Articles

Kick the Clutter: Our Room

by Alissa on February 21, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Organize Your Bedroom

This will be a two-parter, for sure.

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Books: We’ve taken most books out of the room completely, just keeping the most current that each of us is reading. We used to have a small bookshelf in here, but there’s just not enough room for it, so it’s gone.

Furniture: Our room is on the small side. Our house was built in the 1920s, so some of the rooms in our house (our bedroom included) are smaller. Since the closet is also small, we need to have dressers that can pick up the slack on housing our clothes. But in a small room… all that furniture starts to crowd. I’m in the middle of figuring out what to do here and figuring out the best placement for each piece.

Clothes: I have to admit… when it comes to my own clothes closet, there’s a problem. Since we have closets from the 1920s (read: tiny), that makes it an even bigger challenge. I’m about a quarter of the way through trying on all my clothes, keeping only what I truly wear and donating the rest.

One sticking point for me – and it’s especially true with clothes – is the consignment vs. donation question. So (and this is big) I’ve given myself permission to forget about consigning this time around. Don’t get me wrong. I love consignment. I love consigning my clothes and I love buying clothes from consignment stores.

Right now, though, it’s more important for me to just get through the decluttering project and to get the clothes out of the house. Otherwise they tend to stay around too long — until it’s the right season to consign, until I can get to the store (dragging two kids with me) and while they’re sitting, nicely folded in bags, there’s always the risk that I’ll pull some back out and think: “Well, maybe this could work after all.”

Not this time. It’s going to go much faster if I just get everything out of the house that no longer works for me, donate it to a worthwhile charity (I’m thinking Dress for Success for the dressier stuff and a local women’s shelter for the more casual stuff) and move on.

Photos to come!

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

{ 1 comment }

Kick the Clutter: Kids’ Rooms

by Alissa on February 14, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Organize the Kids’ Rooms

Since we just tackled a majority of the toys last week in the office-turned-playroom, I figured we’d move to the kids’ rooms and finish the task.

The two biggest clutter magnets for us here are books and clothes. We keep a ton of books around for the kids (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), but boy, do we need a better way of keeping them organized.

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Toys: The kids are still pretty young, so it’s not often that they’re playing in their rooms on their own yet. That means most of the toys are in the main living areas and we have just a few toys in their rooms.

Those trusty fabric bins and sturdy bookshelves once again save the day for us in both kids’ rooms.

Books: Here’s one of our biggest clutter magnets. We have so many books for the kids that they can sometimes spill over from their intended storage, which is clearly not big enough. This isn’t a new problem and it’s helped to put half of their books tucked away in their closets. That also helps keep things fresh for them – and us – when we rotate them out.

The biggest problem in my son’s room was the bedside table. It (and the floor around it) just turned into a growing pile of books. Easy solution here… we traded the bedside table for one of the small bookcases that we removed from the living room, previously used as toy storage there.

Now we have plenty of space to keep books next to his bed. We also keep a few stuffed animals (you guessed it! In fabric bins!) on the shelf.

Book piles are big in our daughter’s room, too, but she’s too young to keep them tidy on a bookshelf yet. So we’ve just upgraded to a larger bin and will have to do a better job of rotating them as we go.

Furniture: The amount of furniture in both of the kids’ rooms is already at a good number. In fact, there was even a little extra breathing room, so we did the even exchange of the bedside table for the bookcase. And we brought our former coffee table into his room to be used as a train-puzzle-play table. We said we’d give it a trial run and if it wasn’t working out in there, then we’d donate it. So far I think he enjoys having a dedicated space to put puzzles together.

For my daughter’s room, she’s now finally old enough to have toys in her room, so the other small bookcase from the living room is now in her room, housing toys there.

Clothes: Our other biggest clutter magnet in the kids’ rooms is the clothing pile. I was able to keep on top of the clothes for one kid, but once the second one arrived (and a girl, no less!), things started to pile up a bit. I went through and packed away all the outgrown clothes that have been hanging around for my son. Our general rule of thumb has been to save one large bin of clothes per size per kid, so that if we were to have another baby, we wouldn’t have to buy clothes. Anything that doesn’t fit into that one bin, we give away. Now that we have two kids — and two genders — of clothing to keep track of, there is a lot going into storage. For now that’s just the name of the game, I guess, so for now, all I can do is just hope to keep them reasonably organized.

The “before” photo:

And the “after”…

Next week, we’ll move to our bedroom (I think).

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

{ 5 comments }

National Stop Bullying Day – Resources

by Alissa on February 9, 2012

Today is National Stop Bullying Day.

