Finish It Friday – Are You In?

Happy Friday to you! It has been quite a day of finishing for me already—and it’s *only* 4 PM. ;) There's so much more on my weekend to-finish list, so here goes:

1. (Start) and finish (within reason) holiday planning.
2. Finish planning Collin’s birthday celebration(s).
3. Finish putting away Halloween decorations.
4. Wash car – inside and out. It’s supposed to be nice here this weekend, so it would be nice to get this done.

There is more…but this is what I’m going on record with. ;) How about you? What's on your finish-it list?

Holiday Organizing with Buckets

You may recall that I love using buckets to organize and store things—it’s just one of my (uh, many) quirks. Lucky for me, the holiday season offers new opportunities to organize things with buckets (hooray!) and, it turns out, the holiday season also offers the opportunity for finding new buckets.

Yesterday I discovered some new buckets on my way to an in-home client appointment. I arrived very near the client’s neighborhood about fifteen minutes early. It just so happens that my client lives very near to a very nice and very new Target. So, I thought “I have just enough time to stop at Target to return those pillowcases and use the ladies room.”

So I run into this very new, very nice Target and stop at the returns counter—which happens to be right next to a very well stocked Dollar Spot. This very well stocked Dollar Spot happened to have some very cute holiday buckets—in red, blue and green. Now remember, I have fifteen minutes to a) use the ladies room, b) return pillowcases and c) drive the remaining three miles to my client’s home. And arriving on time is a priority. So, those buckets really complicated things. Do I use the bathroom or do I buy the bucket? I opted to stick to the original plan and use the ladies room, reasoning that I could easily swing back by Target on my way home.

Fast forward 4-1/2 hours…and I’m back in the very new, very nice Target. I have $2.50 in my hand and I am ready to claim my lovely green bucket. To my shock and horror, there are only red buckets left! That’s right—all the blue shiny buckets and all the green shiny buckets are g-o-n-e, leaving me not only green-bucketless, but also realizing I am not the only crazy bucket-loving lady on this planet. In fact, there were many bucket-loving people in that one very new, very nice Target buying up my shiny green buckets while I was happily and unknowingly organizing with my client. Who would have thought?

I decided to settle on the red bucket and head home, slightly bothered that all those green buckets got away from me—every single one of them. Gone.

Now a rational person would let it go. I had a red bucket, I should be happy. Right? Nope. Not me. That green bucket kept calling me and that green bucket kept nagging at me. The red bucket simply wouldn’t do. I had to have a green bucket. (Yes, I was becoming an even crazier bucket-loving lady than I was just hours earlier.)

So, I did what any crazy bucket-loving lady would do and headed to my not-so-very-new Target to see if, by chance, it had shiny green buckets. And alas—it did! I am now the happy owner of a shiny green bucket (and a red bucket, too. Because…well…you just never know when you might need a red bucket, right?)

So, what do I plan to do with these buckets? Well, when I first saw the green bucket, I thought it would make a great spot to store incoming Christmas cards. Without a designated spot, incoming cards can quickly become a source of holiday clutter.

These buckets would also be a handy container to corral card sending supplies – the cards, pens, stamps, address labels, etc. so that this project can be portable and move from room to room as my mood strikes.

I also thought it would be fun to use a bucket to store coupons, catalogs, receipts, and other holiday shopping gear throughout the season. The basket I used for this purpose last year has been permanently “borrowed” by my daughter for use in her closet, so I needed a container for this purpose anyway.

These buckets are really fun colors, making them great to use in a kid’s room any time of year. (Perhaps I should have picked up a blue one or two for my son’s room…hmmm…)

You could also use these buckets as a fun gift basket filled with anything that strikes your fancy...hot cocoa with holiday mugs, for example.

Okay…I’ve got to stop because I’m about to talk myself into more buckets, and really, I have other things on my to-do list today that trump my desire to go crazy buying buckets. (Again.) So, I’ll end the bucket report here. But, if you get a bucket or two of your own, I’d love to hear how you plan to use it. (And not to start a bucket-buying frenzy out there or anything, but just keep in mind these cuties sold out very fast yesterday at that very new Target by my client’s house. So…keep that in mind as you make your own bucket buying plans.)

