This will revolutionize your life!

I kid you not, this WILL revolutionize your life! A wonderful friend taught me to do this years ago and it has been my favourite (and I might as well admit, only) party trick ever since. What to do with all those shopping bags that we all end up with? Despite my grand intentions to be "green", there are times when I forget my bags and end up with a whole load of plastic. Now since they have made the bags thinner and thinner, they don't always make it out the other side of a grocery trip intact, but when they do, there are myriad uses for them. The only problem is storage ... plastic bags take up a lot of room. Well they do if you haven't yet mastered this amazing trick. Read on and then by all means grab your own bag and give it a try. I know you can do it and I will be so proud of you!

 Think of all the places these little triangles would be handy .... in the car, in your handbag, in the nappy bag, for wet bathers when the kids go swimming, for dirty washing on school camp .... the list goes on and on! Enjoy ...oh, and you're welcome.

Organising your ideas on the go

I am an ideas person. I love a good idea, hints and tips, that kind of thing. I am forever picking up ideas from friends and family and when I am out and about. I used to be a scrap paper collector. I would scribble a note about an idea I had seen or heard about on a scrap of paper which was often never to be seen again, well, certainly not when I was actually looking for it. So I came up with the idea of carrying a little notebook with me, divided into sections, so that I could keep everything in the one place and have some hope of finding the appropriate information in a timely fashion.

You know by now of course that I do love my stationery. There is something intoxicating about a new notebook without anything written in it yet. Full of possibilities...... (apologies, daydreaming about stationery!) Add little tabs to said notebook and I am in paper heaven. I create a new notebook each year; it is one of the jobs I do during my summer holiday at the beach. Love to get organised for a new year.

 My book is divided into sections as follows:

(1) Party Ideas - a section for each of my girls, theme ideas for their next birthday celebration,
guest list, food ideas, games / activities etc

(2) Birthdays / Special Occasions - a list of dates by month so I don't forget what's coming up, ideas for gifts, ideas to celebrate / new traditions etc.

(3) Christmas - a list of everyone I buy gifts for (with room to write in what I have bought), colour scheme (we change this from year to year), recipe ideas, new traditions etc

(4) Blog Ideas - you never know when inspiration will strike!

(5) Great Ideas  - a catch all for amazing ideas!

(6) Books / DVD's - a list of the authors we like to read and which books we have already read / own and ditto for our DVD collection (both are extensive .... might have to consider putting them on the computer so I can just update the printout rather than re-write it every year). I also have a list of book / author recommendations or movies we want to see.

It really is a treasure trove of information and I would be lost without my little green book. Try it. It will revolutionise your life! Happy organising :)

Gaining back control

Life is crazy busy and sometimes that means that things get more out of control than I would like. It is usually a combination of factors that contribute and this time, it was having a weekend away, feeling a little under the weather (probably due to lack of sleep), various appointments and lots of projects with deadlines that made me feel like my head was spinning and my house look like a medium size tornado had just gone through. I am never productive when everything is in such a mess so I needed some serious intervention. Just so you know I am not over-exaggerating, here is the evidence of my disarray.

I'm sure you recognise my messes ... overflowing laundry hamper, dirty dishes, heaps of clean washing to be folded and sorted, paper piles and assorted clutter on my kitchen bench. I am a little alarmed about actually sharing these photos with you but this is what real life looks like sometimes for our family of six.

So, here are my best tips for righting my house and alleviating the stress that this kind of mess causes me.

Tip #1: Put on my runners. That might seem like an odd first step but it does really help. It was a tip I picked up from www.FlyLady.net . (This is a fabulous website with great tips for streamlining your home and your life.) It helps me to focus on working rather than being distracted with other things.

Tip #2: Start with the kitchen ... a clean sink without dirty dishes makes me smile (and looks better if you have unexpected company)

Tip #3: Tackle the washing and laundry. I have a secret ... I love doing the washing. It is one of those jobs that gives a large return for a small investment of time. And even more so now that I have my new super-sized washing machine. I can catch up in just a couple of loads.

Tip #4: Beat the timer. I love a deadline to spur me on so I set my timer for 10 or 15 minutes per room and then try to beat it. (Works for kids too who are reluctant to spend time cleaning their rooms or tidying up common areas).

So after a busy few hours (including Bejewelled breaks - you need a reward when you are working hard), my house it back to rights and I have a clear head to tackle the next project. It's all good.

