Many of my clients are stuck in the muck of their scrap booking projects. Scrapbook inertia is a common phenomenon. It often comes from wanting to make your pages perfect or simply not knowing where to begin.

Perhaps you can’t figure out how to Read the rest of this entry »

Situation: This garage had plenty of built-in storage but a mess was created when we decided to get rid of the off-site storage unit and consolidate everything into the garage. As with most organizing projects, there is usually temporary chaos before there is order.

Challenge: The back wall of this garage had built-in floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves but they were completely full of childhood memories consisting of one large plastic bin per child per year.With three kids all of them at least in middle school, that meant a lot of bins!

Solution: We went through all of the kid’s  memory boxes. At first it was very hard for my client to get rid of childhood papers. She eventually became a champ at making decisions and letting go of enough memories so that each child’s memory items could fit into only one to two bins each. This reduced the storage bins from about 6-8 per child to 2 which gave us a lot more space to store items brought from the off-site storage unit. My client did an amazing job learning how to let go. Her kids still have plenty of great memorabilia to discover and uncover later!

Situation:

This kitchen bar counter had turned into a dumping ground for all things that didn’t have a pre-defined place to live elsewhere. The owner had spent the past year investing all of her energies traveling to see her husband in an assisted care living facility. She simply did not have any energy at the end of the day to maintain her own home.

An additional challenge was that this home had been her main residence for 40 years and, as is normal for everyone, she had accumulated many duplicate and unnecessary possessions.

Challenge:

Determining what types or categories of items had actually found their way to this area. Most of the items did not belong in the kitchen/living room but ended up there by default because there wasn’t any space in the other parts of the house to store them.

Like most classic organizing projects, we had to begin organizing and de-cluttering other parts of the house before we could tackle this particular area. For this client, our work began in the garage. Once we had the garage organized and purged of all unnecessary items, we had created enough space to move what she wanted to keep and store from the kitchen area.

Solution:

Begin by tackling, purging and organizing the two car garage which had initially room for only one car. Once that area was organized, we had space to bring in the other items from the kitchen that needed to be stored there long term. These items mainly consisted of memories, clothes and holiday decorations.

Many of the duplicate items were given to her daughter who was in the process of purchasing a new home so it was a win-win for everyone!

Here are a few answers to my most frequently asked questions:

Q) What Tools Do I Need To Organize a Garage?

Gather boxes, in all shapes and sizes along with a box of large trash bags.

Q) When Should I Begin?

The day after trash is emptied if possible.

Q) How Should I Begin?

To begin, remove everything from your garage. I know this sounds intimidating, but this is the only way you will clearly see what you are holding onto.

Start 3 piles outside Read the rest of this entry »

Situation
My client had fluctuating weight issues and did not want to get rid of any clothes in the off chance that her size changed. She had massive amounts of clothes that were too big and clothes that were too small. Read the rest of this entry »