Thoughts on the Organize Now Challenge

Even though it's only day three for me, it's time to start week three of Jennifer Ford Berry's Organize Now 12 Week Challenge. So far in the challenge we have organized our schedule and our kitchen cupboards. I've found myself wondering how Jennifer chose the particular weeks from her book that she did. (If you don't know, the challenge is based on the book Organize Now, a Week-by-Week Guide to Simplify Your Space and Your Life, has a full year worth of organization tips broken down by areas of your home and life.) 

Whenever I set out on that mission to clean the house, I start with the most used rooms and... Ooooh, never get to certain areas of the house... And don't think about some things until I need them... See, this is why she is the professional! The thought also entered my mind that when she uses the word 'organize', she probably is talking about starting out with the early stages of an episode of hoarders - although the principles do still work under the worst of conditions and one week may not be enough for a given area. 

So, here's the logic I have come up with for following along with the challenge:

• Week 1:   Organize Your Schedule
• This one is pretty obvious. How can we be organized in any other area of our life if we are running around late for appointments and forgetting things we need. Consciously thinking about when we need to be somewhere ahead of time gives us the chance to think ahead about what we need to take with us, what we may need to purchase (gifts, cards, etc.), needing to leave early enough to have time to get gas, and so on. 
• Once you have this tackled, it opens the door for things to fall into place in other areas of your life and your home.

Similarly, I think the other weeks help us to set things up to get other areas of our living running more smoothly:

• Week 2:   Organize Your Kitchen Cupboards
• When the cupboards are organized - everything has a home and everything in its place - cooking becomes less of a challenge (you can find everything you need) and putting away the dishes is quicker and easier (you know just where to put things and can get it there easily).
• Week 3:   Organize Your Bedroom Closet
• Like the cupboards, and organized closet helps us dress faster and put away laundry with ease. 

I think the next two weeks of the challenge are among the most important when it comes to keeping ourselves organized after the challenge:

• Week 4:   Organize Your Routines (weeks 53 & 54 in book)
• I'm using the first edition of the book, in which this week comes much earlier. Like FlyLady, I think this is probably the most important thing you can do. When you have well-structured routines, you can move through your day without having to really think about what comes next. I work in a preschool classroom, and following our routine everyday helps the children thrive. They always know what part of the day will come next and exactly what they need to do at that time. Grown-ups benefit greatly from this kind of structure as well - especially those who buck against the idea.
• Week 5:   Organize Your Papers/Files
• I think even the most organized people in the world have to work to keep up with the constant influx of paper into our homes. If you have children in school, it's 10x worse. (I seriously think they're training them all to be secretaries pushing paper!) Getting what we already have under control and then having a plan to keep it that way will help save our coffee tables, dining tables, desks, etc. from the piles of paper that tend to happen.
• Week 6:   Organize Your Pantry
• Menu planning, grocery shopping, and putting groceries away all become simplified  when the pantry is tidy. 
• I don't have an actual pantry, but I have some shelves in the 'back room' that house all of my stockpiled items. This room is also home to the laundry, tool boxes, and everything people with a 'real' house would keep in the garage. The plan for me is to tackle the whole room during this week. (shudder!)
• Week 7:   Organize Your Entryway
• This area tends to become a dumping ground for whatever we happen to be carrying when we enter the house. It's also the first thing people see when they enter our homes. With so much organizing done behind the scenes, this seems like a perfect time to do something in a room that will greet us every time we come home. I can't wait for this one! (I have four weeks to find a new home for the dog's crate!)
• Week 8:   Organize Your Memorabilia
• I had to go to the book for some clarification on this what. Memorabilia is such a broad category and, if you're like me, it infects many areas of your home. If we are going to simplify our homes and our lives, we will definitely need to get this under control.
• I am going to keep an eye out over the next few weeks for those hidden bits of memorabilia throughout the house and make note of them. That way when this week arrives, I will know what I need to tackle and will have had time to think about what I may need to part with ahead of time. We get very emotionally attached to our memorabilia, so this can be a very challenging task.
• Week 9:   Organize Your Medicine Cabinet
• At the beginning of this chapter Jennifer says, "Medicine cabinets are usually small, so this won't take long." If I stick with just the medicine cabinet, she's right! Ours is so small, we hardly have anything in there. All of our actual medicine is kept in the kitchen because the cabinet won't hold them and our bathroom is so tiny that the heat and moisture would be a problem. Our first aid supplies are in a different cabinet in the bathroom - which I will definitely address during this week along with the other storage spaces in the bathroom.
• As far as why this task makes the top 12 list for the challenge, having your medicine in order helps those daily routines run smoothly. Medicines for crisis situations (fever, upset stomach, etc.) as well as first aid supplies well organized and easily accessible will make those difficult moments in life so much easier to handle.
• Week 10: Organize Your Refrigerator
• Here's a task that will make meal prep so much easier. Planning your grocery shopping will whole lot easier as well. It seems like this should be a quick and simple task, but if you head over to Pintrest and search "organized fridge" it gives you a whole new perspective of what your refrigerator could look like. I think I may need to take some measurements in advance and start looking for baskets!
• Week 11: Organize Your Books, CDs and DVDs
• For some folks, this will be an easy week. For others, this is a huge undertaking. A quick tally of where we have books and this will mean diving into five rooms for me! Obviously, finishing a mission like this can have a huge overall effect on my house. Gathering up all the DVDs in one place will also impact several rooms.I don't want to talk about CDs... Let it suffice to say that this is another project that will have a wide impact.

