organizing Archives - Life with Dee

Simple Organizing: 50 Ways to Clear the Clutter

April 3, 2018 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

I'm on a mission to completely declutter and organize my home this year. Or at least this decade. I'm a fan of Melissa Michaels' website, The Inspired Home, as well as the books of hers I have read. So when I had the opportunity to read and review her latest book, Simple Organizing: 5o Ways to Clear the Clutter, I jumped at the chance.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Read more here.

I already had two of Melissa Michaels' books:

and...

I love them both so I had high expectations for her latest release. Fortunately I was not disappointed. Simple Organizing reflects the author's trademark style - beautiful yet simple and achievable.

A quick look at the contents shows that this book is more than the typical decluttering book.

Domestic Dee-Va: Exercise Room Update

January 20, 2015 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

My project for last week was supposed to be our exercise room. Remember this? Well, it ended up being “one of those weeks”. But that’s okay. I’ll just keep plugging away at it until it’s done. I did manage to get a bunch of stuff boxed up:

Boxed up and ready to move out of this house

David and Chris just hauled it over to the back room of our guest house where Chris lives. I have a hair appointment tomorrow afternoon but David will be out of town which means I’ll have some time in the evening to work on it again. I still need to find a new home for an old television in there and we will take the bed out soon. I can see it’s going to be another week or two before it’s all done, mainly because David will have to move things for me and he’s terribly busy much of the time. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

31 Days of Autumn Nesting: Day 15 – Skeletons In My Closet

October 18, 2012 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

I was a little embarrassed to show you what my exercise room looked like yesterday but I figured my readers would have one of two reactions. Either you’d look at it and think, “Yay! I’m not the only one” and feel better about yourself. Or “I’d never let a room get like that” and again, feel better about yourself. So in a way, I’m just helping to improve everyone’s self esteem, right?

I was so proud of my accomplishment yesterday. I kept taking a peek at the room and of course, when David got home I had to show it off to him. He was really impressed, especially in light of the fact we still have all the “stuff”. I reminded him that having grown up with a very tiny bedroom (but at least I didn’t have to share it!) and a lot of stuff provided me with excellent “stuff and cram” skills.

So now I’m on a roll. Today I took on our storage closet. It’s hard to tell from the pictures but it’s huge (15 feet deep by 4 feet wide) with shelves to the ceiling along one side and across the back. It’s great to have so much storage space — as long as it’s kept organized. Starting back during Happyland Music Fest, it started to be a dumping ground, just like the exercise room. Are you noticing a theme here? A thorough clean out and organizing project would take at least two days. I’ve done it before so I know that’s no exaggeration. I don’t have that sort of time right now so I decided to just neaten it up a bit.

I started by setting a timer for 20 minutes. Here’s what it looked like to start:

Nice, huh? I began by pulling out the empty boxes and the stuff on the floor down the middle:

Yes, that’s Shiloh’s back end. We usually keep boxes from small appliances and such for awhile, just in case we need to return them. It’s time to get rid of them, though.

I didn’t sort through anything but basically just straightened stuff up. It’s nowhere near where I’d like it but at least there’s a clear path down the center:

A lot of stuff has been returned to its place on the shelves:

At least there's a path down the center.

David made and installed these hooks for me a few years ago. It is SO handy to places to hang things that are otherwise awkward to store. Plus it makes use of all that wall space:

This is what I removed. The boxes have all been broken down now and are ready to be recycled. Unfortunately we can’t recycle styrofoam so those packing pieces will have to go in the trash but the rest is in the back of my car, ready to drop off at the recycling center. Oh, and that 20 minutes on the timer thing? That was no where near enough time. All told, it was closer to an hour, including vacuuming and hauling all the recycling to the car.

Empty boxes and such - headed for recycling.

Sometime this winter, probably after the holidays, I’d like to thoroughly clean and organize this closet. A number of years ago I bought a whole bunch of white cardboard boxes, numbered each one and then grouped like items in each. I then wrote the contents of each box on an index card with a corresponding number and filed them in a small file box. This was such a terrific idea because instead of searching through all the boxes to find something, I could just look through the cards and find out which box it was in. After Lisa got married I got rid of a LOT of boxes of homeschool curriculum and a bunch of other stuff from this closet. That sort of messed up my system because it removed certain boxes and they are no longer in order. I really need to get rid of a bunch more stuff out of this closet and then re-do the boxes and corresponding cards. After Christmas…

31 Days of Autumn Nesting: Day 14 – The Exercise Room

October 17, 2012 By Deanna Piercy 2 Comments

I finally tackled a long-postponed task today. Our exercise room has been a dumping ground ever since our Happyland Music Festival back in May. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I *did* have it sort of straightened up at one time – at least enough that I could get in there to use the exercise equipment. But over time we’ve riffled through stuff trying to find certain things that had been left behind, the kids and friends have slept in there, stuff I would ordinarily put away in the closet has been left out (because I couldn’t easily open the closet doors with all the junk!), and, well, one thing led to another. This is what greeted me today behind the closed door:

And this:

Until folks claim their stuff the best I could do was box it up and stack it out of the way. But at least I can get in there to exercise and it’s not such a wreck that I can’t stand to be in there. See that nice treadmill there? We are going to get reacquainted.

