Organization

January 31st has arrived.  Are you still keeping your January 1st, New Year’s Resolutions?  Now, that’s one of the hardest things, isn’t it?  If you’ve already failed, it’s common amongst us all.  You have a choice, though.  You can restart or let yourself fail. We all have good intentions and truly believe that we can make the changes we desire.  But, life happens.  We start a diet the first day of the year, but cheating happens.  After a failure, it’s so easy to completely give up. If you blew it, now is the time to forgive yourself. Maybe your goal was too hard and you need to alter it a little. If your resolution was important enough on January 1st, it’s still just as important today. Sometimes we fail because we don’t have the resources to succeed.  We need more than just a strong will.  I guess it depends on your goal, but let’s look at some great ideas. Weight Loss Resolutions:      It’s hard to do this on your own.  If your diet didn’t go well, look for people to help.  You could consult a doctor to get specific diet plans that really work.  Seeing a nutritionist or weight-loss coach would be very beneficial.  Joining a gym often comes with a fitness coach or personal trainer consultation.  Getting a good plan for exercising will make a quicker weight-loss result.      Finding free advice can come from your local library.  Books can be found on every subject that interests you in achieving goals.  Goals books are available.  Weight-loss books are also available with many different approaches.  Exercise videos can help you to work out at home, too.  Library bulletin boards are great places to find local free classes and events that could help.      Support groups help many people, whether online or in person.  They’re a helpful place to get encouragement and tips to help you reach your goals.  You also might have a friend that also has the same resolution.  Buddy up and work on your weight loss goals together.  Dieting and exercising together is more fun than doing it all alone.      Placing your success as a visual reminder could be of help.  Place a picture of your desired weight and fitness level out where you’ll see it often to motivate you.  Writing down your goals is important.  Writing out your plan, step by step, creates a deeper level of commitment to your goal. Organizing Your Home      Clutter is a real problem for many people, including me.  It’s important for a messy person like me to find mentors to guide me in organizing my home.  There are professional organizers that will come and do all the work for you.  But, how will that be affordable?  The cheapest way to find them is online.  There are tons of websites and articles that teach and guide in home organization.      There are many websites devoted to this problem:      unclutterer.com       flylady.net      organizingmadefun As in the weight loss resolution, you can also find free advice in your library.  Books and videos abound, as well as ebooks.  Online support groups for messies also help.  One idea is to have your friend come help you organize your home, and then you can also help them with their home. There are so many resolutions that have been made.  Many have been successful and many have failed.Whatever your resolution, don’t give up on the desire to make changes in your life. @2019, copyright Lisa Ehrman

Organization is not my strength, but something had to be done!  Because of Chronic Illness, my home has become a very messy and unorganized place.  When you are just trying to survive, there is honestly no time or energy for organizing tasks. But, this doesn’t mean I don’t have a plan.  Clutter and messes make it hard to relax and enjoy my home.  So, when I have a few minutes of feeling decent, I try to work at organizing my home.  My closet organization project was completed in early July. I finally started to tackle my dresser and jewelry drawer this past week.  My dresser top had become a place to drop junk.  It was covered and piled-up with all kinds of stuff that didn’t belong there. Inside the jewelry drawer you can see the nightmare.  Even though I had all the divided organizing containers, they weren’t enough.  I had a tangled mess to contend with, and spent quite a while untangling necklaces. Many people like to hang up their necklaces on the wall.  I really don’t like this look.  Since I don’t wear most of these necklaces often, I wanted to have a system that worked with my wearing schedule. I decided to use ziploc-bags.  I have already had success with ziploc-bags when I pack jewelry for trips.  It’s easy to place one necklace or bracelet in a small ziploc-bag to keep them from becoming tangled.   I separated all the jewelry and placed necklaces and bracelets in separate locations in the drawer.  I found numerous single-earrings and junk that could be thrown away.  After everything was cleaned-out and organized, I placed it all in the drawer.  Now, the drawer was organized for me.  And, when I get ready for a trip, I just grab the appropriate bags and am ready to go! Cleaning the top of the dresser took many days of cleaning.  There was so much that needed to find a home and papers that needed filing.  I did short spurts of work here…..five or ten minutes at a time.  With my dizziness, cleaning up this dresser was exhausting.  I finally completed the work! The bedroom is still a work in progress, and each corner of the room still leaves much to be desired.  I’ll share more as I can.  Chronic Illness has taken away my ability to work in the way I’m accustomed to.  A deep cleaning/organizing shouldn’t take this much time, but with my illnesses, I’m thrilled to accomplish anything! If you have chronic illness or just don’t have the time to clean, don’t give up.  Just take your work in short spurts.  Doing 5 minutes here and there is better than 0 minutes.  Over time, you’ll be able to get your house in order and you’ll feel better. @2017, copyright Lisa Ehrman