And the final challenge week...

• Week 12: Organize Your Home Office
• After already taking on the paper & files challenge, as well as the books challenge, I bet for most folks this gets a lot easier. Though it all depends on what qualifies as your office and just what kind of business you are doing there. 
• I think putting this project at the end of the challenge paves the way for the other main traffic areas of our hour. At this point, you should have most of the 'behind the scenes' stuff under control, so taking on the big rooms should be a whole lot easier. I also think that by now the progress made during the other challenge weeks will be starting to have a positive impact throughout our houses. (I'm already noticing family members being more conscious of where they put things.) We will also have a new way of looking at our belongings that will make it easier to let go of what we don't need and streamline what we do.

I hope I've inspired at least a few folks to jump in on this challenge. Please leave me a comment and let me know you were here!

Organize Now 12 Week Challenge Week 2, Part 2

Phew! I finished up most of the cupboards today. Well, I finished the cupboards I had started yesterday, anyway. The cupboard above my microwave (where I keep oils and sprays), the spice cupboard, and the drinking glass cupboard didn't get touched. But all the rest are done. It's a good thing, too, because I realized today that I am not ahead of the game with the Organize Now 12 Week challenge. I've finished just in time for the gals to start the next week. So, here are some pics of my finished cupboards:

I will probably get one of those racks to help hold the baking pans upright to go in here. I actually have one, but it didn't fit in this cupboard so I put it to use elsewhere. The dark blur on the left, BTW, is our dog Vega. She was so curious about what was going on and couldn't keep her nose out of the cupboards. Long after I took this picture, I tucked the box of parchment paper that I found in another cupboard in the corner of this one. To me it makes sense to have it right here with the baking sheets.

The microwave covers on the bottom left will not be staying here. For the moment they are designating the space where my stoneware bowls are going to go. The hubby agrees that I have earned them after this project :)

My oven mitts are going to hang inside this cabinet as soon as I get some more command strips.

This is now our breakfast cupboard (except of the Crisco that just won't fit in the baking cupboard). The rectangular bin make come back out now that Z2 has announced he doesn't like cereal bars anymore.

The new baking cupboard, which also holds rice and pasta. I spent at least half an hour trying to figure out how to get all the canisters in here. I finally resigned to tucking a couple ovals in behind the squares - it's stuff that doesn't get used as much anyway - and laying a few on their side. Down the road I may need to switch out some of the canisters, but I just can't fund new Tupperware right now. (Especially since part of this project was to PURGE some of the Tupperware!)

This cabinet is right next to the fridge, so it seemed a logical place for the pitchers. It's also right under the counter where we use the toaster, so in it went. There was room on the shelf for the wraps, so the holder for them went under the sink instead. The yellow bin will hold potatoes once I buy some, and the white basket is for bread.

This could still be a bit better, but at least I know where the lids are for everything. I have a dishpan that I tossed all the extra lids and some odd containers into. I will allow it to hang out for 1 year just in case I find I need one of those containers or something shows up that one of those lids goes to. After a year anything that I haven't retrieved can go. 

This cupboard got moved in the midst of the project. In its new location I can't get a pic of the whole thing at once. I was able to move items from my stockpile into the new food cupboard, which was nice because I discovered things I'd forgotten we had!

I didn't get a before shot of this cabinet, but I am sure you can imagine after seeing the rest of the cupboards. This one got moved as well so that it is easier to access than it used to be. 

After all that work on the cupboards, I couldn't leave the counters a disaster. 

Before:

Yes, there is actually a counter under there!

A lot of things found their way into cabinets as I worked. Other things found their way to the rooms they belong in. Once it was finally cleared off and clean, I really wanted to make it look special. So, I dug out the wine rack that we bought two years ago and...

Love it! 

I didn't get to tackle any of the drawers, so I'll chip at them bit-by-bit down the road along with the couple of cupboards I didn't get to.

