Holding you accountable - what did you tackle this week?

Leave a comment and let me know how you did this week.

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The Organise your Home ecourse is a step-by-step system delivered in bite-sized pieces so you will NEVER feel overwhelmed. You even get an audio of me teaching you how to organise your space.

Tons of people have been through this system; are you next?

(my new) favourite organising tools #16 - gift bags

Hi all

On Sunday I challenged you to declare in the comments an area of your home that you'd be organising this week.

It's not too late to join in - even if you do just one drawer, the top of your kitchen counters, etc.

I'll be posting on Friday (so we all stay accountable) and I'd love to read your comments where you tell me what you've managed to get done.

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I said that I'd be sorting out the gift wrap and whatnot (just means there's such a lot and I'm too lazy to list it all :)) which I'm still busy working through as I do my project-type stuff between the 11pm and 2am feeds!

Long story but I can stay up easier than I get up so this is my new routine.

BUT I have found a use for some of those gift bags...which have become one of my favourite organising tools.

In the post where I spoke about organising the babies' clothes, Se7en commented and shared how she uses gift bags.

Well, I decided to try her suggestion and look...

see the bottom shelf in this pic

and this shelf, which makes my heart go all aflutter - so neat and organised and PRETTY!!!

How else do you use gift bags for non-gift purposes in your home or office?

Please share in the comments and let's get some good tips going. And Se7en, thanks again!

Organise your Home makeover - before

This is the entry I received from Jenny's clutter :)

Dear Marcia,

I have heard that the mistress of this home, Jenny, may be entering your contest to win the Organising Your Home E-Course and I would like you to consider not allowing her to win. I like things the way they are... disorganised! Let me introduce myself. I have been called, Clutter, Junk, Stuff, Crud, as well as other less-flattering names. It has taken years for me to grow into the stronghold that I have become.

I enjoy numerous pastimes that, should Jenny win, would become obsolete. One of my favorite things to do is distract the occupants of the home. When Jenny or her husband enter a room they often take one look at me and get so flustered they forget why they came into the room in the first place. What a riot! The living room and kitchen are the most distracting.

I love to listen to kids whine. In this home, a foster home, there are usually plenty of children. I often hear them saying things like, "Where is my Spiderman shirt? It was just on the couch... Does anyone know where my shoes are?...What happened to my library books?" It is especially entertaining when the family is getting ready for school or church. The voices go up an octave and sometimes they start yelling at each other.

Jenny is creative and talented but I've been able to hold her back from success in many areas, including writing the books she has always dreamed of writing. Bob has a stressful job as a police officer and I am able to keep his stress levels up on the home front as well, especially in the master bedroom.

As you can see, I take my job very seriously and am quite comfortable in the Dalley household.

Jenny has even blogged about me at http://shoemomma.blogspot.com/2009/04/wow.html and http://shoemomma.blogspot.com/2009/03/spring-renewal-or-cleaning.html. I'm famous!

Please let me live and thrive and do NOT let Jenny win. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Sincerely,

Jenny Dalley's Clutter

Isn't that great? Read amongst the fun and you'll see the serious effects of the clutter...

So without any further ado, here's Jenny's first post.

As soon as I saw Marcia's contest for her 12-week Organise Your Home E-course, I knew I had to win.

My name is Jenny. I am a stay-at-home-mom with a wonderful husband. I live in Colorado. I love Jesus. And I am the most unorganized person I know.

I seem to be in a perpetual state of overwhelm. When I was growing up I had to share a bedroom with my very organized sister. We nearly killed each other! Now that we are adults and friends she sometimes offers to help me organize my house.

We currently have five children living in our home. Our biological son is 6 years old. We adopted two little boys, 8 and 7, just this week. We are also taking care of two foster children; an 8 year old boy and a 2 year old girl. Within the past two years we have had 13 children in our family.

Thankfully not at the same time. I could not even imagine the laundry pile I would have.

