Category: Organizing Solutions (Page 1 of 2)

Why I’m In Love With Lazy Susan Turntables

May 12, 2020 / The Organizing Lady / 0 Comments

To me, there’s something truly special about lazy Susan turntables. Apart from their known practicality, I find them advantageous in so many ways as a suitable method to organize and display various types of things.

The origin of the term lazy Susan is an Americanism term dating back to 1915. According to lore, Thomas Jefferson invented the device, which was known as a “dumbwaiter” for his daughter Susan.

Nonetheless, it’s a round rotating tray so that whatever it holds can be seen and reached easily.

While their common use has been on tables to aid in distributing food and kitchen countertops for spices, they are also handy in pantry cabinets, the refrigerator and other places.

I’ve seen them used for things like cosmetics, nail polish, facial products, bathroom products, cleaning products, medicines, craft supplies, desktop supplies, and so on.

Pinterest has lots of ideas for these and they go beyond what they’re commonly used for. Especially the DIY ones made in 2-3 tiered layers to hold stuff.

It’s easy to make your own, too. You just need a swivel so the tray can revolve. When you want to make tiered layers, that’s where you can get really creative. I’ve made my own tiered lazy susans using candle holders from the dollar store, but there are lots of other things you can use.

I grabbed some photos from Pinterest of several lazy susan ideas and uses (as well as my own) to show you how versatile these are. Here’s what I found:

crate and barrel lazy susan turntable — Crate & Barrel

Decluttering For The Soul

March 15, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

Walk into a space that doesn’t make you feel good in it, and there’s something wrong with that space.

On the other hand, walk into a space that uplifts you and I can say with full certainty that there’s everything right about that space.

A pleasant space affects our well being in the way that a child or loved one (or even a pet) gives out loving kisses that results in our feeling of joy and happiness. It’s just a “feel good” feeling overall.

Yet, a hostile space makes us feel uncomfortable or sad or frightened or angry or in despair. A hostile space always creates a negative feeling, no matter what that negative feeling may be.

Sometimes we can escape a hostile area as swiftly as we entered it, and sometimes we are left stuck in it for a certain period of time.

What’s a hostile area, you ask? Well, let’s look at a homeless person’s encampment – usually cluttered with unattractive items stacked like a pile of garbage thrown on the ground. You probably don’t feel so good in that area, right? So essentially, if you’re not feeling so great, it’s considered hostile toward your well being.

Clutter isn’t pretty. I’d have to say it’s hostile to our spiritual well being. A cluttered environment is going to drive us down unless we sweep it out of existence.

If the space is cluttered, it’s an indication that we’ve been in a bit of a slump (spiritually or otherwise). It’s a viscous circle because the area is making us feel bad, yet the space got that way when we were not feeling so chipper.

Simply put, our environment can make us feel good, or it can make us feel bad. And our own space is usually a reflection of how we’re feeling most of the time.

If we start feeling better about life and things in general and then we walk back into the bad environment we had created while we weren’t feeling so great, we’re likely to head back into a slump.

This is where we need to pull ourselves up and get our environment in good shape first and foremost, no matter what it takes.

A happy environment will smile at us. And that is just good for the soul.

Watch my latest video where I give some solutions to make your environment a happy one.

Organizing A Photo Collection Into The Digital Space

July 10, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

Got lots of photo prints? Many people do, especially in the days when we had photos developed.

Well, a mother of a friend of mine decided it was time to share all her accumulated photos with the entire family. Organizing a photo collection was the first part of this hefty project, so she organized them into large zip-lock Hefty storage baggies for each member of the family, and dumped every photo and keepsake item into the appropriate baggie.

This was a large family with lots of grown kids and their family and cousins and aunts and uncles and so forth. So the collection of photos was mind-boggling. Pictured below is just one box of this collection!

My friend said, “Hey mom, it’s the digital age. Why don’t we scan all the photos too?”

This was a brilliant idea because everyone in the family would also have digital photos. And, although the task was a daunting one at first due to the number of baggies and photos, it actually wasn’t so bad once the task was started.

