This room is actually a loft space overlooking our family room. We will be taking down the half wall in this room and extending the current floor across to the opposite wall. The area we are adding is only about 5.5 feet by 12 feet but it will add about 30% more space to the room.

 Yeah!

I look forward to saying goodbye to:

 …a shared dresser and no closet…

 …a tightly placed bed and one shared night table…

…and waking up with the birds (and the kids).

I can’t wait til mid-March!

Do you have any renos in the works?

Before: Crazy cords

So last week I took a few minutes to untangle a little mound of cords in my younger son’s room and found them a good home in his bedroom closet. I mounted 3M Command hooks (which are easy to remove when necessary) on the wall just inside the door so he can store his cords and earphones knot-free.

It gets the mess off the floor but still keeps what he needs visible and close at hand.

After: Hook happy

I’ve used these hooks before for cords. We have a cheap IKEA computer table that holds the family computer and a few years ago I got tired of cords covering the desktop. I mounted hooks on the outside-side edge of the desk so people can hang their earbuds, clip-on microphones and other cord-related computer accessories at their point of use.

Needless to say — and you know I have to say it — I’m hooked!

How do you manage not to go cord crazy in your home?

When I went to work on this room, I asked the 10-year-old boy using it what kind of look he wanted to see in his space. He said that he wanted either a Star Wars room or a James Bond room. I felt that the latter would lend itself better to creating a space that could be fun for a child, but could grow with him too. The inspiration in this room was obviously the Sean Connery-version of Bond — a cool, 1960s, international traveller vibe was required — and on a very tight budget.

The bedding provided a great jumping off point for the accent wall colour and has a groovy, graphic look. The ’60s feel is reflected in the great vintage mushroom lamp at the bedside, and a former martini shaker has found new life as a pencil holder on the desk.

Three clocks set to different time zones (the young master of the space chose his cities), a Mad Men-esque jet ornament on the bookcase, a globe toy, a subway sign of major European cities and a large world map hung over the desk hint at a world-traveller-to-be.

Many of the small, inexpensive items in the room — the clocks, accessories, and map — can be moved out as the young fellow matures. Other, less theme-like pieces — such as the iconic mushroom lamp, the wall finish and the furniture that allows for tons of storage — can seamlessly transition into a teenager’s space or a student’s dorm room.

This room is still fun, but is super flexible for the future.

Ask any organizer and they likely have different ways of setting up their kitchen, their grocery lists and doing their shopping, but don’t worry — there is no one right way. It’s about what works for each of us. And here is what works for me:

Know what you want. Meal planning makes grocery shopping — and five o’clock on a busy Wednesday afternoon — so much easier! Before you shop, make up a menu of dinners for the week by flipping through your cookbooks and/or online recipes for inspiration, and then note down what you need to buy. By writing out your menu for the week you have a clear plan. I find this helps keep me on the straight and narrow. If I see “Tuesday: Thai Chicken with side salad” and I know I have done my shopping accordingly, I am way more likely to have Thai Chicken and a side salad on my plate than any type of fast or frozen food.

Know what’s there. Let me warn you that you will be in for some ribbing from family and friends but this step will be worth it, honestly…label your fridge. I know, I know, it sounds a little over-the-top but it will change your life as a foodie! A few years ago I separated the sections on my fridge door into categories like “sweet stuff”, “dressings”, “condiments” and the shelves into “meats”, “fruits and veggies”, and “dairy”, etc., and it has made a huge difference in the amount of food I shop for and throw out. By having clearly marked sections (choose labels that have a laminate surface for better durability), I can quickly figure out what I need for my menu planning week — and when I really don’t need yet another bottle of salad dressing! Another bonus to labelling is that I don’t end up losing items in the back of my fridge when I know what I have purchased has a purpose and a place. Even better, my husband and kids can also easily locate and relocate food because every shelf is clearly marked.

