The Organizing Lady Cyndi Seidler presents a few tips in a light-hearted way regarding some of the basics of organizing your stuff. This isn’t for a mature audience. Strong language is used a few times. And no dogs were harmed in the making of this video either.
If you’ve heard of Barbara Hemphill’s book “Taming The Paper Tiger” then you know it’s about organizing paper. Well here’s how to tame the chaos tiger in your cabinets. In this case, I’ll be showing my very own kitchen cabinets.
I basically use the necessary “tools” in the cabinets that will maximize the space, help keep things organized inside, and be easy to see to find what I’m looking for. And since all cabinets come in different sizes, I just needed to determine the best fit, or solution for each space.
My pantry is deep and food can be lost in the back, so I used a combination of round turn-tables, hanging shelf baskets, and clear containers that act as drawers. Some shelves are maximized to hold more than it could have held without a hanging shelf basket.
With large round turn-tables on the first 3 shelves of the pantry cabinet, nothing is hidden from view.
The hanging shelf basket maximizes the space on that shelf.
I was pleased to find these clear plastic storage containers with handles at a dollar store.
On the bottom shelf I used another hanging shelf basket and clear plastic storage containers (in 2 sizes to fit in the space).
Inside the other door of my pantry is a shelf for my spices which is maximized by a smaller, more narrow shelf above it and another turn-table below for spices I use the most.
My dish cabinet utilizes space-saver shelves so dishes can be stacked on them without over-stacking dishes on top of each other. I certainly got a lot of dishes on that one shelf for such a small cabinet space!
Under my sink I used some storage containers to hold household items and some tools (since I lack storage space in my apartment), and a dish pan to store some cleaning supplies. It’s better to keep things contained in something than loose because I can just pull out the dish pan when I’m cleaning to access all the stuff I’ll need.
I don’t have much counter space so I store my toaster and Magic Bullet in my cabinet. But I also store my coffee in it since it’s just above my coffee maker. Although I don’t like mixing food with other kitchen items, I made an exception to my rule so that I could have a “coffee center” area.
These are the main things I wanted to show you – that you can use storage containers, bins, shelf space-savers, and turn-tables in your cabinets to keep things organized and make the most of the space inside.
Happy organizing!
You’ve probably wondered, “When should I get organized?” and never really came up with an adequate answer for yourself. So, I thought I’d help you determine the best time to start doing some organizing.
The true test in judging the correct time to tackle this kind of activity lies in how you score in any of the answers below. If you score at least one out of the 10 issues listed here, then it’s safe to say the time is now.
It’s no fun coming into a room to relax, read a book or watch TV when you find there’s no place to sit that isn’t filled with your stuff on it. Sure, you can shove off some stuff to make room for yourself, but it can become tiresome after the repeated routine of 1) tossing stuff on chair, 2) shoving stuff on floor so you can sit on chair 3) vacating the chair and starting over with #1.
It’s easy to think you’re out of something when a lot of your food is hidden behind the cluttered mess of food in front of it. Out of sight, out of mind when it comes to cooking up that recipe you decided to make.
Stuff can take over counter-top space just as easily as stuff takes over other places. It’s like a disease that spreads throughout the counter space and soon the whole area is infected with stuff that belongs in cabinets (or trash can .. or even other parts of your house).
This is a sign that your paper clutter has gone too far. It’s taken over your desk space and left you with nothing but piles of paper on it. That nice desk surface is totally meaningless, and the money you spent on a desk to work at is now just a desk for your paper to sit at.
Even if it’s the 20th time, you’re getting close enough to warrant some time spent to re-think your actions from the time you arrive home to when you start unloading or dropping off stuff.
The main problem with this is that, once the sofa has accumulated stuff, you’ll no longer have a place to sit or sleep. So, if this becomes a problem, it is definitely time to get organized because we all need to sleep sometime.
This is a dilemma that a lot of women face, more so than men. But an over-stuffed clothes closet can have disastrous effects on a woman’s ability to dress fashionably. And, when she can’t find that outfit she just bought, it’s even more of a crisis.
