Garage Sales 101 – The Sale is On!

Garage Sales 101 – The Day of the Sale

Be as prepared as you can the night before your sale. If the sale is  in your garage, try to have everything set up before you go to bed with  specific items ready to be carried out onto your driveway in the  morning. If the sale will be in the yard, have the items and display  tables ready to be carried out and a plan in mind for organizing  everything quickly.

You can post a start time of 9am, but don’t be surprised if you have  cars at your driveway at 7am! Every garage sale I’ve ever had, folks  show up well before starting time.

Collect money in advance. If larger items need to be picked up later, be sure to get 100 percent of the payment at the time of sale and set a specific deadline time for the pick-up.

At the end of your last sale day, don’t expect everything to be gone.  It just won’t happen. If you really just want to get rid of the stuff,  you can start slashing prices a couple of hours before the end of the  sale. But regardless, make a deal with yourself before the sale begins,  you will not to carry anything back into your house. Immediately pack it  up and make a trip to your favorite charity.  Or arrange a charity  pick-up like I did one year during our neighborhood sale. I arranged for  my favorite women’s charity to come with their truck to our  neighborhood the day after the sale. Neighbors put a sign on their  mailbox if they had items for the charity to take. It was a win-win for  everyone.

Here are a couple of more things to consider:

• Lock the doors to your house. When you get busy or distracted with customers, you don’t want someone to walk into your house.
• Clearly mark or remove any obstacles that may in anyway be   considered dangerous. Unfortunately, if someone is hurt on your   property, you may be held liable.
• Confine pets to the house or other secure area. This reduces the concern for distractions, animal attacks or allergic reactions.

Hopefully this series on garage sales helped you release some of your unwanted  treasures to others who will put them to good use and you made some  money in the process.

Originally posted 2010-09-06 12:07:42. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Create an Exit Strategy and a Drop Zone

You’re running late (again) and in a panic, you’re trying to get your kids and yourself out the door to school and work. Everyone is running around frantically to find what they need to leave the house with … backpack, cel phone, address book, hat, gym shoes … Does this sound familiar?

This was the scene at our house a few years ago too. What we needed in our home, and now as a Professional Organizer, I find that most of my clients need as well, is an’ exit strategy’ and a ‘drop zone.’ This is an area where items live that need to leave the house with you, as well as where appropriate items ‘drop’ when you arrive home. Items that need consistent homes in this area are:

• A checklist for leaving the house
• List of errands to run
• Keys, cel phone, PDA
• Purse
• Backpack
• Lunch box
• Coats, boots, hats, gloves, etc.
• Briefcase, laptop
• Merchandise returns, charity drop-offs, post office run items
• Umbrella
• Dog leash
• Sports equipment / musical instruments
• Towels for wiping dirty feet
• Trash can for dropping junk mail as you enter the house

To establish your own exit strategy and drop zone, identify (make a list) all the items that are regularly brought into the house and all the items that typically need to leave the house with you each day.

Next, determine the best location (home) for these items to live, in close proximity to the door that your family typically enters and leaves the home. Often this is through the garage. In many clients’ homes, I have arranged baskets to hold cel phones, PDAs, keys. In addition, hooks as the home for backpacks, umbrellas, dog leach, keys. What has become popular in many homes is a locker system where each family member has their own “cubby” or “locker” for holding their own belongings needed. Where space and budget allow, I have often brought in a closet contractor to construct a locker/cubby system for my clients.

A helpful tool for storing hats, gloves, scarves for all family members is to add a vertical over the door shoe holder (typically used to hold shoes vertically on a closet door). The younger kids have the lower pockets, older kids the middle pockets and the adults the top pockets. This way everyone has access to their own items and they can easily be seen through the clear pockets.

With all the electronics we carry daily, it is also important to have a consistent home to charge electronics, like cel phone and PDA. There are now docking stations available for purchase that allow you to charge all your equipment in one station.

After you have identified and strategized what needs to be located in your exit / drop zone and where the best home is for these items, it is critical that you communicate your new system to all family members. When everyone knows that there is a plan, and where the home is for their belongings, they will be more likely honor that system. When there are no consistent homes for belongings, clutter ensues.

