Closet Organizers Do A Lot Of The Work

Pamper yourself with a closet that makes you feel welcome. Whether a closet is a walk-in or a step-in, it should greet you with a smile. I say that about every room, and the closet is no different. It is a room, it is just a small room.

When you think about it, we shouldn’t have to spend time searching to find something to wear in a closet. Let’s apply a 2 minute rule on organization to the closet: If you can’t find it in 2 minutes, you need to get organized. That’s where organizing products that aid in establishing order come in.

The double hanging rod on the right, for example, provides a space-saving gadget for the closet (available in our Product Shop). Anything that helps give you more space in a closet is beneficial because it should help prevent over-crowded spaces.

There are products for folded clothes, hanging clothes, organizing shoes, grouping ties and belts and scarves, you name it.

The trick (and it’s not really a trick) is to find the right product to organize items in your closet. Pre-fab closet systems are wonderful for creating an organized environment in your closet. And you can custom design pre-fab closet systems without costing a lot of money too.

So, when we chose closet organizers that help us save time finding what we want, we’ve created a lot less work for ourselves, haven’t we?

For more tips, here are some articles that you may find of interest:

• Organizing Spaces for Clothing
• Organizing Kids Closets
• Organizing a Coat Closet
• Organize Your Closet
• Get Your Closet Organized
• Web 3.0 Way of Organizing Your Closet

Filing Papers

It’s that time of year to archive 2008 records and purge documents no longer needed to be kept. This is also a good time to get into those files and pull what you need for taxes, as well as organize any financial papers that go along with your taxes.

With a new beginning, you have an opportunity to improve the way you maintain your papers for ease of storage and retrieval. I find that a lot of people are going a little less conventional and more trendy with the manufacturing of beautiful ways to store files.

The days of the colorless file boxes are out and the time of color is in. So, why not spice up your work area with some colorful filing boxes found in our product shop?

The key to putting any papers in any box, filing cabinet, or file holder is to ensure that you can find papers easily by using categorized filing tabs. I find the best solution is to use hanging files within the box with file folders clearly labeled on its content.

This generic subject classification system is simple and applicable for any home or business (some subject classifications would not apply to a home filing system however):

Major class includes:

• Administration
• Accounting
• Corporate
• Finance
• HR
• Legal
• Marketing & PR
• Operations
• Personal (for home filing system)
• Research & Development

Within these Major classifications, there would be a level we can refer to as a secondary or primary level within the Major level. This is where it can get extensive and anything goes. One example of this level would be “Banking” which would be grouped in the Accounting classification. The file folders is another level within banking and would consist of your bank deposits, statements, etc. Get the idea?

The subject of filing system is an extensive one that I can get into more detail about later. Meantime, I hope this gives you something to work with! Be sure to take a look at our colorful filing boxes!

Stylish Office Products

Not many people think of decorating the office and most of them are pretty stuffy, for lack of a better word. But you can decorate your office or home office in style with products that compliment your own style. Most of us spend a lot of time in our office and there is no reason it shouldn’t give us enjoyment while we’re there. As a matter of fact, a nicely decorated office will give us inspiration and even motivation.

For those who are creative, you can really get those creative juices flowing by being in a space that is accented with accessories and furnishings that make you happy.

One of the first things I tell people who are re-organizing an office space is to ensure their desk is situated so they can look out into the room. This gives them space. A desk facing a wall puts a person directly in front of a wall, and that lessens their space.

The other thing is to use stylish organizing items for displayed office products. Like nice looking magazine holders or file baskets. Desktop items don’t have to be boring and should appeal to your taste in style.

I encourage you to take a look at our office products in our Product Shop to help you along with some choices in office organization to keep your papers neat and orderly.

Surround yourself with stylish office furniture, cabinets, and bookcases too.

One blogger talks about decorating your office in style and says:

Instead of a traditional pencil holder: Use a flowerpot or a decorative vase to hold pens, pencils, letter openers, etc.

