Your Life. Organized.

More Space, More Stuff

 When I was growing up, there was a period of time (when my mom was still married) that we were a family of six.  We lived in a modest home with four bedrooms and one bathroom. (And it was on the second floor). We shared bedrooms (remember bunk beds?) and  for much of my childhood, our family of six lived in about 1,800 square feet. And heck, we did fine. We didn't know any better, and the unintended consequence of an entire family sharing one bathroom teaches you time management and how to get along with each other for sure! You may have enjoyed the same kind of upbringing in cramped quarters. Many Americans did but heck, back then, just owning a home was doing well. But in the past few years I've noticed...

 

Surprise, Surprise... Organizing Is Important in the New Year

On the heels of my blog yesterday about the backlash against order, Peachtree Consulting came out with a survey, showing that getting organized is not only IN the top five New Year's resolutions for 2007, but is THREE of the top five items on the list. Well who'd have thunk it? Certainly not David Freedman or Eric Abrahmson, I guess. Go figure.

 

 

The Misguided Backlash Against Organizing

Penelope Green penned an article that ran in last Thursday's New York Times,  examining the "backlash" against order and against those of use who make our living helping others bring order to their chaotic lives. Here's an excerpt:

Stop feeling bad, say the mess apologists. There are more urgent things to worry about. Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.”

Hmmmm frankly that sounds a little sour grapes to me. I will grant the good rabbi,  that yes, TOO MUCH order, restrictive order, obsessive-compulsive order can indeed be profane and life-diminishing. But who says we organizing experts advocate or work toward any of those things with our clients? Now, I'm sure there might be those few among our ranks who don a leather corset and patent leather boots before...

Today's Radio Show: Raising Organized Kids

Join me today as I interview Pat Montgomery, grandmother and author of the book Now You Know What I Know: Parenting Wisdom of a Grandmother. Pat and I will discuss how to raise organized, responsible children in today's hectic world. If you have kids and organizing challenges, you'll want to tune in today at noon Eastern Time, to Organization Nation on Radio Sandy Springs online. Listen live or grab the show free for up to fourteen days after its original airing by visiting my show page.

Merry Christmas

 It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each of you. May you make the year ahead your best year ever!

Shameless Self-Promotion: Show a Sister Some Love

One of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin, has compiled what he calls his "Z List" of blogs. Check it out. And since he invited me to, I added my own blog to the list. I hope you'll go there, find my blog listing, (it should be somewhere around #50) and click on the little UP arrow to the left of it to move it higher in the rankings. And then we'll see what happens. Thanks in advance for your support and Happy Holidays to you!

Me and Willie Nelson, On the Road Again

I loooove travel! Last December, Christmas Boy and I spent the week before Christmas in Las Vegas with our good friends Melanie and Sal. I'd love to tell you all about it, but you know what they say about what happens in Vegas. Anyway, that pre-Christmas Vegas trip was in 2005 and we had so much fun that we decided to do it again this year, but in a different location. After much research and deliberation, we agreed to all meet in...

Hotel Luxury at Home

 Have you ever traveled and liked your hotel room appointments more than you liked your own at home? It's happened to me a time or two (or seven). I remember staying in a hotel in Las Vegas (we've been there a few times, so I'm not sure which hotel it was) but they, like many hotels do these days, had this fabulous...  

Simplicity News December 2006

Ann Wolfe, of Marlboro, Massachusetts, wrote me the following email:

I want to know about organizing just about anything when you live in an apartment and have limited storage and cannot change the shapes of closets. Especially the bathroom closet.

Ann, this is such a common problem for apartment-dwellers. You can't really make permanent changes because you're renting, but the space just isn't working for you, dang it! When organizing your space -- any space -- your first step is always to evaluate what you own and be sure everything you're allowing to share your space is also giving you value. If not, get rid of it.

The second part of organizing your space involves...   

Divided We Stand

When company is coming over, sometimes your home needs a little camouflage for those pesky projects that you just can't seem to finish. Other times you want to offer your holiday sleepover guests a bit of privacy when they've crashed in their skivvies on your sofa in front of the giant palladium window. No matter what the reason, this coiled bamboo room divider from Chiasso is flexible, attractive, and rolls up completely for storage when it's not in use. Simple, neutral and made from a beautiful and durable green resource, what's not to love about it?

Organizing For Winter Break & Spring Semester

Join me this week, as I interview Christie Glascoe Crowder, author of Your Big Sister's Guide To Surviving College. We discussed how college freshmen always bring too much with them to college the first semester, and how they can go home for winter break and come back organized and ready for the spring semester. So if  you have a student in college, tune in and listen live online to this fun and informative interview on Tuesday, December 19th at noon Eastern Time. And remember if you can't listen live at noon, just visit my show page and listen at your leisure for up to two weeks after the show airs.

