TP and Paper Towels

Are you someone who feels the need to stock up paper towels and toilet paper? Do you have a regular amazon shipment come in before you have gone through your stock? Do you buy these items in in bulk at Costco? Do you store these items all over the house?

I understand the importance of these items. Yes, I use tp every day. But seriously you do not need 60 rolls. OK, let's pull it together.




1. Go collect every roll of paper towel and tp in the house and in the garage or anywhere else this is stored.
2. Stock your bathrooms with 6 rolls.
3. Stock wherever you use paper towels with 4 rolls…probably the kitchen
4. Pick one place in the house to store the remaining surplus. Just like the super market has one place for paper products, so should you!
5. If you have more than one month supply of these items…stop buying them and use what you have.
6. Once a week restock the bathrooms and the kitchen. Remember only 6 rolls in the bathroom and 4 in the kitchen.

By using what you have you will begin to reduce the amount of stuff in your home.

The bottom line is…WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF!

Simple Steps to Organizing - Stuffed Animals

Do you have kids?
Do they have a large selection of stuffed animals and are they all over the house?
Ok, it is time to de-stuff the house. I suggest you do this solo.

Pick out the favorite go to stuffed animals - and set a limit…no more than 10 and ideally 5.
Put all of the keepers in one container. I like the canvas bin.
Donate the remainder stuffed animals.
If you are feeling really spunky, the stuffed animals you are keeping could probably use a bath so toss them in your washing machine.

Simple Steps to Organizing - The Wires

So what is going on with the tech situation in your home? Do you have a drawer or a bin filled with cords? Do you keep them because you are fearful you might need one of them but you also don't know what they charge? Between you and me, this is my least favorite thing to organize. My immediate reaction is to just dump it all in the trash. But instead, let's just jump in.




Disposing of the Cords and the Devices…

The Cords

• Detangle all the cords.
• Match up the cord to the device.
• Every cord that does not have a device, get rid of it.

The Devices

• Gather all your old cell phones that you don't use.
• Reset the phone to erase your data. 
• Donate that old phone.

Where to Dispose

E-Waste  - Whole Foods will take your e-waste and dispose of it properly
Cell Phones - Donate to a local charity that support your favorite choices


Storage of the Items You Keep

• Place each cord you keep in a sandwich bag and on the outside of the bag clearly market the device the cord charges.
• If you have several cords, get a plastic shoe container that hangs on a door and in each pocket put the cord and mark the pocket with info on the what the cord charges. 

Simple Steps to Organizing - The Pantry

You have heard the saying you are what you eat. So tell me, what are you eating! Take a look at your pantry. The pantry contains all the back up foods - soups, cans of tuna, sauces. But is it all a mix of stuff that you really don't know what is in there? So following the rule you are what you eat…the mixed up pantry means the mixed up you. 

1. Take out everything from the pantry and put into groups…like with like…pastas, sauces, canned food, snacks, condiment, spices.
2. Toss expired foods.
3. Toss items that you really should not be eating.
4. Wipe down the shelves. 
5. Put the items back in their separate categories.

Hopefully you will be eating better with this simple step. 

Reviews

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Simple Steps to Organizing - The Baby is Grown

This is a unique blog for a very targeted audience. If it does not apply to you, terrific. You have the day off. 

OK, do you have small kids and yet you still have their sippy cups and utensils from when they were babies? I can't tell you how many kitchens I purge that the families still have all the plates, dishes, bottles and little spoons from when their kids were babies. 

It is now time to go through your kitchen and gather all these items together and put them in a bag. Now I know many of you are sentimental about these items. Hopefully this next piece of advice helps.   Donate all of these items to your local family shelter and while you are at it, maybe add a few of the baby toys too. 

Simple Steps to Organizing - Make-Up

This post is primarily for ladies but hey if you are a guy who wears make-up, continue reading.  It is time to clean up and organize your make-up. This is a great opportunity to really decide what you actually wear.

Less is more!

