** Easy Organizing Finds **

Do you know what a customized bedroom closet space is? It’s where you have customized your closet with shelving, drawers, cabinets, hanging rods and more to specifically meet your particular storage and organizational needs. The keyword there is “your”. Your bedroom closet is customized with closet organizers and storage solutions to meet YOUR needs.

And I’m not talking about personalizing it to make it radiate your personality, although it may indeed do so. I’m talking about if you have 13 pairs of shoes, 10 long dresses, 5 suits, dozens of knit sweaters, 18 belts and 6 scarves that need to go in that bedroom closet, that’s what your customized closet will hold. And it will do so in a simplified way that’s convenient for you to access too.

You can create your own customized closet with deliberate thought and prefabricated closet organizers and shelving. Plus throw in some other closet organizers like double hanging clothes rods, wall hooks or even peg racks.

You also can hire someone to create your customized closet. Companies like CaliforniaClosets.com can come into your home to create these customized solutions for your bedroom closet. But that’s not all. Read the rest of this entry »

A previous post here talked about how you could start getting organized in 10 minute increments. But perhaps you’re a bit short on 10 minute organizing projects in your home and life. Or so you think. Today I decided to start giving you some more specific examples of organizing projects you can complete in 10 minutes. I’ll spread some more ongoing throughout this blog and consistently label them as 10 minute organizing projects so you’ll recognize them. Consider this your to-do list for today or just use the ideas randomly as-needed in your life.

Today’s 10 minute organizing project is for the home. It is how to organize your cooking utensils.

  

Here’s how to do it: Read the rest of this entry »

An organized food pantry likely can double your pantry storage space if yours is a bit messy now. Personally, I don’t have an “official” food pantry but instead store my non-perishable food items in my kitchen cabinets. An additional portable storage cabinet in my dining room holds non-food items like extra rolls of paper towels and packages of Styrofoam cups.

I have had my eye on some attractive free-standing pantries of which I might consider getting one sometime. For now though, since our home has minimal storage space (and floor space), I’ve learned how to work with what I have and place items efficiently in my cabinets.

What got me to thinking about this topic was an article I was reading over at the Just Not Martha blog about the top 5 must-have items for her pantry. Of course, she was talking about food items. But my forte is about where you put the food in your pantry or kitchen cabinets—how to organize your pantry. You have to make room for your favorite food items!

So here is a top 3 list of my favorite organizational accessories for a food pantry or food storage cabinets that I personally use: Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know where your magazines are right now? Really. Just how many magazines are in your home right now? And where are they? Are they organized in a magazine holder or tossed across your home?

Recently thesimpledollar.com ran an article about if it’s worthwhile to have magazine subscriptions. Trent, the blog article author, addressed some pointed questions that allowed him to decide if his magazine subscriptions were a good buy “for him” (your answer might be different). He also pointed out that “for many people magazine subscriptions are a great waste of money.”

But they’re not just a waste of money. For some people they’re a waste of space in your home. They’re clutter at times.

I’ve been a print journalist and an avid magazine reader. But I have to say I spend more time reading online now than in print. Often online I can get similar information (depending on the topic) that’s timely (or not –because evergreen information is useful too). And I dislike the clutter of magazine subscriptions around my home. Paper attracts a LOT of dust. I don’t like dusting (though it’s a necessity). And dust just makes me sniffle and sneeze–a lot.

But print magazines do have a place too, especially when you want a change of pace from the computer and to rest your eyes away from the monitor. And it’s still a lot easier to recline on the couch with a print magazine than to do so with a computer screen. So I do read a few print magazines too. In the past few years I’ve subscribed to some interesting and popular print magazines. And actually I took advantage of some offers to get these subscriptions for free. But even free is too much sometimes. And it’s proved so for me to the point where I don’t say yes to every free magazine offer I happen across. That said I made a little list based on past experience with print magazines in our home so you’d know that…

…It’s time to cut your magazine subscriptions when…. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a free minute to organize? How about 10 minutes? If you answer no check out the article in my personal development blog about some of the myths of being busy. And then try answering that question again.

So Why 10 Minutes?
I was reading a post by Glen at LifeDev blog about how 10 minute increments can benefit your productivity. And I couldn’t agree more. You can be quite productive in 10 minutes. In fact, if you spent just a single 10 minute increment daily organizing items or processes in your home or life that would mean you’d complete 365 organizational tasks annually. You’d spend 3,650 minutes a year organizing your home or life.

Your home and life could be more organized than it has been in the past 10 years by just spending that 10 minutes on creating organizational processes or organizing items around you.

If you doubled that to just 20 minute increments, imagine the possibilities.