The first order of business for this project was to get a photo scanner appropriate for this type of job. So my friend decided that a Epson V550 Photo scanner would be the machine to make this project go faster, so she purchased one.

She could put several photos on the glass and the scanner would scan each one. Not only that, but she could scan entire pages from a photo album.

The scanned photos went into the “Pictures” folder on her computer. Within 5 hours (over the course of a few days spending less than a couple hours at a time) she had over 600 photos scanned. The job was only half done, but progress was being made!

Since her computer could only hold so much, the time came when she had to move the scanned photos to a WD Passport portable hard drive. This freed up the hard drive space in her computer to allow her to continue scanning more photos.

Framed photos were scanned, developed rolls of camera photos were scanned, photo album pages were scanned. They all went into the digital space in perfect resolution.

She didn’t spend time renaming the photos because that adds a lot more time to the project. So it’s a good idea to organize the photos into named folders.

The beauty of this project is that now all the family photos can be shared among the family for years to come. And those memories will always be there to find – a lot easier than sifting through boxes and packets of photos, or even photo albums to find a photo memory.

Share your thoughts about organizing a photo collection!

Decorative Organization Gadgets For The Home

February 22, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

As a follow-up piece to the ORGANIZING STUFF – DECORATIVE ORGANIZATION video segment, I wanted to share some of my own favorite decorative tchotchkes (pronounced “choch-kas”, meaning trinkets) that provide organizing solutions in my own home (and the use of the word tchotchkes came from that segment!).

So, I walked around a snapped photos of things around my home I thought added decor and doubling as a dual purpose to organize stuff in some sort of home decor way – including the inside of cabinets. And, although some of it isn’t necessarily “decorative” in the sense of decor, it makes the space look good (in my “personal-style-opinion”, of course!).

Without further ado, take a peak inside my place (and feel free to Pin on Pinterest!).

The Vanity Organizing Assistant

Jewelry Organization Center

Decorative Wall Organizer

Chalkboard Menu Board

Fridge Shopping Center

Kitchen Utensils Organizer

The Coffee & Juicer Cabinet

A DIY Sponge Holder

Spice Turntable

Kitchen Gadget Holder

Bathroom Wall Organizer

Bathroom Shelf Organization

Bathroom Cabinet Space-savers

Laundry Cabinet Organization

stylish and cool ways to organize makeup

Stylish & Cool Ways To Organize Makeup Cosmetics

January 23, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

I always get great organizing ideas looking around Pinterest and found some clever makeup organizers I wanted to share with you. I even made some myself to show you some ideas of my own, adding something a little different than other similar solutions.

Basically, when it comes to beauty products, they can overcome our allotted makeup space and become unruly, especially as we add new makeup products to our “collection.”Personally, I apply the closet rule to makeup, which would be to get rid of a product when I buy a new product (with the exception of nail polish and lipstick – that is, until it gets to be too much or it has out-lived its shelf life!).

Organizing your beauty products

We have our face creams, our makeup foundations and powders, contouring creams, various blush colors, numerous eye shadow colors, dozens of lipsticks, lip pencils, eyebrow pencils, eyeliners, mascara, makeup brushes and pads, and heaven-knows-what-else. That’s a lot of things to help make us more beautiful.

Well, I found some cool ways to create various makeup organizers and, depending on the size of your makeup “collection”, one of these just might inspire you.

Acrylic Makeup Organizer

Pictured here is actually 2 acrylic organizers – a top piece with dividers and a 3-drawer piece.

DIY Tiered Makeup Organizer

Very easy to make – just a couple of flat plates, a vase for the middle pole piece and some colored glass votive candle holders. You can get creative and use just about any of these type objects to organize and store makeup and makefup brushes.

Makeup Plate

It gets really simple when you just have the basics in your makeup stash and want to display them for easy access. Just get a large plate (in this case a large ceramic pie dish) and any type of containers to compartmentalize your makeup.