Linen closets are known to accumulate more towels and bed linens. But kitchen cabinets are notorious for presenting you with this issue because new things are continually purchased for the kitchen, even if we don’t need it or already have it.
Big problem here. You have stuff to put away somewhere and there doesn’t appear to be anymore places to put it, especially since the places we normally shove things in is now completely full.
Enough said.
P.S. It may also be time to call a professional. (a professional organizer, that is).
In this video I walk you around my house to show you some of the organizing solutions I use to keep things organized.
In styling your home, you’ll see how I use a stylish shelf basket to hold my napkins, the space-saver racks in my kitchen cupboard, the various turntables in my pantry and fridge, the wall shelf I use for my doggie stuff, the Ikea rod over my bathroom sink to keep things off the counter, a decorative shower rack I use as a wall shelf, the shelf basket inside my bathroom cabinet, the organizer on my vanity table, and the clothes hangers I use in my closet.
These are just some of the things I use to store “stuff” in that, as I kept saying in the video, is “cool.” (I may have over-used the word “cool” a bit!).
Anyway, hope you enjoy and leave a comment (only if it’s a nice comment! Hahaha!).
When I came across the hashtag #YouOnlyBetter on Twitter, my head flooded with ideas relating to home organizing. Because we are an extension of our spaces in a way, and the way we create our environment reflects on who we are.
Granted, that hashtag mostly brought up smiling faces of women who did some sort of makeup makeover. But I thought, “a beauty makeover is similar to a room makeover in that the room looks better and we feel better about ourselves for making it look nice.”
In my article “What Being Organized Has In Common With Happiness” it says how being clutter-free is synonymous with being happy. And here I’m taking that a step further by saying that being happy is part of who you are.
Have you ever noticed that when you see a happy person it has a positive effect on you in some way? As laughter is contagious, so is a cheerful person. And a cheerful room is contagious – it uplifts you.
So, what’s a cheerful room? How can a room have feeling or emotion?
A room that looks nice to you is essentially capable of making you feel better. The nicer it is to you, the more cheerful it is. It’s portraying a feeling that’s uplifting – whether it’s a tranquil space that makes you feel relaxed or a space with pizazz that just makes you smile.
Either way, a nice space reflects you and the way you feel. And anyone walking into your space is going to see a bit of who you are in that space.
There was this one lady that I met when I went to do an organizing segment of a TV reality show. By appearances, she looked classy. She was dressed in a stylish outfit and wore her makeup perfectly. But when she spoke, she was in despair. There was nothing happy about her and I could tell that her life wasn’t going so well. Then, once I saw the hoarding mess inside her apartment, I saw the real her. And it wasn’t a nice portrayal of her either.
Now, I’m sure she was a very nice lady and possibly even had lots of friends. But, in her own words, those friends never saw the inside of her apartment. She never had anyone in it, so who knew why she lived with such despair?
With hoarders who need a major cleanup as well as therapy to turn their life around, it’s a whole different story, and not the typical story when we talk about average clutter (see my article “A Talk With Matt Paxton of Hoarders“). With average clutter, a simple cleanup is all that’s needed to change a person and make them feel better.
To celebrate your nice space, I want to start a new Twitter hashtag: #MyOrganizedSpace – and include @TheMakeoverLady in your post. Include a picture or video of your organized space or you in your organized space and let’s all celebrate it together! All your photos / videos just might inspire me to write a new article featuring all of you with your photos or videos!
P.S. I’d love for you to follow me on Twitter, too! @TheMakeoverLady
Happiness comes about in many ways and in many forms. Who knew one of those ways was being clutter-free?
When it comes to order in the house, there’s something I always notice in an organized, clutter-free home – the space looks happy. It actually seems to smile at me when I walk into it. And it’s that sort of feeling in a space that rubs off on people in it.
Dr. Joseph Mercola listed 22 positive habits of happy people and among the list was “live minimal.”
