Category: Videos (Page 1 of 2)

The Plight Over Out of Control Spaces

April 30, 2020 / The Organizing Lady / 0 Comments

I won’t be giving a lecture about clutter being a hindrance in our lives because we already know this. What I do want to say about it is that it wrecks havoc in so many other ways besides being a nuisance to us.

When house clutter becomes “normal”, there’s a crummy downside to that. We no longer see it. It’s like it becomes almost invisible to us as we maneuver around it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we put an invisible cloaking device over it just so it doesn’t bother us.

The downside of having it exist can be anything from depression, anxiety, apathy, to having brutal circumstances happen.

This morning I watched a short video that hit the nail on the head in regards to making a difference in your life and, as a result, to those around you as well. His first advice was to to get up and make your bed every morning. Make it pristine. Then go on to do the next task and the next and so on.

Pretty soon, as you begin to accomplish more and more tasks around the house, you feel better and better about yourself and your environment.

This started off with a man whose home had gotten out of control and all he watched was bad news about the quarantine. He was depressed and getting nothing done. He seemed apathetic.

But then, he made his bed and almost immediately lifted himself out of his funk. He then went into the kitchen and started clearing out all the junk and washed up.

By the end of the day, he looked happier and, after continuing to do daily tasks that improved his life, he became a better man. What a difference he made in his life by just taking control of his areas and himself.

With that, I leave you with this link to the video from GoalCast that is bound to inspire:

5 Day Room Makeover Challenge

April 3, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

As we find ourselves staying more at home during the Covid-19 virus quarantine, I wanted to come up with a 5-Day Room Makeover Challenge to help occupy your time at home.

We’ve been so busy and in a hurry that things at home start accumulating and piling up into what becomes clutter. It gets to the point where sometimes we don’t even notice the mess after it’s been around for awhile.

Now that a lot of us are stuck at home due to the Corona virus, you’re also stuck in the mess we created. So this is my challenge for you to take the time to do something about that.

Start with picking out a room that’s frowning at you. Then look around it. Take photos, even a video of it.

Each day for 5 days, tackle those rooms you’re not happy with. Some rooms may take more than a day and some rooms won’t need your attention at all. If you get this challenge done in a day or two, that’s great! Well done!

Post your before pictures as well as your after pictures in the comments below and let’s do this together!

Note: Also share this Challenge on Facebook and Instagram – follow at:

https://facebook.com/organizinglady

Instagram – @organizinglady2020

5 TIPS FOR 5 DAYS

TIP #1:

Gather up anything that is out of place in a room and put those items away. If you have a lot of things around to gather up, put them in a bin and put away after you’re done gathering.

TIP #2:

Go through any “STUFF” bins that you’ve gathered up from the room you’re organizing and decide if you’re keeping it, if it needs a “home” (because you didn’t have a place for it yet), and categorize the items – clothing, books and magazine, etc. – into other bins or bags.

TIP #3:

Go online and shop for any storage solutions you may need to provide “homes” for items that haven’t had a nice home to live in. If it’s visible storage, make sure it fits in with your decor.

TIP #4:

Donate or toss anything you don’t use, don’t need, don’t like, etc. Try to get rid of all the excess items we tend to keep and streamline your belongings.

TIP #5

Refresh your de-cluttered room with new paint, new throw pillows, new art, whatever will make you happier in that space.

Becoming Fit While Organizing Your Stuff

March 24, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

I’m not a big fan of exercise so what I tend to do is ignore the feeling that I need to do exercise and hope that the feeling goes away eventually.

However, being in the older age range bracket, my doctor says I need to exercise. Bah-humbug, I say to myself.

I know, some people love to exercise. Maybe you’re one of them? If so, listen up anyway because you still might like what I have to say.

So, what I’d like to introduce you to is “organizing fitness”. It involves a bit of bending, some stretching, and possibly a little lifting. Essentially though, it involves moving the body.

Take, for example, re-organizing your closet. In this exercise, you will be moving your arms upwards toward the clothes rod (stretching); you would also need to bend over to pick things up off the floor (bending); and the body would need to move from the closet to the area where discarded clothing goes (moving body).

