Join me this week to downsize and minimalize the amount of kids toys around the house. Tips:
When working with a child to declutter toys, let him/her know about all places they can donate to kids in need, such as to homeless shelters and toy drives. Pick a place to donate together and follow through with it. If not sure where to donate locally, ask the neighbors at nextdoor.com
Tackle clutter with the kids for as long as their attention can be held, they are having fun, and being productive with you.
Kids get overwhelmed by choice. Allow them to make decisions on what to keep and what to donate for only a few things at a time. When their interest starts to wane…
Set them free! Don’t get frustrated. It’s up to you, their mom/dad/guardian/caretaker, to continue sorting, decluttering, and putting things away.
Tackle kids clutter every few months. Declutter a little at a time together and instill great habits in everyone. Do not give up. Their clutter is your clutter. Set a regular schedule, find balance with the amount of stuff you are willing buy/accept/store/donate, and turn challenges into successes.
Isabella Guajardo, founder and owner of Bella Organizing, is a San Francisco Bay Area professional organizer offering home organizing, interior redesign, and residential move management services throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Call (510) 229-7321 or email info@bellaorganizing.com for more information. Gift certificates are available.
Join Bella Organizing to downsize & minimalize yard junk and get the front, back, and side areas of your home looking good again. Keep reading to find tips and resources for getting yard junk reused, recycled, and even hauled away for free. Many of these resources are available throughout the USA.
What is Yard Junk?
Lumber scraps that have rotted and decayed
Wooden logs hanging around when you no longer camp or have a working fireplace
Broken sun umbrellas
Rusting patio furniture that has been through too many seasons
Outdoor toys no longer played with
Landcaping supplies that have gone unused
Fencing and chicken wire that serve no purpose
Dirty, empty pots and planters that snails call their home
Unknown objects hanging from trees that were once decorations
Broken outdoor holiday lights still strung along the house and fence
Bricks, cinderblocks, and other building and landscaping materials that have been laying around for too long with hopes that “someday they’ll be used”
What other yard debris are you ready to kick to the curb?
Resources for local yard junk pick-up services (be sure to read the details of what they DO and DO NOT pick up on their website.)
Many waste management companies offer residents one free, annual bulky waste pick-up in addition to your regular weekly trash/recycling pick up. Contact your local waste management company for details. Here are examples for Oakland and San Francisco.
Local trash haulers, such as 1-800-GOT-JUNK and Junk King (fee-based). There are LOTS of companies to choose from. Do an Internet search for “junk-hauling companies” near you.
Local SF BAY AREA companies and organizations that accept donations of various types of yard junk (you drop off):
Use heavy duty gloves and face masks when handling yard trash, as there can be nails and splinters in wood, mold, bugs, and other yucky stuff lingering on and under these things.
When giving away items online, there are inherent dangers of inviting strangers to your home. Always play it safe and take precautions.
There are many junk haulers who are not legitimate, law-abiding companies. Beware of local scams in which you pay a hauler who illegally dumps instead of dropping it off at a local city dump. You can be held accountable and fined if someone is discovered to have illegally dumped property that belongs to you, even after it is hauled away from your home or business.
Isabella Guajardo, founder and owner of Bella Organizing, is a San Francisco Bay Area professional organizer offering home organizing, interior redesign, and residential move management services throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Call (510) 229-7321 or email info@bellaorganizing.com for more information. Gift certificates are available.
There are valuable memories worth saving, and a lot of bad shots taking up valuable space. Paper photos quickly become clutter stuffed into boxes and drawers if not organized into albums. Digital photos (and video) take up space on computers and smart phones, and make devices run slower unless you back them up externally and delete them from your device. Minimalize paper and digital photo clutter in your home and on your computer by taking these steps.
With the passing of time, you develop a fresh perspective of what photos look good and do not, and what you want and don’t want to keep. This week’s focus is to 1) purge unwanted photos, and 2) take steps to organize the keepers.
Start at the beginning. Look through the photos from the beginning of the digital history on your smart phone or computer, or grab a handful of loose photos and start sorting through them (handle carefully or wear clean gloves to avoid getting dirt and fingerprints on them).
