Organizing Archives - The Sweet and The Salty

How We Finally Found Our Organizing Peace, Part 1

By Jody July 25, 2018

Living in a small place with lots of accumulated stuff, a good amount of medical equipment and supplies, and me not having the best domestic or organizational skills has resulted in us living in a pretty constant state of chaos for a good portion of the time I have been a wife and mother.

I have desperately sought out strategies to be more organized from a variety of resources with the hopes of having more inner calm and more time for the things that really matter to me.

From books to blogs to pestering friends and strangers who seem efficient and unstressed with “how do you manage (insert task)” questions, my search for the order I’ve been looking for has seemed endless.

I’ve written about that journey here, and here, and here and probably some other places as well.

While the resources I came across have been amazing building blocks that have pointed me towards organizational success and helped my mind to grasp organizational concepts, this past May we took a huge step to lay a very solid organizational foundation for our family and home.

What was that huge step you ask? Well, we hired a professional organizer!!

That’s right, we paid someone to come into our home, wade us out of the mess we were living in and put systems in place that we can actually manage.

And despite my husband’s initial very strong resistance to monetarily investing in our home this way, once our organizer came in and made sense of our home for us, we are both in AWE of the results and agree that hiring her was some of the best money we have invested in our family.

What Our Journey To Hiring A Professional Organizer Looked Like

The idea of hiring a professional organizer had been festering in my mind for several years now.

My first foray into the world of professional organizers came about four and a half years ago when we were parents of one child and I was pregnant with our second.

At that time I had two organizers take a took at our place and give us a quote. My husband was adamantly against it and I wasn’t completely sold on either organizer so we decided to forgo hiring someone and instead try to organize ourselves.

At that time my husband put the idea of hiring an organizer out of his mind while I simply tabled the idea for later 😉.

Fast forward to Spring 2018 and we’ve been parenting two kids for a few years now, including a very fun and joy filled son who lives with significant medical complexities and disabilities. In that time we’d also had some external circumstances slam into our family that threw us for quite a loop.

Add those things on top of a demanding g tube feeding schedule, regular multiple medical appointments, regular household chores, trying to spend quality time as a family among the other miscellaneous’s of life and needless to say our attempts at organizing ourselves had not been as successful as we’d have liked.

Eventually we found ourselves in the same predicament we’d been in four years ago, excited about the future but looking at our chaos and wondering how we were going to thrive in the midst of the mess.

Seems something about expecting a child seems to kick me into an organizing frenzy (hint, hint 😉).

As I sat pregnant with our third child, looking around our small, cluttered, disorganized space, contemplating how another person was going to fit in, I knew we really needed help.

I began broaching the subject of hiring an organizer again to my husband. After quite a bit of back and forth (I won’t bore you with all the details about that part of the process but I will say this step entailed some very intense..um…we’ll call them discussions) we began the process of looking to hire an organizer.

How We Found Our Organizer and What Made Us Hire Her

This time rather than just relying on google (the first one I found on google this go around called her dog a piece of s&@t during our initial first few minutes of talking…no thank you) I turned to the National Association of Professional Organizers website. I typed in our location and voila professional organizers galore.

From there I contacted several different organizers and that’s how we found our gold mine of an organizer, Tanya Bond of Functioning Spaces.

Her website was beautiful and detailed.

Her after pictures on Instagram were a style I liked.

Her communication from the very beginning was professional yet personable, thorough and detailed, compassionate and non-judge-mental.

Her passion to see people live a more organized, less stressed life flowed through her.

And from my husband’s perspective her price and all that was included in it was right.

Thus began our amazing journey to a more organized home!

In the process we also formed an incredible working relationship with a very compassionate, understanding professional who came into our home and left us in a much better state then we could have ever hoped for!

We still, several months later, talk about how awesome our time working with Tanya was and how much of a gift what she did for our home continues to be.

Stay tuned, my next post will be all about Step 1 of the process of how she took us from feeling overwhelmed in our home to loving our space!

Let’s Talk: Have you reached an organizing “breaking point” before? If so I’d love to hear about it, whether you’re there now or how you moved past it.

Note: We paid full price for Tanya’s services. She has no idea I’m writing this review or even that I have a blog, nor am I being compensated in any way for it. Our experience was just so life changing from hiring her to help us get it together! I wanted to write about it and hopefully give others hope who are living in the depths of disorganization like we were that there are professionals out there to help. And to give our experience with this kind of service for someone who may be on the fence about it. See you soon for Part 2!

What works for YOU? That is the question to ask…

By Jody September 29, 2016

Life is full for a lot of us.

Full of some really great things…and full of some really difficult things.

In the midst of that fullness, in order for life to work for us, we have to do what works for us.

We have to be intentional about the things we do and the way we spend our time.

And that will look different for every person.