“Clutter has a way of sucking the energy right out of you and replacing it with feelings of chaos. Clutter is an often-unrecognized source of stress that prompts feelings of anxiety, frustration, distraction and even guilt, so give your home and office a clutter makeover, purging it of the excess papers, files, knick knacks and other “stuff” that not only takes up space in your physical environment, but also in your mind. “
Clutter, to me, is synonymous with chaos. They go hand in glove. And where there’s chaos, there’s a degree of unrest.
The first time I organized one of my messy dresser drawers was proof that even a small space could make me happy. I had transformed my jumbled teeshirts into folded rows of color and it actually smiled at me when I opened the drawer. Seriously, a big smile greeted me when I opened it.
Image source: www.jackthreads.com
Now, imagine what a larger space would do for your well being if it were de-cluttered and tidy? I’d say, the larger the space, the more it will have an affect on you.
Without fail, every time I organize someone’s space from a cluttered mess to a tranquil clutter-free space, I see really big smiles on them. And smiles spell happiness.
The smiles that came from the organized living room above were huge. And all it took was a clutter-cleanup (and a bit of re-arranging).
Try looking at magazines with really cool rooms decorated with a light touch of decor. I bet you smile inside at some of those spaces, yes? Makes you feel somewhat happy, right?
The same goes for real spaces that you’re physically in.
Try it, if you haven’t already!
From years of keen observation as a professional organizer, I noticed that organized individuals have certain things in common. They all seem to share the same traits that keep their home, business and/or life in order. Of all the traits however, the bottom line trait is that they have a system (or method) in which things are done.
I consider this trait the foundation of being organized. It’s like putting the bottom building blocks in place to create order. And there’s a system for just about anything and everything we do. Here’s some of the things that organized people have a system for.
Each of the above can become a habit, at which time the system takes hold without much thought or effort to it. A good guideline in changing bad habits into good habits is to try a good habit for 7-10 days.
If you fall off the rails on one of those days, start over. There are no “set-backs” in establishing a new habit unless you’ve put yourself on some sort of targeted timeline, so don’t fret over it. Just keep going at it 🙂
There’s nothing like feeling and being prepared and all it takes is a bit of planning. Sure, last minute plans can give you a rush (in more ways than one!) but it’s just better to know before you go, ya know? So, without further ado, here are some
From Smead Organomics
From Orchard Girls
From Squawk Fox
From Pretty Handygirl
From Free Home School Deals
From Studio5
From Vertex42
From Simply Kierste
From Gone Like Rainbows
From The Organizing Lady
From FreeTime Frolics
From Motherhood On A Dime
From Evening News 24
From Improving Wtih Keia Lee
From SissyPrint
From The Organizing Lady
From The Creativity Exchange
From Mama To Blessings
From Merlot Mommy
From Corals And Cognacs
From Botanical Paperworks
From Hometalk via Rental Revival
From My Moving Reviews
Emergency Contact List from Home Storage Solutions 101
Emergency Supply List from Home Storage Solutions 101
Emergency Checklist: From 30 Handmade Days
From Frugual Fanatic
From Botanical Paperworks
From Living Rich On Less
From Handmade Charlotte
From A Grand Life
Usually when someone calls me for help with their home or office organization issues it’s at the disaster point and beyond . However sometimes, the disorganization situation just needs a few simple tweaks here and there, like a closet that’s gone out of control.
At the point of no-visual return is the time that baffles me the most. Because, when it gets real bad a person has to wonder how anyone in that space survived this long, and if they even realized it’s probably been bad for more than a day, or even a week.
So, I came to realize that there is a degree of observation failure and, for this, you may want to look around again as if you’ve never set foot in your place before.
To know when your “untidy mess” becomes serious clutter, here are some sure signs your obnosis (observing the obvious) needs to be re-obnosed.
Image source: Flickr
When you want to sit down to relax somewhere, you either have a hard time finding a chair or your couch clutter prevents you from sitting on it, and then you end up spending your relaxing time clearing off a place for you to sit down on.