Be creative: Use a cute candle holder to store paper clips, rubber bands and other odds and ends.

Instead of purchasing expensive paintings: Frame your kids’ artwork and place them on your desk or walls.

Some other articles of interest for you on this subject are:

• Beautify Your Office
• Garden Office
• See Jane Work – stylish office supplies
• Feminine Office Accessories
• Create Girl

Neat Drawers

I was in The Container Store yesterday with my friend and strolled through isles of organizing this-and-thats for practically everything you could think of. While my friend went off to see the closet designer about her new closet plans, I looked for some specific solutions for organizing my drawers.

I had been using make-shift shoe-box organizers for holding my lingerie but wanted something a little nicer. Once I started looking at all the various drawer organizers, the only thing that got me out of that isle was a woman who started coming down with her cart inching me further to the end of the isle to make room for her to look.

Before I was scooted out of the isle however, I grabbed my choice of drawer organizers and started throwing them in the basket. I had decided on these wooden boxes that came in various sizes for socks, underwear, shirts, and even a nice one for my junk drawer.

The best part of that shopping experience was seeing so many things discounted! Now, I’m not writing about this to promote the store, but rather to tell you that you can get these kind of things online, right here in our product shop at everyday discounted prices!

Sorry to make this sound like a commercial but hey, I’m proud of what we have to offer here, so why not plug our products as well?

Whenever I look at organizing products, it sparks ideas of organizing things I hadn’t even thought of before. It also presents me with some better, prettier solutions for some of my stuff. And, since we all have “stuff,” it may be a good idea to start browsing around yourself to see what may be a nicer solution for your things.

Maybe start with making your drawers neater? Take a look at our selection of drawer organizers!

Law & Order: Organized Intent

Column by Cyndi Seidler

Sharing a home with a spouse, children, roommate, or live-in loved one can typically be trying. Although I may have much agreement about that statement, let me explain how I’ve made this presumed diplomatically correct conclusion.

The way I see it, there are usually rules that govern a household in which, if respected and executed by everyone, can lead to more harmonious. Yet, no matter how commonsensical a rule or policy may be, some regulations are just meant to bring trouble with them if not understood and agreed upon by those involved.

Yes, it does matter who you impose certain rules upon. And yes, it does have significant effect on your well-being if a particular guiding principle of the household is not valued.

My friend, for example, has a roommate and they get along pretty well. While both are tidy people, the boss of them (my friend) tends to be more stringent about how she likes to keep the house.

They are not exactly an “odd couple” or opposites in the way they like the home, and most of the household rules are honored between them. However, it’s the abstract make-up-rules-as-you-go wishes that go from a simple request, like folding up a throw blanket when done with it, to a “new rule” imagined by the other. This often times has made the requesting person seem a bit over-the-top.

There was one instance where my friend simply stated to her roommate, “Can you return the sofa pillows to their position when you leave?” She claims that this request came after repeatedly re-organizing the pillows back to normal position on the sofa after he left so everything looked tidy.

Okay, seems like a legitimate argument for a new household guideline. But as “a rule,” that might be something to deliberate about.

A rule and a guideline or policy is actually different, although both have very similar connotations to them. The implication that both are expected to be carried out by others is what makes them so similar actually. “Please don’t leave your dishes in the sink” has the overtone of a request, although what this is really saying is, “Please don’t leave your dishes in the sink anymore, ever or there’s going to be trouble.” That could then classify the request as a new rule.

Now, another friend can’t get her husband to do anything around the house, therefore doesn’t expect it. There are no rules because, if made, they wouldn’t be agreed upon anyway, so therefore not honored. Her work-around has been to hire the help she needs to carry out tasks she wishes her husband to do. Therefore, her “teenage husbands-for-hire” come and do any heavy lifting and help her with household projects. She has accepted taking on many manly tasks herself however, like taking out the trash.

