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    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing
    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing
    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing
    Ebook214 pages2 hours

    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing

    By Sandra Felton

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This proven forty-day plan helps readers achieve a well-ordered home and life. Practical and easy to apply, it shows how to get control of clutter, chaos, and disorganization. Each day readers learn tried and tested organizing tips such as how to recognize the time realities of modern life, keep email and paperwork under control, simplify solutions, and more. An orderly home is only forty days away!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateMar 18, 2014
    ISBN9781441245823
    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing
    Author

    Sandra Felton

    Sandra Felton, The Organizer Lady, is a pioneer in the field of organizing. She is the founder and president of Messies Anonymous and the author or co-author of many books, including Organizing Magic, Organizing Your Day, Smart Office Organizing, The Little Girl's Tales, The Messies Manual, and 5 Days to a Clutter-Free House. She lives in Florida.

    Read more from Sandra Felton

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    Reviews for The Quick Guide to Home Organizing

    4.5/5

    8 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A quick, concise guide to organization. This book doesn't attempt to make you change your whole life in order to get things done, it just nudges you into doing things that fit into your life. A great resource!

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great guide. Makes home organizing seem less intimidating. [I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
    • 4/5
      Excellent guide with a variety of tips breaking up tasks in 40 day goals that can be implemented at your own pace. Some of the advice was the typical advice to go through your closet to discard unused clothing and some others were good quick ideas to make your day to day life easier. This would be a good book to read for great tidbits of advice for anyone struggling with clutter and embarrassment.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Quick Guide to Home Organizing - Sandra Felton

    you.

    day 1

    ready, set, go!

    When I was younger, I embraced many ideas I gleaned from tip books—even the ones that weren’t very good. Why? I thought the expert who wrote the book was smarter than I was and surely wouldn’t lead me wrong. But if I had stuck with all those suggestions, you’d see the following when visiting my house:

    Salmon poached in the dishwasher. It may work, but is it really a good idea to go that quirky route? (Unless your stove is out of order, of course, in which case using this method might make you look like a genius.)

    Nail polish and pantyhose stored in the fridge. They’ll keep fresh longer there, but do we really want to dress out of our appliances?

    Homemade soap-on-a-rope, created with soap slivers stuffed into the toes of pantyhose.

    Onions kept fresh by suspending them in legs of pantyhose straddling a door.

    Still more discarded pantyhose, recycled as pillow stuffing. (Pantyhose, for some reason, seemed the solution to nearly any household problem.)

    Smart Thinking!

    How you think affects how organized you are—and how organized you will become. Try reprogramming yourself to become more organized by meditating for a few minutes daily on these positive statements:

    I am too smart to create a mess. Therefore, I put things where they belong immediately after using them.

    I am too smart to let the kids make a mess. Therefore, I spend the time and energy to train them to keep things orderly.

    I am too smart to do everything myself. Therefore, I create a team of family, friends, and hired help to call on when I need assistance.

    I Wised Up

    It took me some time to wise up a tad. Now I’ve learned to avoid introducing things into my life that are far out of the pattern that already exists. If a new idea is not easy to incorporate and easy to follow as a regular part of my life, I reject it. What a relief to have finally found that I don’t have to integrate all great ideas into my life—I need only the ones that will make my life easier.

    In this book you’ll find many suggestions, strategies, and tips. Employing well-chosen tips will free up your life—now and for years to come. Happily embrace those.

    A few you’ll try now and perhaps abandon later. But don’t cheat yourself by not trying at least a few new things, even if you’re not sure they’ll work for you. Some of the ideas I thought originally were the poorest, like grouping my clothes in the closet according to category and color, have proven to be lifelong time-savers. Had I not tried them, despite my doubt, I never would have known!

    Sometimes you will see what seem to be contradictions. This is often true with words of advice. Tradition tells us that you can’t tell a book by its cover. Yet we’re also admonished that first impressions are the most important. We’re told to look before you leap. But we’re also warned that he who hesitates is lost. Which of the truths in each pair is correct? Both are—but they apply in different circumstances. For instance, sometimes you should be impatient with clutter and take bold steps to move forward. At other times you need to be patient when it comes to moving forward, even when you become discouraged with how slow the improvement seems.

    Organizing is not nearly as important as many other things in life.

    But what it delivers often is priceless.

    Sandra Felton, The Organizer Lady

    Never fear. I’ll help you sort out how to tell the difference.

    I define organizing as doing something smart—proactively—to make life easier and more productive. That may include setting up an organizational plan such as the Messies Anonymous Flipper, found at www.messies.com. Perhaps it’s making a chore chart for your children. It may be clearing out the house, so there isn’t as much to dust. It may be giving up some less important responsibilities, so you can narrow your focus on more significant areas of your life.

    If you follow appropriate tips in this book, your organizational life will improve significantly.

    What Do Tips Have to Do with It?

    The purpose of this book is not to ratchet up the details of your life a notch or two. It’s not designed to help you fly higher and longer, to be more of a hardworking perfectionist. You’re probably already expending most of your time and energy and don’t want to expend any more.

    This book will help you work less and still accomplish your aims—maybe even better than before and certainly more efficiently. As you read, you’ll see tips that will work for you, helping you simplify what you do and how you do it. These tips are proven strategies for getting and staying organized.

