consuming phase of wanting to dress himself. My friend is worried that they will never make it to preschool on time between his slow eating and the clothing battles that they have been having!
• Reorganize the closet and dresser storage using a few new storage pieces so that the space is used more effectively.

I didn't realize it at the time, but my friend had a huge mental block on this project. One of her cats likes to chew cardboard, and had a cardboard-chewing party in the bottom of the closet, and had also pulled out some insulation. The thought of dealing with the mess felt overwhelming, yet she couldn't even close the closet door, because a hanging organizer was preventing the closet from closing even partially. Most of her son's clothes weren't hanging in the closet probably because it was just stressing her out to even go near it!

Here's what we did:

• Mental Block Removal: We swept up the cardboard situation, and recycled the cardboard shoeboxes and box of diapers (no longer needed!) and determined that the organizer hanging on the back of the door was a) not currently needed b) lacking the right hooks to work with the doors in the house and c) better utilized in the mud room, so we removed it and stored it until my friend can get better-working hanger hooks. Now the closet door closes so that kitty access is blocked!

• Clothing Sort:We gathered her son's entire wardrobe (don't forget the clean laundry pile) and sorted the clothes into 4 categories: Current, Small, Big, and Worn. Too Small clothes went into storage in a hamper in another closet. Too Big clothes (fewer than my friend expected) were hung on hangers and hung at the back of the closet, and too Worn clothes were thrown out.

Now my friend knows that she has enough clothes in the current size, but needs to start looking for clothes in the next size up. She likes to purchase second-hand lots either locally or through Ebay, so having advance notice of her needs is important so that she can be on the lookout for what she needs.

• Clothing Storage: Pants, swimwear, underwear and socks were stored in dresser drawers, shirts were hung on hangers, and pajamas were stored in a hanging organizer in the closet.

• Easy Access: We installed a lower closet bar in the closet that my friend's son can reach himself. She can hand a week's worth of clothes on the bar, and then let her son pick which ones he wants to wear and dress himself. In season pajamas are stored near the bottom of the hanging rack, two per slot. The clothes in the dresser were moved to lower drawers that he can access easily. Higher dresser drawers are used for toiletries, towels, and bedding.

• Limited Access: Anything that my friend doesn't want her son to have access to we stored in higher dresser drawers and in the top and back of the closet.
• General Cleanup: My friend was so energized by our progress that we ended up cleaning up the entire room!

Find more organizing inspiration at 52 Weeks of Organizing!

10 Things I Wish I had time to Write About

I think about sharing stuff on my blog every day, but for the past few months none of those thoughts have made it into an actual blog post. This is a shame, because I have a lot of fun stuff going on!

1. I planted a terrarium. My grandmother gave me a Wardian Case for my birthday last fall, and I am finally got around to planting some tiny plants in it after reading a beautiful book called The New Terrarium: Creating Beautiful Displays for Plants and Nature and reading this very helpful blog post by the same author, Tovah Martin. My terrarium is not be as stunning as those pictured in the book (I dumped the dirt all over the leaves on the tiny African Violet!), but I will enjoy my tiny little plants just the same.

2. I made Lemon Lavender Butter Cookies, yet another recipe from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. To make the cookies, I first had to make lavender sugar with some culinary lavender. These cookies are lavender-scented! Because it is a freezer cooking recipe, I have several dozen more balls of cookie dough stashed in the freezer to bake when I feel the urge.

3. I'm planning a cutting garden. I love having fresh flowers in the house, and I will occasionally buy a $5 bouquet of flowers from the grocery store for my table or mantelpiece. Last summer I kept seeing these beautiful bouquets at the farmer's market--like this--which I didn't buy because they were quite costly, but the flowers were beautiful! I finally realized I was looking at zinnias, which are actually quite easy to grow in my area, so I bought some pretty zinnia seeds and planted them. I will add a few more types of flowers to the cutting garden and hopefully I'll have a nice selection of flowers for vases throughout the summer and into the fall.

4. I'm slacking off in the organizing department. I came up with a list of organizing projects at the beginning of the year, and I planned to post about a project each week. I haven't finished any of them, nor posted anything about them. I need to get motivated and knock some of these projects out.

5. I'm also slacking in the decluttering department. The spring consignment sale went on without me. I haven't sold anything on Ebay yet this year. I did manage to donate some summer clothes to collection drive for an orphanage in South America... but otherwise, nothing. All my efforts from last year will be undone if I don't stay on top of this neverending project!

6. I have been using the Motivated Moms half size chore planner to get a handle on what needs to be done and how often around my house. I also use it to track my menu plans and workout schedule, including calories burned per workout. I'll be honest--I never get everything on the chore list done, but at least some things get done and I am gaining a more realistic idea of how often things need to be done in my household. (Never often enough!)