If you would like to see how the bloggers that are doing the challenge tackled their kitchens, there are links to their posts on Jennifer Ford Berry's website here. For specifics on the 12 week challenge that Jennifer issued, click here. If you are trying to get your house organized, I highly recommend Jennifer's book Organize Now, A Week-by-Week Guide to Simplify Your Space and Your Life. 

Next week we face the bedroom closet... 

Organize Now 12 Week Challenge Week 2, Part 1

Although the second week of Jennifer Ford Berry's Organize Now 12-Week Challenge doesn't start until tomorrow, I got a start today on organizing my kitchen cupboards. It's a big project... A VERY big project. And I know that I won't have time enough to work through everything during the coming week. So, my plan is to do as much as I can over the weekend and then finish things up as I can during the week. 

I can't believe I am about to share, but I guess my kitchen cupboards are among the least embarrassing parts of my house. So, here's what I started with:

The medicine cupboard.

This one isn't too bad, but it could be better.

Hey! There's the salad spinner!

I know that organizing the pantry comes in a few weeks, but I don't have a separate pantry and to pull off what I have in mind these cupboards need to be dealt with now.

Wow... How does it get to this point? There's actually several factors at play here:

• I have an obsession with Tupperware. I have 3 Jell-O molds. I've used one of them once. But, it's Tupperware so I have to have it. Or, at least I think I do. 
• I have three kitchen's worth of stuff crammed into one far-too-small kitchen. When I moved into my mother's house, all of her kitchen goodies were here. I, of course, brought all of my goodies from my previous house. (Which had a crazy amount of cupboard space that I filled to the brim.) Then my hubby moved in and brought more kitchen stuff. 
• I let myself feel guilt about letting go of things that came from someone else. 
• I suffer terribly from I-might-need-it-someday syndrome. I also have a touch of I'll-use-it-soon-itis. 
• When noone is sure where something goes, or getting something where it belongs is a challenge, or something gets put in the wrong place so the item that belongs there can't be put where it goes, things don't get put away properly.

I'm sure there are more reasons for the state of disarray in my cupboards, but the real point here is when there is too much stuff for the space you have it is impossible to keep it organized. When I read the chapter "Organize the Kitchen Cupboards" in Organize Now, I underlined this: "Be realistic about what you really use on a regular basis and move or toss the rest." So, some stuff has got to go! (Jennifer lists some specific things to consider tossing/donating as well as some tips regarding how and where to store certain items in this chapter that are a must read!)

So far I've about 4 medium boxes of items to pass along to my brother and his fiance, another 3 or 4 boxes to be donated, and filled a black trash bag and a tall kitchen bag. It looked like my cupboards vomited all over the kitchen and dining room for a while, but as things got sorted into piles to leave or went into a cupboard it is getting better. Tomorrow I will be able to move the piles to the vehicle to be distributed on Monday and that will help a lot. 

A few cupboards are finished enough to share at this point. Here's the medicine cupboard:

I still need to make some labels, but the 3 blue bins are adult pain relievers, allergy meds, and supplements. The clear bin is all the children's meds. With everything sorted and all the outdated items tossed, I had a completely empty shelf. So, I moved the dog treats and meds that sat on the counter right below this cupboard into the cupboard - huge bonus! This is a big improvement, but I still think it could be better. Down the road I may purchase some containers with lids to replace the bins or to put the dog treats in. But for now I want to see how much I can do without spending much.

Here's the new and improved dish cupboard:

Since I took this, I discovered I have a sifter. So, I put that up there next to the measuring cups. My stove and microwave are to the left of this cupboard. I usually dish up dinner right at the stove and take the plates to wherever we are eating. (Usually the living room, but I am pretty sure there is a table in the dining room that we should be eating at again soon.) Having the plates on the left side of the cupboard was a pain - with limited counter space I take out one plate at a time, dish it up, and sent it on its way. That cupboard door was either in my face or had to be opened and closed for every plate. It seemed logical to move them to the other side of the cupboard to eliminate that annoyance. 

There's a lot less stuff in this cupboard now. I've decided I can live without the giant Tupperware measuring cups; I only need one Shake N' Pour, one set of measuring cups, and one of those things for measuring peanut butter and Crisco. Once upon a time I baked a lot more and doubles made sense. That's no longer the case.

Several of the other cupboards are nearly finished. I don't want to jump the gun on posting pics until I'm sure. I started burning out a bit, so I want to look at them again with fresh eyes and be sure I'm not overlooking anything. Besides, I have to leave something besides the under-the-sink cupboard for later in the week! ;)

The Organize Now 12 Week Challenge

As part of the gearing-up-to-get-organized process I've been engaged in, I pulled out some of the tools I've picked up along the way when trying to get organized. Last summer I spotted Jennifer Ford Berry's Organize Now! on the rack at my local Michael's store and fell in love with the cover so, of course, I bought it. I read it for a few nights and thought it was just wonderful, but never got as far as putting any of it into practice. The other night I spotted it on my nightstand and pulled it out to add to the pile of helpers. I read some of the sections again and thought, "This will be mighty helpful. I just have to figure out where to start."