Friday To-Do List

So it’s Friday, again! And it’s a rainy Friday. Again! It has been an incredibly wet and dreary October in my neck of the woods. But, oh well. I guess that’s what umbrellas are for.

So what’s on your Friday to-do list? Mine is simple and sweet:  Enjoy spending time with my Dad. Yay! My Dad and his wife are in town for a visit, and I’m seriously just so happy to see him. So, no projects this weekend—just some trick-or-treating and relaxing with this very-special-to-me man that I call Dad.

So no finishing for me this weekend…just sitting back, relaxing and enjoying the fruits of past weekends labor, like this fun (or perhaps funny) little project:

 

This project came together over the course of a couple of weekends. I was inspired by an article about seasonal decorating in this magazine.  The article talked about simple ways to transform your home’s decor for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and then New Year by using the same items in different ways for each holiday. So that got my creative juices flowing—I loved the idea, but wasn’t really sure how to pull it off in my home.

Then, I saw another project in Better Homes and Gardens where they strung pressed leaves from a ribbon on an empty, painted picture frame. Viola! I’ll hang ghosts from an old picture frame. The best part of this project is that it cost nothing. The frame was a curb-side “find” (thank you “Auntie Phyl”), and the ghosts were made from our old bed skirt and fiber fill that I had on hand. Fun and free—gotta’ love that. 

I’m hoping to do some other seasonal projects for Thanksgiving and Christmas using this frame. Who knows if and when inspiration will strike? We’ll see…perhaps a future Finish It Friday project.

So…that’s my weekend, and a little look back into projects completed in weekend’s past. I’d love to hear what’s on your Finish It Friday list! I hope you have a wonderful, productive and relaxing weekend. See you on Monday!

Check, check, check!

Wow…no wonder I waited to paint my hallway for so long. What a royal pain in the legs, back, arms and feet. ;) In my mind that project was going to take about three hours. Which it probably would have, had I only painted the walls. But I painted the doors and trim, too. And OMG…that was a s-l-o-w process to say the least. I painted seven door sides (I only did the side facing into the hall, except in the bathroom where I did both sides.) And I painted trim for days. Literally. It took forever! And I still have to paint the coat closet doors…but my friends that will have to wait for another day, week, or maybe year, for that matter. See, my three hour (in my mind) project actually took over 12 hours in the real world. Yikes! That’s a lot of time to be going up and down a ladder, bending down on the floor to paint trim, and finally, finally rolling on a beautiful shade of Bone White paint from Benjamin Moore. Oh how I love this new paint. So at the end of it all, there was a nice reward, it really does look nice. And it’s done! Woohoo!

Other check marks for the weekend included:

• Laundry. (check!)
• List those two items on Craig’s list that are left over from last weekend. (uh…no check…)
• Finalize Halloween costumes. (check!)
• Make ghosts. (check!)
• And a couple of add-ons—sign up for next session of yoga (check!) and sign up Kailea for Tae-Kwon-Do (check!)

Well…that was a fun little endorphin rush. Just saying “check” over and over has made me quite happy. Yay for endorphins!

Now it’s your turn! Please tell me about all of your check marks—I would love to hear about them. I was happy beyond words that so many of you joined me in Finish It Friday this week. Believe me, I thought about you more than once as I was going up and down that ladder, painting those doors, painting that trim…painting…painting…painting… Thanks for being there with me in spirit. :)

Okay…that’s it for now. But check back again soon because I have a really exciting announcement to make. (And it has nothing to do with babies…) 

Happy Friday!

Oh my gosh, it’s Friday again. Already. Did this week fly by for you, too?

At any rate, it’s Friday so it’s time for some weekend planning. I’m up for finishing some more stuff today and this weekend. Here’s my list:

• Laundry — finish today so I don’t have to worry about it this weekend. Always better this way.
• Paint the hallway — this is a maybe as it assumes that I can find a suitable paint color today.
• List those two items on Craig’s list that are left over from last weekend.
• Finalize Halloween costumes.
• Make ghosts.

 

Okay…there’s my list.  What’s on your list this weekend?

