Rubbermaid Adventures in Organization

Planning a great summer vacation

Janine Adams — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:22:35 +0000

As the weather gets warmer, it’s time to start thinking about what kind of getaway you might take this summer. Everyone’s idea of a great vacation is different, but there are a few principles you might keep in mind to help make your vacation a success.

Plan ahead. If there’s time, start the planning process as soon as you can so that you have time to do some research and check out your options. Talk to friends about places they’ve gone, check out travel websites like Hipmunk and TripAdvisor and book your reservations so you have the peace of mind of knowing where you’ll be going and when.

Leave room for spontaneity. If you button down every last detail and create a packed itinerary, you might lose out on local opportunities that your research didn’t reveal. Even if nothing great materializes, leaving some breathing space in your schedule might give you more time for actual relaxation.

Let it be easy. Vacations should be fun, not work. I know that I’m sometimes tempted to lug along a lot of items that I think I might need. Or I take extra reading material out of a fear that I’ll run out of things to read. (My Kindle has certainly helped alleviate that problem.) Lately, though, I remind myself to let it be easy and I try to travel light, take things as they come, and try to minimize the number of decisions I have to make.

Summer vacations can be an essential part of getting through the year. Try to make yours as fun and easy as possible!

Janine Adams is a messy professional organizer who loves helping others create order. The co-founder of Declutter Happy Hour, she believes in having as much fun as possible in the organizing process. Check out her web site at Peace of Mind Organizing!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

No worries – the Rubbermaid Professional Organizer Squad is here with expert advice! This group of professional organizers has seen and tackled it all. Simply enter your question, screen name and email to submit your question to them (any organizing question is welcome, no matter how simple or complicated!). We’ll answer and feature questions the squad can provide the best answers on. Don’t worry – we’ll email you if your question is selected!

What is my best solution for organizing snacks, cereals, etc. inside a kitchen cabinet? We have several different shape bags of individual snacks and treats

Beth Zeigler — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:05:33 +0000

Three words: Measure, measure measure. No pantry shelf is the same—even some of your pantry shelves could be varying lengths and depths. Before going out and purchasing containers that don’t fit the space, measure your pantry. You’ll next want to count the types of snacks, cereals and other items you typically keep on stock (you know, the ones that take up too much space). Would you want to decant all of your cereals into space-saving containers? Would some things like snacks and cereals be better accessible in larger jars on kitchen counters? Baskets and bins without lids also work fabulous to group like items like small snack bags and juice boxes. Perhaps a lazy susan is in order for the corners of your pantry? My last tip before buying anything, search Pinterest for inspiration and ideas. And to recap:

Measure your shelves (length and depth as well as height in between shelves)
How many canisters will you need for decanting? Count the items you normally have on stock and list things out.
Go onto Pinterest for ideas on additional and unique storage solutions
Repurpose bins in your home or put together a shopping list

Beth Zeigler knew she was on an organizing path when at the age of 5 she was maximizing her closet space to function as a second bedroom for her dolls. Throw in her background of delegating tasks to her younger brother throughout childhood–and her transition to organizing developed quite organically. Check out her web site at Bneato!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

Organize those cleaning supplies!

Janine Adams — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:48:15 +0000

It’s spring cleaning time for many of us. If you have an overabundance of supplies spread around your house, consider these ideas for organizing and simplifying.

Gather up your supplies. Bring together all your cleaning supplies from their various storage spots and take stock. Pluck out the ones you rarely use. (I think we all have cleaning supplies that ended up smelling unpleasant or just didn’t work well.) Combine duplicates, if possible.
Consolidate. While it might be perfectly reasonable to have cleaning supplies under every sink in your house, you might want to simplify things by consolidating your cleaning supplies into one set stored in a central location. Carry the most frequently used ones from room to room in a caddy. Use a turntable for the more rarely used supplies and store it with your caddy.
Use a rack. Long-handled items like brooms and mops can be corralled using a wall-mounted rack, like the Mop and Broom Organizer, available from the Container Store. This keeps them from falling over and gets them off the floor.
Wash your dirty rags. If you use reusable cloths for dusting and cleaning, toss them into the laundry after your cleaning session. That way you don’t comingle clean and dirty. (Cloth diapers make great dust-free cleaning cloths.)

