A Process Improvement Approach To Organizing Your Closets
|
Displaying blog entries 1-10 of 247
Being a better homeowner is a full-time job. It takes good information to make good decisions not only when you buy and sell but all the years you own a home.
Think of times when you need advice on financing, taxes, insurance, maintenance, finding reasonable and reliable contractors and lots of other things. Imagine how nice it would be to have a real estate information line you could call whenever you have a question.
My ultimate goal is to move from a one-time sale to customers for life; a select group of friends and past customers who consider me as their lifelong trusted real estate professional. My belief is that if I help you and your friends with all your real estate needs, I can earn the privilege of being your real estate professional.
Throughout the year, I'll send reminders and suggestions by email and social media that enhance your homeowner experience. When I find good articles to help you be a better homeowner, I'll pass them along. You'll discover new ways to maintain your property, minimize expenses and manage debt and risk.
I want to be your "Go-To" person for everything to do with real estate. I'm here for you and your friends...now and in the future. Please let me know how I can help you.
New year, new me!
While the new year may not transform us into completely new people, it does create the perfect opportunity to make some changes and adopt new habits – like being more organized.
To help you on your journey to an organized home, we talked to experts from around the country to get their tips and tricks for arranging specific rooms in your house.
Each room may have unique needs, but our experts have found some basic rules that can be applied in any situation.
This one is key. There’s no use in organizing things you don’t need to keep – or spending money on organizational supplies, for that matter.
Maria Spetalnik from Conquer the Clutter said, “Many people buy the latest and greatest organizing tool and hope it will solve all their problems. What winds up happening is that the tool becomes just another piece of clutter in the pile.”
Her alternative? Purge items first. Decide what you actually need and what’s just taking up space. Once you’ve donated, sold or thrown out the stuff you no longer find necessary, then start looking for organization solutions.
This saves you time and money in the long run.
We’re not going for perfection here; we’re going for organized. And organization should make sense for the homeowner. Just because one approach met someone else’s needs doesn’t mean it’s the one for you.
“Sometimes you try the hot new organizing trick and it doesn’t work for you or it doesn’t work for long. You are not a failure; it’s just that that system wasn’t created for how your particular brain works. It means you need to figure out WHY that system didn’t work for you, so you don’t keep doing the same thing over and over and hope for a different result,” Spetalink said.
Once you have a handle on the basics (purge before you organize and don’t hold yourself to perfection), you can move on to some room-specific tips.
The team at Molly Maid, the nation’s leading residential cleaning franchise, break organizing the kitchen into a few simple steps: pull everything out, create zones and use organizational tools.
We touched on this in the basics, but the first step is to purge. The Molly Maid team suggests pulling everything out of the cabinets, drawers and pantry. While everything is sitting out, you can wipe down or vacuum the surfaces.
Now it’s time to sort. And how do you know what to keep and what to toss? Cyrus Bedwyr, the kitchen and oven cleaning expert at Fantastic Services, has three easy questions you can answer to put things into perspective:
After you’ve sorted and purged your kitchen items, it’s time to give them a home that makes sense. The Molly Maid team calls these areas “zones.”
“Think about the location of every cabinet, drawer and shelf in the kitchen and pantry, then reorganize so that items get stored near where they get used,” Molly Maid said. For example, you can keep your glassware near the sink or your spices near the stove. Keeping items stored where they’re used most often can help you stay organized in the future.
Once you know what each zone will be for, you can arrange your items according to their purpose. Molly Maid suggests putting frequently used or heavier items down low so they’re easier to reach or lift.
Now that you have the general organization of the kitchen laid out, you can finally see what kind of storage equipment you need. This prevents you from overbuying storage items that would likely end up back in a closet somewhere.
Molly Maid said, “Clear plastic and wire bins make excellent containers for organizing items by zone and for general tidiness.” They recommend under-shelf baskets or wire shelves to utilize the dead space above glasses or dishes in your cabinets and stackable storage units for potentially wasted floor space.
