Places We Love!

The space I love the most in my house is the place where I am able to be alone and create. I have three daughters and our house isn’t tiny but not big either so there aren’t many places to hide. Those of you with children know all about this. I love to sew and play around with my fabrics and dream of things I wish I had time to make and sew. My “Studio” is in our guest room, so there isn’t a lot of room for the creative process but there is a great closet. It is done with Elfa from The Container Store. I first took the doors off the closet (in the garbage they went), and made a curtain which matches the headboard I made for the bed. I took the measurements of the closet to The Container Store, they helped me design the space and all I had to do was swipe my credit card, bring it home and put it all together. I didn’t have the need for any installation, but they will install a system if you want to pay for that service. The system is basically three sets of drawers of different sizes with laminate tops. I sorted all my beloved fabrics, ribbons and notions by type – vintage, large pieces, batting etc…. and labeled the drawers. I also used small plastic bins and labeled them, for the smaller items. I find it best to use bins that are see- through and have lids so you can stack them. I also like to label two sides of my bins just in case I reorganize and need to have the bins face a different way. The framework for a neat and organized closet is all there. The only problem, as with any organization is the maintenance of it. That is where I can sometimes get stuck because when in that favorite space I just want to be creating and, of course, quietly hiding. I am all about maintenance when we have guests though, making sure all pins and needles and scissors are off the bed and in my organized closet.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” William Morris

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Julie

PS – Today is the last day for the Elfa Sale

Grocery Shopping

Did you welcome 2012 with a list of resolutions and a determination to stick to them?

This week: Quick fixes for the grocery store.

If one of your goals is eating healthier, you’re going to be spending a lot more time finding recipes, making lists, and at the grocery store. Try some of these tips to turn meal preparation time into free time.

- Organize your list by categories
- Need pita bread for sandwiches and whole-wheat bagels for the morning? Instead of grouping items by recipe or meal, put them together based on which aisle or section of the store they are in.
- Utilize technology
- Most smart phones have to-do lists or grocery shopping lists with common items pre-loaded to make entering them easy.

- ZipList is a great, free app available for both Apple and Android phones. Not only does it allow for multiple lists (grocery, drug store, etc), it also lets users sync their lists with other users. If you know you’re out of milk but are unsure if someone else picked it up on their way home from work, you needn’t wonder any longer. When one user checks off an item on their ZipList, it automatically updates other users’ lists.

- Many e-lists have the added benefit of multiple uses. Phone applications generally have options to uncheck all items so you can use the list again without re-entering items. Computer based lists can be saved and printed each time for those that prefer to have a physical list in tow, and can be emailed to others who share in the meal-planning responsibilities.

- ListPlanIt
- Not sure what type of list to create? Prefer a format that is already set up for you? Check out ListPlanIt.
- This wonderful resource has lists for any and all occasion. Signing up for a membership will give you access to thousands of lists from meal planning to student planning, travel planning to financial planning, and many more.

Happy Organizing!
Stephanie

Passwords Organizing

Lucky me got a new phone recently and I had mixed feelings about it. It has a lot more capabilities than my old one but it meant a new learning curve. I am getting too old for this! But first things first, I had to set it up! Being the “Techno I am not” I asked my co-worker to help me out – yeah Stephanie! So she proceeded to get things going and then began to ask me for such and such password – oh darn! Where could it be? I have so many and they are everywhere, in different folders and places. Why do you need a password for everything anyway? Should it be like Fort Knox to get into my Google calendar? Really I am not that important! I scrambled around and found what was needed but then made a vow to have them at the tip of my fingers next time. So, I gathered them from their various places and got them typed up and organized and put them in a folder all their own.

About a week ago I needed something else done to my phone, so of course I got Stephanie to help me out. She needed, yes, a password. I jumped up and had it to her in no time. This organization of my passwords is great – just one tip – don’t label your folder – “Passwords”, just in case a thief really wants to get into the site where you can view your children’s art, or they want to spend hours messing with your friends on Facebook.

Seriously though, some passwords are pretty dangerous for others to have access to, so be careful where you store your file and make sure that someone you trust knows where you keep them. Got to go, my phone is ringing and I need to figure out how to answer it!

Happy Organizing!
Julie

Paper or Electronic Planner?

We are pretty organized here at Organizing Maniacs, but we also understand how hard it is to manage all of the pieces of the puzzle we are responsible for on a daily basis. So, I asked our team members to share one thing that they have organized, which has a significant impact on them. In the couple of weeks you will see what they came up with.

The one thing I have organized, which has a significant impact on my life is my planner. I have always used one, and a highly recommend it. I personally belief it is the secret to being organized. About 3 years ago, I gave up my paper calendar. It was really hard to adjust, and on occasion I still miss my Franklin Covey. However, today I use a combination of software in my computer and Apps on my smart phone.