Make a “Checklist for Leaving the House” unique to your household, or purchase the “Checklist for Leaving the House” pad for sale here at: http://www.onlineorganizing.com/ProductsPage.asp?name=Checklist_For_Leaving_The_House and keep it next to the door where you exit your home. This becomes your daily checklist and reminder so you don’t have to depend on memory when you’re rushed.

The key to creating and maintaining these areas is to know what you need to store, make the space, establish consistent homes for the items, and communicate the system to all family members. Soon the stress and chaos of the morning exit and afternoon drop will be a thing of the past.

Originally posted 2008-08-19 09:48:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

New BusyBodyBooks Personal & Family Grid Calendar Organizers are Available!

I’m thrilled to announce that the new BUSYBODYBOOK Personal & Family Grid Calendar/Organizers are ready to ship at The Simplified Home!

I think one of the best features of the BUSYBODYBOOK design is the grid design with 5 spacious columns to schedule, organize, and coordinate up to 5 individual family members or projects, side by side.

With BusyBodyBook planners, managing your and your family’s time is a breeze! BusyBodyBook family calendars provide each family member with their own column to organize and track their schedules and activities while coordinating with each other side by side. There are so many great features of the BusyBodyBook planners, but the grid design is what makes this planner/calendar far superior to a traditional block style calendar that forces one to fit all daily family activities into a small square block.

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The BBB Personal & Family Organizer is 7″ x 10″ in size and is available in two formats:

• Academic year (13 month) – Aug 2010 – Aug 2011
• Calendar year (12 month) – Jan 2011 – Dec 2011

Here are more great features of the BusyBodyBook planners to keep you organized:

2 Monthly Planners:
One planner to record birthdays & anniversaries! Another to note next year’s appointments and future events.

Full Page Months-at-a-Glance too:
Now full page Months-at-a-Glance will give you the big picture to plan for holidays, vacations, or special events. This is a new feature with the new 2010 release.

Key contact pages:
2 Pages for your emergency contact information, doctors, coaches, babysitters…

Removable shopping lists:
Perforated pages for creating handy grocery or gift lists. My clients love this feature!

2 Inside Pockets:
Inside front & back covers provide a deep pocket to hold important papers, receipts, coupons…

Bookmark:
Easily flip to the current week with this unique bookmark that grabs the spiral.

Notes Sections Galore:
A full page each week for notes, to do’s, lists, or alerts. Plenty of notes pages in back of BBB too to record and keep important information.

Sturdy, Clear Plastic Covers – Provide BBB’s beautiful covers with even more protection.

The column grid style is so versatile too – you can use columns to record and track school subjects, personal goals or an exercise routine.

Visit THE SIMPLIFIED HOME to learn more and to order.

There are a couple more BBB designs to let you know about, in future posts. Or visit here to learn more about the BusyBodyBook Wall Calendar, great for putting on the frig. where all family members can see.

Originally posted 2010-07-11 17:09:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

6 Bright Ways to Save

What it comes to saving energy in your home, lighting is an easy place to start, according to Edison Electric Institute. You may wonder what lighting has to do with achieving a simplified home. Quite a bit actually. Simplifying your home environment and life includes more than organizing your stuff and everything you own having a home. Simplifying life includes designing your environment for greater productivity, and lighting contributes greatly to how you feel and work in your space. It also means using your resources efficiently, which is what I’m referring to in the following 6 ways to save.

These bright ideas may help you become more energy efficient.

1. Dust light bulbs and fixtures regularly.
2. Provide task lighting over desks, tool benches and the like so you don’t have to light the whole room.
3. Put lamps in corners of rooms so the light reflects off two walls
4. For lamps left on more than two hours a day, use compact fluorescent bulbs, which use up to 66 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs. A 23-watt compact fluorescent bulb can replace a 100-watt incandescent.
5. Use dimmable incandescent bulbs wherever possible.
6. Install photoelectic controls or timers to turn outdoor lighting off and on each day.

To learn more about how to save money and protect the environment, visit www.getenergyactive.org.

Originally posted 2008-12-07 09:20:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There is no One Best Way to Get Organized at Home

Organization is an ever-changing process; it’s a journey, not a destination. Every day a new approach or product is being introduced as the magic bullet to organization. But everyone is different in temperament, attitude, build, energy, ambition and family size. Every situation and lifestyle requires a different style and approach of organization to get the job done.

