Quick tip: wash those reusable bags

The August issue of Better Homes and Gardens published the statistic that 85% of people don't regularly launder their reusable grocery bags. They recommend cleaning bags in hot soapy water at least once a week. Upon reading that, I promptly threw mine in the wash and in the future will look out for bags that are easy to clean. Some of my plastic-y ones aren't easy to just throw in the washing machine.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by PedalFreak

Women and time

In the April edition of Real Simple magazine was a long feature called "Women & Time" in which they detailed the results of a survey they performed to figure out how today's women spend their time. Here are some of the more interesting findings:

• 52% of women have less than 90 minutes of free time a day
• 29% have less than 45 minutes a day

• Cleaning is the chore that women would most like to eliminate from their to-do lists, followed by laundry.
• Keeping an organized house can make cleaning less of a time suck
• It's possible to streamline laundry, as I noted last week

• The top 3 jobs women don't want to hand of to their spouse are decorating, managing household finances and organizing. 
• I'd like to think that's because organizing is so fun!

Spring cleaning with summer in mind

**This post was originally published in my monthly e-newsletter, Lelah's News. Don't subscribe? Sign up here!

Spring is well underway in southern California. We've had a good mix of rainy, mild and summer-hot days, reminding us that California indeed gets all sorts of weather, and that once May Gray and June Gloom pass us by, summer is just around the corner. Spring is a wonderful time to put your home in order before the demands of summer, when vacations and beach days and camping trips throw your routine all out of whack. Here are some of my favorite spring cleaning ideas that might not be on everyone's to do list, that will help you get a head start on summer organization.

• Clean your air conditioner vents.
• Gas heat? Turn off your pilot light until fall.
• It's never a bad time to check your smoke detector batteries.
• Consider hiring window washers to clean the outside of hard to reach windows. You'll be amazed at the difference really clean windows will make to the light in a room.
• By the same token, if you've been considering window tinting for a window or glass door that gets a lot of sun, do it now in order to fully reap the benefits all summer long.
• Go through your bathroom cabinets and toss old or unused makeup and toiletries, and any expired or nearly empty bottles of sunscreen. Replenish your stock and only buy bottles with expiration dates on them.
• Get your car road trip ready by performing any necessary maintenance and giving it a wash. Take out anything that doesn't need to live there and keep that stuff out by taking everything out of your car that you put into it - every day.

Hate to clean? Get organized.

Not liking to clean is a great reason to get organized. No one wants to live in a dirty environment, but cleaning isn't most people's favorite activity. Organizing first can help. Dishes and laundry are chores that can be streamlined to be less time consuming, if not more enjoyable. Actual cleaning tasks, like dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing of various kitchen and bathroom surfaces, are easier and faster to do when your home is already organized.

• If you don't use your floor as a storage surface, vacuuming is a one-step process.
• Keeping bookshelves, mantels and countertops clear of all but a few display objects makes dusting as easy as lift and swipe.
• A decluttered closet makes putting away clean clothes a stress-free experience, plus you'll have enough hangers!
• When toiletries and supplies are all regularly put away in their designated spaces, bathroom cleaning is just spray, scrub and rinse.
• Schedule recurring cleaning tasks on your calendar. That way you won't feel guilty for not doing them, as you will have made a plan to do them in the future, and you also won't do tasks too frequently. Cleaning the air conditioner filter doesn't have to be done every week!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Valerie Everett

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Reviewed: Organized Simplicity

**Note: I was sent the book by the publisher I don't know how many months ago and I am just now reviewing it.

The author of Organized Simplicity, The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living is Tsh Oxenreider and she has a blog network that offers great content. This book was published last year and I want to go over how it is different from other organizing books out there.

Tsh Oxenreider. Photo from http://tshoxenreider.com/organized-simplicity/ 

Oxenreider comes at organization from the point of view of a working mother who puts her family values ahead of everything else. It's a powerful place to be, as it causes all of your choices to flow from a single purpose. It makes something as simple as clearing out the refrigerator an intentional act that reinforces your worldview and supports the way you want to live your life. Though that might seem paralyzing - how can I get anything accomplished if I have to have a philosophy about it? - it is actually liberating. The author takes you through the steps of figuring out what your family's purpose statement is and then everything that follows, from clearing out your commitments so you have more time to play with your kids, or clearing out the garage so you can actually park a car inside, makes sense. You know why you are doing it. It's liberating, because you can easily see what serves your family's purpose statement and what doesn't.

I went through the process outlined in the book to create a purpose statement with my family. It was a wonderful process, and I recommend it as a way to slow down and reflect on what's important to you, not as an individual, but as a member of a family unit.

The rest of the book sets forth in detail how to empty, clean and organizing each room of your house. This is always great information, and Oxenreider adds value by including lots of recipes for homemade cleaning products and templates to help you organize inventories, to-do lists and schedules.

Organized Simplicity is an inspiring book full of useful content.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Tips and Tools: Car organization

We spend so much time in our cars! In the August issue of Real Simple magazine, they turn their attention to cleaning out a car to make it almost like new. Cleaning your car is as necessary as an oil change from time to time, but the best way to keep your car organized is extremely simple:

Don't leave stuff in your car. 

When you get home, take everything inside (and put it away).

Right now I know exactly what's in my car: the essential stuff in my glove compartment, my Thomas Guide, quarters for meters and some CDs. There are also emergency supplies stowed away with the spare tire under the trunk. There are no empty water bottles, trash, food, hairbrushes, sweaters or even grocery bags. If I bring that stuff into my car, I take it out after the return trip.

This is a little bit harder to manage with kids, I know, but it's a worthy goal. Much easier to keep your valuable car interior clean and serene with no stuff in it.

Make it your new rule, and feel the lightness of a perpetually clean car.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by krisandapril

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

When cleaning contributes to clutter

One of the best reasons to get your home organized is that it makes it easier to clean. Without piles of stuff on the floor and on your surfaces, it's simply easier to do routine maintenance and keep a clean home.

Some people hire help to clean their living space. Whether you have a one bedroom apartment or a five bedroom house, if you have a regular (or not so regular) cleaning person or cleaning team in your home, they may get the floors, windows and surfaces clean, but they often contribute to disorganization and clutter. How can this be? Well, unless they live with you and are intimately acquainted with all your drawers, cupboards and storage spaces, they aren't going to know where things live. They are going to see a pile of objects on your dining room table and instead of finding the specific home for each item (assuming you actually have a designated home for each item), they'll sweep them all up and stick them in the nearest cabinet for you to sort out later. Your dining room table will gleam, but you'll be frustrated when you are trying to find the scissors and they are not in the pencil box by the phone but somewhere your cleaning person stashed them.

 

I see this all the time in clients' homes. They will often have specific spaces for their things, but if they haven't communicated those spaces to the person putting the things away, they inevitably end up someplace else. This doesn't apply just to cleaning people. It's all well and good if you know where to find things and put them away, but what if your spouse needs the label maker and you aren't around? Plus, you don't want to be a position of having to tell people where things are all the time, or worse yet, getting things for them. Speaking of label makers, the solution to both the cleaning person problem and making it easier for everyone in the family to coexist with an organizational system is labels.

If you label where things go, it makes it much simpler for everyone to find things and put them away. Your cleaning person will thank you, and your time can be spent on other things beside locating items for your family members.


Creative Commons Old Hi-8 Tapes by bredgur, on Flickr.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com