I use Outlook on my computer, which speaks with Google Calendar and then it speaks to my smart phone. They all communicate with each other, so it is not important where the information is entered. It all gets synchronized automatically. That makes a huge difference!

I use Comitify as a task App; currently it only sits in my smart phone. But, they are expanding this App and I loved the simplicity of it. It is an extremely easy App to use, and you can share your tasks with other people in your family or in your work team. I also love Toodledo! I appreciate that it speaks with my Outlook and my smart phone App. It makes it convenient and easy to enter all of my tasks while sitting at my computer.

What can I say? Technology has made managing all of my To-Do lists and calendars much easier to manage. What is one thing you have organized that has a significant impact on your daily life?

Happy Organizing!
Cris

Holiday Memory – Cris Sgrott-Wheedleton

Christmas is difficult when you are away from your family. When I challenged the Organizing Maniacs’ team to write about their clutter-free Christmas memories, I knew what I was going to write about!

As I look back to my childhood, I cannot remember a single toy! But, I remember waking up on Christmas Eve and all the anticipation and fun I shared with my three siblings. I remember all of the fun we had at my grandmother’s house and our trips to church to celebrate the real meaning of Christmas. I remember the friends we fed during the holidays. And I remember working at the soup kitchen to feed the less fortunate.

Later, I learned to appreciate the friendship and kindness of people. I have lived away from my family for the last 18 years. Unfortunately, some of those years I had to spend away from them. There was always a place available for me to have dinner, and a feeling that I belonged!

Nine years ago, a stranger took me to the movies on Christmas Day. It is by far the best Christmas memory I have! We have been lucky to spend every Christmas together since.

I hope that you added making great memories to your Christmas list, and that you are lucky to spend it with your loved ones.

Happy Holidays!

Cris

Holiday Memory – Valeria Downey

What I love about Christmas is all the warm memories, I have from my childhood.

When I was little girl, we celebrated Christmas Eve. We went to our grandma’s house and spend time with all of my mom’s family. My mother has one brother and five sisters. As you can imagine, we have a lot of cousins. I loved this time of the year, we got to stay up late and wait until Santa came to our house to drop off our gift.

As a tradition, one of my uncles would dress up as Santa on Christmas Eve. He would come to the house with a bag full of small gifts, which were from our grandmother, aunts and uncles. After Santa was done, he would tell us that he had already stopped by our house and had left us, our one Christmas gift. So, each and every one of us would beg our parents to take us home. We could hardly wait to see what was left under the tree.

We had no chimney, so our Brazilian Santa had to use the front door. In order for him to get in, you had to leave the house for a least a few minutes on Christmas Eve. We always wondered how he got the key to get in. My father used to tell us, that the key my mom had hanging on the wall for decoration was the key for Santa!

After we all went home to see our new gifts, we traveled the 6 blocks back to our grandmother’s house. It was a great time to see and show all of Christmas gifts we had received from Santa. We all played together, until it was time to go home. We only used to get one gift under the tree, so that gift was always special to me. I knew I had to take really good care of my gift, as it was a while before another gift would come.

Today, we still have a lot of those same traditions. We still celebrate Christmas Eve, as adults we draw names and share one special gift with each other. Always remembering, how lucky we are to have each other!

Valeria Downey

Holiday Memory – Julie Mehigan

Christmas has never been about stuff for me and my family. Sure, I have received my fair share of nice gifts for the holiday, and here are a few I remember: A baby doll from my brother (which when given water and squeezed, would do some fabulous things!), a hand knit sweater made by my English Grandmother, a pearl necklace and earrings from my husband on my first Christmas as a new Mother, a nice bonus from a generous boss. There are probably more gifts that I forgot or felt guilty about not liking than ones I remember. It is the people and events that have made Christmas for me.

Growing up in a Christian family there was always midnight mass – with incense, bells and choirs singing beautiful music. After such a service my parents would often leave my brother and me home (hopefully with a babysitter?) to take the Air Force troops who were working that night, on the cold flight line, some Christmas goodies. The thought of my Mom complaining, every year, to my Dad that he got the wrong tree can still cause my brother and me to laugh. I grew up in Germany and we often had Christmas without our extended family as it was expensive to fly to the USA every year. The military offered space available flights for very little money to those who had the patience to wait and see if they got a seat on such flights headed “home.” One year, we traveled to the local air base and waited for days with many others who wanted the same thing. We ended up spending Christmas day in this small airport with strangers who became friends and we never did make it to the good old USA.