I thought I’d share some resources for you to check out with your kids or on your own – or both. Remember that early signs of bullying can begin at a very early age. Start talking to your kids early about bullying.

Bullying can take many forms

- Verbal (name calling and teasing)
- Social (spreading rumors, leaving people out on purpose, breaking up friendships)
- Physical (hitting, punching, shoving)
- Cyberbullying (Using the Internet, mobile phones or other digital technologies to harm others)

Warning Signs of Bullying

Here are just a few warning signs of bullying.
• Changes in eating habits
• Trouble sleeping or frequent bad dreams
• Loses interest in visiting or talking with friends
• Frequent headaches, stomachaches or feeling sick.
• Unexplained injuries
• Often feels like they’re not good enough
• Suddenly has fewer friends
• Appears sad, moody, angry, anxious or depressed when they come home

These are just a few warning signs of bullying. Please click here to read more.

What to do if you (or someone you know) is being bullied

Anti-Bullying Videos on YouTube

Parents: Please view these before sharing with your kids.
Bullied teen Jonah Mowry’s video made went viral in the past few months.

Glee star Lauren Potter speaks out against bullying:

A sister reminds us that words DO hurt.

An Anti-Bullying Flashmob:

{ 5 comments }

Kick the Clutter – Progress Report

by Alissa on February 7, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Checking In

We’re taking a breather this week, mainly to give me time to finish a couple more rooms to post about!

But it’s been about a month since we’ve started the Kick the Clutter series and I have to say… things are really turning around here!

I’d say we’re nearing the halfway point. We’ve hit the main living areas: the kitchen, dining room, living room and playroom/office. We still have the bedrooms to tackle and the laundry room to tackle. The pantry, the attic and the basement are all part of the plan, too. So yeah… we still have some work ahead of us.

But I’m VERY happy to say that so far we’ve been able to totally maintain all the progress we’ve made in each room.

It’s so much quicker to clean up each night, now that everything has its place.

In fact, I’ve even noticed that with less clutter, the kids are more independent (yes, they’re still only 4 and almost 2), but honestly, they’re both self-starters at cleaning up now that we’ve really been serious about getting organized.

Even the not-quite 2-year-old gets up from the kitchen table to grab a dishcloth and clean up a spill – as it happens. (Trust me, I know this may be a small blip in her development, but for now I’m going to enjoy every last minute of it!)

Most importantly, I think we’re all starting to feel just a little less stressed,

Next week, we’ll jump back into the de-cluttering posts, I promise.

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

{ 0 comments }

Kick the Clutter: Playroom & Office

by Alissa on January 31, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Organize the Playroom & Office

If you saw last week’s living room organization post, you’ll remember that many of our toys were relegated to another room. We decided to make the “office” into a shared office-playroom. And I’m really enjoying the results.

This room isn’t very big (just shy of 10 x 12), so we really needed to keep it simple if we were going to make it a multipurpose room.

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Toys: We did clear out a decent amount of toys right before the holidays, in preparation for the new arrivals. We try and do this with the kids at least twice a year (before birthdays and Christmas) so we can try and keep a handle on things.

As far as organizing the toys, we love the fabric bins from Target. They’re pretty inexpensive. They fit wonderfully on a bookshelf and they’re easy for the kids to carry from room to room. As long as you don’t completely overstuff them, they keep their shape pretty well.

My favorite new toy organization solution, though (besides the ottoman in the living room, of course), are these green plastic stacking bins from Target. I love these, because they have wheels, so the kids can easily move them around — even use one as a wagon for their stuffed animals and dolls!.

As if that weren’t fun enough, they also stack. The handles fold in and the next one just sits right on top of those handles. Very easy and very smart! They’re reasonably priced ($10.39 each) and they’re very sturdy and seem like they’ll hold up really well. Right now one holds all my daughter’s doll accessories and the other is holding the kids’ stuffed animals.

Desk: The top of my desk is one of my ongoing clutter stations. I always have a problem battling piles of paper — and they just seem to migrate toward my desk top. It makes it pretty stressful to try and sit down and concentrate on writing, so that’s an ongoing goal of mine – to keep the paper piles under control.

Furniture: This is a question I’m asking myself in each room. Is every piece of furniture completely necessary? Sometimes I undervalue the importance of empty space, until I clear one room out and remember what it’s like!

We still have a desktop computer as our main computer, so we’re not as portable as we would be if we only had a laptop. So for us, a dedicated desk is still a necessity. If you’re a laptop-only family, maybe you could do without a desk and instead use the dining room or kitchen table?

Especially in a smaller room like this one, we just don’t have room for a ton of furniture. We whittled the furniture in here down to just a desk and two bookcases for the kids’ toy storage. That leaves a decent amount of floor space for the kids to actually play with their toys.

