4 Tips for Organising your bathroom

Are you ever in a rush to get ready to go out? Scrounging through your makeup to find the perfect shade of eye shadow? Or is your countertop in the bathroom completely cluttered with creams, makeup and hair accessories? I recently set up my new bathroom and wanted to keep it neat, un-cluttered and easy to find what I was looking for. Here are some tips to keep in mind in your bathroom.

1. Keep the most used items close at hand

All the things I use everyday are at the front of my top drawer; deodorant, face-cream, etc. Toothbrushes and handwash are some of the few things out on the countertop, for obvious reasons, but my perfumes, they are there because the bottles are pretty and to remind me to put it on!

2. Keep backups out of the way and all together

I keep extra razor blades, cotton buds, backup shampoo etc down in the bottom drawer all together so that when I run out of something I can go straight to the "backup box" to check before I go out and buy more. I also keep all those sample size products in a makeup bag to use when I travel.

3. Find solutions for things that bug you!

Getting my hairdryer out, putting it away and finding other things in and around it always used to drive me crazy! My partner helped me to attach a holder (actually a cutlery basket from Ikea) to the inside of the bottom drawer at the perfect height, away from everything else and now I just love to put it away when I'm done with it because it's just a perfect fit. Organising solutions need to be nice to use so it's not just more work to put things away.

4. Use compartments to keep things in their place

To prevent your neatly sorted piles becoming a jumble again the first time you use them, you can use drawer dividers, boxes, bags, and jars to separate things into their groups. They don't have to be fancy purpose made dividers either. Just use what you can find that fits your space and your things.

Setting up a Coffee Station at Home

Moving into a new home is a great opportunity to set up with a blank canvas and really think about how you will use each space. Even if you're not moving, maybe you're in Spring Clean mode and wondering if there is a better way to do things.

In the kitchen of course there are things you can't change like where the sink is, but wherever possible it's best if you can store things closest to where you will use them. 

A great example is in my new kitchen, we have put the pots & pans in drawers next to the oven and cooktop, the glasses next to the fridge and my favourite is where we have set up a "coffee station".

Whenever we make a tea or coffee, everything is in the one place except the milk. It's so convenient! The coffee pods  are directly above the machine, the tea and sugar are in a canister at the bottom, mugs of course are right there, and the teaspoons are directly below. It's so much quicker now to make a "quick cuppa" I find myself wondering what to do while I wait for the water to boil. 

What about you? Do you have specialised areas in your home that makes life easier? Please share in the comments!

Getting Rid of Excess STUFF While Moving House

What a crazy couple of weeks its been for Positively Sorted! Between helping clients get organised, I have moved house, caught a cold AND became engaged to my wonderful partner of two years!

Of course, as an organiser (and a female), my first impulse is to start planning the wedding, but yes I did say I've just moved house! There's still so much to do settling in and organising all these new spaces. So today and over the next few weeks I want to talk about some of the things we're doing to make our new house into a comfortable home.

 Even though my partner and I both llike to be organised, there were a few contributing factors that meant that we had too much "stuff"  and were tackling this as we moved into our new home and unpacked.

1. We have recently merged two "single" households and so had alot of duplicate items that we just didn't need (even if we thought we might.
2. We had been living in smaller rental places temporarily and storing alot of stuff in storage. This new home has enough space to take everything out of storage (saving money), but after 12 months in a box, did we really miss it?
3. A change in attitude from "maybe I'll use that one day" to being really strong and thinking "do we really want to clutter this great new home with the stuff that we don't use/like/need anymore?"

Moving - too much clutter!

Some of the "stuff" that we decided to part with included:

• Bedside lamps that were mis-matched and one of them was really hard to find the off switch without sitting up fully in bed and burying your hand under the lampshade!
• An award trophy that I received from a previous job. I took a photo of it for the memories and out it went!
• Duplicate kitchen utensils, picnic baskets, iron, vacuum cleaner etc. Yes sure some things can be handy to have multiples of, like kitchen tongs or drinking glasses. But things like can openers and vacuum cleaners? Taking up space!
• Decorative items received as gifts that we just didn't really like. This was a hard one, the last thing you want to do is hurt anyones feelings, especially someone who put thought and cash into a gift just for you. But this is our new home, we want to decorate it with items that we love, not out of obligation, but that should go for any home. 

We were pretty tough this time, but if you're finding it hard to part with some things, I recommend packing them away somewhere in a box for at least 6 months and see if you really miss them. Some of the things that we got out of storage made it feel like Christmas to find them again! But with others it was quite obvious that we hadn't missed them and it was time to let them go.