I guess you could consider their situation harmonious in that, if nothing is expected from the other, than no hard feelings will ensue and they can live in peace. However, if there are resentments that go along with “no expectations,” than this just might open up a discussion about what peaceful living is about.

I know my sister and her spouse share in household responsibilities. When I asked her about rules they have among them, she didn’t hesitate to list the main ones that make them both happy. Things like clean up your own mess, return items taken from a place when done, don’t leave lights on, don’t talk during a television show’s dialog or try to start a conversation while the other is reading, and if you see something on the floor, that’s a cue to pick it up.

Fair enough, those sounded sane to me and not too over-indulgent or strict in their aim for living a harmonious lifestyle. Back to my friend and her roommate, when too many requests are viewed as new rules, she can be considered a dictator who was never voted into office.

My guess, in that circumstance and many others similar to it, would be about compromises. You can ask of something you wish to be carried out from hereon, but not expect it and even do something yourself which you wish the other to do. This would, of course, depend on the severity or demand you need or want something done.

Asking a child to keep their room straight should be a rule, not a request, for example, and not carried out by you if they don’t do it. Again, that’s where rules and guidelines differ.

In either case, the rule or the guideline need to be understand, agreed upon and hold value. And, if you look up the word “value” in a thesaurus, you’ll find words like worth, importance, and usefulness, among others.

Myself, I can appreciate a good rule that has value. I do tend to enjoy making rules rather than being given rules, and I confess … I’m more like my friend, the dictator who wasn’t voted into office.

Fresh Start to Bring Balance

Many of us try to get a fresh start in a new year by making resolutions that will improve or enhance our lives.  We make a valiant effort with the high hope that the changes we make will last.  Then, life happens.

There is a way to get in control of our lives and make it last though. I finally got through the “been there, done that” dilemma myself, however it did take some rethinking to make my changes stick.

One of the first things I realized was that I needed a valid reason to make a change.  I needed a worthwhile purpose.

A purpose could be anything from wanting to improve our health in order to live longer to wanting to keep our room neat so we’d feel better in it.

Whatever it is, there needs to be a meaningful reason you want something.
For years, this one friend of mine had wanted to start a new career endeavor. She had made a few attempts to get started in the past but never fully carried through with her plans. Then, once she established why she wanted to do this, what effect it would have on her life, and what benefits it would have to others, she went into high gear to launch her new career.  See, she had the driving force to take off — purpose.

How many of you know someone who wanted to quit smoking?  This one guy I know tried so many times he was at the point of feeling completely hopeless about it.  I asked him why he wanted to quit smoking and he said because he wanted to be healthier.  That’s nice, but why did he want to be healthier?  To live longer?  At first, yes.  But it wasn’t until he ascertained he had a more unselfish motive that finally got him to stop lighting up: he wanted to do it for others who cared about him so he would be around longer–for them.

That purpose carried great weight.  So, I believe if we want something a certain way, we also need a meaningful reason to have it that way.

Isn’t it all too common that we also find ourselves stuck in a situation we don’t want?  When we get into a rut, it’s because we didn’t put our attention on the important things.  In focusing less on the tangible and more on the fulfillment of things you value, you’ll achieve a sense of balance.

To create an ideal lifestyle for ourselves, we need to structure our life so that we have time to do those things that have purpose for us.  But as I said, first we need to determine what our aims are that get us from the place we are to a final destination where we want to be.

Some tips for getting our lives in balance include:

1.    Change priorities.  Priorities should encompass family relations, personal enrichment, health, pursuing passions, working toward long-range goals.

2.    Change the way you operate.  Adjust your normal operating basis to fit in your new priorities.  This could be done by segmenting your day and week with a routine agenda.  Include the time you devote to work, to family, to personal leisure activities and friends, to your health, toward your passions and long-term goals.