Organising with Post-It Notes

I have been doing some of my favourite things today .... moving furniture, rearranging things and getting rid of clutter! It's been a great day really. I'm sure my darling hubby would tell you that I jump into these things with little thought but I actually spend a lot of time planning and measuring before I ever move anything. I try to think through how I use the space (or want to use it), what has worked and what I can change to make it work better.

Today I have been working on my craft studio which is quite a large space and has a lot of storage (read a lot of clutter!) I am not quite up to photographing this space yet, in fact, I will probably be working my way through the debris for the next 2 or 3 days or so. But as I use the same technique for any space I reorganise, I thought I would share some pictures I took earlier in the week. This is my overflow pantry.

If it is at all possible (and it is not always) my first step is to empty out the space I am organising completely. Many of the organising books / tips I have read suggest that you start with a shelf or a small area. I much prefer the all in method. This way, I really know what is in the space (even in the back corners).

Next comes the planning for what is going to go back into the space. I am just slightly obsessed with post-it notes but they are so handy! I write all the items that need to be stored on them. I like that I can move them around to plan my space on my kitchen bench and then move them to the area that is being organised while I put everything back.

And back it goes! Now I must get back to the mess I have made downstairs but I promise I will share pics once it is all complete. Happy organising!

Magnetic Menu Planning

I love to cook. I don't even mind cooking dinners night after night for my family. What I don't like is trying to think of what to cook. I always seem to draw a blank or can only think of the meals which I have cooked over the past couple of nights. I used to be great at menu planning (I would plan my meals for a month at a time) but these days, I just never seem to have the time to sit still long enough to menu plan. And so I went in search of a solution ....

I tried to plan my meals just one week at a time and decorated a gorgeous menu board for my kitchen where I could write the meals onto the glass. Simple, easy to change, should have worked a treat ... but it didn't. I often found myself trying to quickly plan my menu before I went grocery shopping and I struggled to think of dinners to cook.

Enter Pinterest (source of many fabulous ideas) and I saw a Magnetic Menu Planner. Now this was just the solution I had been looking for. The idea was to make up magnets of all the meals you like to cook and then just arrange them on your fridge into a meal plan. Perfect. So here is my interpretation ...

If you are at a loss as to what to include at this point, ask your family for their favourites or for meals you haven't cooked in a while. The other thing you could try is just to keep a record of what you cook over the next couple of weeks and use this as your base. I did both of the above and then made sure I added a magnet for Eating Out, MamaBake Meals (I will tell you all about these another day), Freezer Meals (I often cook in bulk), Try A New Recipe and Take Away.

I designed my magnets using Story Book Creator Plus which is a fabulous digital scrapbooking program from Creative Memories. I use it for lots of projects around the house. Then I printed them on cardstock, laminated the little cards and then placed self-adhesive magnets on the back. You could do something similar with post-it notes if you don't want to go all out with the magnets.

This is what the finished product looks like. I can now easily plan 3 weeks worth of menus in a matter of minutes. It is easy to move meals around and to add new meals.

Many thanks to the lovely Sarah for making me the weekly grid to place my magnets onto and for lending me her laminator today when mine started smoking!!! True - one of the little cards went in and didn't come out. And to Jill from www.controllingmychaos.com for the original idea. I love it.

My New Favourite Product....

As I was browsing the aisles of OfficeWorks recently, I made an exciting discovery. Wait for it ..... photo size sticker paper! You have no idea of all the uses I can think up for this magnificent product. I was honestly dizzy with excitement.

First on my list was printing up my own icon stickers for my calendar. This is especially helpful for those things that have to be written on repeatedly ... like the girls calisthenics classes. Not only will I not have to write the child's name and class time over and over each month, I have also colour coded them (of course!!!) so I can see at a glance who is doing what on any given day. Brilliant.

I can see me going through a fair few sheets this year. And stay tuned for some of the other ideas I have for these sticker papers. Happy happy joy joy. (It doesn't take much to make me smile.)

Ready for School

We have been organising up a storm in our house over the past week. We are of course getting ready for that exciting event ... the start of the new school year. (In actual fact, I am going to really miss the girls as they return to school and for Bec, start in Prep. I enjoy having them home, but I digress, this particular post is all about ORGANISING ... which I love, love, love.)

We have been setting up "stations" around the house in an attempt to keep the items that belong together, well, together. Of course, we like to make sure David feels included in this whole process so we made sure there was a job for him to do. Task #1 was to install some new hooks at child-height in our front enty so that the girls can hang up their bags when they get in from school. They share bedrooms and there really isn't enough room for them in there and this will make it easier to pack them too. Very convenient. Tick.

