Dust Yourself Off and Try Again

Some days are harder than others when it comes to coping with day to day clutter, depending on what else is going on in your life.

Organizing is an ongoing task. You will need to revisit each area you organize on a regular basis to maintain it and make sure that whatever system you have put in place is working for your family.

Create a "visitation schedule" for spaces that you don't necessarily see everyday, like the kids' drawers. The sooner you accept that this is ongoing, the easier it will be to cope with it when you find a space out of order that you have recently organized. happy organizing :-)

Mental Clean Up Day!

Okay so really getting organized and staying organized are two totally different things. I love getting organized but staying that way has proved to be a challenge. My children just do not believe in staying organized right now and to avoid going completely insane I just try to clean up behind them once a week. Otherwise my kids will be writing a book about my anal ways and how they felt they could never do anything right in my eyes (example: Martha Stewarts daughter).
    
Well now that I have got that off my chest I will go throw everything in a laundry basket right now just to clear the floor and to assist in maintaining my sanity :-)

Time to clean out the closet for back to school

The kids' closet tends to get out of control in the summer when my girls get out their own clothes all summer, not to mention all the times they play dress up with both costumes and real clothes. So I have a tendency to just let it go during the summer. So here is the result of that...it's not too bad but it is certainly not as orderly as I like it to be.

I got out my donation bag and donated a lot of the summer clothes that got small toward the end of the summer and definitely won't fit next year and pulled out all the school uniforms.

Ahhh a breath of fresh air :-)

Time to clear desk space!

Time to clear the desks in the kids rooms in hopes they will be motivated for a new start this school year.  I went back and forth about what I wanted to store all the writing utensils in, last year  I used one big container for all the pencils and markers but that didn't work so well when we went looking for a certain color marker or a pencil that was already sharpened we had to shuffle through the bucket too much. So I am going to do a separate container for pencils, color pencils and markers to help ease the process. Here is a before and after of one of my daughters desks:

here is the after...ahh what a breath of fresh air

here is a close up of one of my side projects for the color pencil container. 

As much as I wanted to buy new containers...in the spirit of condensing I decided to 

find ways to reuse what I have. So this was a blue christmas bucket 

with bears on it that I bought from dollar tree last christmas,

I just covered it in some zebra print duct tape (I already had) that I bought last year also

because I thought it was cute but really had no project in mind.

I liked it so much I'm looking for stuff to cover with this tape now :-)

storage area condensed

This is one of my sources of frustration, everytime I look in this area I just think to myself there is too much stuff over there and I don't even know what half of it is. 

So I started by emptying out the space completely

Then comes the hard part, condensing it down and putting it back in a neat organized way. One thing I know after emptying this space is... never buy those 30 gallon storage containers because you will just keep putting stuff in them until they fill up (it's like I felt obligated to fill them up and make use of them) but that's a bad idea because you end up with some of everything in one container and you lose track of what's in there. From now on I will stick to small ones that I can have more control of and label them.

Okay this is much, much better but I will call this phase one because I want to get rid of those huge containers. I actually have 2 of each, I emptied one and put one inside the other for now. This was supposed to be a 2 hour project but it was more like 3 hours because I had to take the last hour to take all the papers to the recycle bin, pack up all the donations in a bag and gather all the trash and throw it away.  It also forced me to pull some papers out of these containers and keep them in plain view so I can get rid of more stuff but I didn't have time today so in plain view I will be forced to deal with them soon.

I am determined to start today

A little sleepy from working until 2am but I am determined to take the time clean out my storage area in the basement. I have my (what I call) motivation in a can AMP energy drink by my side to assist :-). I also found motivation in my new 2012 IKEA catalog that arrived today, they are so organized I love it. I am alloting 2 hours to this project in hopes that I can finish it today. I keep hearing Peter Walsh in my head too after I read his book "lighten up" to eliminate sources of tension in my home and take my space back! So here I go...pictures to follow, when I'm done of course :-)

Welcome

Welcome to Brighter Day 

I am starting this blog because my sister thought it was a good idea (she pressured me into it!) and in the back of my mind I thought maybe this will be a good outlet sort of like a public diary about my ongoing organizing projects, they are ongoing because I have two daughters who are 7 and 9 that are still organizers in training (my husband is too). 

I also have my little quirky things I love like gadgets such as the “as seen on TV” or in my Harriet Carter catalog that I love to browse and discover unique things that are sometimes useful and sometimes just entertaining. I love to be creative and use my hands to do things so who knows what may show up on this blog. So between cooking, cleaning and working I will find time to post again…until then