The secret isn’t always in how to get organized - it’s in wanting to get organized and committing yourself to taking consistent action. Once that is achieved, everything will fall into place. Wanting to without action won’t get you anywhere. You can organize as well as the next person if you have the desire and take the action to get it done. There are plenty of resources available to you to learn the skills, including Professional Organizers in most major cities throughout the world to guide you through the process. Simplified Spaces (my company in the Indianapolis Indiana area) is available to work with you personally and virtually.

Your system of organization should fit you and your lifestyle personally. It should be tailored to your style, your schedule and your motivation. I have to take all of these variables into consideration when I begin working with a new client. What works great for one client, may not work at all for the next. Some of us are day people; some are more productive at night.

I’m convinced that anyone can achieve an organized lifestyle if they learn the skills of organization, if they have the desire, seek out the resources to learn the methods and principles of organization and take the necessary action to move forward, at whatever pace works for their personality.

Don’t be discouraged or beat yourself up if it’s a slower process than you’d like. The clutter didn’t appear overnight and it won’t go away overnight! You’ll get there, as long as you take consistent action!

So go forth and simplify ….

Originally posted 2010-10-07 11:22:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Calendars and Planners for Busy Work-At-Home-Moms: Inexpensive Ways to Stay on Top of Family Activities

A new school year is almost upon us, and with it comes the barrage of back-to-school activities, projects and assignments for busy parents to manage. To help you start off the school year on the right foot, today let’s talk about calendars and planners for busy families.

If you’ve been in an office supply store lately, you’ve seen the latest gadgets and gizmos to help you stay on top of your business whether in an office or at home. Keeping ahead of the rush doesn’t have to involve spending lot of money for electronic gadgets that will only confuse you more until you get used to how to use them. Sometimes, the tried and true methods still work the best.

As a work-at-home mom (WAHM), you are saving money on childcare but also building a business that you can be proud of. To that end, you need certain equipment to make it happen. For the sake of scheduling, a PDA or Smartphone are great technologies, but there are still many folks who could not function without their paper calendar/planner. These families are visual and still need to see the week or month spread out in front of them instead of looking on a small hand-held phone screen. That’s fine and there are still many functional calendars/planners from which to choose.

Have you seen the new calendars for 2011? They aren’t just the pocket variety your mom carries around or the one that comes in the mail from the insurance company (not that there’s anything wrong with those). Calendars for busy families have taken on a functionality that is quite exciting.

Speaking of calendars, two that I’ve found that work great for busy families are BusyBodyBook and Mom’s Family Calendar by Sandra Boynton. These calendars are fun to look at and come with stickers and pens to record everyone’s schedule. The BusyBodyBook provides a space to write in every family member’s name and their activities each month. You can also use this grid-style calendar for meal planning.

Family calendars help you mesh family life and business commitments. Since the kitchen is the central meeting place for a family, the calendar can hang there for everyone to record what they are doing. Or, they can give all their information to you and you can do it. Mom, you can even list your work hours each day on the family calendar so your beloved husband and kids know when you are not to be disturbed.

Now, let’s talk about planners. A planner works best when used in conjunction with a desk calendar. In your planner, each day is broken down by hours. The time slots that you listed on the family calendar can be broken down into specific project commitments in your planner. A planner can go everywhere with you so you are never without your schedule.

Choose a planner carefully. There are many on the market and some have features you don’t need. Franklin Covey offers a line of planners for all sorts of needs. Look for:

• Removable pages
• Section for notes or notepad
• Address book
• Place for business cards
• Tabs for easy look-up
• Vinyl pouch for bills, messages, etc.

Keeping your business schedule straight is not an easy task, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an expensive one. You can still stay on top of your daily work with the ever handy, even if they are considered “old fashioned” by your kids, calendars and planners made for the job.

A word of warning from a Professional Organizer … learn to use your calendar/planner religiously! Never be tempted to jot something down on a piece of paper or sticky note. Train yourself to grab your planner/calendar no matter what, even if it is in another part of the house – stop for a moment, go get your planner and record the event. You will save yourself so much headache later on when that slip of paper gets  misplaced before getting recorded in your calendar. Trust me … I see it happen every day with my clients.

Learn more about the organizational tools and planners we carry at The Simplified Home.

Originally posted 2010-08-02 15:42:23. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Let Your “Launching Pad” Do The Work, And Always Have What You Need When You Arrive Where You’re Going

“Launching pads” are among my favorite organizing tools because if you work with them, they work with you — and save your bacon time and time again.

