Simple Rules to Create Organization that Sustains Itself Plus Master Bath Organization

This is Part 2 of my How I Organized My Entire House for $0.00 (Really!) series. Part 1 (Intro) is here.

I want to start off this series by giving myself a set of rules (more like guidelines) to follow. It's easy to get carried away and easy to lose sight of your goals, so this will help keep me on-track.

1. Think about how you live your life. It doesn't make sense to have a system that doesn't work with how you live. Have the things you use together grouped together, not always like with like*. You usually use tape and scissors and wrapping paper together. Have them together. You usually use toothpaste and toothbrushes together (if I'm making any weird assumptions here, feel free to educate me! :) )--make it so you only open one drawer or one cabinet to get them. Think efficiency.
2. Have the things you use the most in easiest reach. The stuff you use less can be harder to get to. Make things easier on yourself.
3. Along with number 2, have the things where you use them, or put them where you are more likely to use them.** Don't get too caught up in where things are "supposed" to go. Put them where they work for you.
4. Make things easy to put away. If they aren't (and you are like me), they won't get put away.
5. Make it simple. Don't go overboard labeling stuff. Don't make a tiny compartment for everything. Have a place for everything, but there's no need to make it more complicated than it needs to be. If you want. Simple systems are the most self-perpetuating.***
6. Reevaluate. Organize, then go back a week later and see if it's working. If not, tweak. Just because you organized it one way doesn't mean it has to stay that way. And it's easier to rework it when it's still somewhat organized than when it's completely disorganized because the system didn't work with the way you live.
7. Get rid of stuff you don't use. I've heard if you haven't used it in the last year, get rid of it. But, I think that's unrealistic. I have things I haven't used in the last year that I want to keep and it would tick me off to replace. But, there is a lot of good in honestly evaluating if you are going to use it. Are you holding onto something because of guilt? Because of what it represents?**** When getting rid of stuff, the biggest thing is to be honest with yourself.
8. Educate your family on your new system, but don't overwhelm them. Make it fun. Get their input if it affects them (I've found it works a lot better if ideas come from everyone, instead of my trying to impose a top down approach).
9. It doesn't have to be perfect. It won't be perfect. What you organize now will probably have to be organized again at some point. Hopefully a long, long time from now. But, your life will change. Your needs will change. Don't get caught up in perfectionism or get overwhelmed. One little piece at a time.

*For example, put a pair of scissors in the places where you need them the most--not all the scissors in the same spot. Then the scissors will be where you need them, they won't travel all around the house, end up in tossed random drawers and never make it back to the scissor drawer and then you can't find a pair when you need them. For example, I have a pair of scissors in my bedside table, so does David, a pair in the kitchen for opening food packages, a pair in the office, a pair in the wrapping paper box, a pair in the kids' art box, and then the specialty scissors where they go--do not touch my sewing scissors please

**I have a topical acne medication I need to use every day, but not within 30 minutes before or after showering. When it was in the bathroom, I didn't use it regularly. But, put it by my laptop, and suddenly I remembered to use it twice a day like I am supposed to.

***It's my experience that I will put something box in a drawer, but not necessarily a certain spot in that box in drawer. For example, if I have a box for often-used medicines: works great! If I have a certain spot for Tylenol in the box, it doesn't get put there every time by everyone and I get frustrated. It doesn't work across everything (forks have a certain spot, dang it!), but it's a generally good rule of thumb.

****Sometimes that's ok--you may pry my great-grandma's quilts out of my bloody fingers--but sometimes it means you need to let go of that to get rid of it. I kept some kitchen gadgets for a long time, because if I had kitchen gadgets, then surely it meant that someday I was going to be fabulous and motivated to cook all the time, right? And, it would make life easy, and I would transform into super chef-type "good mom" person. I was invested in seeing myself as "person with cool kitchen gadgets" and invested in thinking that a good mom cooks every night. Once I let go of that--good moms don't have to cook every night--then I could get rid of the clutter that wasn't helping my life. Or my cooking.

Do you all have any other tips? I'd love to hear what has and hasn't worked for you! 

(Also, I need to take my own advice! I am just horrible at putting things away and not always good at setting up things that work for me, but that's the point--right? To take time to set this stuff up; to stop and think about it.)

Now, onto the bathroom!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Grace Lace Beret

I knit this Grace Lace Beret to escape the deep, dark abyss I feel into when I graduated from college in December. The name of this abyss is "what in the heck am I going to do with this degree and therefore the rest of my life besides being a wife and mother which is awesome and all but not the whole sum of my existence because I'd really like to do things in addition to being a good wife and mother because most days kids make me want to eat my fingernails and bend my brain into itself except when they are being totally adorable and drawing cute pictures of flamingos (see exhibit A)?" This question is much too large, even for my newly enlarged, degreed brain. So, I quite naturally fell to knitting to ease my mind of such weighty questions. I knit a lot in January. A lot.

 Exhibit A (Courtesy of Aubrey)

I knit it twice. Because I am a contradiction. I hate figuring out gauge. I would rather guess. I know enough about the way I knit and crochet to know that I have a very tight gauge. So, I guess. Educatedly.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Curtains in my Kitchen!

My sister moved a few weeks ago. I mentioned this in my last post. When she moved, she and her husband ditched a ton of their stuff. Which means, I got a lot of their stuff.

One of the "stuff" I got was the curtains that were in their living room. They just happened to go perfectly in my kitchen.

This is the before shot:

This is what they looked like before I hemmed them. Yeah, way too long:

And the completely finished after:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.