7. We are planting a raised vegetable garden this summer.We planted a small amount of things last year, and it was so much fun we decided to get more serious about it. Like for the flower cutting garden, I've planted some seeds and we'll see how things develop. I am using this handy site here to plan a square foot garden. For now it's recreational, but I am looking forward to having a prolific supply of vegetables.

8. After many years of studying the room arrangements in The Washington Post's House Calls, I'm finally rearranging the furniture in my living room. This was the room that finally convinced me that I had enough information to improve the layout. This room was also an inspiration. We just need to paint and have the new couch delivered...

9. A friend of mine has convinced me to try growing potatoes in a garbage bag. Apparently potatoes can be easily damaged when you go to dig them up, so if you grow them in a bag, you can carefull empty the bag open at the end of the growing season (or slit your garbage bag open, which is what I'm planning1), dump the soil in a wheel barrow or container, and pull out the potatoes without using a shovel.

10. I did some freezer cooking last week! And I got around to posting about it. Hopefully I will be able to post updates on these other projects, too.

Stockpiling Strategies: One Extra

The number of items I stockpile feels about right, both for keeping track of in my mind, and for the amount of storage space available in our house for stockpiling.

Still, I really hate having to run out to the store at the last minute when I run out of a crucial ingredient. I have had several traumatizing experiences dragging young and crabby children through the store halfway through dinner prep!

The compromise for me is to keep One Extra of most of the non-perishable items in my pantry. When I use up the mayonnaise, or the hoisin sauce, or the brown rice, I pull out the One Extra from the pantry, and add the item to the grocery list on the fridge, one of the little things I do to keep myself more organized.

Typically these items are condiments and cooking items, and for the most part, it's not worth the savings to buy a bunch of them on sale, and anyways I don't have a lot of space to stockpile items unless they are used frequently. Some of these items cost pretty much the same amount no matter when I purchase them (such as groceries from Trader Joe's).

For example, I recently made Chicken Adobo with bok choy in the crock pot. I used up my apple cidar vinegar, the opened my One Extra one. I promptly added cidar vinegar to the grocery list--this system works better when I'm not cooking in a hurry. I'll buy just a small bottle on the next grocery trip because I don't use it very often. I'm not stressing about getting to the grocery store in time because I still have a mostly full bottle.

I also saw that my paprika was getting low, so I added that to the grocery list too. I dont keep One Extra for spices and flours, because I like my spices to be relatively fresh, and some take a long time to use up. Instead I add them to the list when I see that the quantity on hand is running low.

This system has been working really well for me for several years now. I love that I can reach into the pantry and pull out whatever I need! The system would work even better if I didn't have to spend precious minutes finding things in the pantry. I'm hoping to deal with that problem soon!

52 Weeks of Organizing: Clearing up Christmas 2010

Before I can work on any of my numerous household projects, I need to clear up everything from Christmas, which we allowed to run a little longer than usual after our tough season. I know if I take the time to organize now, things will go much more smoothly when I pull out the Christmas containers 11 months from now!

As I mentioned last year, now is the best time to record the things that worked and didn't work in 2010, and then I 'send' the letter to myself to be sure that I read it in early November 2011. Last year's highlights included:

• Buy new lights for the Christmas Tree (great reminder as lights sell out in my area before we buy our tree)
• For the English Trifle: buy TWO boxes of ladyfingers and only ONE box of blueberries (I guess I bought the wrong amounts in 2009 ;)
• Family photo must be done by October or it will not happen (true!)
• Gift Wrapping always takes about twice as long as I think it will, so schedule accordingly. (much better this year!)

All of this was valuable advice! I am adding a few new tidbits to the same list for next fall. In the mean time, I've been implementing my other Christmas wrap-up strategies:

Ornament Removal Procedure: I take all of the ornaments off the tree at once, carefully accumulating them on the bar in my dining room. When I unplug one from the light string, I immediately replace the plug with one of the original light bulbs. (We have a few Hallmark Magic Ornaments)

Now that the ornaments are down and the tree has been cleared for removal (don't forget any small ornaments!), I can stand in one position to invidually box the ornaments: find the box, locate the corresponding ornament, wrap up, store. I can stand in one place and work on this over the next few days whenever I'm talking on the phone or have a few minutes of extra time.

This takes much less time than searching for the correct box each time an ornament is removed from the tree. It also helps me to identify dirty or damaged ornaments that either need to be cleaned up, superglued, or thrown out. (Ebay is a great place to find replacement ornaments.) Most of our ornaments fit in 3 identical storage containers, except for a handful that don't have boxes, which will all be stored together in a labeled cardboard box (I should find a plastic storage container to replace that old box!)