Task #2 was to sort out the stationary supplies for each child. I bought a couple of these white planter boxes at Target last year for my kitchen bench and liked them so much I grabbed another 4, one for each of the girls to house their homework books on their desks. This keeps everything easy to access but doesn't take up too much workspace. The blue containers were also from Target and are sink organisers. They have a large section at the back which is perfect for erasers, glue sticks, pencil sharpeners etc and 3 sections at the front which divides their textas, coloured pencils and grey leads/pens. With four of them, there was much fun to be had with my trusty labeller too.

I am still very much in culling mode at the moment (no drawer is safe!) and today we tackled the girls desk drawers. We recycled most of it (lots and lots of papers) and then sorted the things to keep and reorganised the drawers. Their desk space is now looking gorgeous inside and outside.

This is one of my favourite parts of our recent kitchen / living area renovation - the homework stations. This long desk is adjacent to my kitchen and opposite the dining table. The girls can work on their homework close to me but not in my way as I prepare dinner and set the table. I can read out spelling words to them, answer questions and keep them on track. It works perfectly. The only downfall of this area is that is has a large flat surface and is therefore likely to attract all manner of items to it.

So there you go, we are ready to go back to school in our house. How are your preparations going? Only a couple more sleeps...

The decluttering bug

Oh, how much I can do without!

I have just spent the past 3 weeks living in our caravan with only the basics. Half a dozen kitchen utensils,  a small toiletry bag with bathroom and make-up supplies, one bag of clothes for each family member and  a few toys and games for each of the girls. And do you know what? I didn't miss a thing that I had left at home. Life is simple when you are away on holidays ... there are fewer choices and it works just fine.

Then I came home to our housefull of STUFF! It didn't help that we left a day or so after Christmas and the influx of new items that brings to our family of 6. (Nor the birthday gifts of not one but two of our precious girls owing to a lack of strategic family planning on mine and David's part ... really, a December and a January baby? Why wasn't I thinking June or July where major gift giving occasions would be spaced more evenly through the year? Search me.)

I get the decluttering bug everytime we get home from our summer holidays. I think it is something to do with the New Year / fresh start thing I mentioned yesterday. Nothing is safe - wardrobes, drawers, toy cupboards, art supplies - it all gets cleaned out. One of my resolutions this year is that if I don't love it or use it regularly .... out it goes! I am trying to teach this to the girls too, at least 2 of whom are absolute packrats. We don't need to keep every piece of paper they have ever drawn on or every McDonald's Happy Meal toy. We have had significant success today. I will share the photos soon.

Hopefully by the time they return to school in 10 days or so, we will have tackled most rooms and hot spots for clutter. Then we can get on with the fun stuff ..... cooking, crafting and having fun together (and hopefully a little relaxing for mum too!) Wish me luck.

Conquering the Paper Piles

I don't know how it is at your house, but at my house, paper seems to multiply rapidly. The pile I sorted and dealt with just last week has grown to gargantuan proportions. It is, in part, due to all those end of year notices, permission forms and catalogues but it is also due to me needing to update our system for dealing with all these former trees! So today, I tackled the paperwork .... again.

A couple of months ago, I came up with a system for broadly categorising and storing papers that are "in use". I bought inexpensive white magazine boxes and jazzed them up with labels I made (so they matched the rest of my colour scheme. Coordinating makes me happy.) Each child has a box which is where I keep their folders for their activities eg. calisthenics, singing etc; their homework books (so their littlest sister doesn't use them for colouring in) and classroom notes and newsletters (I cull these at the end of every term). David also has a box which is great for anything he leaves lying on any flat surface - it winds up in his box and has some hope of being found again. I have several other boxes .... home, party planning and so on.

These boxes have worked really well but I really needed some way of having my current projects in view. It is definitely a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind for me. So today I added a new "tub"to my kitchen bench.

The tub on the right has my diary, pen cup, notepad, blogging ideas book in it. This is my EVERYDAY tub as I use all of these items on a daily basis. The tub on the left is my current PROJECTS tub and contains several clear folders that I use for ... paperwork to be completed (permission slips and the like), Christmas, summer holiday (including packing lists), a follow-up folder and one for Bec's birthday party which I am in the throws of planning as I type this. The folders in here will change frequently but with any luck, this stuff will not get lost somewhere in a pile on my desk. Here's hoping ......

(Feel free to share how you manage your paper piles in the comments section below. I love to hear how other people get organised.)