If you’re anything like me, a disorganized bedroom does not make for a good’s night sleep. From the closet to extra blankets and nightstand trinkets, a little bit of organizational planning can go a long way.
Let’s start with the closet.
How should you arrange your clothing? Some people organize by color, others by type of clothing and others by how often they wear particular pieces. This goes back to the idea we talked about earlier: Don’t expect perfection. There is no “right” way to do this, just one that’s right for you. The important thing is that you can find your clothes when you need them.
As seasons change, it can be hard to know what to do with your off-season clothing, especially accessories like gloves, hats, swimsuits or wraps. Paloma Baillie, a Los Angeles-based professional organizer, has a solution for that: “You can use plastic containers with locking lids to store off-season fashion.”
For storing extra bedding, like blankets, sheets and pillows, consider investing in a piece of furniture that can double as storage.
Something like a trunk or a bench with built-in storage can go at the foot of your bed or under a window and look like a piece of furniture while also storing other items.
Your closet is organized, everything is off the floor, your random extra bedding is folded up neatly in another storage area – so why do you still feel disorganized?
Sometimes we spend so much time organizing the things people can’t see, we forget about what’s right in front of us.
Surface areas, like the tops of dressers or nightstands, can be arranged using storage containers or trays. Luckily, they come in plenty of shapes and styles, so they can double as décor! If you’re putting items on a tray, make sure everything has its own area, so they seem curated, not scattered.
Last but not least: the laundry room.
You know, the room with “piles of laundry, most of which you aren’t sure if it’s clean or dirty,” said Natalie Wise, a modern lifestyle philosopher and author.
Wise suggests setting yourself up for laundry room success by creating zones. “Have a zone for dirty clothes and a zone for clean clothes, and never the two shall meet,” she said. “Depending on your situation, you may also need zones for baby/kid clothes, dry-clean-only items, delicate dance costumes, stained sports or work clothes, and the like.”
Whatever zones you have, Wise advises keeping necessary items for each one close by. “For instance, keep hangers where the dry-clean-only items are, so you can easily grab them on your way out the door. Or keep hand-wash liquid and soft dust bags for the delicate dance costumes,” Wise added.
If you don’t have much space to work with, Wise says to go vertical! Consider tall, thin racks for each family member’s clean laundry. “I find it easiest to keep each family member’s laundry separate and do separate loads for each family member’s clothing. There’s no sorting, and it goes much more quickly; then each family member can fold and put away their own laundry,” Wise said.
However, you decide to get organized, remember our fundamentals: purge before you begin, and don’t expect a “perfect” solution. Finding what works best for you and your family will help you not only get organized, but stay organized in the future.
Generally speaking, when you need an inventory of your personal belongings, it is too late to make one. Sure, you can reconstruct it but undoubtedly, you'll forget things and that can cost you money when filing your insurance claim.
Most homeowner's policies have a certain amount of coverage for personal items that can be 40-60% of the value of the home.
Homeowners who have a loss are usually asked by the insurance company for proof of purchase which can come in the form of a receipt or current inventory of their personal belongings.
The most organized people might find it difficult, if not impossible, to find receipts for the valuable things in their home. Think about when you're rummaging around a drawer or closet looking for something else and you discover something that you had totally forgotten that you had.
An inventory is like insurance for your insurance policy to be certain that you list everything possible if you need to make a claim. Systematically, make a list of the items by going through the rooms, along with the drawers and closets. In a clothes closet, you can list the number of shirts, pants, dresses and pairs of shoes but higher cost items should be listed separately.
Photographs and videos can be adequate proof that the items belonged to the insured. A series of pictures of the different rooms, closets, cabinets and drawers can be very helpful. When video is used, consider narrating as it is shot and be sure to go slow enough and close enough to see the things clearly.
For more suggestions and an easy to use, interactive form, download a Home Inventory, complete it, and save a copy off premise, either in a safety deposit box or digitally in the cloud if you have server-based storage available like Dropbox.
Displaying blog entries 1-10 of 247