1. We have to do a mad dash of cleaning every time company is expected.
   
2. For those surprise visitors we offer a myriad of excuses for why our living room looks the way it does.
3. We lose things on a regular basis.
4. I often enter a room with the expectation of conquering the clutter, only to become so discouraged that I do an about face and head straight for Facebook or comfort food.

I have learned a lot from Marcia during the past couple of years and this opportunity to go through her Organise Your Home E-course will be life changing.

I am thrilled that I get to be a guest writer on her blog. Not only do I welcome the accountability, but I get to share this experience with all of you!

What would an improvement blog be without a couple of humiliating before pictures?



Is anyone else going through this 12-week course? I'd love to hear how you are doing!

Are you in?

It starts tomorrow - are you in?

Remember this contest for the Organise your Home system?

Well, it's finally here.

Our guest blogger starts sharing her journey with us tomorrow and will continue for at least 6 posts :)

Aren't you excited?

I know I am - I'm that person at the airport who LOVES people watching. And it's just the same with homes - I love seeing how other people organise their stuff and which systems they have that could work for me.

So I can't wait to be a virtual voyeur in Jenny's home and watch her get her home organised over the next 6 weeks.

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***NB***

I'm going to revive the Friday Declutter Challenge while Jenny's doing the guest blogging thing so that you can all play along.

Start thinking about a small area you can declutter or organise in your own home and post your intention in the comments to keep you accountable.

I'm also participating so check the comments for my intention!

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P.S. The Organise your Home ecourse will only remain at this price up to the end of August. if you were on the fence about this, don't say I didn't warn you :)

What's no. 1 on your to-do list?

I never could understand how it was that some women didn't take care of themselves.

Until now.

Because now I've had babies it is a different ball game altogether!

I didn't notice while I was still in the hospital because they wake you so early with coffee/ tea but the day after I was discharged, I realised something is a bit off...what is it???

Oh my word! I'm not hungry.

And that's how it started.

After a few days of being at home, I realised that I wasn't eating breakfast until HOURS after I'd woken. When I was pregnant, I'd wake and literally have to eat something within minutes because I woke up starving.

Not so anymore.

I also realised I'd just grab the first thing available (some biscuits (cookies) or rusks with my tea) which is not good!

at least I'm eating lunch - yum!

Good thing I had the awareness before it got even more out of hand. I decided I had to do something about it because I have to take care of me first before I can take care of the babies.

So now when I do my to-do list every day, my no. 1 item is Eat Breakfast.

What's no. 1 on your to-do list?

For those of you who wanted baby pics and an update...

Go here!

Enjoy :)

Quick tip - organising the babies' cupboards

Organising the babies' clothes is starting to be a minefield.

Especially since I'm not good with seeing what size things are. I always have to look on the label to see the size. Poor kids!

So I thought I'd show you quickly what I've been doing.

I have these storage boxes and I separated the clothes into the various sizes, slapped on a post-it note and voila, organised!

Untidy but organised :)

Quick tip - forgetting your cell phone at home

Sometimes I realise that my cell phone battery is running low so I plug it in to charge. Our charging station is in the kitchen.

I then forget to collect the phone before I leave because the rest of my stuff is on my launch pad, as in this picture.

Yes, that's a new bag :)

So now I do this: I keep a clothes peg on my cell phone charger. When I plug in the phone, I remove the peg and pin it to my handbag.

Like this.


When I'm ready to leave and I see that peg, I remember that my phone is still charging and now, I don't forget to collect it anymore!


How do you remember your cell phone?

What's that about making plans???

My plans were all turned upside down when the babies decided to come very early at 32 weeks.

During the early hours of Tuesday morning, Kendra and Connor were born. K weighed 1,590 kg and C weighed 1,850 kg. (edited to add: multiply by 2.2 to convert to pounds!)

Tiny tiny tiny!

They are both fine (doing better than they should be at this stage) but will be in the NICU until they can both breathe on their own and are 2kg or more in weight.

I, on the other hand, am being discharged in about an hour or two and will be going home.

And the winner of the Organise your Home ecourse is...