    Some tips require time and energy—for you, they may take more effort than they’re worth. You may have already tried and rejected some of my suggestions. But keep an open mind. You may decide that tips you once knew and have forgotten, or had earlier rejected, may be useful to you now.

    When you choose the behavior, you choose the consequences.

    Does this book cover all of the tips and strategies you will ever need? Unlikely. But I can promise you this: if you follow appropriate tips in this book, your organizational life will improve significantly. You will be amazed.

    So how do you know when to use a tip? Listen to your instincts and your emotions.

    Some tips will meet an immediate need. Some will provide a great solution for the future. Ignore the ones that will never be useful for you. Each tip is designed to help you find order and beauty in your life. And like tools, they require intelligent handling to work well.

    There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

    Beverly Sills, opera singer

    Your education won’t stop here. I warmly invite you to join us daily at www.messies.com. It will provide a springboard into a whole ocean of help from people struggling with, and overcoming, the same problems you’re facing.

    Forty Days to Fabulous

    There are forty chapters in this book, all designed to help you radically improve your life in forty days—just maybe not consecutively. What I mean is this: to make this book work for you, you need to pace yourself. You may be tempted to race ahead, reading more than one chapter a day. But that won’t give you the time you need to really put the tips in place.

    I’m not suggesting you drag your feet. But we’re aiming for big changes. Some chapters involve simply learning to see solutions in a new way. With those your progress will likely be immediate. But the solutions in other chapters may take some time to set up. Don’t feel as though you’ve failed if you halt for a day or two and take time to fully implement tips from those chapters before moving on to the next.

    Above all, know that you’re not alone. I’m still smoothing out the rough spots that crop up in my own life, even after being known for decades as The Organizer Lady.

    So, welcome! I’m so glad to have you coming along with me on this journey.

    day 2

    envision your goals

    It’s time to get excited about what your house can be. Frustration may have started you on the road to change, but excitement will take you even farther than you ever dreamed you could go.

    Bring That Dream into Focus

    You can’t go in your everyday life where you haven’t gone in your dreams. When you start daydreaming in detail, it becomes planning.

    You can stimulate your dreaming by looking around at the lives of friends you admire, the ones who really seem to have their act together. Think back on how Mom did things, if that’s the life you want for yourself. Read decorating magazines. Visit model homes or open houses. See, feel, smell what you want your house to be.

    I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn’t something left in life of charm and grace.

    Rhett Butler, in the movie Gone with the Wind

    You can stimulate your dreaming by looking around at the lives of friends who really seem to have their act together.

    Read over the statements below and spend a moment thinking about each. Check those that apply to you. You may even have your own to add.

    __ I want to be happy when I step into my house.

    __ I want my home to reflect my personality and my style.

    __ I want my home to be a good launching pad for my family and me.

    __ I want to be free from the stress that clutter causes.

    __ I want to use my house to meet the needs of others.

    __ I want to be able to find things easily.

    __ I want to spend less time struggling to stay organized.

    __ I want my house to be beautiful.

    __ I want a place to train my kids to be responsible, organized adults.

    __ I want ______________________________________.

    __ I want ______________________________________.

    The Big One

    It is your pleasure, your privilege, your high calling, to set goals, to envision a dream. Make it a big one. The Big One.

    Nothing short of bold vision will be enough to propel you to create the home you envision for your family and to maintain it that way in the years to come. Let me say for you what you may not have the boldness to say for yourself: "I want a house that is beautiful, clean, even shining. I want it to be neat and tidy and stay neat and tidy. I want to welcome unexpected guests with joy, because I can bless them with the atmosphere of my home, and I can meet their needs there. Houseguests will share themselves with us, and we with them, in the comfort of our house.

    This book is about defining your dream and setting a pace to pursue it.

    "I want . . . no, I need a house that is easy to live in. It supports me in what I do because things are easy to find and easy to get to. I don’t have to struggle to move forward in my projects in this house.

    "My family is proud of our home—so proud that they want to be part of keeping it clean and in order. Their friends are welcomed, and they enjoy what we have to offer them here.

    "My habits and their habits keep the house nice—consistently—not perfectly but consistently. I want to feel in control of my belongings, papers, and finances, so that area of my life does not become chaotic, frustrating, and even scary. I work smoothly—without wearing myself out in this quest—because I have developed a system that works.

    Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

    Pearl S. Buck, author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize

    "The words dignity, serenity, and harmony are not strangers in my house. Is it dusty from time to time, or are there things out of place? Perhaps. But never so much that the integrity of what I, or we, have created is lost.

    "This is not just a house. I will not be satisfied until I have fully created a true home, with all that word embodies. I know that specific strategies, tips, and steps toward order are important, because they are the nails that hold together the boards of this dream."

    This book is about defining your dream and setting a pace to pursue it.

    What is the allure of marathons? There are many, I’m sure. But for most, I think, it’s the challenge of doing something you thought you could never do. When you do it, what a thrill!

    This book will help you make a commitment to your dream, challenge yourself to new heights, and upgrade your house and life in a way that may seem impossible now. Take it day by day, slowly and steadily. You will be thrilled when you cross the finish line of your desires.

    Do Just a Little Better

    I won’t bore you with the cliché of a journey beginning with just one step, though I’m tempted to do so, because it’s so true—especially in this context. In housekeeping, truly, just a few little changes can make a huge difference.

    Often careless or casual habits just need to be upgraded

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