Purge and delete. Here is a list of photos worth downsizing:
blurry shots
bad composition
dark lighting
duplicates (multiple shots of the same pose or facial expression)
scenic pictures of which you no longer recall the location
photos of people, places, or things you no longer care to remember
Downsize first, organizing next. If you have a lot of digital photos to go through, focus on purging first, then put detailed labeling into albums and individual photos later, or else you may become overwhelmed. Deal with paper photos similarly, placing the keepers in stacks according to a general date or event. If you plan to scan them, purge and organize first, digitize later.
Mark favorites. Many digital photo storage programs (such as iPhoto) have an option to “star” or mark favorites. Do this as you go (and as you take photos in the future) so that you can find them faster at a later date. You can also mark favorites to print or email. If marking paper photos, use a post-it note or separate envelope to sort and label favorites.
Store photos safely now and forever.
Create one main folder labeled “Photos” on your smart phone or computer (the Mothership). This is where all your photo albums/sub-categories are kept. Your phone or computer may already come installed with a photo organizing application or program. Take advantage of it! From here it will be easy to organize, label, find, and back up photos.
Create new albums as you take new photos, or file new photos in existing albums. Albums I have in my phone and computer are “Friends” “Family” “Fig and Newton” (my dogs) “Home & Garden” “Bella Organizing” (work-related), and various labels according to the event.
Use acid free photo boxes or photo albums for paper photos. If an acidic product comes into contact with photos or paper, the acid can migrate and cause permanent damage and decay to your valuables more quickly than they would naturally. This is why it is important to use good quality Acid Free and archival materials for the preservation of treasured memories.
Use an SD card or thumb drive to transfer smaller batches of photos to safer digital storage. I don’t suggest saving photos using these small devices, as they can easily become too many storage places, and get lost. Use SD cards and thumb drives to transfer photos from one device or computer to another quickly, with the goal of getting photos to the Mothership for safekeeping.
Two moms are better than one. Send acopy of the photos on your computer to a larger, heavy-duty external hard drive. From the external hard drive, a third copy can be transferred to online/cloud storage (optional.)
Scan and save paper photos digitally on a cd that you can then upload to your computer, an external hard drive, and/or online (cloud) storage.Read Consumer Report for reviews of the latest desktop photo scanning machines. Mail away options are available for large batches of photos, some of which are listed here. Always read reviews and use local companies (don’t take a chance that your special memories will make it through customs in order to get a better deal from a foreign company.)
No storage system is 100% foolproof. Keep organized copies of your digital photos in 2-3 places AND paper back-ups of your most precious ones.
Photo Display Tips – see and use what you have
make a collage of framed photo memories on a wall or store in a digital photo frame that rotates and displays hundreds of photos at a time
Save favorite photos as phone or computer wall paper
Link photos of people to their information in your phone’s contact list
Companies like Costco offer less expensive and high quality transfer of home movies and slides to DVD, printing, mounting, photo repair, and album creation services.
Read 27 unique display ideas for paper and digital photos from Buzzfeed.
Isabella Guajardo, founder and owner of Bella Organizing, is a San Francisco Bay Area professional organizer offering home organizing, interior redesign, and residential move management services throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Call (510) 229-7321 or email info@bellaorganizing.com for more information. Gift certificates are available.
Good for the face, neck, hands, and feet for cleansing, smoothing, and moisturizing.
“Everyone should exfoliate, every day, even guys.” ~ Bette Midler
When I ran out of my favorite Bert’s Bees exfoliate a couple years ago, I changed my ways for good. I didn’t like the additive ingredients listed on the label. Bert’s Bee’s is supposedly all natural, so why all the extra stuff? Probably to extend shelf life and patent the product.
On the label I noticed main ingredients I have around the house: sugar, honey, lemon. I did research, experimented, and came up with this delicious, homemade & biodegradable body product recipe to share with you – and without the microbeads!
This sugar scrub recipe makes one and a half cups; enough to fill two small Kerr 4 oz. jars. It can be modified to make a large amount. I choose to use all-organic ingredients, but it’s not necessary for the final product.
Ingredients
1 cup granulated sugar (white or brown)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons honey
The rind of one small lemon
Directions
Mix sugar, olive oil, and honey together in a bowl. Shred and add lemon rind. Stir to combine.
Scoop into a wide-mouth container with a lid. I reuse the Bert’s Bee’s container and clean it with soap & warm water before every refill. You can also use glass canning jars available at most home and hardware stores, or reuse 4-8oz body product containers you already have once empty. This sugar scrub is fresh, so use within a few weeks and be sure to always scrub the skin gently with it. I place it on my shower caddy and use daily. It also makes a great homemade gift.