Hi everybody

Thanks so much to all 14 of you who entered my competition - I absolutely loved reading your entries and seriously wish I could have all of you guest blog for me.

It was hard, hard work just choosing one winner so I did a little something special for the rest who didn't win.

If you have not yet received an email from me (with your special something) and you entered, then it means I wasn't able to find an email address for you either in your comment or on your blog (invited readers only). If this is the case, please email me and I'll respond :)

Now, the winner is......Jenny from Shoe Momma.

I'm not going to say too much about Jenny at this point because I want her to introduce herself to my readers in her first post :)

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Here's a bit more about the Organise your Home ecourse.

• It's set out in 12 parts with a 13th bonus one thrown in for free
• covers every section of your home. You work through it section by section in manageable bits so you don't get overwhelmed.
• you also get the Household Organising File and instructions on how to set yours up
• free email support for the 12 weeks
• and much more
  

An organised home for just 44c a day

Ask the organiser about managing priorities on to-do lists

Happy Monday everybody!

I work off of "To Do" lists and I prioritize all my projects ABCD... using the system from Swallow that Frog. My to do list keeps getting invaded with other projects and requests.

How do I maintain my lists so that they are effective? Everyone and everything wants to be in my A file and I can't find my balance. Do you have any suggestions?

Marcie Rowan

Hi Marcie

Yes, I have some suggestions.

1. Get really clear on your main purpose/ focus for your life at this point
This purpose may change from time to time, or it may not, but it's still a good idea to check in with yourself regularly to make sure you still know what that purpose is.

E.g. this year my main purpose has been to have a healthy pregnancy and birth two live babies.

2. Use only one to-do list
When you use multiple lists, it's very easy to forget about some things on "the other list". I understand about different categories of things so what I do is I have one list with sub-headings like Personal, Business and Household. I can still see it all but it is ordered on paper and therefore in my mind.

3. Only put things on your to-do list that support your purpose
If your purpose is to create a loving, clean, organised home for your family, then you can't be serving on every committee in sight and never spend time taking care of your home.

4. Once things are on your list, eat your frog or, as you call it, swallow your frog
This is where your ABCD system comes in. Or what I use with my clients, the time-value matrix where you focus on urgent and important tasks only.

Do your difficult but most important tasks first. If you hate doing the laundry (like me!), just do it to get it out of the way.

I can't tell you what should be an A priority because we're all different. But I can tell you that tasks which don't support any of your goals are definitely not A priorities.

5. Don't overload your lists
Pick a maximum of 6 tasks a day. When you sign up for the Organising Success Pack, you get a pack of organising forms. My Eat the Frog form only has space for 6 daily items for two very good reasons.

And that's because

1. Most people can't get more than 6 important tasks done daily (including me!)
2. I want you to feel good at the end of every day so rather putfewer tasks and actually get them done

Marcie, hope this helped!

Anybody have any more tips for Marcie? How do you manage your priorities on your own to-do lists?

Project Baby - getting the clothes ready

So the baby showers are over and I finally knew what I could go buy.

People like to buy "outfits", in other words, cute clothes, so I put things like vests, leggings and babygrows (onesies) on my wish list.

Also, I like babies to look like babies, not like three-year-olds :)

We got a lot of what we needed but there being two, we had to go buy some stuff. I still don't know if we have enough but at least we have some clothes.

How many vests does one baby need anyway?

Someone at work gave us a very generous gift voucher so we went and bought the rest of what we needed, at least for the first stage.

And so the laundering commenced.

busy folding the clean laundry

sorting by category...
from the top: girl bibs, boy bibs and caps/ beanies

leggings on the left and vests on the right

their first slippers (they are too cute!), booties and socks

babygrows and knitted leggings and tops

neatly labelled on the shelf

burp cloths on left and blankets on right
(don't worry, I have PLENTY - the rest are still being laundered)

I feel much better now that they at least have clothes to wear!

I've used gift boxes (the purple ones) and plastic drawer dividers because they were falling over in anything bigger and I hate untidy shelves.

Question - anybody have any bright ideas to store all these tiny little clothes?