Makeup Drawer Organizers

These are a must for any makeup drawer. It keeps like-items grouped together and avoids the messy drawer syndrome.

Makeup Case

These come in all shapes, sizes and types, so if you have a big collection you want to grab – this could be the way to go.

Vanity Makeup Center

For those who need to have a large cosmetic assortment, the following vanity centers are for you! Look it over and get inspired …

The Ikea Makeup Organizer Hack

There are no words other than someone found yet another use for the Ikea rail system.

DIY Makeup Organizer

What more can I say about this? It’s 6 glasses glued together to hold makeup!

QVC Makeup Organizer

This spinning makeup organizer is available at QVC

DIY Tiered Nail Polish Center

I made this, similar to the tiered makeup organizer shown above that I made.

Anyway, these are just some that I think will inspire you to organize your makeup, so no more excuses for messy makeup areas, okay?!

14 Really Great Drawer Organization Ideas

December 9, 2015 / The Organizing Lady

What’s In Your Drawers?

Drawer clutter is something that lurks inside without proper guidance. Drawer organization, on the other hand, is something that smiles at you when its opened and nothing is lurking inside. And it needs no assistance in finding something.

Drawer Organization Ideas

You may have noticed that these drawers are easy to keep organized because of the various drawer dividers used. Buy them, make them, create your own drawer style. Just make sure it smiles at you when you’re done 🙂 Take a look at the photo slideshow to get ideas for organizing your drawers!

A fun spice drawer that uses foam liner strips by Youcopia to hold the spice jars in place inside jar.

Image source: The Organizing Lady!

A kitchen utility drawer that uses wood drawer dividers to organize groups of items.

Image source: The Organizing Lady!

A kitchen utility drawer using plastic drawer organizer compartments. These expand to width of drawer space.

Image source: The Organizing Lady!

Make it easy to see your storage wraps inside a drawer. This drawer had built-in wooden dividers to make the job easier.

Image source: The Organizing Lady!

This is a deep kitchen drawer so I used clear plastic storage containers to separate items inside drawer. These help prevent a cluttered drawer!

Image source: The Organizing Lady!

A deep drawer used for plastic storage containers. Lids are stored in a clear plastic storage bin inside drawer.

Image source: The Organizing Lady.

A nicely organized kitchen utility drawer using wood drawer dividers. It's easy to see where things are and where they go when you're putting things away in them.

Image source: Better Homes & Garden - bhg.com

Even a junk drawer should have order in it, and this one uses various size cardboard box containers. It's a clever way to group like-items together and handle the mess that junk drawers typically look like.

Image source: Hi Sugarplum

Use a drawer to organize candles of various shapes and sizes. This drawer uses plastic drawer organizers available at most department and specialty stores.

Image source: Real Simple

A simple and inexpensive way to compartmentalize your clothes drawer is to use empty shoe boxes. And to really squeeze in more than usual and be able to SEE what is there, use a folding technique that shows what you have.

Image source: OneKingLane.com

A sweater drawer without any drawer dividers - just use a folding technique to show the sweaters and you'll be able to squeeze more inside, as well as see what you have.

Image source: LuckyMag.com

This is a cool idea for a craft or sock and underwear drawer, even for ties. It uses DIY round tubed drawer organizers from PVC pipes.

Image source: diyncrafts.com

An organized sock drawer using clear plastic storage bins inside drawer to hold socks in. You can see all your socks with this simple folding technique that neatly displays each sock.

Image source: Better Homes & Garden - bhg.com

A baby drawer organized with decorative collapsible canvas bins inside drawer to separate and contain the items. Collapsible canvas bins come in all sizes and available just about anywhere these days!

Image source: Buzzfeed

Organizing Stuff Video Series #2

October 19, 2015 / The Organizing Lady

This is the 2nd in my Organizing Stuff video series.

In this video, you’ll see The Organizing Lady show you tips for organizing the clothes closet, storing seasonal clothing, and best place to place your clothes hamper.

