Evaluating the week...

Phew, we made it through our first week. That was relatively painless! How are your videos and magazines looking? How about your mail clutter? Are you managing it well?

I am happy to report that our videos are still looking good. Fortunately the video "drawers" are easy enough for the kids to use which helps keep the mess down. The only one in our family sad to see the magazine pile go was our one year old. He misses making a mess with those! =)

The mail clutter has taken a bit of effort on my part to maintain, but so far so good! It helps that the amount of mail we've received this week was pretty light. I can't even begin to tell you how much more relaxing it is to go into the kitchen without that mound of mail waiting for me.

What has worked for you this last week? Do you have additional ideas or suggestions? Please share!

Next week's goals: start tackling the kitchen (including that overflowing junk drawer), get that dreaded cleaning on a schedule, and get our receipts in order

Are you ready? I am! Together we can do it!

Magazines

To go along with the snail mail clutter theme from yesterday, the task for today will be to organize those magazines we all have laying around. You know, the ones we plan on reading when we find the time yet are still sitting around months later? At our house, magazines tend to collect on the tables in our living room, just in case guests want to look at them. Now that I think about it, though, I sure hope we're good enough hosts that our guests aren't dying for a magazine to read!!! Goodbye junky-looking magazine piles!

1) The first step is to decide which magazines you really want to keep around. Recycle any and all that you really don't feel you need to keep around. If you have a hard time throwing away magazines, see if your friends, your library, or local doctor's office would like to have them. There, now doesn't that feel better? At this point, you may want to consider discontinuing any magazines you no longer care to read. This will save you money in addition to saving you from the unnecessary clutter.

2) The second step is to decide which magazines you want to keep as reference material and which ones you just want/need to read.

For those you want to read, ask yourself why they haven't been read. If you aren't truly committed to reading them, recycle them! Are they just not handy when you want to read them? Find a way to put them in a more handy location. I have a tote I keep next to my bed that neatly holds all of the magazines I want to read. For some, hanging a magazine rack in the bathroom works well too. Just be sure to recycle those magazines after you've read them so you're not just moving around the clutter!

For those magazines you would like to save as reference material, Consumer Reports and Handyman Magazine for example, I suggest finding a location where they will actually be used as reference so they don't just become more clutter. We have magazines filed in our basement and in our garage depending on the magazine.

Once you've chosen your location, you'll need to find a way to keep them organized. There are many magazine racks and holders of all different types, materials, and colors available on the market today. I prefer ones that keep the magazines such that you can read the date on the magazine's spine. I also like to be able to label the holder so I can find what I need at a quick glance. Find a magazine holder that works for your space and style. We like using just the basic holders. You may prefer something completely different. If you prefer a free option, you can always use a cereal box cut to the same shape:

You can also paint or cover it to make it more fun!

From here on out, as soon as you receive a new magazine, your task is to either recycle it, place it in your "to be read" location, or file it away. It will take some time to get into the habit, but you can do it! Bye bye magazine clutter!

Mail as clutter

One thing I constantly find myself trying to work on is de-cluttering the house. If I didn't know better, I'd think papers, toys, and other items are multiplying in my house. We'll get the house all straightened up, and the next thing you know, there are papers and toys on every flat surface within sight!

Today is the day you and I tackle our snail-mail clutter together by making and implementing a plan to keep it at bay!

In our house, one major cause of clutter is mail. It arrives daily - bills, magazines, local papers, product samples, and that beloved junk-mail. As soon as we bring it into the house, it gets dropped on the island in the kitchen for us to deal with later. As you can probably guess, "later" around here usually translates into, "in a few days when we have a large pile". I do tend to pull out the bills and place those on our office desk, but then that equals clutter in the office. Yep, yet another place where we're constantly fighting clutter! Do you have the same problem?

One idea I have heard is to only touch papers once. If you don't have children at home, this method may work great for you! The idea is you deal with each piece of mail immediately so you won't have to pick it up again later - discard junk mail, put away samples, pay bills, and deal with any other mail as soon as it comes in the door. This is tough for me. With three children needing my attention, it's nearly impossible for me to do.

My plan instead is to sift through the mail as soon as I bring it in. It should only take a minute or two to immediately throw away any junk mail, remove samples from their packaging and throw away the packaging. From there, I plan to put the magazines and newspapers I want to look at on the end table in the living room. The samples will be set next to the steps to be taken upstairs when I go up next. Also, bills will continue to be taken to the office desk so that they can be paid once I get a free moment. Nope, these aren't really ideal locations for the samples, magazines, and bills, but we're working on baby steps, right? Those other areas will be dealt with soon enough.

What are your ideas for dealing with snail mail clutter? Do you have a system that works well in your house?

Movies

As I was looking around our house getting psyched up to get organized, I'll be honest... I got pretty darn overwhelmed. There's so much to do and seemingly so little time each day in which to do it all.