3.    Plan your schedule daily.  Refer to those activities that get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

4.    Create a time plan with a master list and daily list.  Limit the number of things to accomplish in one day.

5.    Focus on your lifelong passions and start to really pursue them.  Life is more fulfilling when you’re doing those things that bring you joy. Direct your energies on doing more activities that are in sync with your purposes.

6.    Do less what you don’t like and do more what you do like.  Many things you don’t enjoy doing can be delegated, so make a list and see what you can enlist another person to do, or hire someone to do it.

7.    Learn to say “no” to things that don’t align with your purpose.  Match time and resources to the priorities you’ve chosen.

8.    Don’t make work the center of your universe.  Step off the work highway temporarily to regain a sense of balance.

9.    Make time for yourself.  Do those things that comfort you — a bath, a walk, reading.

10.    Keep agreements you’ve made with yourself.

When you really know what I’m saying, you’ll find that it’s not so much about managing time to achieve our goals and pursue our passions.  It’s more about managing ourselves.  It’s about knowing what we want, and why we want it.

Happy new year.  May things never be the same.

COLUMN: ORGANIZED LIVING
By Cyndi Seidler

Being Ready for Your Future

Often times, the weekend approaches us and we are either asking ourselves or someone else, “What should I do this weekend?”

This demonstrates more than creative initiative at work. It shows a person who is thinking ahead, planning out a short-term goal that usually carries a purpose with it, even if it’s just to have fun.

Many of us seem to be fairly good at these kind of short-term plan-making abilities.  But, what about the kind of planning that extends into the more distant future?  Like, what would you want to be doing in ten years, fifteen years, and so forth?

The way things work on planet Earth is that are bodies get older and we reach a point where we begin to see things differently.  We particularly start seeing ten years from now a lot more threatening than we had “when we were younger.”

I just had a birthday and my daughter offered no sympathy about it either.  At my age, it isn’t like a New Year celebration anymore — it’s more like a mourning of our beloved youth.

Despite my various emotional attitudes on the subject, I’ve been able to remain relatively calm.  Although I’m getting older, it doesn’t seem as frightful as it could.  Probably because I’m looking forward to things I’ve put out there for my future.

So, the thing that keeps people focused and driven, no matter what their body’s age happens to be, is that they work towards a long-term goals.

One of the things this does is it keeps us from withering.  People who retire from work and don’t make new goals go along in life without purpose.  This usually leads to idle oldness and no fun.

If the mind ceases to generate the kind of creative stimulus that typically keeps us young and/or healthy, we wither in mind and body.
Additionally, if we haven’t been planning for the goal of retiring, we’ll often find ourselves in a boat without a paddle.  In other words, we’ve arrived somewhere but we didn’t bring the tools with us to go anywhere from there.

People who didn’t plan or prepare for their long-range future by setting aside a retirement fund know what this is like.  They reached retirement age and then struggle to survive.

Maybe you’ve heard many of the “regret” stories?  I wish I had put money aside in a savings account.  I wish I never bought on credit. I wish I spent more time with my family.  I wish I had, wish I had, I wish I had.

Regret is the kind of thing that changes nothing.  It only sits there making you wrong for something you have the power to make right.
Regret dwells on the past, and what we should be doing is creating the future.

The future is a minute from now and a year from now.  It is something ahead of us that we need to continually create and put goals on.
So, every year, I list all my goals for that year.  And, every day I list my goals for the day.

It gives me a sense of accomplishment when goals are reached and, as soon as they are, new ones are made.

We don’t have to wait until we reach our goals to make new ones either.  It’s perfectly okay to want to accomplish a lot of things in the future.

But a goal is only as good as it’s plan and actions on carrying it out.  Just thinking about something you want to be, do or have in the future isn’t good enough.  It requires action along those thoughts.

It’s a simple drill: Look at where you are today and where you want to be in next month, or next year, or in the next several years.  Write it down, read it every day or every week.  Take some action on it.