To see how they could work for you, let’s first imagine a scenario: Picture yourself and the others in your household walking through the door that you normally use when you enter your home. It’s dinner time. Everyone’s been gone since the morning, and they’re loaded down like pack animals with all the accoutrements of their respective days.

Before you can even think about breaking the leftovers-for-dinner-again news to them, backpacks, briefcases, purses, groceries, wallets, diaper bags, dry cleaning, gym clothes, shoes, hockey sticks, keys, coats, glasses, school books, the dog’s leash, the dog, spare change, more shoes, purchases, the receipts those purchases generated, the newspaper, did I mention shoes?, the mail, and all manner of other burly, surly, and sundry items hit the floor, tables, chairs, benches, counter tops, and pretty much every other available horizontal surface that’s within 10 feet of the door. What’s a person who’s striving for organizational nirvana to do?!

Well, I fear that you can’t beat ‘em, so you might as well join ‘em: for the best results in clearing this kind of clutter, I suggest that you work with, rather than against, their natural tendencies and acquired habits.

Your secret solution just might be launching pads: they’re the places to put everything that’s coming or going, now or in the near future.

To start, think of where you and your loved ones tend to dump their daily loads, and then put something in those spots to catch the loads — preferably one receptacle for each person. It could be a table, shelf, basket, box, bin, bucket, bench, milk crate, tote, tray, rug, carpet square, chair, chest, cart, stand, taboret, row of hooks, designated closet shelf, authorized section of kitchen counter top, or any other thing you can think of that marks the place where you “launch” yourself when you leave, and where you deposit your stuff when you “re-enter your atmosphere.”

After that, inform your housemates that they now have predictable, logical, and safe places to leave their belongings until the next time they leave the house. (And then encourage compliance!)

In addition to allowing your launching pads to provide safe harbor for shoes, hats, and coats (preferably on hooks, vs. hangers — it’s easier); bags, purses, and backpacks of all stripes and types; homework, gym shoes, lunches, and musical instruments; and the large gear (whether that’s football padding, a monster load of library books to return, an outgoing basket of dry cleaning, or a baby carriage)… take it one step further.

Place a container at each person’s launching pad to corral the small, but important pieces of life: wallets, cell phones, keys, glasses, sunglasses, pens, jewelry, spare change, lunch money, school ID cards, and the inevitable (and sometimes icky) detritus that resides in pockets. This container could be a bowl, basket, jar, box, dish, mug, or cup, but like the launching pad itself, it provides safe harbor for the little things that count — and as a result, you truly (and literally) won’t need to “sweat the small stuff” anymore.

But wait — there’s more! If you really begin to groove on your launching pads, you can even set up tiny offices, teeny first-aid stations, and miniscule beauty parlors by adding a box or storage unit that holds some paper, a pen, a few paperclips, a roll of tape, and a small pair of scissors; some band-aids, tissues, and anti-bacterial cream; or a comb, mirror, and lipstick. You could also put a wastebasket and recycling bin there so that when you arrive with the mail, you can open, sort, toss, recycle, and retain some of it before it gets any farther into the house. The mail job is handled!

And, for advanced users who’ve become experts at trusting their launching pads (they really won’t let you down if you use them all the time), they can even function as a kind of communication device: the kiddos can leave permission slips that need to be signed, for example, at Mom’s or Dad’s launching pad; and the adults can, in turn, put those signed slips right back whence they came, all in plenty of time to make the school bus. These might also be the places where you put phone messages, honey-do lists, and any other notes that you want to leave for family members.

Now, begin to make great use of your new launching pads. Start placing everything you’ll need when you leave tomorrow at your launching pad space today or tonight. This might include items that your tickler file rendered for tomorrow, theater tickets, a camera, an umbrella, returns to make (with receipts, to be sure), a grocery list and coupons, checks to deposit at the bank, movies to return, or your outgoing mail. Add things as they occur to you throughout the day and evening, rather than assuming that you’ll remember them in the hectic morning hours. (Trust me on that one.)

If you can’t put a physical object there — tomorrow’s lunch yogurt that needs refrigerating, or the giant volcano science project that’s still drying in the basement from its fifth layer of paper mâché — leave a “place holder” note instead to remind yourself to grab it when you go.