Isabella Guajardo, founder and owner of Bella Organizing, is a San Francisco Bay Area professional organizer offering home organizing and residential move management services throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Call (510) 229-7321 or email info@bellaorganizing.com for more information. Gift certificates are available.
I do a lot of closet organizing and see a variety of home made and professional installation systems. Even the biggest and most well-designed closets can have organizational problems. What if you have a tiny closet or simply too many clothes like most of us? A quick and easy fix-it starts with analyzing the type of hangers you are using.
We accumulate a variety of hangers over time: colorful plastic tubes, bulky wood, padded sweater and metal dry cleaning hangers are common.
Tube hangers are sturdy, inexpensive, easy to acquire, and are used for just about everything: blouses, t-shirts, sweaters, dresses, folded over pants and skirts. If you have collected a variety of these colorful hangers…beware! It makes the closet look messy and clothes tend to slide off their smooth surface. Plastic is a material I suggest be phased out of the home whenever possible, and considered primarily for garage, attic and basement storage containers, and areas where liquids can spill and permanently damage the container. If you already have or prefer plastic tube hangers, use the same size and color for visual consistency; this alone will make the closet look and feel more organized.
Padded sweater hangers are meant to prevent stretching at the shoulders, but I have witnessed stretching on them anyway. These hangers also take up a lot of space and can be difficult to slide across a hanging bar when searching through the closet. The key to preventing hangers from stretching sweaters at the shoulder is to 1) wear them regularly, and/or 2) fold and stack sweaters instead of hanging.
Wood hangers are good to use if you have the space. Whatever material they are made of, consistently sized, shaped and colored hangers give the closet a sleek and minimalist look and feel.
Wooden hangers look nice, are sturdy, and one of the natural materials I prefer for the home. They work best for large and heavier clothing, suits and jackets in a hallway entry closet, but tend to use up too much space in a wardrobe closet. Stick with slimmer hangers where you can.
What about dry cleaner hangers? Why bother transferring clothes onto regular hangers when they are already hung when picked up from the cleaners? Dry cleaner hangers are slim and sleek, therefore take up little space…as long as they don’t bend and tweak out of shape. If you wear the same dry-cleaned clothes every week it makes sense to consider using them as your regular hangers (please at least remove the plastic bag covers!) If your clothes will be hanging for a while, transfer them onto better hangers, for safe storage and aesthetics. Otherwise, your clothes may lose their shape quicker. Typical dry cleaner hangers also bend out of shape quickly and snag other clothing.
Slim hangers of the same size and color give the closet a sleek, minimalist look and feel. The ones I like to use have a velvety finish, chrome or nickel hooks, and a good shape to the shoulders, which helps keep clothes from stretching and slipping to the floor. They work well for most lightweight shirts, blouses, and tanks, and are almost completely flat allowing you to hang many items close together, creating space where there was none.
Here is a similarly slim hanger made of a rubber material which I prefer for extra large and heavy men and women’s clothing. They work well for coats and jackets, too:
Cascading hangers with clips further maximize space. They allow pants and skirts to hang their full length, keeping them wrinkle free. The ones shown here have a small hook to hang them on one another, allowing you to maximize vertical space. These hangers keep their shape over time and can hold a lot of weight without collapsing, unlike plastic tube and dry cleaner hangers.
Do you or your partner have neck ties that need proper hanging? See my quick video below where I demonstrate one of my favorite tie hangers and how to use it.
Choosing the right hangers can create space where you did not know you had it. Slim hangers, wooden hangers, and cascading pant and skirt hangers are great choices for streamlining your wardrobe closets for function and aesthetics. Maximize space by adjusting the type of hangers you have; it is an easy and inexpensive way of making the most of a small closet without sacrificing style or durability.
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Ready for more? Call (510) 229-7321 today to schedule a complimentary estimate for your closet and wardrobe organizing goals. Gift certificates are available.
Isabella Guajardo, founder and owner of Bella Organizing, is a San Francisco Bay Area professional organizer offering home organizing, interior redesign, and residential move management services throughout the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Call (510) 229-7321 or email info@bellaorganizing.com for more information. Gift certificates are available.
Start at the beginning. Look through the photos from the beginning of the digital history on your smart phone or computer, or grab a handful of loose photos and start sorting through them (handle carefully or wear clean gloves to avoid getting dirt and fingerprints on them).