 

The Best Laid Plans are Flexible

As you know, last Friday I posted what I realized was an aggressive list for Finish it Friday. Since the weekend is when I have my biggest block of “do-stuff-around-the-house” time, I love the idea of starting the weekend with a to-do list—a.k.a. my Finish It Friday list. My list helps me stay focused during the weekend, which means more things get done than if I didn’t have a list or a plan.

Now, from working with clients and online workshop participants, I know there are those of you out there who avoid planning because you feel like if you make a plan you have to follow it. The thinking goes something along the lines of this: If I make a list for the weekend and don’t check everything off the list then I feel like I’ve failed.

Ouch! That is pretty high stakes stuff. Do it all or you’ve failed. I can see why you’d resist creating a plan if success or failure was that black and white!

My approach to planning is a bit more flexible. See, I didn’t finish my entire list this weekend, but I did get an awful lot done. I don’t think I failed at all. What do you think? Here’s what I checked off my list:

• List three items on Craig’s list. Partial check. One item was listed, the other two are closer to being listed, but not quite done.
• Straighten up the basement back room.Check – and well worth the effort. Yay! 
• (Start) and finish cleaning the house! Check!
• Transfer photos to jump drive for my family in Michigan. Check!
• Order samples for master bedroom window blinds. Check!
• Paint a picture frame. Check!
• Finish up my projects for Get Organized for the Holidays. Nope…but hey, that’s what today’s for, right?

So…did I fail? Well, first let’s explore why those other things didn't get done. In a nutshell, I got a better offer (or made a better plan.) Yesterday, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful October afternoon and go on family outing to the pumpkin farm. We left the house at noon for some much needed clothes shopping for the kids, and then headed to the pumpkin farm. We returned home at about 8:30 PM after dinner at Jay’s parents. Long story short—there wasn’t much time to get things done yesterday! And that was fine by me. Because I made my plan on Friday, I got a lot of stuff done on Saturday. Even though all I did was post one thing on Craig’s list and put a second coat on that picture frame—I wasn’t at all taunted by my to-do list yesterday. I knew the world wasn’t going to come to a screeching halt if my other two items weren’t listed, and I knew that I could finish up the holiday class projects today. So…it was all good.

The moral of the story is this. When you make a plan, even something as simple as a weekend to-do list, you don’t have to get it all done to be successful. This isn’t a case of all or nothing. Anything you check off your list is a success. Every check mark is progress. Every check mark is a step forward.

So if you avoid making plans or even to-do lists due to fear of failure, try reframing your thinking. To-do lists and plans aren’t all or nothing propositions, nor are they set in stone. They’re a tool to make it easier to get things done—and they do work! So give planning a try and give yourself the permission to keep it flexible! You can change it, tweak it, delete things, and defer things to your heart’s content. Remember, the best laid plans are flexible.

So…I’d love to hear from you. What works for you when it comes to planning, making to-do lists and getting things done? Do you love lists or avoid them like the plague? Or, if you’d like to share what you finished this weekend, you know I’d love to hear!  (And thank you to Brenda, Mikia and Cheryl for joining me in Finish it Friday! And Michelle, I look forward to hearing from you next week.)

Happy Monday!

 

 

Happy (Freebie) Friday!

Yay, it’s Friday again, and best yet, it’s Freebie Friday again! Woohoo! So I mentioned that this week I would be giving away something that is very hard to find…so here it is:

It’s a copy of The (now-out-of-print-and-really-hard-to-get-your-hands-on) Organized & Inspired Scrapbooker, co-authored and signed by me. Hooray! Now, don’t be mad at me for hoarding this. I picked up a spare copy many, many months ago after first learning the book was going out of print. I wanted to have a spare copy for a rainy day, and well, it’s raining cats and dogs here. So, today is the day! Woohoo!

Now, this week’s Freebie Friday is a bit different than most; replying to the comments will not enter you into the giveaway. Instead, all you have to do is complete a brief online survey. For a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of creating an online workshop on (you guessed it) scrapbook organizing. This is the topic I hear most often in our surveys that people would like…so my goal with the survey is to find out more details about what you want in a workshop like this. Things like how many weeks should the workshop run? What topics would you like covered? What kind of space do you scrapbook in—your own room, a shared space, etc. In a nutshell, the survey will help me create your ideal online scrapbook organizing workshop. Sound like a plan? Terrific!