You can also think a little more long term with a launching pad by viewing it as a “pending place” as well. Put items there that you won’t need tomorrow, but will need next week or next month: library books due back in two weeks, a birthday package to mail to Aunt Heloise next Friday, or an article to give to a friend when you see her on the first Wednesday of the month at your book club meeting. These things aren’t lost this way — they’re stored safely, in a logical place, ready for your future use. Just be sure to put a note in your planner or tickler file to remind yourself to take them along on the appointed day.

With any luck — and some well-placed coaching from you — the rest of your family will begin to gather things that they’ll need tomorrow or in the near future and place them at their individual launching pads. Then, in the morning — or two weeks from now — they’ll have what they need, when they need it, without the usual last-minute mad dashes hither, thither, and yon.

Household members will also know exactly where to put things when they arrive home so that those possessions don’t wander all over and wreak havoc on the rest of the house. And perhaps best of all, they’ll start to see the beauty of your wisdom, to appreciate the improved way of life that has arrived with the advent of the launching pads, and to acknowledge you as the domestic superhero that you truly are.

There really isn’t a down side to using launching pads, other than the fact that it may take a little while for everyone to form good, solid habits about using them. But humor me and give them a try.

If you use launching pads as purposeful, intentional — and the only — places where incoming and outgoing stuff belongs; if you do not allow them to become random dumping grounds; and if you behave this way every day, very soon your launching pads will dramatically reduce those times when you can’t find your keys, glasses, the tennis racket you need for your grudge match, and the report you’re just certain you were reading in bed last night that needs to go back to the office.

Believe in the power of launching pads!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paula_Apfelbach

Originally posted 2010-11-27 21:49:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

My Journey to an Organized Life!

Welcome to my little corner in cyber-space!

I’m so excited to share with you tips and strategies that I’ve learned as a Professional Organizer for the past 4 years and from my own struggles with getting and staying organized.

I’ll admit it right here … I was not born with the “organizing gene.” In my younger years, my mother used to declare that my room resembled the aftermath of a tornado that had blown through. As an adult, I teetered on the fence between being mildly disorganized to feeling completely out of control. Like I hear from so many clients, I thrived within the structure and routine of a corporate environment, but in my personal life, I was a disorganized mess!

Perhaps you can relate to my experience? I didn’t recognize the need for systems and structure in my home life like was inherent in the corporate world. After all, what did I need systems and processes in my home, where I was my own boss. I didn’t recognize the negative effects of a disorganized environment. And as long as I didn’t invite anyone over, my secret was safe. What a way to live?!

My transformation toward an organized home life began in 2002, following the adoption of my second daughter from Russia at age 3 1/2. WOW did life change after Alena’s adoption. I hear this from so many of my clients … the life I knew before kids was now a distant memory, and I lacked the skills to dig myself out of the mess once it started spiraling out of control. It was then that I recognized that these issues no longer involved just me. If I didn’t get my act together, my kid’s lives would be impacted too, and that realization was my wake-up call.

They say that “necessity is the mother of invention.” It surely was for me! I began to immerse myself in all things organizing, from books to decluttering sessions by myself and with a clutter buddy, teaching and enlisting help from my kids, to trying new organizing products. I began to recognize that our home operates not unlike a business, with departments, rules, consistent systems, behaviors and habits. Once I made that connection and began viewing our family life like a small operation, the solutions for improvement became crystal clear.

In 2004, after the transformation of our home, my passion grew to share my newfound knowledge and skill with others who were struggling as I had. Simplified Spaces was born in early 2004 and I haven’t slowed down since. So you see, I wasn’t born with the organizing gene, like so many assume to be the case for us organizing types.  Rather I came to the profession as a Professional Organizer after my own life transformation that developed into a desire to share my epiphany with others.

I can’t wait to share with you through The Organizing Genie blog what I’ve learned personally and through my profession as a Professional Organizer. I am confident that you can experience the same transformations in your home and family!

So what are the benefits of home organization? Why should we care? Well, the benefits are huge and our health and wellness depends on it. From kids and chores to tips on space planning, to reviewing the latest and greatest products, I invite you to join me every Monday, as we explore and learn the recipe to achieving The Simplified Home.

Wishing you Simplified Spaces …

Janet
The Organizing Genie

Originally posted 2008-08-15 07:34:49. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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