Monthly Archives: August 2012

Professional Organizer Tips

If you don’t have the time, hiring a professional can be a great way to get organized. Keep in mind that you will still need to be there with the professional to give opinions and make decisions. A good closet organizer or designer will spend a lot of time with you making sure that you get exactly what you need. Use these guidelines to decide if you would rather hire a designer or do it yourself.

1) If you decide to hire a professional, there are some things that you can do before they arrive to save everyone some time. Consider creating an inventory list for your professional. Make a list of things that you definitely want to keep. You could go ahead and pull everything out, separating clothing that you wish to keep from things that you are willing to sell or give away. Categorize your belongings by style, color, use, or length. You might decide to discuss it with your pro before you categorize.

2) When the closet is empty, go ahead and take some measurements. Let your designer know how high you can comfortably reach. It saves a lot of room if you can place shelves and hanging bars up higher than the standard height. Your closet professional will help you to make the most of the space that you have by utilizing vertical space.

3) Talk with your closet organizer about creating storage for things that are not normally placed in a bedroom closet. You may need room for a sewing machine, arts and crafts, sports equipment, your grandmother’s china, or other items that need to be stored. Categorize these items by how often you use them. Things that aren’t used very often can be placed up high in the closet. If you are storing a lot of sports equipment, you may decide to line the closet with cedar to absorb moisture and odors that could make its way from the equipment to your clothing.

4) After the best arrangement is agreed upon, invest a little in some space saving hangers, like velvet hangers. Space saving hangers allow you to hang things very closely together so that you save lots of space. Cascading hangers let you coordinate outfits and double the room in the closet. Velvet hangers are slim, save space, and don’t slip. Choose the color and style that best suits your taste and your closet will look great and stay organized.

About the Author: Rick Miller is on the staff of Only Slimline Hangers, a leading online resource for velvet hangers which are space saving hangers, non slip hangers and slim line hangers. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyslimlinehangers.com.

Storage Solutions for your Home Office

Are you tired of feeling cramped and surrounded by clutter in your home office? Planning out home office organization strategies can save time, money and your sanity. Use these practical tips for setting up an office that has plenty of storage and suits your personal tastes. You’ll be more focused, organized and productive than ever in your organized home office space.

Invest in a Good Filing System

Nothing is worse than losing an important document, losing track of receipts, or just never being able to find what you need when you need it. A good, sturdy filing cabinet or filing system is just necessary in a home office. There are many styles, sizes and shapes to choose from, so don’t worry about an ugly file cabinet interfering with your design or office décor. If you plan on having a paperless environment, have a good back-up system, like an external hard drive, to store electronic copies of everything. Back up your files daily if possible so that you don’t lose anything important in the case of a computer problem.

Use Furniture as Storage

If your office is small, you probably only have room for a few pieces of furniture. Try to choose things that double as storage devices. If you have a coffee table, get one that is more of a trunk shape so that you can store things inside of it. If you have an ottoman, get one that opens up to give you a place to stash magazines, computer cords, or whatever needs hiding. Minimize what is out in the open as much as possible to create a serene work environment.

Make the Most of your Space

If you have a closet to store things, you’re lucky. Make the best use of the closet space that you have by using stackable containers, shelving that will hold your office supplies, and easy-access baskets for things that you use most often. If your office supplies will be sharing a closet space with your clothing, then use space saving hangers, like velvet hangers, to minimize the amount of space that your clothing takes up. These types of flat, close-fitting hangers keep your closet neat and orderly while holding your clothing so close together that it actually takes up less space. Take advantage of hangers that cascade from each other to coordinate outfits. Use hangers that you can hang several things from at once. You can double or triple the amount of closet space that you have for your office supplies by taking this one simple step.

About the Author: Rick Miller is on the staff of Only Slimline Hangers, a leading online resource for velvet hangers which are space saving hangers, non slip hangers and slim line hangers. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyslimlinehangers.com.

The Top 5 Benefits of Being a Minimalist

Great tips from the Everyday Minimalist on how to get exactly what you want out of life. We hope you enjoy this article as much as we do. Read the entire article here.

Everyone wants to know all the benefits of being a minimalist.

So I came up with my top 5 reasons.

There are plenty more reasons as a result of these major ones, but they all come in time, as minimalism slowly creeps into your system.

1. Less stress gets you what you want

You have less to deal with when you start applying minimalism to all aspects of your life.

Living a simpler, less complicated life takes some work in the beginning, but the rewards are great.

If you keep saying yes to everything, you will never enjoy or get anything finished.