After my husband retired, our routine was gone and replaced with nothing.  We started staying up much later and sleeping in.  He quickly got caught up with his sleep and was appearing more rested.  But, after some time, he began to realize that nothing was getting accomplished in his life. His goal of writing was getting no where, because he had no schedule to keep him on task.  His lack of schedule was also making me use that as an excuse to be less organized with my time.  We both decided we would like to be more disciplined with our time and be more productive. I read online to see what other people were doing to create schedules in retirement.  There are many different ways to set up schedules.  We decided to just follow an easy approach.   1. We wrote down all the things we wanted to accomplish each week and month. 2. We took a blank computer calendar and decided how to spread these goals into practical, doable actions.  We placed the actions onto the calendar in their amount of importance.   (Ex.  Writing time- he decided how many hours a day he needed to write and added those on the calendar.)   3. We went over the calendars together to create time to do things together and to make sure we didn’t overwork or over commit ourselves.  We wanted to make sure that there was “margin” included in our lives.  Margin is important for rest, reflection and sanity. Using a digital calendar is helpful, because the schedule may/probably will need tweaking along the way. Schedules aren’t created to rule our lives, but to guide us into productivity and protect us from chaos.   Android Apps offer many digital ways to keep your schedule with you at all times.  Here are a few to check out: TimeTune is free  Planner Pro-Personal Organizer Planner Pro- Daily Calendar & Personal Organizer  also has this app for iPhone Because my laptop is Mac and my phone is Android, I prefer to use my Google Calendar which is also on my phone.  That way it syncs perfectly!   What are your favorite ways to stay organized?  Do you keep a schedule? @2017, copyright Lisa Ehrman

July 6, 2017 Affiliate link included. Do you have a gift for Organization?  It’s not a natural God-given gift of mine.  For me to have things organized takes serious and thoughtful planning, strenuous execution, and diligence to keep up the process.   Because of my many chronic illnesses, we moved into our one-story town home over two years ago.  Within two days of moving, my hysterectomy took place.  This kept me from ever getting a good plan for organizing my home.  So, now I’ve decided to tackle some of the things that are messy, ugly, and driving me nuts.  The worst offenders in my home are the closets! There is so much clutter and wasted space.  When you have downsized, wasted space is a terrible no-no.  Organization means that you need to utilize every inch of that space for good!  This is my purpose in this project. Because of my pain and lack of energy, I’m doing 15 minute work projects.  This post today is showing two weeks of work. Some of the lifting and carrying has been done by Hubby, as I’m not allowed to lift anything over 20 pounds ( I had repairs done in my surgery).  Let’s start with the before and after photos. This scary mess is our walk-in closet.  Underneath the hanging clothes are piles of shoes and purses.  The laundry hamper is over-flowing, too.  What a night-mare, and no way to vacuum! I began by removing everything that was on the floor.  Since I knew the shoe boxes needed to go in the other closet on a shelf, I had to clean off a shelf.  So, next, I’ll show you the closet across from the walk-in.  I took everything off the bottom shelf, which was out-of-season clothes.  Most of them were too small for me.  As I placed them on the bed, I divided them into stacks.  The stacks were: 1. Keep- but Store 2. Sell- Or Giveaway 3. Throw Away 4. Hang up in the closet  The storable clothing and blankets were placed in space bags and stored under the guest bed.  This took a lot of the clothes out of our room and emptied up so much space!  I went through all the shoes and placed them in the right boxes.  Then I labeled them and placed them on the now empty shelf in the linen closet.  Now, they could be easily found.  This also made it possible to vacuum the walk-in closet and keep away dust.  This is so important to a family with allergies and asthma. I noticed my scarves.  They were a huge mess, hanging across three coat hangers.  I couldn’t see most of them.  I decided to try something I had seen on tv sometime ago. I sat on the bed and laid them out. I took one coat hanger and a plastic set of shower curtain hooks that we had from and old house.  We had purchased these at the dollar store and they were just the cheap, clear plastic type.  I laid them across the hanger and hung a scarf on each one.  When I was done the scarves were beautiful, accessible, and so organized!  This looks better and takes up so much less room in the closet!  Here’s the finished look for the walk in closet.  Now, we can actually find the clothes that we wear, and the clothes that don’t fit us are gone.  This makes more sense, doesn’t it?  I continued to work on the linen closet, by taking things out and re-working them.  By adding some dividers that I already owned the spaces were more defined.   When I had many small items that were to be saved together (gift items) I placed them in baskets.  This saved so much space on the shelves.  In the end, the shelves look better and I was able to put many more things in this closet.  I’m very happy with the results.   Do you have some great tips for organizing your closets? @2017, copyright Lisa Ehrman