One of the things that can really be a hindrance to living life to its full potential is to constantly be looking at how other people are doing things and think that’s what we need to do also.

It’s one thing to learn from others and improve as a result, but it’s another thing to see what someone else is doing and then feel bad about ourselves because we’re not doing or not able to do those same things.

Our blessings and challenges and ability to handle those blessings and challenges varies from person to person.

What works for me isn’t necessarily going to work for someone else and vice versa.

I’ve seen this truth played out most recently in my quest for being organized.

For the purpose of having more time for what is important to me, I fell into the trap that I would only reach the level of organization I was looking for if I did things like such and such does things.

And that was my strategy for a long time; try to make life work for me by finding someone who seemed to be succeeding the way I wanted to, and then do things the same way they were doing them.

In an Internet full of ideas this was not hard to do.

While I did come across some really great ideas along the way with this strategy, I also wasted an awful lot of time and effort trying to force into my life circumstances and capacity what worked for someone else’s life circumstances and their capacity.

What Doing This Looked Like In My Life

When I first became a stay home mom I really didn’t know what I was doing.

I was not prepared for the amount of diligence and organization needed to take care of my own children for the whole day, day in and day out while keeping our household from drowning in utter chaos and undone tasks.

Well along came blogs. I devoured blogs learning as much as I could about being organized and keeping a house running relatively smooth as a stay home mom.

And I learned so many great ideas, but some of those really great ideas just didn’t work for me no matter how hard I tried to make them work.

For example one of those great ideas was in regards to laundry.

I read so many posts that said the answer to my laundry woes was to do a load from start to finish, folded and put away every single day.

So for a few years I tried it like that and it just did not work for me.

And here’s the key, I attempted it for a few years trying to get it to work, going to bed at night thinking what’s wrong with me I can’t even get it together enough to get my laundry done everyday like so many others can.

How awful of me to do that to myself!

It wasn’t me that was the problem (in this case) but the system that works great for others just didn’t work for me!

I really wish I had not allowed that to go on for so long, but I did.

Thankfully I finally woke up to needing to do what works for my life and if something really isn’t working and it’s not for a lack of my trying, I need to find a different way, no matter how beautifully that same thing works for someone else.

So that’s what I did and I found having a laundry day (with some break through loads done as needed) has worked wonderfully for me.

No more going to bed feeling bad because I didn’t get my load for the day finished and put away.

Instead I have a system that works very well for my family, my capacity, and my life circumstances. And not only is it working good but it also feels good.

Another example of just doing what works for you is in the same vein of laundry but regarding my rags.

A tip I got early on from blogs was to use rags* in place of paper towels to save money. So that’s what we do and it has saved us money.

(I use these rags here*and here*for everything from cleaning up spills, cleaning glasses, drying dishes, wiping counters, storing syringes in while we’re out, etc.)

But I don’t want to spend the time folding them. We use them quickly and I feel it’s just not the best use of my time to fold them.

So I store them in the bathroom drawer and in baskets on the kitchen counter, unfolded. I simply pull them out of the dryer and stash them in their appropriate place.

So it looks like this:

And they don’t bother me one bit.

But I know for some my unfolded, very visible rags would really be bothersome.

But this is an example of just doing what works for you.

While the unfolded rags cause me absolutely no angst, it’s a guarantee there are things others do that would really bother me but that thing works great for them.

Find what works for YOU, and stick with that.

In this day of immediate access to glimpses of others lives, those we know and don’t know, it’s really important to keep the perspective that there is absolutely no one size fits all way to do things. There just isn’t.

To make the most of your life and the circumstances and personality that only you have, you have to do what works for you.

Anything else will bring you down unnecessarily.

I really regret that I beat myself up for so long and felt that I didn’t measure up just because doing a load of laundry a day didn’t work for me.

There’s just so much more to life than trying to do things the way others do them.

For each of us to flourish in our own lives, we have to find what works for us, do that and get on with living the unique life we’ve each been blessed with.

Let’s Talk: What type of systems work well for you and your family? How did you come to find those were the systems for you? Have you ever tried to fit something into your life that just didn’t work?

(*This post contains affiliate links. Read Disclosure Policy here).

Getting Organized by Getting You as a Person Organized

By Jody March 11, 2016

Getting control of my schedule, to dos, and chaos at home has been an ongoing battle for me.

I crave organization and the calm and peace it brings, but I am not a naturally organized person at all, in any way shape or form.

I have to work really hard at being organized and be very vigilant about it in order to experience the calm and peace that results from it.

When I was first married, I read Making Your Home a Haven: Strategies for the Domestically Challenged and it has remained my favorite go to read for nearly ten years when I need inspiration for getting organized.

Even though I’ve read countless others books on the subject, Making Your Home a Haven is the only one I keep a physical copy of on my bookshelf, and the only one I can really recall being incredibly helped and impacted by.