For most people, cleaning house isn’t the most enjoyable task. You can make it easier for yourself by streamlining your supplies!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

How Do I Even BEGIN Dejunking My Garage?

Deb Lee — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:46:46 +0000

Spring is a great time of year to unclutter your garage. It can seem like a daunting project, but it doesn’t have to be! Having a good plan of attack can help you stay focused and get your garage looking and functioning the way you need it to.

Figure out what you have. What exactly lives in your garage now? What items do you need to keep and which ones can you throw out, recycle, or donate? Sometimes, an easy first step is to look for things that are obviously trash or that you no longer need.

Sketch your plan. As you look around your space, determine what you want to store in the garage and where (i.e., specific area) certain things will live. It can be helpful to do a rough sketch (with dimensions) so you can plan where you want to put specific things. For example, you may want to think about the items you will keep closest to the entryway from the garage to your home (for easy access). You probably won’t want to go into the heart of the garage to get things that you use often. And, keep in mind that as you go through the process and refine your plan, this sketch may change.

Create zones. Think about your space in terms of zones or centers. Do you have lots of lawn and gardening items? Bulk paper supplies? Cleaning supplies? Holiday items? Tools? Sports equipment? You’ll want to keep similar items together so that you’ll know how much inventory you have. This will help you figure out the best spot to keep certain items as well as the size/type of containers or shelving you might need. Ultimately, this will also help you to refrain from buying unnecessary duplicates.

Finally, remember that you don’t have to do this alone! Why not enlist some help from friends and family members (or even a professional organizer)? More hands on deck can get the project finished more quickly and make a challenging task seem a little bit easier.

Good luck with getting your garage dejunked!

Deb always seemed to have a knack for putting things in order, and started re-designing her mother’s room at the age of nine. Fast forward several years later and you’ll find her helping clients get more organized and comfortable in their homes and offices. Check out her website at D. Allison Lee.com!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

Three tricks for easy decluttering

Janine Adams — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:38:06 +0000

If you want to get some spring cleaning done, often the first step is letting go of excess. Cleaning is much easier when there’s no clutter to work around! Here are three things to keep in mind to make decluttering and purging easier:

1. Stay honest. While decluttering, ask yourself the following questions when trying to decide whether to keep an item:

Do I use it?
Do I love it?
Does keeping this item contribute to my vision for my space?

If you can’t honestly answer yes to any of those questions, consider letting the item go.

2. Stay focused. A timer can help you keep focused on your decluttering. Set your timer for a small increment of time (like 15 and 30 minutes) and keep working until it goes off. Then, take a break to hydrate or relax before going back to work.

3. Stay put. Create a Relocate to Another Room box to temporarily store the items that belong elsewhere in your house. Don’t put those items away until the end of your decluttering session. That way you don’t get distracted by going to another room.

Use these three tricks and you’ll get your space decluttered quickly so you can get to the spring cleaning!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

Parking Between the Lines

Erin Gentry — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:54:14 +0000

This is a guest post written by Professional Organizer Lea Schneider from Pensacola FL and owner of OrganizeRightNow.com.

It started with a simple comment.

I wish the garage had parking spaces.

Considering that most garages do indeed have parking spaces, that comment didn’t quite make sense to me. Of course, cluttered garages don’t have any parking space much less “spaces.”

This comment came about as a busy mom and I were organizing her garage. Her garage serves multiple purposes from holiday storage to car parking to a home recycling center. There is even food storage with a spare fridge, chest freezer and shelving for quantities from the big box store.

Besides all of that going on, two active boys use the garage as command central for playing soldier, construction worker, bike racer, skateboarder and more. The driveway is a playground as well as the cul-de-sac that is full of on-going adventures with neighboring children. Fortunately for this doting mom, these boys want to be outside from the moment homework is complete until it is too dark to see. She doesn’t need to pry them away from video games as they have plenty of imaginative play going on.

However, the constant play creates nightly havoc when dad tries to come home and safely park after work. There are bound to be dump trucks, bikes, skateboards, roller blades and more in the way. Sometimes, they are all tied together with clothesline and bungee cords from some pirate adventure of the day.

So, you know what we did? We just made some parking spaces! I grabbed a roller of fat painter’s tape, which can be removed later without harming the floor, and created some.