A Son's Journey Through His Parents Life

 This is the time of year when thoughts turn to family and memories of past holidays together. Maybe this holiday season you're missing a loved one who has passed on. I miss my mama this time of year. Or perhaps you're separated from your family by many miles and you can't be together this year. David Dudley wrote a wonderful article about his own family, and getting to know his parents as he never had before, as he recounted his experience helping his parents downsize their home.

They had lived in the same house for over thirty years and as any good son would, David offered to help go through their belongings in preparation to move into smaller quarters. Little did he know what emotional battles would ensue and the education he'd get in the process...

You Deserve It

Gretchen Rubin's Number Seven of her Twelve Commandments of Happiness is to "Spend Out".  Spending out means feeling okay about spending a little money on things you love, and then USING THEM instead of waiting until "someday" to do it. To spend out, you must use the specialty diaper disposal bags, use your fabulous new underwear, and for Pete's sake, USE your special table linens! This is significant to me, because I grew up in a pretty poor household, so I have a frugal streak roughly the size of Texas. This means I tend to default to "making do" with things until they're absolutely unusable anymore or denying myself a lot of little things that would make my life just a tad nicer. My friend Debbie and I were out shopping the other day and as we were moseying up and down the housewares aisle, it hit me...

Great Stocking Stuffers for The Big Kids on Your List

 On a web forum I frequent, the topic came up of old candy you miss from your childhood. The ones that came to mind for me immediately were Marathon Bars, Adams Ice Cream Flavor Gum, and Vanilla BB Bats. The discussion enthusiastically grew and one member posted...

Parents Rule

Listen to radio host Pat Montgomery interview Monica about parenting and raising organized kids in an organized home. Pat's radio show is called Parents Rule and you can listen free online or download it to listen later, but hurry and grab it today because it won't be up on the web much longer!

A Tasty Dish

On the heels of my latest post about the creation of the new Travel & Food category, I have a new food post! This past weekend, Christmas Boy was out of town so Saturday night I went to dinner with my friend Magic Debbie. After much debate (and several canceled reservations at other places) we settled on a place called Dish, which for you Atlantans, is in Virginia-Highlands. Owned by chef Sheri Davis, Dish is a cute little place which (according to my research) used to be a gas station. Inside, you'll find it slightly dark, a smidge too cool, and sporting a funky urban decor. The atmosphere wasn't "fine dining" as we had expected it to be, instead leaning more toward hip and trendy, but it wasn't bad. Our dinner consisted entirely of items...

How Do Travel & Food Relate to Organizing?

I recently added a Travel and Food category to my blog. I struggled with this, because I really do think my blog entries should always (okay 98% of the time) pertain in some way -- however tangential -- to my core genius. In case you're new here, my core genius (thanks to Jack Canfield for that term) is organization and simplicity. So how exactly does a category called Travel and Food fit into organization and simplicity blog? Well, I figure travel fits in a few ways...

10,000 Visitors (and other trivia)

 Thanks to my good friend, John Trosko, I started using Sitemeter to track my blog visitors back on May 12th. Well, here we are almost exactly seven months later and my fancy little tracking buddy tells me that 10,000 individual visitors have been here! (Well, actually as of today, it's 10,364 if we're being specific) Not to mention, 85% of the visitors are from the U.S., and 56% of them are browsing with Internet Explorer. Don't you just love stats? So tell your friends, send them links to get here, and most of all, thanks for stopping by... and hey, throw me a bone and next time you swing by, take a second and leave a comment letting me know you were here. Oh, and if you wanted to, you could leave a few bucks or some cookies too, just to be nice. I like oatmeal.

The Simplest Things

Last week, I blogged about a holiday decor swap I did with my friends. I ended up with a few new items (a large nativity scene and a candle garden, to be specific). Anyway, my husband loaded everything from our group that didn't get claimed into the back of our SUV and planned to drop them all off at the Goodwill the following day. As I was setting up my new nativity, I got an idea. I have a large interesting coiled wooden bowl that sits in the center of my dining room table and I remembered there were three boxes of Christmas tree ornaments in the truck, destined to be donated. Hmmmm... I put a bunch of fluffy synthetic fiberfill in the bowl, and added all the ornaments on top, and poof -- I had a simple, free, and what I think is a beautiful centerpiece for my table.   The gold and wine-colored ornaments even look perfect with my green and gold table runner! Sometimes it's the simplest things that make the most impact. I bet Martha would be proud.

What I Want For Christmas

What I want for Christmas is for you to take a minute and consider using just a teeny smidgen of that ginoooooormous holiday gift budget to do some good in the world and...