Know what you need. Have you ever come home from the grocery store and realized you forgot to buy a particular item yet again?! Don’t leave your shopping to memory — write down what you need as soon as you realize you are running out of it. I keep a 4-by-6-inch pad of paper and a pen mounted on the side of my fridge with a magnetic clip. When I see I am getting low on something, I add it to my ongoing grocery list. It saves me riffling through the fridge right before I head out shopping or counting on my memory recall when in the meat aisle — and my family also knows that if they want more of their favourite cereal, they have to add it to the list. When I sit down to do my meal planning, I use this ongoing list and my recipe requirements to re-write my list according to my grocery store’s layout — so fruit and veg go at the top of the page, followed by bread, then cleaning products, etc. I find it is worth the few extra minutes to re-write the list so I am not criss-crossing the store.

These ideas are what works for me, but be sure to tailor your shopping experiences to what works for you. Maybe it is a pre-printed checklist of often-purchased ingredients, maybe it is making your meals on the weekend and popping them in the freezer — whatever it is, find out what works for you and stick to your plan. It will make Wednesday dinners (and all the others) so much easier!

What is your best food shopping tip?

This post first appeared on fellow professional organizer Heather Burke’s blog Smart Spaces Organizing. For more great grocery shopping tips, check out http://www.smartspaceorganizing.ca/blog/.

Here are some common objections to purging and how one might re-think them:

1.      “But it cost me money!”

Yes, many of our possessions come with a price tag — or two, in some cases. The price we paid to purchase the item and the price we continue to pay to keep it lying around in our home. If you don’t need it, use it or love it, what is it doing in your home? Instead, share the item with someone who could use it by passing it along to a friend or a charity, or try to sell it online or via a consignment store. But keep in mind that not everything you paid for in the past is still worth something today. Be prepared to accept that the money is already long-spent and you may only recoup a fraction of what you paid for some items.

 2.      “I might need it/fix it someday!”

Ask yourself: When did I last use this? Is it worth the space it is using up? Can I borrow a similar item from someone if I really need to use it one day? Start a “to-do” list when you hold onto something with the idea that you will do “something” with “someday.” When you are finished decluttering a space, take a look at your to-do list and prioritize your tasks. You may decide that some items and their repair are much more important than others. It might be time to say good-bye to those things at the bottom of the list.

 3.      “But someone gave it to me!”

When a client tells me that they cannot let go of something they clearly don’t need, use or love because it was a gift, I ask them to think of the gift-giver. Would this person want you to keep something they gave you if it was a burden in your life? Do you give gifts expecting people to keep them forever, even if they no longer represent something positive in their lives?

 4.      “But it reminds me of ….”

Keep in mind that memories are locked in our hearts and our heads, not in a musty box in the attic. Carefully store away a few precious keepsakes and, if need be, take photos of the pieces you feel you can part with. These photos will trigger the memory you want to savour — without taking up much space in your home.

It is amazing how much you will gain by letting go!

Recently, my family experienced its own changes. Due to some health challenges, my mom came to stay with us a few weeks ago. While she is now doing much better, we still don’t know whether this will be a short or long-term living arrangement. Either way, we have needed to do a bit of room re-shuffling in our family home in order to better manage our day-to-day living.

We have moved my mom into our master and ensuite and my dear, sweet, loving and unbelievably patient husband and I (not nearly so dear, sweet, et al) have moved into our upper level balcony/half room that until a few weeks ago served as our business-and-home office. (Picture a room that is pretty much like a balcony on the second floor that overlooks our family room on the ground level.) We have distributed our business-and-home office into our family room and basement and today our new “loft bedroom” (so dubbed by Mr. Patience) consists of a bed, dresser and one night table.

These moves gave me the chance to practice what I preach (hopefully without sounding too preachy) to my home organizing clients — the value of being realistic about what your life today should accommodate. While I am typically pretty good about letting go of stuff, losing my night table and downsizing my dresser contents from six drawers to four in our new sleeping quarters forced me (in a good way, of course) to be realistic about what I was keeping and what I was not. And the situation in general encouraged me to figure out what on my to-do list was really worth doing and what was not.

A few of my newly realized home truths, so to speak, are:

I will never be a nail gal. The drawer full of polishes, nail hardeners, files, etc., is part of my never-realized hope of having pretty hands. I got real and faced the fact that I am a bit of a nervous nail nibbler, I wash my hands something like 50 times a day and I never wear gloves to paint furniture, wash dishes, garden or handle highly corrosive material, so out went the nail gear.