Alright…click here to take the survey. Make sure to answer every question…and include your email address, first name, last initial, and location. Without this info…there’d be no way to let you know you won, and that would be very, very sad. I will notify the winner via email, but announce the winner’s first name, last initial and location on the blog post, so every will know who won. Be assured I will only use your email address for notifying the winner. I won’t add you to any list, though I do have some good lists if you want to sign yourself up for one or two and get even more organizing tips and ideas. But I digress.

Take the survey first for your chance to win The (now-out-of-print-and-really-hard-to-get-your-hands-on) Organized & Inspired Scrapbooker. Enter before 9 PM on Sunday October, 11th. I will announce the winner on Monday! Good luck and have a great weekend!

 

Updated: The survey is now closed and links have been turned off. Thank you to everyone who participated. :)

Monday Morning Check-In

How was your weekend? I hope it was great! I’d love to hear how you did with your Finish It Friday projects. I’m happy to report the following updates on my Friday To-Finish list:

• Drop off donations at Goodwill. Done! On Friday I dropped of the box of stuff at Goodwill. Woohoo! It always feels good to have the stuff completely out of the house.

• Finish a creative project (or two!) Check! I finished four projects for Get Organized for the Holidays this weekend. So fun to play with paper, paint and Mod Podge.

 

How about you? What did you finish this weekend? I can't wait to hear...

Organizing Magazines

The next session of Organize Your Paper Clutter starts next Tuesday…so the topic of organizing paper is top of mind again! How to organize magazines is one of the popular questions in this workshop, so I thought I’d share my system for keeping my vast collection of magazines under control. If you’ve stopped by this blog of mine a time or two, you may have picked up on my love of magazines. I have always, always loved to flip through magazines and catalogs. I think I love magazines the way some girls love shoes, and other girls love chocolate. Yet, the professional organizer side of me knows that too much of a good thing, when we’re not careful, can equal clutter.

So, here’s how I keep magazine clutter at bay.

1. Establish a home for your magazines. Now, ideally this would be a single home, so that you always know how many magazines you have, and they don’t begin to take over, if you know what I mean. However, I have a couple of homes for my magazines. The most current magazines live in a reading basket in my family room, and the ones that I’m currently in the process of reading are on my night table. (Well, at least they were until I painted…now I’m in search of a new night stand, one with a drawer to hold a couple of books and magazines. Less clutter, if you know what I mean.)

 My reading basket is home to current magazines and books.

Magazines that I’m keeping for the long-haul are stored on shelves in my office storage closet. These are organized by title, year and month, and stored in magazine holders from IKEA.  

2. Decide which magazines to keep long term.  There are several magazines I plan to keep indefinitely. These are mostly magazines that are no longer in print such as my Simple Scrapbooks, Cottage Living, Mary Englbreit, and Organize. I also include really great decorating magazines—special issues that are chock-full of great ideas—too many to clip. These magazines take up about nine (in total) magazine file boxes and just over one shelf. In addition, ever since the great magazine purge of 2009, I have allocated two magazine boxes for one year of Real Simple back issues. 

These magazine boxes are now home to magazines I'm keeping indefinitely, such as Cottage Living and the like. I now keep just one year of Real Simple back issues.

3. Decide what to clip. So what about all the other magazines? Well…when my reading basket starts to get too full, I have a magazine clipping party. I tear out inspiring photos and articles that I will refer to again. And those last five words are key:  I try (really hard) to only keep clippings that I will actually use, or in other words, refer to again. This is something I learned the hard way, after over-accumulating a bunch of really lovely, or super interesting clippings that served no practical purpose in my life. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am using the word practical a bit loosely. I keep a few clippings around simply because the photos are inspiring.

 

4. Organize and store the clippings. Immediately after clipping an article, I temporarily store it in this [IN] PLACE SYSTEM Expanding Document Wallet 

 
Organized into the following broad categories:

• To read
• Scrapbook ideas
• Recipes
• Decorating ideas
• Project ideas
• Organizing ideas

 

Then, once the document wallet gets full (or the mood strikes!) I move my clippings to one of several binders—such as my decorating ideas binder.