With most projects, I have no problem figuring out where to start. I can look at the end goal and logically think through all the steps required to get there and just where to start. BUT, getting organized has just never been so simple. Even with this fabulous little book in my hands telling me just how to get there - all the steps I need to take broken down into a week-by-week format - I didn't know where to start. My problem being the idea that I don't want it to take 40 weeks to get there. (The book actually has a full year of week-by-week tips, but some don't apply for me and others only apply to special circumstances.) At the very least, I knew I wanted to see progress in some areas of my home much sooner than I would if I started with week 1 and worked through the book in order. So, I would need to come up with an action plan of my own... (Yes, I was definitely finding ways to procrastinate and getting hung up over something silly, but it is what it is.)

So, I decided to Google the author and see if she maybe offers a quick-and-dirty-crash-course in organization. I didn't know that January is National Organizing Month. It turns out that in recognition of that, Jennifer Ford Berry has started a 12 week Organize Now Challenge. She selected 12 chapters from her book to kick-start the organization process. Five wonderful ladies have been selected to blog about their progress on the challenge each week. I'm not one of those ladies, but I've decided to jump in with them. It's always easier and more fun to do something when you're not doing it alone. The plan for the challenge is:

Week 1:   Organize Your Schedule
Week 2:   Organize Your Kitchen Cupboards
Week 3:   Organize Your Bedroom Closet
Week 4:   Organize Your Routines (weeks 53 & 54 in book)
Week 5:   Organize Your Papers/Files
Week 6:   Organize Your Pantry
Week 7:   Organize Your Entryway
Week 8:   Organize Your Memorabilia
Week 9:   Organize Your Medicine Cabinet
Week 10: Organize Your Refrigerator
Week 11: Organize Your Books, CDs and DVDs
Week 12: Organize Your Home Office

I'm only a week behind here, and not really all that far behind. As part of organizing your schedule, Jennifer recommends buying one planner to use for both home and work. Separate planners leaves you open to confusion and overlapped appointments. I purchased a small planner back in December and sat down just before the new year and put everything I could into it - birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, etc. 

Jennifer suggests gathering all of your To Do lists, sticky notes, scraps of paper, and so on and combining them into a single list in your planner. My planner doesn't have a good place for this (there's room for daily to-dos, but not for the long-term running list I always have) so, rather go shop for another planner, I have attached my planner to a pad-folio with a couple Smash bands so that they open in opposite directions. (I should probably get some pics to post.) This way I can keep running lists, have a place for brain-dumping, and jot down whatever, whenever, wherever. I take this with me wherever I go, including upstairs when I head to bed (Jenn recommends keeping a small notebook by your bed for when you lie awake thinking of all the things you need to do) so I always have access to it.

So, I already have week 1 underway. Keeping your schedule organized is, obviously, an on-going task. I will need to refer back to this chapter regularly to stay on top of it and complete the tasks I have not yet addressed. The Challenge also doesn't address some areas of HUGE concern for me (living room, dining room, kids' rooms...), but I expect that stepping up to the Challenge will help me find the motivation/determination to develop my own plan for tackling the rest of the house.

Up next is the kitchen cupboards. Oh boy...

In the beginning...

I am sure it says something about me that it took me an hour just to come up with a blog name. More than that, that nothing else could get done until I had come up with a name. I could have worked on one of the many other projects I need to tackle and waited for inspiration to strike, but what a great excuse to procrastinate!
But, now there is a name (strange as it may be) and my blogging adventure can begin.
Coffee... Cobwebs... Two things that are plentiful in my life. One I love; one I hate. I am sure I don't need to distinguish between the two. And, as I have in so many prior years, I've resolved to eliminate the cobwebs in 2013 and find more time to relax and enjoy my coffee. Of course, if I'm completely honest with myself, there are plenty of times where I could spend less time relaxing and enjoying my coffee and find some motivation to tackle the cobwebs. ('Cobwebs' could easily be replaced with a plethora of other household-related tasks.)
I know I'm not the only one who has entered the new year with the same goal in mind. I also know I'm not the only one who has fallen into the same cycle of getting off to a great start, restarting at some point in the year, and starting yet another year without having reached that goal. I wish I could afford to higher someone to tackle the job for me, but that won't happen. I can't afford to purchase new shelving and gadgets and such to try to make it happen either. So, the challenge feels huge. But, I'm going to give it a go just the same!
I've been all over the World Wide Web looking for inspiration and ideas. I have pulled out all my go-to guides from the past. I will be posting about my finds, my successes, my failures, and anything else that inspires me along the way.