We moved two larger bookcases in for toy storage (we already owned these) and moved the smaller bookcases up to the kids rooms. We also got rid of an old dresser that we had been using for other storage in this room. Our mantra was to get rid of all the smaller pieces of furniture in favor of fewer, larger pieces that would better maximize the space.

Next we’re on the lookout for a larger rug to give the kids a more comfy play time.

The “before” photo:

You know that saying, “It always looks worse before it gets better?” Yeah. That pretty much sums up this photo. We had already moved the bookcases and toys in from the living room at this point, to an already overcrowded room. I’m a little embarrassed to share this one, but at least it’s real.

Note to self: Start taking more before photos, before jumping in and moving furniture around!

And the “after”…

Another picture? Really?

And the computer/office is now just one small corner of the room.

Next week, we’ll move to the kids’ rooms (I think).

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

Tagged as: kick the clutter, organization

{ 14 comments }

Valentine’s Day Gift Idea: A Year of Date Nights

by Alissa on January 25, 2012

 

Lately I’ve been a little obsessed with Pinterest. Just a little.

So when I was looking for something to give my husband for Christmas, I found this amazing idea for a year of pre-planned date nights. And I knew it was something I had to try and recreate for him.

She not only planned each date, but also prepaid for many of her date night envelopes. Frankly, we didn’t have the cash around Christmas to do the same. So I just put together the ideas for all the date nights in advance. It’s the thought that counts, anyway, right? ;)

Pin It
Here’s how I made it my own:

I found an incredible box of Penguin books postcards – all featuring old, classic Penguin book covers. I fell in love with those postcards and I thought it would be neat to incorporate them in the gift.

So I had fun choosing a theme for each month, finding a postcard in the pile to coordinate and drawing up an invitation for my husband to join me on a date night. I also found a small travel-themed scrapbook kit (stickers and card stock) that was on clearance, so I grabbed that to add a little extra interest to each envelope. I thought the travel theme reflected “our journey together” nicely.

I tried to keep a relatively frugal eye to the date night planning. There were a couple splurges in there (namely, a concert), but for every splurge there was a frugal/almost free date night (i.e. a free book reading or a picnic).

Here are some ideas I came up with for our Year of Date Nights:

- Freezer cooking night. I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, how romantic, Alissa. Let’s get together and cook for several hours straight. Fun!” I actually started this themed night with the thought of taking a cooking class together – until I priced them out.

And I quickly realized there’s a reason we’ve never been to a cooking class together. Ha! It’s just not in our budget right now. So my wheels started turning and my thought was… you know, we can actually have fun doing mundane things together, if we’re in “date night” mode. So we’ll buy a bottle of wine (optional), turn some music on and have some fun getting some cooking done for the month. Not into freezer cooking? Just plan to cook a nice dinner at home! You don’t even have to pay a babysitter, if you want to feed the kids, put them to bed and plan on a later dinner together.

- The AMC Best Picture Showcase. It’s something we try and make it to every year (we had to miss the year our daughter was born within a week of the event – and even then we were tempted). It’s an incredible experience for movie fans: a 12-hour movie marathon that features all 5 of the Best Picture nominees. In a row. It’s one of our favorite dates all year, so you can bet it was going in the date night basket!

Here’s what the “invite” looked like:

- Roller-skating. Yes, roller-skating. I was trying to go for something active that was a little bit outside our comfort zone. I almost chose bowling, but thought that wouldn’t be a great idea, given my husband’s semi-recent shoulder surgery. I happened to find a nearby roller skating rink that was open on Friday evenings.

- Run a 5K together. My husband has expressed interest in running a 5K together recently… so I’m making sure we make those plans a reality. I scouted out a nearby race that happened to be both an evening race and which also raises funds for a disease that has affected his family, so it’s an extra special race for us. Plus it includes a get-together for all race participants at a nearby restaurant, so that’ll help round out date night!

What do you think? What kind of date nights would you include?

{ 7 comments }

Kick the Clutter: Decluttering the Living Room

by Alissa on January 24, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Get Rid of Living Room Clutter

Our living room has gone through so many transformations in the five years we’ve been here, that I’ve lost count. They haven’t been big changes… just changing around the furniture placement. Quite a bit of furniture moving around here.

But finally? I think we have a winner.

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Toys: For the past year, we’ve had two bookcases in the corner of the living room, where we kept many of the kids’ toys. The only problem was that the pile of toys always seemed to grow and consequently, would take over the rest of the living space. It got to be pretty overwhelming. So we compromised and moved most of their toys into our office area. It’s now mostly a playroom, with a small “work corner” for the computer. There’s still a small bin in the living room for a few toys.