Do that for 15-20 minutes and you’ve got a nice workout happening.

Recently, I decided to do some organizing fitness with the books on my bookshelf. They just seemed to be getting clogged up with too many books and I wanted to insert some display stuff on the shelves too.

I put on my yoga pants and a long-sleeved tee-shirt (it’s colder weather right now), and I proceeded to head over to the bookshelf.

I reached up to the books on the upper shelves and started looking them over. I pulled out any books that didn’t give me love anymore and placed them on a cart table I placed nearby.

When I got to the lower shelves, instead of sitting on the floor, I thought I should bend over to sort through them to give me some bending time in this fitness slot.

By the time I was finished, I had a 30 minute workout that included stretching, bending, lifting books, and moving my body. I was proud of myself. And, I had a little over a dozen books to donate to my local library.

Funny thing is, I may not be getting on a treadmill or jogging or taking long walks and all that sort of thing, but I’m staying fit while staying organized!

Try it. You just might like it.

Watch video:

Being An Artist For Your Home Interior

March 20, 2020 / The Organizing Lady

If you’re not happy with an area of your home, whether it’s an accumulation of clutter or just has a worn out feeling, it’s time to put a little pizzazz in your space.

To be an artist in the design of your home spaces, you really don’t need classes to teach you artist techniques. You just need a little incentive, some ideas from designs you like, and a heaping scoop of imagination to make a room transformation.

That’s that “recipe” to be your very own amateur home designer. And, like anyone creating anything, those ingredients will help you shape your environment into any artistic setting you like.

You can have fun with colors, texture, shapes, and placement of items in the room. You can add types of decorative pieces that make you feel good. Essentially, you can be the Michelangelo of your space.

Like a painting or sculpture or anything artistic, you start shaping your vision into something that gives you pleasure in the end. By that I mean, if it’s nice to look at when you’re done, it should give you pleasure.

There may be some things that just have to stay for the time being, even if it doesn’t bring us much joy anymore. But don’t let that stop you from getting creative in the room. For instance, if you have an old sofa that you just afford to replace yet, make (or buy) a cover for it and toss some new throw pillows on it.

Now, the thing that doesn’t belong in our decorated environment is clutter. It isn’t always tossed items in the room that cause a cluttered room. It can be too many collections of things without a displayed containment space for them can be too much for the room.

The “trick” there is grouping your collection in some sort of display shelf or framed shelf.

Too much furniture for a space can also give a cluttered appearance. Actually, too much of anything in an area is most likely, well, too much.

Here’s a good way to get started: Try taking photos of your room before you start and look them over carefully. Make a note of anything you don’t like about the room, and then some plans on what you can do to fix that. By this time, you’ve pretty much began your artistic endeavor by just looking at something and envisioning it being better for you.

Have fun, and leave comment with photos of what you’ve done!

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 Stuff Series 7 – Organize Makeup

March 8, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

Cyndi Seidler gets together once again with actress / photographer Denice Duff in this segment of Organizing Stuff video series to help her organize her makeup.

In a previous segment, Denice showed her home in “Decorative Organization” and revealed an area in her bathroom that she could use a little help with – her makeup. So Cyndi returned to work out a better solution for that.

Watch video:

Organizing Stuff Series 6 – Decorative Organization

February 17, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

In this segment of Organizing Stuff, Cyndi Seidler walks through the home of Denice Duff to check out her decorative organization style. Denice shows her studio, dining room, kitchen and bathroom areas.

Watch Video:

You’ll see a transformed garage made into a photography studio. Although it’s a working studio where she brings clients, the space still contains storage – only stylish storage.

Her dining room area once had a cluttered wall filled with her young daughter’s drawings and, after her daughter grew up, she cleared the wall, painted it, put shelving on it and placed select framed photos on the shelves and walls.

The kitchen was another transformation Denice did as her other remodeling project. She painted the dark wood cabinets and walls to white and created a contrast of black chalkboard paint on the upper wall above the cabinets. On the chalkboard areas surrounding the perimeter of the kitchen were some of her favorite phrases – in Italian!

