Organizing with Barbie:-)

Okay so it is clearly my fault that my daughter has too many barbie dolls. In a effort to find somewhere to keep them all neatly I decided the barbie house needs more seating. So instead of the dolls just laying on the floor of the doll house they could sit up neatly on a couch. In my light bulb moment I decided to make a sofa from 2 kraft mac and cheese boxes.

So I used black duct tape then I used a little zebra print duct tape to create a little design at the top and bottom of the couch along with some throw pillows (zebra tape with cotton balls inside) that are taped down of course (otherwise they will be lost in the toy box)

So now barbie can hang out with two other friends on their new couch 

and satisfy my crave for neatness in the barbie doll house. 

This project made everybody happy...me the kids and barbie :-)

Email Overload!

Too many emails? I think a good rule of thumb is...every time you sign-up for a new email subscription you should delete one. You know the one that never says or shows anything useful like you thought it would when you first signed up.

Manage your inbox so it can be an asset not a burden :-)

Tax Time is Coming!

Well the holidays have passed and it's time to organize anything related to tax filing. Get all your donation receipts, W-2 forms etc. all in one place so searching for documents is not an added headache to doing your taxes. Go ahead and clean off the desk you have to work at too, so in your moments of frustration you don't take it out on all the stuff that's out of place on your desk and throw it away only to discover later you really wanted to keep it (oh only I do that :-).

Happy Tax Time and remember...when the IRS is happy, everybody is happy the IRS is happy :-)

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 :-)