The Posh Space

Quote of the Week

(Purchase this ‘manifesto’ for yourself at the Smile Collective Shop.)

Office Organizing: Part 7 – Lists

{Photo from MomAgenda}

The final piece of this 7 part series of Office Essentials is lists.  You know the ones: your lists of calls to make, appointments to schedule, things to do, who needs to go where and when (AKA-your calendar), and your shopping list just to name a few.  Here are some of my favorite picks for keeping track of yourself and your families’ schedules.

{Photo from MomAgenda}

To-Do’s and calendars converge in the hip and helpful Mom Agenda allowing Mom to keep track of projects, appointments, and things to do all in one place.  There’s even space at the bottom to write your dinner menu for the week!  Although many people are using calendars and note systems on their phones there are still many people who would prefer to write things out and the MomAgenda can do the job beautifully.

{Photo above from Planner Pad}

The Planner Pad also combines both your calendar and your tasks.  The Planner Pad allows you to separate your tasks into different groups or categories which I really liked.  So you could create a category for each family member if you wanted to in order to keep track of their activities and projects.  You can visit the Planner Pad web-site if you are interested in learning more about it or see my blog post “Planner Pad is Worth a Try”

Last but not least is the most nourishing list of them all: your weekly menu and grocery list.  By planning in advance what’s for dinner you are saving yourself headaches of figuring it out at the last minute and ending up with take-out again!  When you start planning your weekly menu you will also find that your grocery trips decrease!  Before I started menu planning my husband and I were going to the grocery store just about every day!  Now I purchase the items we need for 3-4 days.  This has saved my both time and sanity.  Weekly menu’s/grocery list should be easy to find at your local super store, office store, and even many craft stores.  But in case you just have to have one right now I have created one you can print yourself.  Click her for the PDF.

I hope this has you inspired you to try to find the right system to manage ALL those lists in your life!
Have you tried one of these planners?  Let me know what you think.

Kids Work Zone Part 2.5 – Table

Opps! I forgot to include this in last week’s post Kids Work Zone Part 2 – Paper Supplies; this is the after picture of my kid’s work table.  Now my girls actually have room for crafts, a game, a snack, or what ever they would like.  Before their table was cramped and overflowing with homework, coloring books, crayons, markers, and more.  Everything was getting piled on their little table and there simply was no left over space for them to work.  The configuration of the table was also limiting.  Now they can each work on their own side of the table.

If you missed it last week, here’s the before picture of my organizing nightmare.  Really it’s frightening.

I did clean up the table and chairs with the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  It did wonders on the marker, highlighter, crayon (yes, it got the crayon off!), and dirt.  The only thing it did not work on was some of the paint.  There is a metallic paint that I just can’t get off, we will most likely need to spray paint the table.  But overall, I was really impressed with how well it cleaned up!

Kids Work Zone Part 2 – Paper Supplies

My, oh my, how do we deal with all the kids art and school  supplies? This has been an ongoing conundrum for me in my house.  No, I’m not just exaggerating you are going to see proof positive of my organizing nightmare…my own NOT working kids work zone!  No, I’m not perfect and my kids aren’t either and when you don’t set up something that really addresses your needs, chaos will happen.  So after thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and even more thinking about how we could solve our problem I finally came up with a solution.  Here’s how I did it.

Identifying the Problems:

Problem #1. My husband works from home most of the time, generally at the kitchen table.  He actually DOES have a real office in an office building, but the kitchen table is his preferred work place.  So we need a place for him to keep his calendar, notes, computer when not in use, notepads, and some files.

Problem #2. My kids also “work” in the kitchen on their art projects, homework, games, etc. and things were ending up on the floor, the kitchen table or overflowing on their little white table.  It was an organizers worst nightmare!

Finding the Solution:  I knew we need storage space.  Things were not getting put away because there was simply not a place to put things away.   So I grouped all like items together.  All the coloring books, all the kids’ homework materials, all the loose drawing and construction paper, my husband’s work stuff, etc.  I weeded out anything that was in bad shape or we just did not need.
I evaluated what I had left and took measurements of the space under the window.  Plan in hand I headed to IKEA.  I purchased the Expedit Bookcase, which is one of the most versatile pieces on the market.  I added the white storage boxes from IKEA and the turquoise magazine holders and drawer from The Container Store.

These magazine holders are labeled: Activity Books (which includes Paper dolls), Marker/Paint Books (Color Wonders etc.), Ben (husbands stuff).  Box to the right is titled: Ben’s Work.  To the far right you can see the writing supplies and Artwork Zone I showed you yesterday.

Kids projects box for any unfinished craft projects, Lego projects, etc.

This is the most used section of our zone: Craft Paper (blank paper, construction paper, etc.), Coloring Books, and Studies (homework spirals, homework guides, flash cards etc.).

Ahhh….I am breathing easier now that we have finally got this under control!  Let me know what you think about our transformation.

Kids Work Zone Part 1 and a half – Artwork

For the last few weeks I have been working on my kids “work zone”.  Last month I posted Kids Work Zone Part 1-Writing Supplies.  You know we were starting to have the avalanche of paper, coloring books, artwork, markers and more.  What we were doing was clearly NOT working.  Ironically, about a week ago I was speaking to a Mom’s Group and we were talking about this same topic.  Mom’s were asking where do you keep your kids homework supplies, art papers, and all the other papers associated with kids and school.  My advice, keep it simple, keep it where those things typically end up.  For most people, that’s the kitchen.  Sooooo, tomorrow I will have a post with lots of show and tell on how I created my “Kids Work Zone”.

But for today I want to leave you with this tip on storing the papers your kids want to keep.  Let me start by saying this is not necessarily the papers YOU want to keep as mementoes and this is NOT for all the craft papers your kids bring home from school.  THAT is a whole different story and maybe an entirely different blog post.  This is for all those drawings, coloring sheets, writing, poems, etc. that your kids work on at home that end up like little daisies sprouting up on your kitchen table.  This idea actually came from one of my clients.

I gave each girl their own little drawer as you can see in the picture above.  I call it the “your choice drawer”.  When we are cleaning up and there is a coloring page or writing lying around I ask my girls if they want to keep it or recycle it.  If they want to keep it they go and put the paper in their drawer.  This gives them their OWN space, where they can keep their own things and they get to decide what goes in the box.  Now I did start with some parameters, the girls and I had a chat about how we can tell when it’s time to recycle some of the paper.  We decided when the box gets filled up they will have to decide what stays and what goes.  At the end of the school year or the summer we will go through box again and decide what we keep in their big keepsake boxes.

Tune in tomorrow to see how this piece fits in with all the other pieces of the “Kids Work Zone” puzzle.

How do you manage all the kids work zone supplies?  This is such a problem for so many moms’ I would love to hear your thoughts.  Leave a comment below.

Halloween Treat

I thought you all might get a kick out of this picture.  This is a picture of one of my daughter’s loot from last night’s Halloween festivities.  The girls poured their candy out onto the table and then I had to share with them one of my favorite parts of Halloween when I was a kid…sorting your candy!!!  Yes, I have been into organizing since I was a child!!!

So we started sorting.  We put all the M&M’s together, gum together, suckers, etc.  It was funny!  At least I thought so.  The girls actually did have fun sorting through their candy.  When it came time to trade they were glad they had sorted their candy so they knew exactly how much they had of each thing!

Just a little organizer humor and sweet little trick to teach your kids how to sort early on.
Aren’t you glad I can laugh at myself every now and then?