Why Will This 10 Minute Increment Approach Work for Organizing Your Home and Life? Several reasons…

1) If you tell yourself that you’ll do an organizational task for just 10 minutes, that seems reasonable and easy enough. You’re more likely to motivate yourself to organize something if you say “I’ll just do it for 10 minutes” than if you say “That’ll take me hours to do”. In the latter case you’ll probably put it off, possibly forever. In the first case, you might even find yourself engrossed enough in the task to go longer.

2) If you have a short attention span normally then 10 minutes is long enough to get something done but short enough to focus before your attention deficit sets in.

3) You truly might only have 10 minute free increments some days between your job work breaks, attending to matters with your spouse or children or attending and waiting for appointments.

What Can You Organize in 10 Minute Increments? Read the rest of this entry »

She got the jewelry.
But not the jewelry organizer. This Wall Mount Jewelry Cabinet has lots of space on the inside and a good size mirror on the outside.

She got a watch.
But not a watch storage case. This Watch Storage Case is big enough to accommodate future years of watch gifts too.

She got the mug.
But not the mug rack. Why not use this Sliding Mug Rack to hang all of your mother’s day mugs on one side (and father’s day mugs on the other side). It’s a space-saver because you can hang it underneath your kitchen cabinet.

You have a reason to splurge on yourself now, Mom. After all, you have to store those precious gifts somewhere, right?

Summer is near! That means now is the perfect time to evaluate your clothes closet. But not to remove out-of-season winter clothes. That’s a whole other topic. Now is the time to take those spring and summer clothes that are just using space in your closet to charity.

This is the time people in need (or people not in need who just like to shop at thrift stores) are looking for cool-wear clothing. So if you’re thinking of donating that wool coat you might want to hold off until winter. Thrift stores and donation drop-off points don’t always have room to store or display everything that’s donated to them. So they won’t be displaying a lot of your winter wear during the hot weather season. Hang onto your winter clothes donations until winter. That way they have a chance of going to someone that needs them and not ending up in the local landfill due to a lack of space in the warehouse or storefront.

Just last weekend I hauled a pile of clothes off to the local Goodwill. A bit of irony though is that I didn’t make more room for my wardrobe in my bedroom closet. That was because these were mostly hanging in my home office closet. The closet rod in my bedroom closet is full of stuff I wear now. That’s my primary wardrobe space. I had put these mostly short-sleeved blazers that I don’t wear anymore due to a change in profession in my office closet. But the good news is I’ll have more room in there for my files and office-related items now.

When evaluating your clothes closet, consider donating… Read the rest of this entry »

Do you like baskets? I do! Baskets are beautiful AND functional. They are works of art too, usually handmade. Baskets make great organizational tools too. I like to use them to hold everything from utensils and oven mitts in the kitchen to paper notepads and cards in the office to toiletries and tissue paper in the bathroom.

I have wire baskets, which are sturdy and see-through. But I also have baskets in materials that include rattan, rope, bamboo, metal, coconut husk and more. Wicker baskets are definitely nice but they’re not the only material comprising baskets.

If you’d like to view some photos of baskets with tips about how to use them in your organizing scheme, click over to my website at OrganizeWithBaskets.com . I’ll be adding some more material to that site in the future too related to organizing with baskets and perhaps even decorating with baskets or decorating the baskets themselves.

The average woman loves using lipstick. But when you have a handful of different lipstick shades rolling around in your bathroom drawers, it’s a hassle to keep track of them.

And it’s even more annoying to have to pull each one out of the drawer to hold it up to the light to check if you grabbed the right color (because you sure can’t read those little labels on the tubes).

This Lipstick Holder solves that problem! You can store up to eight lipstick tubes in it on your bathroom counter or a nearby wall shelf. Now whether you’re grabbing your smoky rose, bistro burgundy or any one of the other hundreds of hot and cool lipstick shades you can see them clearly and find the one you need quickly and easily.

You could stack small clothing items such as underwear, scarves, gloves, even bikini swimwear in drawers. The problem is you can’t see what’s in the stack without picking through it.

And stacks tip over and merge into each other creating a pile of unrelated items for you to pick through. What a hassle! The solution is this Hanging Organizer Bagg.

This one is perfect for holding such small clothing items in its see-through vinyl zipper pockets. You can see what you have at a glance. And you save space by essentially hanging the items vertically in your bedroom closet.

Plus if the lighting isn’t good in your closet (and it definitely wasn’t in your drawer) you can easily pull the bag out to take a closer look at its contents without messing the contents. Buy several bags for all your needs.

With colors like black, pink, purple and red you can buy something fun to look at or buy colors based on your organization method. For instance use red bags for cosmetics and pink bags for scarves.