And lastly was her organized, yet decorative bathroom. Stay tuned for a future segment where we do some decorative organizing for Denice’s counter-top makeup!

Check out and subscribe to the Organizing Stuff Series playlist on YouTube!

Organizing Stuff Series 5 – Staging A Room

February 9, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

In this segment of the Organizing Stuff Series The Organizing Lady consults with a teenage girl about getting her room staged to help prepare her family’s home ready for sale.

Watch video:

Cyndi consults her about clearing the room of as many personal items as possible and reducing furniture in the space. She also suggests clearing the walls of all her pictures and posters and leaving only one picture displayed.

The plan is to clear the clutter, display fewer items on surface spaces, remove some excess furniture pieces, and remove the unused dresser in her closet to make it more spacious.

Oh, and of course, to ensure the bed is made before the house is shown to potential home buyers!

She was eager to get started and began with clearing her over-crowded bookshelf unit, then her desk. The room took shape and soon looked more like a showroom than a teenage girl’s room.

In the end, she was very proud of her space. Maybe she will make her room staged all the time when she moves into their new home! You never know!

Organizing Stuff Series 4 – Organize Kitchen

January 13, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

The next adventure in the Organizing Stuff video series takes place in the kitchen!

Working with a real client in real time, solutions are found for problems in her cabinets and with organizing the multitude of supplements she needs to take after surviving cancer using alternative treatment.

The fun began at the dollar store where we shopped for items to help get her kitchen cabinets better organized. We found everything we needed except for marbles to make a Lazy Susan turntable. So we hopped over to another dollar store to get those!

Watch this segment of Kitchen Cabinet Organization and see for yourself how much fun (and how rewarding) it is to do a bit of organizing!

Organizing Stuff 4 – Organize Kitchen PART 1

(There seems to be some blacked out spots in this video. Will fix and upload new version shortly!)

Organizing Stuff 4 – Organize Kitchen PART 2

In this 2-part video …

After some fun dollar-store-shopping, we returned to the house and began removing the paper party wares from the cabinet we decided to use to store all her supplements. As luck would have it, the basket bins we purchased to store her supplements fit perfectly with three baskets going across the lower shelf. We hoped everything would fit inside the baskets, and it did!

We still had an empty shelf above the lower one but that was going to be put to good use next because she had more supplements stored elsewhere in the kitchen!

So we moved all the others from the cabinet they were in and joined them with others in the new “supplement cabinet”. This not only stored all her vitamins in one place, but it freed up a whole other cabinet in her kitchen!

During this time, we paid attention to examining the supplements for expiration of their shelf lives before transferring them to the new cabinet. It didn’t surprise me that she didn’t know what some vitamins were!

The fun didn’t stop there.

Next up was organizing one of the food cabinets. For that, I made a DIY Lazy Susan to store some of the food items in. Everything was removed from the cabinet to be sorted and grouped before putting them back inside.

When that cabinet was done, she had room for more food and was able to see everything she had in there! Big win!

The same was done for the spice cabinet. We used two Lazy Susan turntables for spice storage after sorting through all the spices. Many were thrown away for being expired or having a shelf life that died many ages ago!

At the end, we wanted to leave all her cabinets open so that house guests would come and see the organization inside. It’s a proud moment when organizing projects like this are completed so we should take pleasure to share such accomplishments to the world!

I hope this gives you some inspiration and motivation to do some kitchen organization yourself. Just remember, make it a fun project to do and it will be fun!

Happy organizing,
The Organizing Lady

P.S. Also see Organizing Stuff 3 – Organize Home Office Papers

Organizing Stuff Series 3 – Organize Home Office Papers

January 4, 2016 / The Organizing Lady

In this reality show styled segment of Organizing Stuff, you’ll see Cyndi Seidler working with a client in a home office to organize papers and establish a paper flow system. It’s the real deal, with a real client in a real situation.

Watch as Cyndi and client have fun going through the organizing process of sorting papers with client and establishing if paper should be kept and filed, if it requires some action, or if it can be tossed.