So while that book still remains my favorite book on organization (it’s been there for me through a lot over the years!) I recently finished a book that has come in as a very very close second.

A running theme between these two favorite books of mine is that in order to really get organized, you have to get your inner world organized much like you need to get your outer world organized.

Although when I was younger and much more naive I enjoyed the beginning of Making Home Your Home a Haven where this concept was discussed, but I really wanted the meat, the practicals of how to get my home together and so that was what I focused more on.

Well, years later I realize how absolutely important it is to get my internal life organized in order for my external life to be organized.

Which is why when I came across a book actually titled Organizing You, I was incredibly intrigued and bought it right away. I was so intrigued and hopeful about it (and honestly feeling a little desperate about the state of some things) that it never even made it into my reading que as I just started reading it as soon as I bought it. (I came across it after I read this review of a different book by the same author).

So many times I have worked so hard and spent so many hours to declutter, to put things where they make the most sense, and make my surroundings as orderly as possible. And then try to implement elaborate systems to make sure it all stays that way.

And yet time and time again I’d find myself slipping pretty quickly back into my old habits and ways that caused the chaos and disorder in my home, to do list and schedule in the first place.

I’ve come to a point where I really realize that no amount of organizing my home is going to solve my organizational challenges if internally chaos is swirling around in my head and heart.

And that is exactly what my new second favorite book on organizing is all about.

It’s about using organization to get rid of your spiritual clutter and all of the “shoulds” and “need tos” taking over your mind and keeping you from calm, peace, rest, and enjoying what’s most important to you in life.

And it is chock full of practical tips of exactly how to go about de-cluttering yourself and getting yourself organized first and foremost.

One of my biggest challenges has been keeping track of all the day to day tasks I need to do to not fall behind on things that absolutely have to have get done to keep the household running smoothly as well as the things I need to be doing with and for my children.

I found a solution in this book that I can not wait to try and I feel it has a lot of potential to be really beneficial to our home.

That solution is called chore cards and I am adapting them to my unique circumstance (which the authors talks a lot about doing) and calling them priority cards.

I have it all set up and have started using it and am still tweaking it some. Once I get up and fully going with it I will for sure be back here blogging about how’s it helping me (or if I find its not working the way I thought it would I’ll be blogging about that, but I’m really hoping I’ll be blogging about how it’s helping!).

The book also really helped me with some practical ways to use my planner as a way to get things out of my head, written down and actually done! As a result I’ve been spending a few minutes each evening planning out my next day and not just writing tasks down, but (gasp) actually planning out when I’m going to do them.

Which I know that sounds like such common sense but previously I had been stopping at the write it down step and then going about my day haphazardly with all these to dos written down and no actual plan or time specified for when I was going to do them.

So now instead of just letting my days happen and stressing about what I needed to be doing and when and how what needs to get done is going to get done, I’ve been facing each day with a written plan.

Since implementing this my days are going so much more smoothly and efficiently. Not perfectly, but definitely flowing much much better and more priorities and must dos are getting done and checked off.

I really loved the practical tips in this book as well as the authors tone and writing style. Very conversational, very thorough, and very non condemning! I did quite a bit of highlighting throughout the book.

The only time I did feel a little anxious and overwhelmed while reading was when she was outlining a way to keep track of the occasional tasks that need to be done. And this was because, to be honest, I’m still just trying to handle getting the day to day necessities done and I was like oh my I am supposed to do those things too?

So I gave myself permission to go back to the section at a later time. And the author really talks a lot about that too, not feeling like you have to do things, but figuring out what needs to be done for your life and your home, and nothing more.

In addition to the practical, the author also delves into some pretty deep heart issues a lot of moms may deal with.

One being anxiety and another feelings of guilt and like we’re not doing enough. Both of these are big ones for me and she gave me a lot of food for thought in both of these areas.

The author definitely has a gift for getting to the heart of the matter and delivering the practical!

I enjoyed this book so much that when I finished it I missed her encouraging voice so I’ve already started her other book.

I’m excited to implement what I learned in this book for awhile and report back what is working and ways I’ve tweaked some of her suggestions to fit our life.

The author describes Organizing You as focusing on the inner woman, on truly organizing you as a person and I totally concur that’s what this book is all about.

It’s the kind of order and organization I’ve been craving, and I believe that by getting myself together, all the rest will follow.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and struggling to get organized, Organizing You is definitely a book I think you will find helpful.

*It is written from a decidedly Christian perspective (which lines up with my faith) but I did want to make sure I mention that in case anyone buys it and is caught off guard by that.

Let’s Talk: I definitely love a good practical book on organizing! What are some of your favorites? What tips do you have to share for what most helps you keep track of all the things you need to do and keep the mental and spiritual clutter at bay?

(This post contains affiliate links. Read disclosure policy here).