The next step is how to get rid of all that stuff. It's alot easier to part with something if you plan to sell or donate, it doesn't feel as wasteful and you could be helping someone else out who really needs it. More about that next time! 

Organising Kitchen Cupboards - Before & After

One of the hardest places to keep tidy in most kitchens is the dreaded plastic containers, closely followed by the pots, pans and trays. Usually, due to the quantity of these items and only a finite space to keep them in, they will be stacked in a cupboard or drawer. No matter how neatly you pile them up, as soon as you need to take one from the bottom, they start to get messy. This week I received a new product called a Cakesnake that has inspired a mini kitchen cupboard makeover.

Before

The pots, pans and oven trays were in a deep drawer and didn't stack very well. The plastic containers were in a low cupboard and very hard to find what you were looking for without pulling it all out.

Looking at the type of items, it was decided that moving the plastic containers and mixing bowls to the drawer would allow much easier access to find what was there, while the Cakesnake in the cupboard allowed all the trays and frypans to stand up next to each other when the drawer wasn't deep enough for that.

The Cakesnake

After

The Cakesnake has made access to all those bulky, clanging pots, pans and trays easy in the low cupboard. It hasn't saved any space but it sure has made this cupboard more effective to use. Nothing falls over when you get something out, and the gap is right there to easily put things away again.

As for the new plastic container drawer, there seems like so much more room here! All the smaller containers, sandwich boxes and kids drink bottles are contained in their own box, the lids are all in one place and then everything else neatly stacks according to shape. 

PS. The big red pot in the before photo found a new home on top of the fridge as it wasn't used as often.

Just because you've always kept something in a particular place, doesn't mean it won't work better somewhere else. Also, few clever tools like the Cakesnake and containers to keep smaller items organised can make a huge difference.

5 Tips for Organising Kids Rooms

In the recent school holidays, I got to help a very crafty little girl organise her bedroom. It was your typical kids room, a bit messy with a good mixture of toys, books, unfinished craft projects, and collected knick-knacks.

After moving house in the last few months, there were alot of things still in boxes which, once pulled out, had no real home to be put away, except for the already cluttered shelves or, of course on the floor.

Here are some tips for getting kids organised with more chance that it will stay that way.

Talk to them about what they want
Kids love to feel like they are being treated as a grown up. So asking about how they use their toys and the space can help them feel involved and more likely to take ownership of the end result. You can also help them to understand what's in it for them. No more losing your favourite toys all the time! No more hurting your feet when you step on stray lego pieces! Another interesting tip is that some kids leave things out just because they like to look at them, so having a special shelf where kids can display their favourite "thing" at the time can work really well.

Make it fun
This is a no-brainer! If it feels like a chore, kids will get bored in 10 seconds flat. Keep the mood light, put on some favourite music, and try making a game of it. When you're sorting things into groups, label some boxes or baskets (whatever you have handy) with categories (craft, books, figurines etc) as well as a bag for rubbish and another box for "things that belong somewhere else" to reduce the risk of getting side-tracked. Then as you're going through everything in the room, see how fast they can pick the right box or which box will fill up first. Plenty of positive encouragement here also helps. And this brings me to the next tip..

Have plenty of breaks
Boredom, short attention spans, tiredness, hunger can all lead to less cooperation from kids. Frequent breaks for snacks or a quick run around outside can help break the monotony for kids and pep them up for more. It also gives you a chance to assess where you're up to, decide on the next step and of course have a break yourself!

Give them easy access
Once you have everything sorted into groups and know how it all gets used, you can look at storage options! In our holiday project, we needed plenty of storage for craft supplies as well as unfinished projects. We repurposed some furniture from other parts of the house to create a workspace and some display shelves. Then we purchased some clear plastic boxes that would easily slide out from the shelves to get things out and put away. Labelling is the final touch to help kids remember where things go.

Create a routine
Once homes set up for all the things in a kids bedroom, start setting a regular part of the day when everything gets put back in that home. A great time to do this is part of the bedtime routine... "Tidy, Teeth, Toilet then bed!" This is another time when making it fun comes back into play. A prize for whoever can get their room tidy in ten minutes is an example of this.

We all know that kids bedrooms are never going to be neat and tidy all the time, but finding ways for them to WANT to get organised is so worthwhile. And teaching them how to be organised now will help them as they grow up and in the future.