Once you start cutting back on your commitments and your stuff, there is less to do, less to buy, less to take care of and what you do end up with, is exactly what you want.

2. Less of an impact on the environment

Buying less helps reduce the amount of items that are being overproduced for the environment. If we stopped purchasing new items every year that we don’t really want or need, the demand is less, and factories will produce less. In fact, they may produce just what we need, no more and no less.

Before you purchase new items, minimalism encourages you to re-purpose and re-use what you already own.

Cutting down on new purchases by learning how to cross-examine yourself for whether or not you need the items is a useful skill to have.

3. Less money is spent so you can save

Buying less, means spending less.

And if you spend less, you can save more for your future and financial well-being.

If you also purchase quality items, you will cherish and enjoy them longer, plus you won’t have to buy as many replacements in the future.

And don’t we love that?!

4. Less cleaning to do

The more you own, the more it owns you.

You have to take care of the things. Maintain them. Polish them. Upgrade them. Add more to the collection. Yell at people who go near your figurines.

It gets exhausting, devoting so much time to loving things.

The less stuff you have, the less you have to clean and the less you have to maintain.

And you can devote your appreciation and love to the few things you own, that you truly cherish and value.

5. Less time wasted

You will be picking, choosing and prioritizing what is really important to you to get done, rather than trying to do everything all at once, and feeling unfulfilled.

Everyone needs a little down time, sometimes. And if you’re constantly putting your resources towards things that don’t hold any meaning for you, you will be stuck dealing with time wasters that don’t benefit you whatsoever.

Clutter for example, is just a form of visual distraction and the more we have in a home, the more our brain has to process.

Having a minimalist life and home also lets you find your things quicker.

Instead of hunting for that rogue working blue pen, you have them all in one area, ready to be used.

Or how about having all your keys and items ready at the door before you leave in the morning?

That also cuts down on having to scream in frustration at 7.59 a.m., while frantically searching through your pockets, cursing the amount of stuff you own and have to check before you find your keys.

About everydayminimalist
I’m a 20-something year old girl who lived out of a single suitcase in 2007, and now I’m living with less, but only with the best. You don’t have to get rid of everything to become a minimalist! Minimalism can help simplify and organize your life, career, & physical surroundings. You can read more about me as a minimalist. Or come and visit my other blog Fabulously Broke in the City where I got out of $60,000 of debt in 18 months, earning $65,000 gross/year.

Do I Need all of this Stuff?

As human beings, we tend to be sentimental about a lot of things. We also get stuck in “buying and acquiring mode”, making purchases of things that are a good deal or that we think can help us in some way. The problem is, we get consumed by the quantity of things that we own and we forget to concentrate on the quality. Focusing on the quality of not only how things are made, but also the quality that they bring to our lives, helps us to be more selective about what we allow into our space and existence.

1) Deciding to become a minimal consumer of goods and the Earth is a great feeling. Getting rid of things that clutter your mind, home and life gives you a freedom and an ease of living that you may not have experienced before. The first step is to get rid of all of the things that are not worthy of sharing space with you. Ban junk, things that bring negative feelings to mind and things that will create more work for you in the future.

2) Come up with a list of questions for yourself to ask whenever you are deciding what to keep or what to buy. Make these questions personal to you so that your home slowly becomes a place of comfort and joy for you. When deciding what to keep, ask yourself things such as, “Does this make me happy?” “Is this the only thing that I have to remember someone or some special event?” “Is this worth keeping forever?” “Will this take up too much of my precious storage space?” “Do I look at this regularly and reminisce, or does it stay hidden away?”

3) When buying things like kitchen items or organizational items, try to only buy the highest quality, most useful things. Make sure that you replace old items instead of just pushing the old items to the back of a cabinet when the new items arrive. Getting rid of junky, flimsy, flawed, or tacky items and replacing them with higher quality items will save you money in the long run. Not only will you be more selective about what you buy, but you also won’t have things that are likely to break just waiting to cause you to spend money.

4) By limiting what you will allow to take up space in your home, you should reveal storage and room that you didn’t know you had before. If you have a lot of keepsakes or need somewhere to discretely organize things, think about that bulky dresser in your bedroom. If you use space saving hangers, like velvet hangers to fit your clothes neatly in your closets, then you can use the dresser space for keeping photos, photographer equipment, books and more. Find creative ways to store the things that you must keep and you’ll have a home that is neat, clean and easy to keep organized.

About the Author: Rick Miller is on the staff of Only Slimline Hangers, a leading online resource for velvet hangers which are space saving hangers, non slip hangers and slim line hangers. For more information, please visit http://www.onlyslimlinehangers.com.