NYC Professional Organizer Gets Organized at Home
As a Professional Organizer in NYC, there isn’t always time during each week to do everything that I want to or should do. However, I have learned that when it comes to organizing my home, I need to practice what I preach. Even during the summer when it is very tempting to slack off and not pay as much attention to keeping my home organized, I have discovered that taking a few – yes, only three or four – minutes to follow the systems that are already established can prove to be tremendous time savers in the long run. And that makes more time for the fun stuff!
This summer, this NYC Professional Organizer has taken organizing systems on the road and I spent some time developing ways to better organize my weekend home. This is a part-time residence which could immediately be defined as a space that lacks the organizing systems that are present in my NYC home. But while I might not need the same level of organization in my weekend home, I still need to have some basic home organizing systems in place because I don’t want to wake up one day and find that most of it needs to be spent decluttering and re-organizing the house.
I want to share some of the simple organizing solutions that I have put into place so that my home stays organized and I have more time for gardening, boating and spending time with my friends.
- I finally got tired of rummaging through the shoe boxes at the bottom of my closet each time I needed a pair of shoes. I bought a simple shoe rack at Bed, Bath & Beyond, quickly assembled it and proceeded to empty the shoe boxes and place the shoes on the rack. Not only does the closet look so much neater, I can grab the desired pair of shoes and be on my way in no time.
- We recently renovated our bathroom and the good news is that we have much more storage space in the medicine cabinet than we need. The challenge was trying to corral all those small items that tend to get strewn on the shelves and manage to fall out every time the door is opened. When I started searching through my storage closet for items that could be re-purposed as containers for Q-tips, dental floss, and extra contact lenses, I found that a couple of votive candle holders turned out to be just the right size. They are now strategically placed on the shelves so that the dental floss is near the toothpaste and Listerine, the lenses near the saline solution and the Q-tips near my make-up.
- I try not to use the weekend house as a place to store those clothes that I’m just not ready to part with but in reality won’t ever wear again. However, there are clothes that are nearing the end of their useful life that I keep at the house. I do switch my clothes at the end of the winter and summer and to make this process easier I keep a shopping bag on the floor of the closet to collect items to be donated. As the bag tends to get filled throughout each season as well as at the end of the season, I make periodic drop-offs at the local Goodwill Store.
- As I really want to maximize my weekends outside NYC, I have tried to find more efficient ways to address those necessary chores that need to be done each weekend. As much as I can appreciate the “bargain priced” groceries and pharmacy products at WalMart, I want to get in and out of the store quickly. I have found that jotting down items that are needed as they come to mind and then dividing my shopping list by category (pharmacy, household, food, etc.) really makes a difference. In addition, I follow a specific route through the store each time I shop so that I can quickly find what is needed and move on to the next section.