S P A C E

Awesome, awesome. My mother-in-law was totally sweet and bought me one of the books on my reading wish list. I'm quite enjoying The Organized Mom, by Stacey Crew, so far. It gets my mind buzzing, and even though our home is mostly organized and in place, there is always room for improvement and some changes. As time goes on, I'll share some of the better tidbits I find in there - always making sure to give the lovely Stacey credit of course!

But on to the title of today's blog. S P A C E. It's an acronym. Organizers love acronyms, and I'm also pretty sure that you can't write an organizing handbook without TM'ing your own clever little version of one. They all boil down to the same thing though, so for our purposes today, I'm going to give a nod to the original Queen of Organization, Julie Morgenstern, who came up with S P A C E. Every professional organizer worth her salt has a copy of Organizing From the Inside Out by this author. It's a bible of sorts. Sorts. Hah! That is what the S stands for, so here we go - the fundamentals of organizing, briefly:

S:  SORT
When you start an organizing project the first thing you want to do is SORT your items into categories. For example, say you've decided to tackle your bedroom closet, you need to take everything out and stage it (on your bed, on a clean sheet on the floor, etc) so that you can see what you have in the different categories. Shoes here, pants there, sweaters over here, dresses over there - you get the picture. If you're feeling particularly energetic, you can even sub-categorize: 'shoes' becomes 'sandals', 'flip flops', 'sneakers', 'pumps' and so on.

P: PURGE
Once you've sorted and grouped your items, you can more clearly see how many and how much you have of any one category. Bet you didn't realize you had nine black sweaters, and 15 white tank tops. Now take a look at each item, critically, and decide whether it should stay or go. Depending on what you're organizing, deciding what to keep may have different guidelines, and you'll need to figure out what those are ahead of time. With clothing, usually a good rule of thumb is that if you haven't worn something in over a year, you probably won't, so it can go*. Go could mean donate, or it could mean toss out, depending on the condition of the item. You'll want to have some trash bags handy, as well as a box marked 'donate'.
* Caveat:  Give yourself a little more time for pre-preggie clothes though! It took you nine months to put the weight on, it's going to take time to get back to fitting in your non-maternity jeans again. Don't toss them just yet!

A: ASSIGN
Now that you've slimmed down your 'keep' piles, you need to assign areas of the closet (and dresser) for the different categories. If something has a home, you always know where to return it (and find it!) Will you hang belts on a special hanger on a rod in the closet? Or keep them rolled up in the top drawer of the dresser? Do you want to fold t-shirts and pile them on shelves or in drawers, or hang them neatly side by side (possibly by color?) Decide how you want to layout your closet and dresser, making sure that what you wear most often is most easily accessible, and then you can move onto the next step...


C: CONTAIN
Do you have enough hangers for everything you want hung up? Perhaps you'll want to purchase some clear plastic shoebox containers for out of season shoes/boots (and store them on a top shelf out of the way). How about getting in some dividers for your dresser drawers so that the line between your bras and your socks is clearly drawn? Did you want to keep your shoes on shoe racks on the floor, or perhaps make use of an over-the-door shoe bag?
Remember, you want to complete S, P, and A before rushing out to buy containers. You don't know what you'll need before you know what you have. AND you may just find you have containers around the house that will work just as well already. No need to spend a fortune at the Container Store (although every time I go in there, I sure want to, it's such fun!)


E: EQUALIZE
Finally, equalize - or maintain. Every so often, take a little time to look through what you have. Make sure items are in their correct 'home' and your jeans aren't vacationing with your party dresses. Did you just buy a couple new sweaters? Look through the ones you have and see if there are any you might want to give away or throw out. The changing of seasons is also a great time to do a nice spring clean of your clothing and go through the main steps again.

So there you have it - S P A C E. Have I motivated anyone to take a gander at decluttering and organizing a particular area in their home?