If you haven’t seen the first in this tip series, check it out!
https://organizinglady.com/video-how-to-win-at-organizing-stuff/

Video: Styling Your Home To Be Organized

September 5, 2015 / The Organizing Lady

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!).

List It With Styled Checklists To Help Keep You Organized & Ready

August 10, 2015 / The Organizing Lady / 0 Comments

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

Printable Prepared Checklists to make your life a little easier …

Printable Grocery Shopping Lists

From Smead Organomics

From Orchard Girls

From Squawk Fox

Printable Menu Planners

From Pretty Handygirl

From Free Home School Deals

Printable Cleaning Checklists

From Studio5

From Vertex42

From Simply Kierste

From Gone Like Rainbows

Printable Goal Lists

From The Organizing Lady

From FreeTime Frolics

From Motherhood On A Dime

Printable Budget Planners

From Evening News 24

From Improving Wtih Keia Lee

From SissyPrint

Printable Master To-Do Lists

From The Organizing Lady

From The Creativity Exchange

Printable Travel Checklists

From Mama To Blessings

From Merlot Mommy

From Corals And Cognacs

Printable Moving Checklists

From Botanical Paperworks

From Hometalk via Rental Revival

From My Moving Reviews

Printable Emergency Plan Checklists

Emergency Contact List from Home Storage Solutions 101

Emergency Supply List from Home Storage Solutions 101

Emergency Checklist: From 30 Handmade Days

Printable Party & Holiday Planner Lists

From Frugual Fanatic

From Botanical Paperworks

From Living Rich On Less

From Handmade Charlotte

From A Grand Life

10 Savvy Solutions That Roommates Can Use To Organize Shared Spaces

July 24, 2015 / The Organizing Lady / 1 Comment

It goes without saying that roommates need to set ground rules (oops, I said it!). So, let’s move on to how they can live in harmony around their shared home spaces.

Now, although I can’t help you in the personality conflicts area, I can help you create a balanced home environment to achieve harmony. Let’s start in the kitchen, the most shared space of all in a house sharing situation.

KITCHEN AREA ORGANIZATION

1. Designating food shelves in cupboards or pantry and in fridge

If you can spare some space, like some shelves in the cabinet and fridge, this can make a roommate feel right at home.

2. Using labels in food cupboards

Albeit, some of the food may be shared, like staple food and spices, there will be food specifically for each roommate. And, if there isn’t a designated food cabinet for a roommate, labeling food is a smart solution.

3. Using labels for fridge food

With designated food shelves in the fridge, you may not need to label food. However, if you’re sharing the entire fridge, this will delineate whose food it belongs to. Unlabeled food is open season for whoever is in there so, unless it’s leftovers from a shared meal, better slap a label on it.

4. Keeping lots of disposable food containers at hand

Without these nifty containers or jars in the kitchen, the fridge and cabinets can become cluttered or messy. And, since containers stack so nicely, the cabinets will always look nicer. And, for shared shelving, make sure to also keep some masking tape at hand for labeling!

5. Maximizing your cabinet space

Space-savers like lazy-susan turntables and space-saver racks will turn the cabinets into more usable space.

Also, grouping a lot of food items in bins or containers will save space in the food cabinet.

6. Creating new storage

If you need more cabinet space, you might consider hanging pots and pans on a ceiling overhang.

There might even be some wall space for wall shelves to get dishes or extra food items out of cabinet spaces.

7. Keeping a shared shopping list

It’s bound to happen – one roommate uses the last of the cinnamon spice and you won’t know it until you go for it. Keep a list inside a cabinet door or as a decorative framed chalkboard piece.

BATHROOM ORGANIZATION

8. Creating space

In a shared bathroom, storage space can be a big issue. Over-door storage will maximize the room and provide additional storage.

Installing wall shelving will also add more storage space.

Baskets hung on the wall add more storage space, too.

COMMON LIVING SPACES

9. Staying clutter-free with bins

Besides the kitchen, a living room or dining room are the most shared spaces, and keeping these areas free of stuff that doesn’t belong there can be challenging. Keeping basket bins around is one way to control the clutter.