Here is a previous organizing idea from The Creative Mama

The beginning of a new year always gets me in the mood to organize. The idea of clean and orderly are so appealing after the chaos that is the holiday season. Each January, I want to work through my house organizing everything from the kitchen cabinets to my make-up drawer. The only problem is that my enthusiasm can get me in over my head. I can either get so into organizing that I don’t have time for anything else or I dive in and get burned out. Can anyone relate?

A little trick I’ve learned along the way to make sure I get my organizing projects completed and keep my sanity is….

Join me at The Creative Mama to read the rest!

In the mood to de-clutter and get organized for 2012?? Click on over to Today’s Housewife where I’m sharing some tips to make the task a little less stressful.

I recently decided that the time had come to find another system for organizing winter gloves and hats and scarves. I got tired of rooting through that crate looking for that one glove!! As I was reading through a great organizing blog series (31 Days to {cheaply} organize your home at Organizing Made Fun), I came across a great idea!

Use an over the door shoe organizer. Brilliant! It hangs on the inside of the basement door right beside the door to the garage that we use to go outside the majority of the time. Everyone can see their stuff. No more hunting and rooting! Love it! Thanks to Becky at Organizing Made Fun for the great inspiration!

Where do you store your winter accessories?

Click over to Today’s Housewife and see!!

During the month of July, I am working my way through the house one room a week decluttering and re-organizing. I would like to be able to start school with everything in its place so we are not distracted from our learning. So far, we have finished my daughter’s room, the multipurpose room (homeschool/toy/tv) and our office space. My son’s room, the master bedroom and the basement are still to come.

As I work through the house, I am finding past organizing solutions that worked and those that just didn’t. One thing that really worked for us this year is our art displays. Our kids have always made TONS of art and are offended when we don’t hang each and every piece up for the world to see. We have tried many systems and ways to display, store, giveaway art. This year, I think we finally found something that works!

We basically turned a couple parts of our house into an art gallery.

We have framed kids art on the mantle.

We have kids art displayed in our multipurpose room.

This display was created at the spur of the moment by my daughter and I. We needed some place for her art projects to dry and to display. She has some ribbon left over from a project and I had a 3M command strip hanger and some clothes pins. It works great!

The kids know that in art galleries the art is only displayed for a certain amount of time. So, just like regular galleries, the art show is limited at our house as well. When the show is over, the art gets photographed and either recycled, gifted or a couple really good pieces might get stored in an art storage container.

School is starting soon, so the next art show will begin soon! I’m looking forward to it.

How do you handle all your kids’ art projects?

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Do you need some organizing help? How would you like to win a one hour virtual consultation with a professional organizer?? Who wouldn’t?? Head on over to Operation Organization – MN and get the details. Hurry!!! The contest ends Tuesday July 26th.

This week, the kids and I took on the toy/homeschool/tv room. This is our multipurpose room that changes with the seasons of the year and life. I needed to take that into consideration when organizing this space. This summer, it has become the tv/wii/craft room. Generally, a mess.

To get started, I used the same system as I did with my daughter’s room.

1. Empty the room. Including shelves.
2. Deep clean. We vacuumed the floor, wiped down the baseboards and washed the windows.
3. Add the large, must-have items back into the room – desks, chairs, couch, table
4. Start sorting. 4 piles – trash, yard sale, keep, storage.
5. Put old curriculum away and replace it with new.
6. Find a place to store necessary items.
7. All items in the keep pile must have a place. If it doesn’t, ask again if it is necessary.
8. Add the keepers back into the room in their proper place.

With the kids getting older, there are less toys in the room. That certainly cleared up some space. Last fall, this room became our homeschool room. So, I filled the toy shelves with books and manipulatives. It is also the location of our only tv in the house, so the couch is necessary.

I am still working on the walls. I need to re-hang the white board  and move some things around (maps, bulletin board, etc.). Now that the room is organized and clean, I have a much better idea of where things should go.

Do you have a multi-purpose room? What’s your organizing secret?

Last Friday, I introduced the Living In The Moment series that will be running each Friday on Overcoming Busy. Check out the intro post and then plan to link up your Living In The Moment story this Friday.

We decided to tackle my daughter’s room first. I knew it would be our biggest challenge. This room is always tough to get de-cluttered and keep that way. One reason is my daughter is a packrat. She wants to keep every scrap of paper, unfinished craft project, broken toy or tacky gift she’s ever had. The other reason it is hard to keep her room clean and organized is that she can look at this mess and actually say “Why do I need to clean my room? It’s not that bad.” Really.

Normally, I wait until the kids are gone to the grandparents and clean out their rooms, but this year I wanted to do things differently and see what would happen. I wanted to try and let the kids help and let them make some decisions on what stays and what goes. Dangerous, I know, but stay with me. I had a plan.

1. Empty the room. Literally. we took everything out of the room but her bed, dresser and desk. We even emptied desk drawers and took pictures off the wall.
2. Deep clean. We vacuumed the floor, wiped down the baseboards and washed the windows.
3. Move furniture. We moved the furniture to make most of the space.
4. Add the large, must-have items back into the room – bookshelves, hamper, nightstand.
5. Notice how nice, calm and clean the room feels. Let the kids come in and enjoy the space. Make sure they notice how much bigger and more usable the room feels.
6. Ask if all the stuff that we moved out of the room really needs to go back in.
7. Start sorting. 4 piles – trash, yard sale, keep, storage.
8. All items in the keep pile must have a place. If it doesn’t, ask again if it is necessary. Find a place to store necessary items.
9. Add the keepers back into the room in their proper place.
10. Have some ice cream to celebrate!

Here are the results.

Pretty awesome, huh? Amazingly, the little packrat loved how nice her room was now and how many friends could fit into it, so letting go of her junk treasures wasn’t so hard this time! Success!! To help, keep her room clean and organized, we instituted 2 simple rules. One, she can’t come out of her room in the morning until the bed is made. Two, she can’t go to bed until the room is picked up with everything in it’s proper place. So far, so good.

Now, my son can’t wait until we do his room!

How do you declutter your kids’ rooms? Do they help or is it easier to just do it yourself?

Now, I have too many ideas!!

Right now, it the height of cookout/grilling/outdoor living season. I love this time of year! We grill 3 to 4 nights a week and eat outside as much as we can. It seems a shame to have to come inside to eat on those warm summer evenings. I want to soak up as much summer as I can. I try and make the menu and the serving easy. Here are a few tips to keep outdoor dining simple.

Read my tips today at Today’s Housewife