This big, blue visual difference has really helped the boys. In the past, they did attempt to put their toys away but were not a good judge of the vague concept of “away.” Now, when it is time to put things away, the directions are much easier to follow. All toys go behind the blue line and out of dad’s parking spot.

Don’t you wish all solutions were this easy!

Four tips to help you get any organizing project done

Janine Adams — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:52:23 +0000

Feeling baffled about how to organize something? Feeling too overwhelmed to begin? Keep these four tips in mind and you’ll have the job done in no time.

Store like things together. It’s much better to have your adhesive bandages all together in a first aid bin than scattered over the house, right? This is true for most items.

Store the things you use most often in the most easily accessed spaces. Items you use daily should be within arm’s reach (if it’s on your desk) or at eye- or waist level (if it’s a shelf or drawer). Stuff you use once a year can be relegated to a less convenient storage space. Keep this in mind when you’re deciding where to place things.

Less really is more. The fewer items you have to store, the easier it is to find what you need and put it away. Letting go of stuff can be liberating (and make organizing easier).

Let go of perfect. There’s no such thing as perfectly organized and your organizing solutions don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be able to find what you need when you need it. So if you have an idea for how to organize something, just give it a try. If it doesn’t work, switch it up. Don’t let perfectionism paralyze you.

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

What do I do with school papers?

Beth Zeigler — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:45:23 +0000

There are a few questions you’ll have to answer to determine which solution will work best:

1. Where do you do your homework? In the kitchen? In the home office? In your bedroom?

2. Are you constantly needing items signed and reviewed by a parental guardian?

3. What are your retention guidelines? Do you keep graded papers to refer back to them? And conversely, do some papers need to be kept but not referred back to?

For most spaces, I would suggest clear wall pockets. You can hang 1 or more and use each pocket for a different category. I like wall pockets because they can go just about anywhere and keep the space neat and clean.
One wall pocket could be an inbox: papers to get signed, things to review. One could be an outbox: to house papers after they are reviewed and have yet to be taken back to school.
You could also use the outbox for books that need to be returned, etc. Another wall pocket could be things to be filed or scanned.
You could also do a tiered file sorter, stackable paper tray or magazine files if wall space isn’t available.
For papers that need to be kept and referred back to, you could use a binder to store and easily access these papers (dividing them by categories using tabbed sections).
I would suggest using an accordion file box or a portable file caddy for papers that need to be kept on record–or better yet, scan in papers and recycle the hard copy.

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

How can I organize the piles and piles of paper in my office?

Deb Lee — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:40:51 +0000

Keeping your papers organized can sometimes be a challenge. Before attempting to put the papers away, you’ll first need to figure what types of documents you have and put them in categories. So, you might have business papers (like taxes, policies, client information) and personal papers (like home repair/maintenance, insurance, appliances).

Once you have you documents categorized, decide which ones need to be stored in a file cabinet (you need them, but not every day) and which ones need to be out an about so you can see them (you handle them regularly). The documents that you need to have access to often can live in a wall file or desktop sorter.

The good news is that once you find a system that works for you, it will be fairly easy to keep up with.

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?

What can I use to organize our athletics equipment in our garage? Such as lacrosse sticks, hockey sticks?

Allison Carter — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:32:32 +0000

Large athletic equipment can be a real challenge to store.
One of the simplest ways to store lacrosse and hockey sticks is to use a tall garbage can and stand everything upright in it.

If you would like to get them off of the floor, there are several options of hook systems you can attach to the wall to hold them up horizontally or vertically.

One of my favorites for sticks of all kinds (including brooms and mops) is this:

Photo from Hardwareworld.com

Hook set above from Amazon.com

For less than a dollar for each rubber-coated hook, you can hang all of your long items. It holds them upright vertically in place against the wall with the friction of the rubber.

Rubbermaid’s Fast Track system is more elaborate and has functions that you can use forever. It has a double hook that attaches to the system’s track.

Rubbermaid FastTrack Hooks

This is a great solution for sports equipment with the bonus that it’s easy to add, subtract, and change your hooks based on your needs.

Allison Carter likes fun and funky organizing. She is a creative, right brainer and thinks it is more fun to organize if you love how your space looks. So she utilitzes color, shape, pattern and texture to keep herself and her stuff organized. Check out her web site at The Professional Organizer!

Do you have a room or area in your home that needs organization help?