Image source -woronuik-wordpress
You may find that you are having to enter from your back door because your front door has stuff jammed in front of it blocking entry (and exit). So far you probably didn’t mind such an inconvenience, but the fact that it’s an inconvenience is a clue something is wrong.
Image source -bentowa-wordpress.com
You know that your bills are either in the stack on the table, or under the pile of magazines on your sofa, or among the kitchen counter-clutter, or in the bedroom on the dresser with other papers, or maybe even the bathroom … somewhere, anywhere that you last had them in your hands. And, if you’re not set up with automatic bill payments, then you may have experienced a service (or two) getting shut off.
Image source: stylist.co.uk
This is most likely due to the fact that you can’t distinguish your clean clothes from the ones that need to be laundered (since they probably got mixed up, or you forgot which pile of clothing was what). And, many of your clothes that were removed from your closet are now in piles around the room, leaving only the ones you don’t like (or can’t wear anymore) hanging up in the closet.
Image source: Linkedin
Starting to read a book is easy, but when it comes to finding that book again to finish reading later, it seems to be missing. And, as you look everywhere for it in hopes of finding it, you find something else to do that distracts you from wanting to read in the first place.
Image source: flickr
Unless you’re affluent enough to dine out every day, cooking up a meal for yourself may be necessary. And when it’s necessary but you can’t cook among the kitchen mess, or can’t even walk around your kitchen anymore, it becomes a situation.
Image source found on -indiewire
That’s right, you’ve come home from the grocery store with food you already have but didn’t know it because it was hidden in cluttered cabinets. The thing is, you probably wouldn’t even know you already have it since it’s hidden, so it’s not been such a big deal. You’ll eventually find it someday, but it’s too late – you don’t need it right then.
You can’t sleep in your bed anymore because clutter is now resting on your bed.
Image source: Today.com
Toys are everywhere and there’s no end in sight since the kids claimed the space and are now able to enjoy it with all their toys around it.
You find hoards of nasty bug critters lurking within the mounds of food-clutter who found the remnants of your food as tasty as you once did. Or worse, you find remnants of animal feces among your clutter, which clearly indicates that your clutter critters were there and probably still around somewhere.
When you’ve had one or more visits to the hospital emergency ward due to clutter injuries (resulting from either fallen clutter or falling over clutter), it is a sure sign that your clutter is a problem. Don’t wait until someone has to come find you under a debris of stuff (like one man did whose hoarder wife was missing for a couple days. True story.).
And lastly …
Image source: Evista Bulevard
…because there’s too much stuff in it. But, you knew that.
As I entered the lobby of the Hilton Universal City, I had a purpose – to meet the man who has been instrumental in changing the lives of so many people. And not just ordinary people, but people with a desolating and life-altering problem: hoarding.
To be fully prepared, I knew my first stop should be the Starbucks stand inside the hotel. I wasn’t standing there more than a few seconds when I saw a cheery-looking fellow approach the stand. I instantly recognized him – it was Matt Paxton. And he was the man I was there to talk to.
The fact that he also arrived at the Starbucks stand before our meeting immediately told me that he was a man who enjoyed good taste, so there was sort of a like-minded-coffee-people bonding that took place as we shook hands.
Matt handed me his book, “The Secret Lives of Hoarders”, a gift I graciously accepted and eager to read. From what I knew of its contents, I was going to hear some juicy behind the scene stories of his interludes with some of the most ghastly hoarding cases in the country.
With drinks at hand, we headed into the elevator and the conversation began to flow before we got into the room and I could set up my recorder and video camera. That’s okay, I told myself, because I was going to take everything in, recorded or not.
Good thing is, I already knew a lot about Matt. I knew he stars in Lifetime’s show “Hoarders: Family Secrets”. I knew he also had starred in the show’s precursor, “Hoarders” when it was on the A&E network. I knew he had a business called Clutter Cleaner where he and his diligent crew of extreme clutter busters have engaged in the lives of over three hundred hoarders nationwide. And I knew that he wrote a book that’s now on the NY best sellers list, that he has a popular podcast show, and that he speaks to numerous attendances about the issues of hoarding and senior relocation.