I’d like to think those boxes will get sorted out to their rightful owners but the truth is, we will probably still have all of it here when the next Happyland Music Fest rolls around. I was thinking today that if I decide for sure that I am not going to get chickens again, I might turn their coop (which was originally a metal storage building) into storage for Happyland stuff. Chances are that won’t happen anytime soon but if I do some major clearing out and organizing of our huge storage closet, I can move all this stuff in there. Ultimately I want to put all my crafting stuff in here and use that drafting table for my projects.

Hopefully people will come get their stuff but at least it's boxed up and somewhat out of the way.

And maybe the weight machine will see some action now:

At least I can get to the weight machine.

The stool and speaker are high on my list of items for whom I’d like to find the owners:

We still have no idea whose speaker that is.

So that was my autumn project of the day. As the days grow shorter I tend to struggle a bit with a less than cheery mood sometimes. It’s nothing as serious as depression but I’d say it’s at least a mild from of Seasonal Affective Disorder. My plan to combat it this winter is to buy a special light made for people with SAD and use it while on the treadmill. The combination of light and exercise are supposed to be really helpful.

Do you have any special clean up projects going on around your house?

Making progress

November 15, 2011 By Deanna Piercy Leave a Comment

I tackled a couple of other kitchen projects today. I cleaned and organized the top portion of my pantry:

Before:

After:

And I cleaned out my messy refrigerator.

Before:

After:

If you click on the photos it will take you to Flickr and you’ll be able to see my little notes about the various items in both the pantry and the fridge. Just in case you are as nosy as I am about these little details. You can also comment on any of my photos there.

And for today’s thankfulness:

I am thankful for the ability to purchase healthy food.

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30 Day Challenge

September 29, 2010 By Deanna Piercy 2 Comments

One of my friends on a Yahoo email group mentioned doing something she calls a “30 Day Blitz”. Basically, she and her kids are devoting one hour a day for 30 days to getting caught up on some household tasks. Several of us in the group thought this was a great idea and are planning to do our own version.

I don’t work outside the home and my kids are grown so I don’t really have trouble keeping up with the usual tidying up, laundry, cooking and that sort of thing. However, there are drawers and cupboards and closets and seasonal chores which need attention in my house and I figure that this is the perfect time to tackle some of those. We leave for New Orleans on October 29th so I’m starting my “30 Day Challenge” today. When we return from our trip we will be well into November and the holiday season so it will be nice to have all these extra chores out of the way beforehand.

This morning I walked around the house with a notebook and pen, jotting down things that have been bugging me. I selected 22 tasks I want to complete, trying to keep each to less than an hour. For chores that will take significantly longer, I divided them up. For instance, I chose six kitchen cabinets I want to re-organize, a day for each. I didn’t write down 30 tasks for two reasons. First, “life happens” and I know there will be a few days in which I won’t get one of these extra chores done. Second, if I do really stay on task and complete all of these, I’m sure it won’t be any trouble to come up with additional chores.

I’m going to try to remember to take before and after photos. Of course, I didn’t think of that until I had already pulled out most of the stuff in the first cabinet I cleaned out. This is the cabinet in our kitchen where I store paper, plastic and garbage bags. The kitchen trash can is to the right of this so it’s a handy place to also keep disinfectant spray. I started using re-usable bags at the grocery store a few years ago and now I virtually never forget to take them in with me. On the other hand, David and Chris occasionally will pick up something at a store so we still get a few bags now and then. We no longer have an indoor cat so I don’t need them for the litterbox but Chris has one at his house so he does come get a few bags every now and then. I started with this project because it was an easy one and it’s nice to get off to a good start.

Here is the “before” pic:

And here’s the “after”:

All the plastic grocery bags are in those two Glad boxes, while the paper sacks are in the back in the two Braum’s bags. The little yellow box on the bottom left contains litterbox liner bags which I used years ago when we had a paralyzed kitty who needed a very shallow litter pan (literally, a cookie sheet inside one of these bags). I’m not entirely certain why I still have them other than the fact I can’t bring myself to just throw away something perfectly good. Maybe I’ll find someone who wants them. Any takers?

So, Day One, Project One is complete and it feels good. Anyone else want to join me in a similar project?

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Let the organizing begin!

January 7, 2009 By Deanna Piercy 3 Comments

This is one of the closets in our exercise room. I store all our gift wrapping supplies, boxes and extra gifts here (the top shelf has the satellite box and some of David’s stuff that I don’t mess with). It was all neat and organized at one time but over the past year has drifted into a state of disarray.

And this is after I took everything out and reorganized it. I have enough gift bags and assorted gift wrapping supplies to last years! And I haven’t bought much of it at all. The wife of the couple we bought the house from nearly 11 years ago had been a manager of a Hallmark store. She apparently bought up wrapping paper whenever it was on sale and then left it for us when they moved. I’ve been using it ever since.

If there weren’t doors on this closet I’d be inclined to buy some pretty storage boxes and really work to make it look perfect but in my “old age” I’m learning to let go of some of my perfectionism. It’s lots better than it was before and that’s good enough.

Simple Organizing: 50 Ways to Clear the Clutter

Contents:

Make the Most of Your Space

Entrances

Living Spaces

Kitchen & Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Bathrooms

Kids' Rooms

Home Office & Creative Spaces

Conclusion