As I became an adult I started to make my own memories. One year my husband and I left the stress of splitting our time with two families, living in different states and we went to Germany for two weeks. On Christmas day we walked around the Munich Olympic Stadium and the gardens of Nymphenburg palace. Before we got married we would drive around neighborhoods to look and laugh at the crazy lights. We now have this as our yearly tradition with our own three daughters. They open their matching pjs (still on my list to find!) get their hot chocolates and off we go to ooh and ahh and laugh together.

As a Professional Organizer I see what stress and unhappiness people can go through because of the things/stuff in their life and it is my hope that we choose carefully what we share this holiday. Perhaps we could give a gift to charity in someone’s name, share a meal, make a phone call to a loved one, have a good laugh about a “bad” tree and do what is really important in the long run.

Julie Mehigan

Holiday Memory – Michelle Wood

When I was a kid, my parents were divorced. My dad was an only child but the family had a lot of friends. My mom on the other hand was one of 6 and there were twenty-something grandchildren in the family. Every Christmas Eve, we would start out with festivities at my dad’s family and then move on to even bigger festivities with my mom’s family. For me, the holidays came to represent spending time with the people close to me (related or not), eating too much and laughing a lot. As Bryan and I have started our own family and moved away, we have had to begin our own traditions for Christmas Eve. It just so happens that it includes spending the evening with close friends, eating too much and a lot of laughter. This is something that I am very grateful for.

Michelle Wood

Holiday Memory – Stephanie Wright

Sleigh bells, snowmen, scarves, even warm fires to combat the winter wonderland all around.

Growing up in Southern California, these were merely the makings of songs meant to fill us with cheer and get us in the holiday spirit. When we ventured to the mall for last minute gifts or walked through the neighborhood passing out baked goods, decorated candles, and general good will, it was under sunny skies and in jeans. Perhaps we had on scarves or sweaters with reindeer, but they were purely ornamental, and worn over short sleeve t’s. It is for these very reasons that when in December of my 5th grade year my parents announced that we would be spending Christmas in Big Bear, a small mountain community (read: snow!), I knew it was going to be the best Christmas ever. That year, I didn’t even bother to make a wish list for Santa. There was only one thing that I wanted and it wasn’t sold in any store. I was determined to wake up on Christmas morning, look out the window and see snow. Real snow. Falling from the sky. Not the synthetic ‘flock’ that we had sprayed on our trees before bringing them home to decorate. I was talking about an actual freezing fantasy come to live in the form of unique flakes. And while I did get my wish and ultimately spent hours in the front yard of our rented cabin gleefully rolling around like a maniac and building snowmen, snow women, snow children, snow puppies, and snow kitties enough to populate an entire snow suburb, it isn’t the snow that makes me ache to return to that cabin, to that year, to that Christmas.

What really made that year so special for me was that we took time as a family, away from the malls and the tinsel, to enjoy each other and reconnect. One way we did this that I would like to pass along to other families started with how we chose to decorate our tree. For purely logistical reasons, we left all of our traditional decorations and ornaments at home. Instead, we decided to make all of our ornaments once we got to the cabin. Again, we did not want to have to transport any more back home than we brought with us, so our decorations had to be disposable as well Apparently my parents felt that traveling in a car with two young girls made the car feel crowded enough as it was! Our inspiration, as it often did, came from my mother. She decided that since we would be making hot cider garnished with orange and apple slices, we could also use apple and oranges slices as ornaments. We cut them up, baked them, and then attached cute ribbons to them to hang them on the tree. Not only were they fun to make, but they made the entire cabin smell wonderful, were inexpensive, and biodegradable! My parents got a little fancier than us and hot glued sticks of cinnamon and (pepper corn things) to theirs. We also went on a scavenger hunt, pitting me and my dad against my sister and mom in an all out search for the best looking pine cone to top our tree and runners up to place on lower, but still worthy branches.

In the end, it was this Christmas, the one with the least amount of ‘stuff’ that we all agreed gave us the most. Now that I’m in Northern Virginia, I can play in the snow each year, but I still remember to come in from the cold and take the time to truly enjoy what matters.

Stephanie Wright

National Prescription Drug Take Back Initiative Collection

“More than seven million Americans currently abuse prescription drugs, according to the 2009 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Each day, approximately, 2,500 teens use prescription drugs to get high for the first time according to the Partnership for a Drug Free America. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including the home medicine cabinet.” DEA Website.

Take a few minutes to collect your expired prescription drugs and drop them off at a collection site.

National Take Back Initiative Collection Site Search
The 2nd National Prescription Drug Take Back Day
Saturday, April 30, 2011
10:00 am – 2:00 pm

Find a Collection Site Near You