Media: For as long as we’ve been married, we’ve had a large armoire that kept our TV hidden from the world. It’s a nice piece of furniture and has well served its purpose for our family, but it’s very big and heavy. It overpowered the room. We recently bought our very first TV (we’ve been incredibly lucky with hand-me-downs from family.) With that change, we decided to take a leap and mount the TV on our wall so that we could downsize that armoire.

For the first time ever, we’ll have two TVs in the house. We’re planning to move the armoire and older TV down to our unfinished basement to keep me company on the treadmill.

And now it feels like our once overcrowded living room has almost doubled in size.

Furniture: Is the furniture in your living room adding to the cluttered feel? How about moving a piece out or placing it in a different spot that might help give you some visual breathing room. As I mentioned above, we’ve experimented quite a bit with the furniture placement in our house and the living room is no exception.

But I think we’ve finally hit the perfect placement — and I don’t say that lightly. I’ve honestly never had this feeling about our living room before, but now I just can sit on the couch, look up and think to myself how much I love it here. That’s such a neat feeling, to fall back in love with our house. (And so much cheaper than moving! ;) )

The “before” photo:

I’ve been looking for a “before” look at our living room, which is tough to find, since we were too quick to start decluttering (i.e. I forgot to take a before photo!). So please look past the cute Puppet on a Stick. See all that clutter in the background? That’s our living room on a typical day. Toys strewn about in the corner. And that big black bar in the front is the armoire that I told you was overpowering our room.

Here’s another clearer photo of what our living room-turned-playroom looked like.

We had already moved the bookcase/toy storage out at this point, but this was a very typical look at that corner of our living room – yes, including the dog hair! ;)

And the “after”…

Goodbye, toys!

After one too many bumps and bruises for the kids, we traded my favorite wood coffee table for a softer storage ottoman. Bonus: blankets and trains now live hidden inside.

Now *this* is what we see from the couch. What a difference!

By the way, the toys haven’t completely disappeared.

Here’s our secret:

This leather-ish storage ottoman from Target – for $80 (and actually on sale this week for $59!), it holds a good number of toys. The rest have moved into the same room as our computer/office or to the kids’ rooms.

And we still have something to work on, namely my magazine addiction, especially with all the freebie subscriptions I’ve found in the past year. We are quite literally overflowing with magazines here. At some point, though, even if they’re free, it doesn’t help if they’re taking over. So on my to-do list as I continue to declutter is to cancel half my subscriptions.

Still some decluttering work to do here.

Next week, we’ll move to the office/playroom (I think).

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

Tagged as: kick the clutter, organization

{ 20 comments }

Dog Training with Milk-Bone® #ILoveMyK9 #CBias

by Alissa on January 19, 2012

We were recently chosen to shop for Milk-Bone® dog treats and to use those treats to train our dog.

My daughter’s always so excited to give him his treats every day, so we had to explain to her that this time he was going to have to work a little for his reward.

He hasn’t ever tried the Milk-Bone® MaroSnacks that we picked up on our latest shopping trip, so I was hoping that the novelty alone would help get him interested in playing along on our training session.

I really like when I can find healthier treats for the dog, especially during training sessions, since he’ll usually get more treats in a shorter session than he normally would. So I want to know that those treats are healthy ones – and these fit the bill.

Sniffing out to see what's in it for him.

"Here I am lying down just like you asked. I'm waiting. I'm waiting..."

The sweet taste of victory!

Our training session was a total success!

And Milk-Bone® dog treats made dog training so easy that even a baby could do it! ;)

What kinds of rewards do you like to use during your training sessions? 

—-

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

{ 2 comments }

Kick the Clutter: Decluttering the Dining Room

by Alissa on January 17, 2012

So one of my resolutions this year is to get organized. Kick the Clutter is a weekly series I’ve started so that we can all get organized together! Who’s with me?

We’ll go step-by-step around the house until we’ve reached every nook and cranny and there’s nothing left to straighten up, donate or give away.

Kick the Clutter: Get Rid of Dining Room Clutter

Our dining room sits right in the very middle of our house. It’s visible from the living room and the kitchen. You have to walk through it to get anywhere else in the house.

So with all that foot traffic, we tend to drop a lot of stuff there. Especially when there’s that nice big horizontal space dining room table just waiting to take a load off.

For the most part, the rest of the stuff we store in the dining room stuff has been pretty easy to control. We don’t have a ton of extra dishes or linens here. We did have an excess of candles, which I ended up paring down. So for us, it’s mostly about getting everything that doesn’t belong in the dining room OUT!

