Time Management & Decluttering Are Keys To A Happy Life

Jul 14

Savor Your Summer

By Jonda Beattie It's All About You: A Personalized Approach to Achieving Your Organizing Goals 4 Comments

Summer is already here. Organization and schedules are important, but summer is a perfect time to ease up on this structure and take the time to savor your summer. Here are some ideas to help you slow down and really enjoy your summer. Summer is often a time for vacations and changed schedules. Don’t let yourself become stressed by the changes. Set your summer schedule, prioritize, and enjoy. Set up a summer schedule Yes, you heard that right. If you don’t make a plan, your summer can fly by in a blur, and you will not have truly savored it.…

Jun 30

Organizing and Managing a Budget

By Jonda Beattie Ask the Organizer How to Organize

Organizing and managing a budget works much the same way as organizing and managing your time. There are several steps to take as you go about organizing and managing your money. First, I’ll review the steps to take to organize your budget. Organizing A Budget Track how you are currently using your money For one month keep track of every bit of your spending. Keep and organize all receipts – even for cash purchases. If you didn’t get a receipt, write the amount down on a piece of paper in your wallet or on another receipt that you have. I’m…

Jun 16

a child drawing on a piece of paper with a crayon

Managing Your Child’s Paperwork

By Jonda Beattie Ask the Organizer How to Organize

Children seem to generate a lot of paperwork, especially in their younger years. Managing your child’s paperwork and making decisions on what to do with all of it can be overwhelming. Having a plan and a system in place will keep everyone sane and happy. Keep on top of your child’s incoming paperwork. Check backpacks daily or at least weekly. Like keeping up with your incoming mail, do an immediate triage. You know that some items can be immediately trashed or recycled. For example, if your child is doing well in school there is no need to keep items like…

Jun 02

A loving couple creating simple home organizing solutions

Your Home’s First Impression – Your Curb Appeal and Entryway

By Jonda Beattie It's All About You: A Personalized Approach to Achieving Your Organizing Goals

When you approach a home or a business your first impression is colored by what you see. When I was involved in competitive ballroom dance my coaches made a point of letting me know that judges start marking your rating when you first put your foot on the floor. How you present yourself as you walk on to the floor was very important. Then your first steps set the tone. If you messed up there you were pretty much done no matter how well you performed the dance later in the routine. Think of the walk that people take coming…

May 19

A person using a hand-held vacuum on the floor of the front seat of the car - driver's side

Car Maintenance

By Jonda Beattie Ask the Organizer How to Organize

In keeping with my maintenance theme, I am ending the series with the easily overlooked workhorse – the car. Our car is a major investment and often an extension of our home. Yet, because it is not actually a part of our home, car maintenance is easy to forget. Car maintenance inside the car Whether you use your car to drive to client’s homes, transport kids or pets, run errands, or haul recycling and donations, you want to keep the interior of your car tidy and clean. Built up dirt and grime not only does not give a good impression…

May 05

Household Maintenance – An Organizing Necessity Part 2

By Jonda Beattie Ask the Organizer How to Organize

Recently I talked about how household maintenance was important for a clean and organized home. There is another part of household maintenance that is not so visible. It is easy to overlook the importance of regular maintenance for our appliances. Yet, who hasn’t experienced the Thanksgiving trauma of a stove or refrigerator that has just failed? Or the dead washer or dryer after coming home from a trip with a ton of dirty laundry? Maybe returning home after a trip and finding water standing on the floor because a hot water heater died? In order to function efficiently and last…

Apr 21

A woman and a man kneeling on the floor behind a coffee table in a family room dusting and polishing the furniture.

Household Maintenance – An Organizing Necessity

By Jonda Beattie How to Declutter: Use Simple Strategies

Keeping your home clean and clutter free can seem like an overwhelming job. Clutter comes into every home. It is a sign that your home is lived in. However, when you put a structured household maintenance plan into place, you gain a sense of control. This plan will ensure that clutter and disorganization don’t take over. Investing in household maintenance saves you time There is the old proverb, “A stitch in time saves nine.” It infers that if you have a small hole in your clothing, one stitch taken now will save having to sew up a larger hole later.…

Apr 07

Multiple pairs of hands joining together to create a heart shape

Benefits of Joining a Virtual Organizing Group

By Jonda Beattie How to Declutter: Use Simple Strategies

Virtual organizing has been around for quite some time. This is when a professional organizer works one-on-one with an individual remotely. My colleague, Diane Quintana, and I both offer that service along with other professional organizers. The benefits of virtual organizing are many. Virtual Accessibility You can participate from anywhere. It doesn't matter if you are in the same area as your organizer. And while it is probably more beneficial to log in near the project you are working on, it isn’t absolutely necessary. If you are away from home, you can still participate. Safer environment No one is coming…

Mar 24

Tackling Spring Cleaning

By Jonda Beattie It's All About You: A Personalized Approach to Achieving Your Organizing Goals

This is the time of year that we think about spring cleaning. Spring is a season when the world seems to come back to life. It seems a perfect time to release anything holding us back and reorganize and freshen our homes. When we talk about spring cleaning, we think about deeper cleaning than our normal maintenance cleaning routine. For example, we regularly clean our bed linens but during a spring-cleaning session we also clean any blankets and the bedspread or duvet. We clean the mattress pad, wash or replace pillows, and flip the mattress. And while we have that…

Mar 10

a man standing with his hands beside his eyes so he can't see what is around him.

Clutter Blindness

By Jonda Beattie How to Declutter: Use Simple Strategies

Clutter blindness is simply clutter that is in front of you, but that you don’t see. Usually, this clutter accumulates slowly over time but because it is never dealt with it begins to look like it belongs there. It’s not that people have a vision problem. It’s just that they have become accustomed to the clutter and expect it to be there. How does clutter accumulate? Clutter generally accumulates when tasks are not completed. For example, you bring in the mail and you might even pull out the obvious trash and throw it out or recycle it. The rest is…

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