Now is a great time to declutter Christmas decorations and supplies. If something is worn, broken, or just unused, weed it out now rather than storing it for another year. If something worn or broken needs to be replaced before next Christmas, you'll most likely pay less for the item now than if you wait and buy one in December.

Wash and neatly fold Christmas linens so that they will be ready for use right out of the container next fall.

If a kitchen item is used exclusively during the holiday season, consider storing it away to free up space in the kitchen. (cookie baking supplies, etc.) pic Be careful to store food type items (decorating sugars, etc.) in sealed containers to protect them from pests.

I'm hopeful to participate often in the 52 Weeks of Organizing challenge, with a variety of decluttering and organizing projects!

Stockpiling Strategies: A Series

I am sure I am not the only person who has reached for the shampoo in the shower... only to realize suddenly that the bottle was used up during the previous shower. Or to simultaneously discover that I am out of both workout clothes AND laundry soap at the same time.

Before I had kids, these pitfalls were no big deal. I could easily run to the store whenever necessary to pick up shampoo and laundry soap... often paying full price for the item.Now that I have young kids, a trip to the store has become more challenging to impulsively add to the schedule. It seems like the hardest shopping trips are the ones when I only need a few small items.

In the past year, I've managed to simplify my errand list by purchasing large quantities of each item that we regularly use all at once--at a discount price. This has helped me to cut down significantly on:

• stressful last-minute dashes to the store when we run out of something crucial
• paying full or high prices
• trying to keep track of everything we are 'low' on
• getting stuck in the parking lot trying to wrangle kids and large items (toilet paper packs, etc.) at the same time

By removing the pressure to purchase something that we are going to use immediately, I am freed to purchase stockpile items when it is convenient for me to do so (aka when the kids aren't with me) and to wait for lower prices. Often I am only actively looking for 2-3 types of items at a time during any given month, rather than buying 10 different items each month. It feels almost luxurious to nonchalantly reach into the cabinet and produce a fresh toiletry when the one my child is using has run out--definitely less stressful that searching for an alternative or adding an unexpected shopping trip to an already hectic schedule!

Here are a few stockpiling tips that I've found to be helpful:

• Identify stockpile-friendly items. For my household, these items include paper products, laundry soap, dishwasher soap, certain cleaning supplies, dental hygiene supplies, certain non-perishable foods, and my special brand body wash.

• Test before stocking up. Be sure that you and your family like the brand of the item that you are planning to stockpile. I tend to stick with familiar brands when stockpiling as I want a quality product that my picky eater and soap-sensitive kids will tolerate.
• Focus on stockpiling only 2-3 items at a time (or fewer!) The idea is for stockpiling to simplify your life, rather than overwhelm your shopping trips and your budget. Look for sale prices, and start getting a feel for what is a 'good price' and what is a 'great price'. Stop buying the item when it costs more than you want to spend.
• Don't forget to shop online! Especially when shopping for items that don't typically go on sale, I check online and see if I can get a better price at an online retailer. If I can use a discount code and get free shipping, I can sometimes find prices that are better than what I would find in my local stores. I also shop online for certain items that local stores may or may not carry. This reduces my time spent going from store to store looking for the correct size vacuum bags, for example.
• Store your stockpiled items together in a logical, accessible place. The stockpile won't be effective if you don't remember where you put it! It will be even more effective if other family members know where to look for things, and will help cut down on the, "Honey, do we have any [item]" conversations.
• When the storage area is full, stop purchasing the item. Other great discounts and sales will come along eventually. Don't let your stockpile exceed the size of your storage space and spill into your living space (and your life!).
• Rotate your supplies. Use older items before using newer items. Check expiration dates and make sure that you will use the item before the deadline passes.
• If you can't use it, donate it. Desginate a spot in your storage areas for items to donate. Items that we decide we don't like, or don't use anymore, or that we develop allergic reactions to, or free samples, etc. can be passed on to someone who CAN use them, which I love to do.

 Next week, I'll share my 10 favorite items to stockpile, as well as a few of my stockpiling failures, and my new stockpiling ideas for 2011!

My Thank You Note Tracking System

Long, long, ago, I married my husband and became the grateful recipient of many lovely wedding and bridal shower gifts. Unfortunately, I only made it about half way through my thank you note list before the list disappeared.