I thought about starting with our "junk" drawer. Do you have a junk drawer - you know, the one that is the catch-all for all of your odds and ends? We have one. Honestly, when we first moved into this house, my first question to my husband as we started unpacking the kitchen was, "Honey, which drawer is going to be our junk drawer?". I know, pitiful, huh? I got all charged up ready to dive in, until I opened the drawer. It was closed almost as quickly as it was opened. I figured I'd better start will something a bit more manageable.

Our first project of the new year is to get those DVDs, Blu-Ray disks, and VHS cassettes (if you still have some like we do) organized. Do yours look anything like this...

or this...?

This is actually pretty straightened up from what they sometimes look like. To start getting our videos under control, we decided to find a bin to put them all in. We took measurements of how large the shelves were for our DVDs/VHS cassettes so we would know how large a bin we could use. Unfortunately, every bin we found was too big for the shelf space - usually too tall. One other issue was that we didn't want to waste all of the space in the back, because we knew we'd need that space.

Since we couldn't find any DVD/VHS organizing bins that suited our needs, it was time for us to start thinking outside the box. We ended up finding sweater bins that were both cute and the perfect size for our space. Check it out...

Since we have two shelves for our DVDs and VHS cassettes, we decided to purchase two bins - one for our kids' videos, and one for all of my husband's action movies and my chick flicks.

The great thing is now we can quickly see all of the video titles. Also, we're utilizing the space all the way in the back.

Now it's your turn... you can do it!

Why talk finances?

You may be wondering why I am including finances in a blog about being organized. Well, other than the fact that I really get a kick out of trying to stretch my family's money, having your finances organized goes right along with having an organized life and household. Don't worry, I'm not planning on getting into stocks and all of that stuff. That's definitely not an area I know much about! I'm more into the basics of saving, budgeting, and making our family's money work for us. Before you can start budgeting and saving, though, it helps to get your finances organized.

***Disclaimer - I am not a financial advisor, just a mom who loves finding ways to stretch our family's money.

When we got married almost nine years ago, my husband and I each came into the marriage with different ideas of how we should manage our money. I believed firmly in using checks and cash to make most purchases. (This was more than nine years ago.) My husband, on the other hand, believed very much in using credit cards - responsibly, kept and filed every receipt ever received, and filed away all bills, bank statements, and anything he may possibly want at some other time. In addition to this, he kept track of his money spent on a computer program. It was tough trying to combine our two methods since it would mean streamlining my husband's process while I would have to learn how to work the computer program. Also, I'd have to get comfortable with using credit cards more.

We had the some of same issues when it came to budgeting - I had my ways, he had his ways, and we needed to find a compromise. I'll get into all of this more as we get further into the new year.

If your finances are already organized, kudos! Feel free to share ideas of what works for you as we get more into this on future Tuesdays. If you haven't kept on top of your finances, now is a great time to start!

Your financial task for this week is to start keeping track of those receipts. Select a location to keep your receipts - a simple shoebox or desk drawer will work for now. We'll work on organizing them next week.

Thinking outside the box

I encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to organizing. I absolutely love stores that sell stuff to help you organize. I could spend a ton of money there on all of the cute little bins and other storage items. I don't know about you, but as much as I love all of that cool stuff, though, we don't have an endless supply of money to spend on all of those fabulous items. Because we're on a budget, I sometimes have to think outside the box.

There's nothing to say you can't use boxes and bins you already have laying around the house just because that wasn't their intended purpose. We have all types of boxes and bins around our house being used for things other than they were initially meant for. It's okay of they're not the most beautiful boxes or bins. They can be covered or decorated with fabrics, wrapping paper, or other items you may already have around the house. The trick is not saving every box or bag you receive, though, because that can lead to a whole other problem which we'll start conquering later - clutter.

As we begin on this organizing journey together, I encourage you to start thinking outside the box.

Topic Schedule

Since this is a blog about getting organized, I suppose it would be a good idea to make a schedule of sorts to help me keep on task. I don't know about you, but I get pretty overwhelmed when I don't have a plan for accomplishing something - especially something as big as a blog!

Schedules and lists are so important to me. They are about the only things that help me remember to get certain things done and help me stay on task. Lists and schedules are important, though I think it's also important to remember that they need to be flexible. While I try to cross everything off my list by the end of the day, sometimes life gets in the way. That's okay. Also, sometimes a schedule I've worked out for myself just isn't working. That's when the flexibility comes in handy - being flexible enough to change the schedule around to try to find one that will work better.

To start, I'll try to stick with the following organization topic schedule:

Sunday - time

Monday - house

Tuesday - finances

Wednesday - house

Thursday - decluttering / eliminating / simplifying

Friday - house

Saturday - evaluating the past week and planning for the week ahead

What are your thoughts? Is there an area you would be interested in covering? Let me know!