The Posh Space

Dream Closet: Jonathan Adler’s Barbie Closet

Barbie’s Dream closet!  This was just too funny to pass up, especially with it being Valentine’s week and we are surrounded in red and pink. I just could not resist posting this.

This is a closet designed by the fun and flashy Jonathan Adler for a temporary Barbie Malibu Dream House. You can see more pictures of the Barbie House at Apartment Therapy and at LAist.

This is really just for fun, so there is really not much constructive I can say.  Usually I give the good, the bad, and the reality of a “Dream Closet” but this one is pretty much 90% unrealistic.

One thing that would be fun to take away from this would be the curtains and valance instead of a curtain door in a kids room.  I love that idea!  Great, so there was one little nugget of usable information.  Other than that, I hope this closet just makes you smile.

Forget the Label Maker – Create Stylish Labels

I was at my favorite store, The Container Store the other day and I saw these beautiful felt flower gift tags. Since they were in my favorite color, turquoise blue, I was quickly going through my head trying to figure out what I could do with these. Then like a bolt of lightning it hit me! I was so excited and it was a solution I had been searching for, for months!  So I quickly scooped up four of them and headed straight for my laboratory…I mean home.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a barging shopper. So I have some overflow storage at the top of my pantry for items that are for future use. I have been searching for the right way to label these bins for a while and not having them labeled has lead to some confusion.

The first thing I did was flip the white tag over. You may be able to see in the picture below from the store that the white tag had lines on one side and the back was solid white. Then I added the names/categories to each tag. It looked a little boring so I added the dots around the edge and voila my tag was done! Finally, I attached the tags to the baskets and lined them all up.

The gift tags like the ones I purchased are available for $3.99 or the wine bottle gift tags are $8.99 and come with a thicker “leather” like tag to write on. The fun and fabulous tags are called Flower Tiedings from Twinkle Brands.  They also make a cute butterfly which would be perfect for a kid’s room. Oooh, I’m getting more ideas!  See the before and after pictures below.

Here’s the inspiration!  The flower tag I saw in Container Store.

Here is the before pictures of the basket.

This is a close up of the after!

Here’s the line of my four baskets!  Love to add this bit of fun to our pantry!

Okay, I hope you enjoyed the pictures and let me know what you think.

Jewelry Organizing: Before and After

I recently worked with a client who wanted some help organizing her jewelry. She had a previous organizing system in place, using an over-the-door system with clear pockets for each item. However, after a move, she found that this system was no longer working for her, and she wanted an organized way to put her jewelry in to drawers.

Check out pictures of this project at The POSH Space’s Facebook Page!

BEFORE: Jewelry to be organized.                       AFTER: An organized drawer!

Thanks Veterans

A very special thanks to all those who have served and to those who are serving.

Family History Month

October is Family History Month and while there are a number of ways to preserve your family’s history by creating a Family Tree, a scrapbook, or by creating a family cookbook, it’s important to start any project by taking a few moments to get organized. 

One of the questions I am often asked is how to organize photos.  If you decided to take the month of October to start preserving your family photos here are few tips to help you get started.

1. Choose a starting point.  You can’t organize a lifetime’s worth of photos in a few hours so start your process by choosing what you will focus on.  If you are working on family history then you may want to choose one person, one family, or one decade.  This way, when you are going through photos and grouping them into categories you can quickly pick out the photos that meet your criteria. 

2. Decide how you want to organize the photos.  This is a big sticking point for many people.  Generally, there are three ways to organize your photos: by year, by person, or by event (such as a vacation, a birthday, or a holiday).  When looking at older photos it can sometimes be difficult to determine the year of the photos.  Always check the back of the photo to see if there is a date stamp.  You might be best off organizing older photos by family or person. 

3. What are you going to do with the photos once you have grouped them together?  Are you going to put the photos in a scrapbook or keep it simple and put them in a photo storage box?  You may decide that this year you simply want to group all the photos into the different categories and store them in separate boxes.  Then next October you can focus on getting a set or more into scrapbooks.

My biggest piece of advice is to keep it simple.  You don’t have to get it all done right now.  Take one  small project at a time and you will be less frustrated and be more likely to continue the project in the future. 

Good luck preserving the memories!

Angela

Copyright (C) 2010 Angela Ploetz, POSH Space  www.theposhspace.com.

National Preparedness Month, Part 4

Home Inventory

It’s National Preparedness Month and if you have been following the POSH Blog you have lots of ideas on what you can do to be more prepared by creating your home emergency kit and outlining your families’ emergency plan.  So let’s take it back to what Professional Organizers like me are known for and that is helping people deal with their stuff, their things, and their possessions. 

Often when I’m working with clients they might say something like I need to make a household inventory.  But that is something most people don’t every do.  I understand it can be intimidating.  So here are a few different options for creating your household inventory. 

1.    Create a list.  Write out or type out a list of all the important items you have that you would need to make a claim on for insurance purposes.  This can be an intimidating task, but will prove helpful in the event of an emergency.  On your list note the make or model of the item, size, purchase date or year, purchase price, and approximate value.  Since this is a big project, start by taking it one room at a time.  You can also send this list to a trusted family member who can save it on their computer.  This way in the event of an emergency if your documents are destroyed someone else will have copies. 

2.    Use your owner’s manuals.  Gather up all those owner’s manuals that are floating around the house and put them in one location.  You can keep them in notebooks, a filing cabinet, or a waterproof safe.  Staple the receipts to the manuals and write the serial number on the manual.  This way you have all the information you need in one location in case of robbery.  You can make copies of the front cover of each manual including the make and model, the serial number you wrote down, and the receipt and give copies to a family member to keep in the event of an emergency.

3.    Photo documentation.  This is probably the easiest way to document what you have.  Take photos or a video of each room.  You can save the photos to a zip drive, CD, or your lap top and easily send them to a family member as well.  If you do this you may not have the make and model numbers but at least you will have something to help you in the event of an emergency. 

What have you done to create your home inventory? 

Angela

Copyright (C) 2010 Angela Ploetz, POSH Space  www.theposhspace.com.