My weekends deserve better. My hands-on organizing work means that I spend most of my life in t-shirts and jeans and those shirts take a beating. After I deem them no longer wearable for work, I tend to categorize them as weekend wear. While I didn’t have a large cache of such clothes, I decided that even my weekends can use a shirt that fits and is without stains, so — getting real again — out went the sub-standard shirts.

I can wait or delegate. My pre-holiday to-do list had included re-painting every room on my first floor, and, if I was lucky, even slapping up some colour in our basement. Well, a ladder incident and my mom’s health called for a re-do of the to-do’s. Mr. Patience and I managed to paint some areas ourselves (just the easy parts) and we hired a painting company (the first time we have ever done that for our own home) to do the hard-to-reach areas and the takes-more-patience-than-I-could-ever-muster dark grey room. I still have half the trim to paint (I was too cheap to pay anyone to paint those areas) and my basement is suffering from the overflow of my business-and-home office (see paragraph three), but I am happy my “let’s get real” moment meant that my walls were painted — by someone else — before we hosted Christmas dinner and that I realized that I can paint the trim and basement sometime in 2012.

Forcing myself to get real has made life a little easier for me.

Do you have any “get real” organizing successes to share?

Years ago, one of my sisters put together two binders full of tried and true family recipes. She typed in the recipes from various sources (bless her!) and after printing them out she slipped the 8.5 x 11-inch pages into clear plastic sleeves so the sheets would be protected from splatters. Tabs in the binders divided the recipes by categories (cakes, cookies, meats, veggies, etc.) and everything was popped into two matching binders.

She then distributed the binders to her siblings and now presents her nieces and nephews with copies as they leave home for the first time.

You can use plastic sleeves and tabbed page dividers to organize your favourite recipes into binders.

Over the years, I have added recipes printed from the Internet (I am a messy cook, so cooking with my laptop nearby is a VERY bad idea, hence the need for hard copies), magazines, and friends. I’ve also added photo-album-style clear plastic sleeves (with four 4×6-inch slots per page) so recipe cards can be slipped in and out.

When friends ask for a recipe, I can quickly locate what I need in the binder and, better yet, if their request is for a recipe from the computer file (I’ve kept that file so I can add to or edit the binder contents), I can e-mail the recipe over to them with just a few clicks of the mouse.

So what is your system for keeping track of your favourite recipes?

Information central
Many families choose a central calendar system — for example, one that is mounted on the wall in a high traffic area like the kitchen — in conjunction with each parent’s personal portable calendar. If you use both a portable and a central calendar, you must remember to keep them in sync.

Worried about recording new events in your central calendar when you are out and about? Leave a message with the details on your home voicemail so you have a reminder to update the calendar when you get back to your house.

Make it family-friendly
Whether you colour-code each family member’s events (blue for one child, pink for another), use colour to record special dates (red for vital reminders, black for everyday), or add some eye-catching icons or stickers, make sure your central calendar is easy for everyone in the family to use and understand.

My favourite family calendar?
I love Avalanche’s spiral-bound File-it wall calendar and have used it in my own home for the past couple of years. It comes in a number of different colours and styles, but the real selling point for me is its built-in pocket.

Avalanche's File-it Calendar

Each month is printed on what is essentially a file folder. I write the date and time of the event on the month-at-a-glance calendar and then pop the background information (the party invitation, the school trip permission form listing what the children need to bring that day, etc.) into that month’s folder. I don’t have to take the time or effort to squeeze too many details into the square and the information is still kept close at hand. If you want to use the calendar to keep track of monthly paperwork, each folder can be detached and stored at the end of the month.

So, what’s your favourite family calendar?

So what brought about this first blog post?

Well, I decided to push down my sense of posting panic and to approach this new adventure the way I advise my clients to tackle an organizing or decorating project:

One. Step. At. A. Time.

Whether you are organizing or decorating your space, don’t let yourself get too overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once. Instead, break down the project into incremental steps. My baby steps into the world of social media includes an Edited Interiors blog and Facebook page.

Another similarity? Just as I received some incredible help from Lara Wellman and Trisha Bond in learning about blogging and WordPress this week, I encourage potential organizing and decorating clients to seek out help from trained professional home organizers and accredited interior decorators. Step-by-step we can help you deal with your challenging spaces so you can enjoy a beautiful, calm and uncluttered home.