What I wanted to know more about was the man himself. And that’s exactly what I got.
So, with my video camera in one hand and my ears (and eyes) peeled to his every word (instead of the camera, sorry about that), we began the interview while he tried to finish packing his suitcase for his next rendezvous.
It isn’t just experience that has given Matt insight into the lives of hoarders. It’s from really getting to know them, and the way he’s achieved that is by talking to them.
For a hoarder, he says, “You’re not allowing family members into your life. You’re loosing part of your actuality, your life, because you are hiding your disorder.”
Matt took notice that the families of a hoarder are typically angry and antagonistic toward them. “They’ve lived with it for 20 years, 30 years. They’ve seen their family money disappear, they’ve seen assets disappear, they’ve seen their loved ones, their sister that they love or their brother that they love, they see him disappear.”
“Hoarding is not who the person is. It’s what they’re dealing with right now, in this pocket of time. Two years from now, hopefully they can start to go back to who they wanna be.”
“When we look at a hoarder right now, especially a hoarder on TV, they may not look that great. But that’s just who they are right now. Ten years ago they were an awesome and really cool lady or a man that had a fascinating job.”
“And they had a husband or a boyfriend or a girlfriend. They were somebody that had a great life, and then some bad stuff happened to them and hoarding kicks in.”
“I try to tell everybody hoarders are not bad people, they’re good people that have had bad things happen and I don’t think family members understood that.”
“Hoarding is just a really shitty truck stop. It’s not who you are for the rest of your life.”
When talking about therapy, Matt recounts how one woman living in filth had turned her life around.
“One lady had 18,000 pounds of poop in her house. She’s getting married. She got her life back together. It’s awesome. She got her therapy, she got regulated on meds, she got good meals every week.”
“All of a sudden some of the social issues that she dealt with that caused the hoarding started to get handled in therapy. But when she was living at home literally in 18,000 pounds of poop, how can you focus on therapy?”
“That’s the stories I want to get out.”
“I’m very aware that we’re putting a mental disorder on television for entertainment,” says Matt. And while that is the case, he also made it very clear that he only does it if therapy is part of the arrangement.
To Matt, therapy is the most important part of the process in helping a hoarder get their life straightened out. Without that, he believes his help is just a temporary fix and that there is little hope that anything will change for them in the long run.
“For me they gotta be willing to go to therapy, and they gotta be willing to have their family involved. That’s my only criteria. I call it the three F’s – family, faith and friends. Without that in place, the chances of the house staying clean, not very good.”
“When we started the season, it was either an organizer or a therapist. You didn’t get both, but my issue was that they agreed to pay for therapy for the person after I left. So that was the kicker for me. As long as they paid for therapy, I was willing to do it.”
But aside from the therapy, Matt’s personal success with hoarders on the show begins on a different level.
“It was a lot of do what I say, not what I do. Yeah, a lot of it’s luck, to be honest. And I will tell you the reason I did well on the TV show is I just speak what I think. I talk to the hoarder as an equal.
“I treat them as you’ve seen me on TV. I’ve spent a week with that family already. So when I’m getting angry at a hoarder and I’m saying, ‘Come on man we’ve got this.’ I’m saying that to a friend. And I’m speaking to him like I would speak to grandma or my mom or whoever else I’m working with.”
“I definitely get accused of being too blunt or too prude but that’s all I know. I talk to them as an equal. And I expect them to do more because they’re my friend and they’re good people. I know the good person that they are so when I’m pushing them, I’m pushing because nobody else will.”
“And they know from my constant interaction with them that I care about them. They know how I talk to them. I knock on the door. And then I take three steps back and I invite them outside. I don’t go in the house, trying to get into their stuff.”
“I get to know them outside away from the mess because the mess isn’t who they are. So I spend as much time as I can, just being with them, just being, not talking about hoarding. I find out what their favorite sports are, what’s their favorite food. Like, who are they as a person? Not the mess – the mess is just what’s going on now.”