If that seems too complicated or hard to do, you can sit back and be a victim of your future, rather than the creator of it.  But, only one of those choices has more fun.

A Room with a View

As an organizing expert, I try to be careful not to do that preaching thing. It really bugs me when people sound off advice with this sort of conceited authority and act like they are better than you. They probably are, but I strive to take my authority less seriously.

It’s kind of like when you were young and your parents sat you down and started telling you how important it is for you to do your homework, or keep your room clean, or practice your musical instrument every day. While their talks had some merit to it, they usually lost me at, “Hello, please sit down, I want to talk to you.”

So, just think of me as a person who happens to know a heck of a lot about a particular subject and wishes to impart some words of this wisdom. And, to prove I’m not overly authoritative on it, I want to begin by letting you know I’m not perfect.

With that said, I won’t be telling you that you should keep your room clean, for one thing. I personally tend to pick up a cleaning person rather than pick up a dust cloth. So, that’s an article for a housekeeping expert, not me.

Then again, to have an aesthetic room that you love and enjoy spending time in, that’s something else. Take my living room, for example. It’s one of my favorite rooms in the house, although I’ve made each of my rooms a special place. But my living room is the first place that welcomes me when I come home and we have a special bond.

When I walk into that room, it greets me with a smile. I’m convinced it’s actually happy. That mood usually then transfers to me (unless I just came in from an hour in heavy traffic, in which case it takes longer for me to feel the immediate joy my room wants to give).

This is not to say I typically walk into my living room unhappy and it has to cheer me up. I’m often too tired to know if I’m even in a mood. I’m just saying that the mood of the room is uplifting, no matter what sense of serenity or numbness or even drama I may happen to be experiencing at that moment.

How can a room be happy and be capable of making you happy, you ask? For one thing, it’s the view. And beautiful views can make us feel happy.

In the space of a room, I like to surround myself with things I like and be able to look at things that are appealing to me. Thus, each room in my house is a view.

It’s similar to being there watching a view of the mountains or ocean or any of your favorite scenic views. Some people call each of these types of spots “a happy place.”

Conversely, a cluttered and messy room is stressed out. Distraught furniture sitting in needed pathways isn’t so friendly either. And having all those beautifully framed photos hiding behind a not-so-beautiful stack of papers can be downright sad.

There is a real mix of emotions going on here. We have some overall anxiety mixed in with a dash of antagonism and a pinch of sadness. It’s interesting to see the emotional well-being of individuals that happen to be in that space.

Now, I’ve actually seen really messed up people with all kinds of emotional issues start out with a room just described (since these seem to go together like hand and glove). Then they clean it all up and get organized and make it aesthetically pleasing to them, which subsequently makes them become happier people, at least when they’re at home.

Now, that’s what I call some therapy!

I met someone once who was stunning in her physical appearance. I mean, she looked like she spent an hour on her make-up and equal time selecting the perfect outfit she dressed herself in. This was a lady I was supposed to give organizing advice to on television without a second take. After meeting her, I must say I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next.

Her home was a total and complete disaster zone, from top to bottom, every square inch of it. Miserable and ugly were not the right words for this environment. It was more like, condemned, which is what this woman would be herself if something wasn’t done about it.

I really had a difficult time adjusting to the two different conditions in front of me: a woman who did everything she could to look beautiful, and a home that didn’t match the woman.

Naturally, I wanted to run. This isn’t like me, but I really wanted to bail on this one. All I can say is, good thing I had an acting background so I could pretend I wasn’t mortified.

One can only imagine what this woman must feel when she occupies any space of her home. It certainly wasn’t joy. Essentially, we have a woman who places importance on beauty for her body, but not on her home.

Bottom line, the therapy is the same: make her space as aesthetic as she makes her body. After that, she can take in the fine view and sit back with a glass of wine to go along with the new mood at home: tranquility.

Lucky for me, my friends never seem to notice the dust. Their eyes are usually on the view.