Organizing Steps:

1. Pick a spot to sort through every item - either the kitchen table or the bathroom counter.
2. Grab a trash bag.
3. Gather together ALL of your make-up from every place you keep it - purse, night stand, various bathrooms, kitchen drawers, the car…you get the idea.
4. Dump it all on to a flat surface.
5. Go through every item.
6. Anything that is old, dried up, sticky, gooey…throw away.
7. Anything that you don't wear - you know that peach lipstick the sales person talked you into buying…throw away.
8. Now pick one place to keep all your make up and only one pouch for the make-up that you take with you during the day.  
9. Take a tissue and wipe clean every item that you keep. This is one more opportunity to really decide what to keep.
10. Wipe down the cabinet and/or the pouch where you keep your make up. 

Simple Steps to Organizing - Coffee Mugs, Tea Cups, Travel Mugs

Part of organizing is just about creating space. More often than not disorganization happens because there are just too many items crammed into a small space. So let's go to your kitchen cabinets and purge the mug collection.

1. Clear off a counter or a table.
2. Gather together every coffee mug, tea cup and travel mug for hot drinks.
3. Toss any items that are chipped.
4. Pick up every item and decide which ones you LOVE…the rest GO.
5. Put the to go items in a paper bag and take them to Goodwill.
6. Put the ones you LOVE back in the cabinet…the same cabinet. Be brutal and purge all the ones that do not get used.  Do not keep any mug or cup because of some kind of sentiment…pass those on to someone who will use them.

Less is More.

Simple Steps to Organizing - T-Shirts

OK, I just tackled this one myself. Yes, even Andrea the Organizer has to purge.
Many of us have an attachment to our t-shirts and the reasons are vast…won at an athletic competition, worn at a favorite concert. However, our teachers can take a beating and have a life span.

So here we go…
Take out all of your t-shirts. Go through your pile and one by one use this criteria to remove it from the pile:

• torn
• stained
• too small
• every time you see it in your drawer you look at it, skip it and pick another one

Putt them away. I like to put them back in by color from lightest to darkest and put them in vertically instead of stack on top of each other.

Don't you love all the space you created in your drawer?

Simple Steps to Organizing - Large Shipments

Do you get regular deliveries from places like Amazon and you have boxes and boxes of stuff? Here are your simple organizing steps.
1. Take the supplies out of the boxes and group everything into categories…i.e. tp, paper towels, house cleaners, etc.
2. Pick one place to keep these items. Take an inventory of the amount you have…you may have more than you realized.
3. If you have a large supply on hand then put your future orders on hold. Quite often when we don't actually see the items, we don't know how many we have.

Now for the most important step…
4. Collapse the box and put it in your outgoing recycling.

Simple Steps to Organizing - Boxes

Get ready for a super easy task which will create space immediately.
Do you have empty boxes in your house and/or in the garage? Get a scissor or a knife and break down every box and put them in your outgoing recycling. Stop saving boxes, bags, old wrapping paper. Put all that stuff out in the recycling. Bye bye.
You are done!

Simple Steps to Organizing - The Books

Do you have a sentimental attachment to your books? Do you have books that date back to your childhood. Does the thought of getting rid of books make you feel a little uncomfortable?

Ok, I get it. I love to read and have a been a big reader since the age of 4. Thankfully I do not have attachment to the physical book and am happily apart of the electronic age. But for you, you need the feel of holding a book.  But do you also say, I probably could get rid of some books? Books take up a lot of room. So here are some of my suggestions to organizing your books and reducing the size of their footprint in your home.


1. Have a place for your books
Many of my clients have a tendency to have books all of their home. Wrong. If you don't already have one, get a bookshelf. You can find bookshelves at very reasonable rates on your local Craigslist website. If you have children, they too should have a book shelf. Kids learn in school about putting their things away. You want to model that behavior at home.

2. Gather your book inventory
Get all of your books together…yes, that means every single book you own. Rule of thumb…the amount of books can not exceed the size of your bookshelves. That means you need to reduce the amount of books you won. You can do it.

3. Reduce the inventory
Here is the biggest task. Go through every book one by one and take out…
- any books that you own multiple copies of the same book
- any books that you have had longer than 6 months that you said you would read and haven't
- any books that you know you won't read again
- any books that it is so obvious to you that you say "oh that can go"
- any books that you don't love

4. Get rid of them
Donate all the books you puled to your local library.

5. Put them away
Now in your new books shelves there are a variety of ways you can shelve them:
- alphabetically by author
- color coded (may favorite)
- category - fiction, non fiction, self help, history, etc.
- no order, just put them on the shelves

Happy reading!