For many, many, months, I believed that my husband threw the list away. You can imagine how vindicated he felt when I FOUND the list... in a pile of papers, on my desk, at my office. (Fortunately, he's a nice guy, so he didn't rub it in much.) Yes, the paper organization at my desk was a little out of control. Do I have a picture? Let me see.... here we are on a good day:

Anyway. I feebly attempted to resume my task of writing out my wedding thank you notes. This was challenging because I was having a lot of trouble staying awake. I could manage to crawl out of bed each morning and drag myself to work more or less on time, work 8 hours, and then drag home and fall asleep on the couch. I was having to take little naps in the parking lot of the grocery store before going in to shop--and when I did muster the energy to go in, I would try very hard not to throw up.

Yes, I was expecting a baby. A Big One. It was all I could do to do my job, sleep enough, eat enough, and do all the things I needed to do to prepare to be a parent. Things that fell by the wayside included the wedding thank you notes, unpacking in our new house, cleaning our new house, and paying any attention whatsoever to my poor husband (usually I was unconscious on the couch when he arrived home).

Then, of course, when my son arrived, there was a new round of lovely gifts, meaning a new list of thank you notes needed to be written. I am proud to say that I managed to keep up with these, but I never managed  to completely complete my wedding thank you note list. I regret it to this day. (No, I don't know where the list is now... Argh!)

As a result of this sad story, I decided to set up a system in my calendar/address book to track thank you note writing. It is a very simple system, and it has worked well for over 6 years now! Any gift recorded on the list eventually has a note written for it.

How it works:

I keep a tabbed section in my planner with a set of paper titled 'Gift and Card List' (any lined paper will suffice). I simply write the person's name, the gift they gave, and the person in our family who received the gift. When the thank you note is written, I check it off on the list.

The list is impossible to lose because it's in my planner! The list is conveniently stored with my tabbed address book within the planner, so when I write a thank you note, the address that I need is immediately on hand. I can even look back and figure out who gave us a particular gift if I need to know, for instance if I want to ask a person where they found a particularly unique gift.

Thank you note tips:

• Combine them when possible. My children were both born in August, so I am not ashamed to report that I wait until September to write thank you notes for their gifts, and combine the gifts given to both children in one note (this is changing as they are old enough to write their own notes; see below). This also works for me in December; I combine notes for my birthday and Christmas gifts from the same person.  

• 4 year olds can write thank you notes. I have some fill-in-the-blank thank you notes that my 6 year old had been using, and I discovered that my 4 year old can write them (almost legibly!) if I spell the words letter-by-letter. This is a great way to keep her entertained when I'm working in the kitchen. She draws a puppy picture on the back of each one.
•  Avoid keeping your list on scrap paper that can be lost easily. I keep my list in my planner so that I can't get lost in a pile. I can open the rings and remove one sheet to lists gifts given at a party, and it's always conveniently located next to my address list in the planner, which I always need when writing the thank you notes.
• A gift bag works well as a tote to store all your note-writing supplies. This tote contains the cards and envelopes that the kids have been using to write their notes, as well as the special stamps they picked out: My son picked The Simpsons (no longer available), and my daughter picked Puppies and Kittens.

This is what works for me!

And to everyone who did NOT receive a thank you note from me for our wedding gifts, I apologize. Your gift was and still is greatly appreciated. :)

Holiday Prep: Review Last Year

Somehow I managed to schedule a pop-up reminder telling me to review the notes I made about Christmas 2009 back in January when I was clearing up Christmas. The notes are just a single page Word document with reviews of how things went, reminders for this upcoming year, and a few ideas of new things to try. It's like having a conversation with a past verson of myself to help jog my memory regarding various and sundry Christmas Stuff that I otherwise won't think of until it's too late.

I'm hoping this miscellaneous list will spare me a few emergency trips to the store and help me to plan a little better than last year; for instance, I need to recognize that gift wrapping will take 6-8 hours and it would be best to schedule time to get the wrapping done during the day rather than staying up all night one night, all the way past sunrise. (I had no idea it would take that long! And yes, I have a very big family and we do quite a bit of gift exchanging. And no, I am too neurotic to use gift bags in most cases.)

It's one way that I am trying to get prepared for the holidays.

How to Feel More Organized: Keeping up with Kids

In addition to my attempts to keep myself organized, I've been implementing strategies to keep up with my kids as well.

A Clothes Box in Every Closet
This is a place in each of my kids' closets where I can quickly stow outgrown, damaged, or disliked clothing until I am ready to deal with it. I repurposed a pretty Piperlime box for my daughter's closet.I also have a box in the laundry room to store items after they are cleaned, but it's nice to have a storage spot right where the kids get dressed so that I can separate the items right away--sometimes outgrown clothes get reintegrated with the regular laundry en route to the basement, and they don't quite make it to the Consignment box. (Of course, I don't consign an item unless it meet my criteria.)