This binder includes tabs for each room in my home. So when I come across a decorating idea that I love, I have to decide where I am likely to use this idea—the master bedroom, one of the kid’s rooms, etc. The clippings that make the cut, get stored in a sheet protector behind the appropriate room’s tab.

Aside from storing magazine clippings in this decorating binder, I also store paint and fabric swatches, my paint sample floor plan, and other decorating resources such as catalogs for window covering companies, and things like that.

5. Recycle everything else. Once I go through my magazines and clip things I want to keep, the rest of the magazine gets recycled. If I don’t clip anything (or too much) from a magazine I take it to our library and place it on the free table, passing it along to a happier home. (And I try really hard not to take anything off the free table that will start the cycle all over again.)

So this is what I do…but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the perfect system for you. For those of you who have taken my workshops you know that I don’t believe organizing is a one-size-fits-all proposition. The best organizing solution is the one that works for you.

For some people binders and sheet protectors are simply too much work for how often they will refer to their magazine clippings. For me, because I truly do use the items I clip…it’s a terrific system. It allows me to have my favorite ideas, photographs and articles just a flip or two away, all the time.  

Do you have a great system for organizing your magazines and clippings? If so, I’d love to hear from you! Please share your ideas in the comments. And if you’re looking for a complete paper organizing system for every type of paper that comes into your home, remember that Organize Your Paper Clutter begins on Tuesday! It’s the last time this workshop will be offered in 2009—so grab your spot today!

Thanks for reading and sharing…I can’t wait to hear your ideas. 

filling in the blanks…

I spent virtually every waking minute this weekend painting, or getting ready to paint, or cleaning up after a painting project. But you know what (aside from my sore muscles from going up and down the ladder) it feels *so* good! To say that room needed a fresh coat of paint is the under statement of the century. Wow…what a difference! And the best part is this:  unlike my window cleaning project from a couple of weeks ago, this project will stay looking nice for much, much longer (though this time I will not be stretching the paint job for twelve years!)

I ended up choosing a nice shade of green. (Well, I think it’s a nice shade of green, anyway.) Green seems to be my new favorite color. It has always been my Dad’s favorite color…so maybe I grew up with so much green that green feels like home to me.

 

Anyway, it’s Castleton Mist or HC-11 from Benjamin Moore. I used their new Eco Spec paint which is Zero VOC and minimal odor. Oh my heavens, I seriously love this paint! It was the best. Literally it didn’t smell bad at all and it covered so well it was amazing! I have 1-1/2 gallons of paint left, it covered so well, so I’m going to be painting our master bathroom the same color. That room really needs a fresh coat, too, so no worries—it’s one less decision to make. First, though, I have to strip the wall paper border and figure out how to cover the discolored spots on the ceiling. That should be fun. Painting ceilings is always a laugh-riot, if you know what I mean.

I’m down now to one more paint choice to make…the hallway. Any suggestions? (The hall is that long narrow strip in the floor plan photo that connects one green room, to a pink one, a blue one, and another room in a different shade of green.) I’m thinking a neutral is a must…but which neutral? There are so many to choose from… Any ideas?

So that’s what I finished this weekend. How about you? Did you do anything fun, long over due, or in any other way completely rewarding? Hope you had a great weekend…I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.

In other news…I’m just days (if not hours) away from opening registration for Get Organized for the Holidays. This workshop is always one of my favorites because I get to lead the workshop and participate in it, too! Both of my kid’s birthdays fall during the holidays, so we take an already jam-packed season and fill it with even more fun and festivities. Being organized during this time of year is an absolute must for me, and sharing the season with my online workshop friends makes it all the more fun! I hope you’ll join me this year, too! I’ll let you know as soon as the workshop opens. By the way, the workshop will begin on November 3rd (with a pre-workshop assignment the previous week) so mark your calendar.

Also, registration for Organize Your Closet ends today…so sign up now if you’re still thinking about joining in.

Okay, that’s it for now. Enjoy the rest of your Monday.

 

P.S. Many thanks to my friend Stacey for helping me paint this weekend. I'd for sure still be up on a ladder if it weren't for you. :)