“I can’t ask them to get rid of something if I don’t even know what kind of person they are, or what interests them. Like what do they care about? What do they love? What gets them excited? Do they have kids? Do they have friends, a partner, whatever? Why are they doing this? If it’s just because the county’s going to throw them away, we maybe don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t care what they have, but I want to know what their real motivation is because then, if we know that, then I can get them to the finish line. And the finish line is a clean house.”
The popularity of the show “Hoarders” began on A&E network and later moved to the Lifetime channel as “Hoarders: Family Secrets” this year where the network gave the thumbs up to show the real thing and just help people.
“We know probably 80% of the people watch because it makes them feel better about their own lives, just like I watch Biggest Loser. I’ll be watching Biggest Loser and eating popcorn, ‘Hey I’m not so bad, I’m fine. Right?”
“But there’s 20% of the population that watch our show and they get actual tips on how to help their loved ones or they get hope.”
“They find hope that their life can get better. I’m willing to do the show as long as we give therapy to help that 20%.”
Every show starts off with some initial research on the hoarder and in preparing the team.
“You never know what you’re gonna find. So we send the scout out. We get all set up for safety gear. We train all of our guys.”
“From ServiceMaster Restore all the way down to organizers, we give a class the day before we start cleaning to make sure they understand how to communicate properly.”
“I probably spend 20 hours with the family before in preparing for safety before I even walk in the front door. And I’ll spend a day before the cameras roll. I’ll spend about three or four hours just hanging out the house getting to know them.”
“I don’t think many people have spent more time in hoarded homes more than me and my three guys that started my business Clutter Cleaner and the camera crew. I mean they’re in there for five days, ten hours a day, working side by side with hoarders. The hoarder is there the whole time. We don’t film anything unless they’re there.”
“We really get to know them. That’s why you see a lot of things change by the third or fourth day of cleaning. Because that hoarder learned to trust us. And you can’t get trust in the first ten minutes.”
It seems that Hoarders is the last few reality shows that are truly “real” and without scripted or encouraged drama.
“You don’t need to encourage drama with Hoarders. It’s gonna happen. It took us a while to get the camera crews to understand, ‘Dude, just keep the camera’s running. It’ll be good on its own.”
Although each episode is an emotional one for Matt, the rewards outweigh the difficulties. “I’m not here to be famous and make a TV show, I’m here to make sure this person has a better life.”
Matt’s company “Clutter Cleaner” had its beginnings in 2006 when he helped his grandmother move from a house she had lived in and accumulated things for 20 years.
“I get paid to help people which is awesome.”
“But my ideal is, it’s not right for us to take the job if the person is not able to do some type of interview. So I find out. If we know they’re unwilling to do therapy, we don’t take the job. Because you’re just setting them up for failure. ”
“My system with ServiceMaster Restore is we go in and we clean the whole house in like three, four, five days. For a hoarder that needs one hour a day for nine months, we’re not gonna be the solution. We call in a professional organizer.”
“Whether you use a cleaning company like me and ServiceMaster Restore or you use a professional organizer like Dorothy Breininger, you still gotta have a therapy in place on the back end, and that’s really the kick.”
“I got the best gig in the world man. I have made a good living off of helping hoarders. So I do feel an obligation to figure out this affordability issue. We’ve helped with awareness and now it’s time to bring affordability.”
“We’re the ugliest of the disorders out there. We’re starting to understand hoarding, but no one’s giving money for it. So right now it’s on families. There are some government that will throw a little aid here, a little aid there.”
“I see the miracles three, four, five years down the road. I’ve got all these hoarding weddings this summer, where all these people eight years later got their life back together and they’re getting married. So I know when I’m looking at this lady and I’ve got to sort through her eight foot of diapers, well that’s just getting me closer to that miracle.”
“I hope to build a very big foundation. I do hope that. I want to build a big national solution that gives everybody awareness and education, and can help me make this cleanup affordable. When that’s done I can retire.”
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