This way I can take a larger amount of clothing to the basement all at once when I have time to think about what I am doing, reducing the chances of the clothes ending back up in the drawers!

A Toothbrush in Every Bathroom
I don't know how other kids are, but my kids are highly distractable when we are trying to focus on leaving the house. If I send them upstairs to brush teeth, it takes forever for them to reappear, mostly because they got lost on the way! I finally got the message and put toothbrushes, floss, and toothpaste in every bathroom. Now, whether we are preparing to leave the house, preparing to go to bed, or someone just has bad breath, dental hygiene supplies belonging to my kids are close by.

I included supplies for the master bathroom because I've made the habit of preparing a toothbrush for any kid who joins me in the bathroom while *I* am brushing my teeth. I need a few extra toothbrushes for this strategy; I've found the sample size toothpaste and floss from the dentist works well in lesser-used bathrooms. I'm finding that it is well worth it to help my kids avoid skipping brushing, especially since both kids have tooth issues that increase their vulnerability to cavities.

A Spot for Every Lunch Box
My son takes his lunch to school every day. My daughter uses her lunchbox 3 days per week. What this used to mean was that my son's lunchbox was sitting on the countertop when the weekend arrived, and my daughter's was taking up space in the kitchen every day! I realized that even items that are used nearly every day need a 'put away' spot. Now that I designated a spot in a cabinet to store them, our lunch boxes spend much less time cluttering up the kitchen counters, and I always know exactly where to find them when we DO need them.

This is what works for me, I hope it works for you, too!

Holiday Prep: A Series

I have a rule about Christmas. The rule is that Christmas must be contained to the month of December. This means that any and all Christmas decorations must not go up until after my birthday (Dec 9th), and must come down during as soon as possible after New Years Day. Christmas Shopping and Shipping are properly done in December. Holiday Photos are taken in December, holiday cards are written and mailed in December...

I really like this rule because it makes me prioritize and limit Christmas Activities. I enjoy the holiday season, but one month's worth is plenty for me. At the same time, it seems like there is more and more to do to get ready for the holidays each year. As our family grows, and I volunteer to help at school, AND I entertain more around the holidays, I've found that I must be very organized and cheat bend the rules as much as possible if I want to get ANY sleep at all during the month of December!

I am going to share a few of my Holiday Preparation tips during the upcoming weeks in the hopes that they will be as helpful to others as they have been for me.

How to Feel More Organized: 5 Little Things

I am a long way from being fully organized, but I like to think that I get a littler closer to having it all together each day. Here are a few tips that I try to follow to help keep everything a little more together.

1. Keep Dollars and Quarters on Hand
If I have a supply of dollar bills (or coins!) and quarters, it helps everything run a bit more smoothly. I'm prepared if I have to feed a parking meter, pay a toll, tip a service person, hire my son to do a project (his fees range from 25c to $1 depending on the task), or play the Tooth Fairy.

2. Charge Up the Technology 
When I take the time to make sure my cell phone, camera, ipod, and laptop are plugged and charged properly, I can just grab them and go. I need to get better about this, particularly for  my cell phone.

3. An Empty box in the trunk to hold Reusable Shopping Bags
I recently left this box in my trunk, and I think it's going to stay until it wears out! It holds all of my reusable grocery bags, which has a double benefit of clearing the bags out of my cluttered pantry along with ensuring that I never arrive at the store without my bags. I can fit two full grocery bags in the box to prevent them from falling over on the way home. I can put messy things, like potted plants, in the box. I also keep a few plastic newspaper bags in the box to cover wet umbrellas when getting in/out of the car on rainy days.

4. A 'Little Bits' Tray
You know when you are clearing things up around the house and you stumble across a small object, but you're not quite sure what it is or where it goes? This Little Bits Tray is where those items end up in my house. Along with various tiny toy parts, it holds some paperclips and other potentially useful items. It's a quick place to stow something small that I don't want to lose, then periodically I go through it and put small items where they really belong.

5. A Running Grocery List on the Refrigerator
I use a large Post-it Note pad to keep a running grocery list, right on the fridge. I keep a pen in the drawer close by so that I can quickly add to the list when I see that I am running low on various staple items--I don't wait until I run out of something to add it to the list! I put items in three columns based on the grocery stores where I typically purchase things. When I am ready to go to the store, I add the items I always buy (milk, bread, produce) as well as anything in particular I need for an upcoming recipe and I'm good to go. When I get away from this habit, I find myself going crazy running out of things that I thought I had!

I would love to hear from others about the little things that you do that make you feel more organized.