Dig in and ditch the clutter

Serving dishes: Ask yourself how often you really use all the dishes you’ve collected. For us, it’s the set of the most adorable soup bowls, which I fell in love with but haven’t used nearly as often as we should. So they’re currently on the block. I’m giving us a month. If we don’t step up our use, we’ll have to part ways and make room. Tough choices, I tell you.

Linens: How many tablecloths do we need? Cloth napkins? We do actually use our cloth napkins at every meal, so I kept most of these. I still was able to get rid of a couple that have seen better days and another set that I never really liked the feel of. They went to the rag pile. Also I almost never put them in napkin rings, so I ditched the box of those that I had kept around for years. Some literally still had the tags on them. Frustrating, but I know someone else will enjoy them and put them to good use.

Furniture: Is the furniture in your dining room adding to the cluttered feel? How about moving a piece out or placing it in a different spot that might help give you some visual breathing room. Since our dining room needs to serve as a walkway as well, we have limited options on furniture placement. But we did recently switch the china cabinet to a different corner and all of a sudden, the room makes so much more visual sense than it ever has before. It’s funny how one very minor change can make such a big difference.

The “before” photo:

A pretty typical look at our dining table. That flat surface just calls out to us, wanting to collect our stuff!

And the “after”…

Success!

I’d love to hear your ideas for centerpieces. I’m torn on whether it would be best to try and keep the table completely clear or whether a centerpiece might help inspire us to keep it clutter-free.

Next week, we’ll move to the living room

Let’s keep track of our progress and share with others! It’s always easier when I get to hear what ideas are working for others. So please share your thoughts and progress with us throughout this series!

{ 2 comments }

Money Saving Mom’s Budget {Review & Giveaway}

by Alissa on January 10, 2012

Are you stuck in a financial rut? If you hope to gain a firmer grasp on your family’s finances this year, you really want to start by reading Money Saving Mom’s Budget by Crystal Paine.

I’m so excited to share with you my thoughts about this book, which hits bookstores today. I was fortunate enough to receive an early edition and let me tell you… it may be just a small investment in your financial freedom, but it is no doubt a worthwhile one. (And when I say small investment? I mean it… right now it’s marked down to just $8.40!)

Too many financial books on the market can be overwhelming. Or on the flip side, they can include tips that aren’t helpful to everyone. We already pack our lunches, we don’t have a landline and we spent years as a one-car family. We’re no strangers to saving, that’s for sure.

I can tell you that I’m as impressed with Crystal’s other advice as I was with all her financial tips.

This isn’t just a book about saving money. It’s about saving time, saving your efforts and, ultimately, saving your sanity.

Here’s where she starts and where I want to start as well. She talks about the importance of goal-setting and how essential it is to changing your situation to set concrete goals for yourself.

Believe it or not… this is pretty new for us. Now let me explain. We’re not short on dreams and hopes for the future. We want a great education for our kids or to enjoy a fun family vacation. And we’ve even saved toward those things here and there. But we’ve never made them concrete goals. We’ve never sat down, figured out how much a vacation would cost us and then broken it down even further to determine how much we’d need to save per week or month to get us there.

Sounds simple, right?

And that’s exactly my point. Crystal has a way of writing that is down-to-earth, easy for anyone to implement and truly genuine. Have you checked out her Money Saving Mom blog? If you don’t already follow her there, make it a point to stop by!

Where does the genuine part come in? Well, she’s lived these ideas herself – she and her husband, in their early years of marriage, scrimped and saved their way to pay cash for their house. I’ll repeat that one more time because I had to read it again myself. She and her husband paid cash for their house.

But more importantly, they did it in a way that they still had fun without spending money. They didn’t dwell on what they couldn’t afford. They had fun with what they had and stretched their creativity along with their budget.

This may be the biggest takeaway for me – although that’s a tough competition – there are a lot of great takeaways from this book.

But living a life of contentment, even when there’s not much in the budget financially, can make you feel rich in everything else. That is powerful stuff.

“Contentment is a choice. You can choose to be miserable in your situation or you can choose to bloom where you are planted.”

If there’s one thing I want to remind myself over and over again as I re-read her book in the months to come, is that from here on out, I choose contentment. Wherever someone else is on their journey, I’m not going to compare ourselves to them. I’m going to bloom where I’m planted and I’m guessing things will look a whole lot sunnier as a result.

I’m also thrilled to spread a little sunshine to a couple readers, as well. I have two copies of Money Saving Mom to give away to two lucky readers!

Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below for your chance to win!

[click to continue…]

{ 37 comments }