Decorating with like with like

One of the fundamental rules of organizing is keep all like things together (and preferably near where you use them). If you do this, there is only one place your car keys will be: with the other keys by the front door. It's a simple idea and one that in practice can save you tons of time looking for things.

Another advantage of this method of organizing is when looking for display opportunities in your home. A bunch of similar objects grouped together can create a simple and stylish decoration. These items can be functional, sentimental or neither.

An example of the functional: glassware displayed in a glass case. It's all together, it's easily accessible when you want to use it, and in the meantime it looks nice. An example of the sentimental: a few select vintage toys from your childhood grouped on a shelf in a guest room or a window sill. Even a few items can be considered a collection: display your three digital cameras or favorite colorful nail polishes on a bathroom shelf to brighten it up.

Why go out and buy knickknacks when you can decorate with your own stuff?

Creative Commons photo posted to flickr by Jennifer Martinez

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

A year ago: preparing for every day, storing recipes and keeping it together

Here's a recap of what I think are my best posts from around this time last year:

An exhortation to follow one of the primary rules of organizing: keep like items together.

My three-part series on how to organize recipes, from cookbooks to individual loose recipes to digital ones. I still think these are the best ways to go about managing what for my cooks is a losing battle with new recipes coming in all the time. My loose recipes have over time moved from file folders to clear sleeves in a binder, but both work.

Lastly, in the first installment of my preparing for everyday series, I write about what every prepared person should have in their desk drawer.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by cleverclevergirl
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

The story of the rubber cement

One of my favorite creative projects is to make collages out of photos and words found in magazines and newspapers. They make great cards since you can personalize them or make them themed. They are also a nice way to reuse reading materials you’ve finished with and give them new life, as well as are easy to make and inexpensive. All you need is some cardboard or paper and glue.

I like to use rubber cement to affix the pieces of my collages because it is fast drying and doesn’t make a big mess. The last time I made a collage, I thought I put the pot of rubber cement in the upper left hand drawer of my desk, where always keep it, but when I went to glue something a few weeks later, it wasn’t there. I spent several minutes looking in each of my desk drawers, then in the art supplies, then in the kitchen drawers. I couldn’t figure out where the rubber cement had gone. I asked the other person who lives in my house. He told me he hadn’t used it or put it anywhere else. I believed him...really! I was frustrated, because I ended up having to tape the thing I wanted to glue.

I didn’t want to buy a new bottle, not so much because of the $1.59 expense, but because I knew I had a bottle and did not want to clutter up my house with a duplicate, since I was sure the one I had misplaced would turn up. I held strong, didn’t buy a replacement, and sure enough, one day I opened the top desk drawer for a paper clip. The orange lettering on the back of the rubber cement bottle suddenly caught my eye. The rubber cement had been put back in the wrong drawer, and I hadn’t ever seen it when I opened up that drawer to look for it. I was relieved, to say the least, and immediately glued the thing I had taped. Much better. But I recalled the lost minutes of my life looking for the thing in the first place. If only I had been present in the moment of putting away the glue and put in its regular drawer, just a few inches to the left of where I tossed it in a hurry to clean up my project mess.

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

Birds of a feather should be stored together

One of the most fundamental organizing rules (and there aren't very many of these) is keep like items together. I cannot stress enough how important this is, and how much easier it is to find things if you keep everything that is similar together in one place (provided you are able to remember where that one place is, of course). 

If you are not already doing this, start small and see what a difference it makes. Put all of your hair ties in one dish in your bathroom or bedroom. Nest all of your mixing bowls and keep them on one shelf. Find all the places you have batteries stashed around your house and put them together in one bag or box in a closet or drawer. The next time your reading lamp burns out its bulb, you'll know exactly where to find the appropriate replacement, since it has been stored along with the rest of the back-up bulbs. (I keep mine in an upright bag under the kitchen sink.) 

Keeping like items together makes finding things easier and saves you time, since if there is only one place to look for spatulas, if there aren't any in that spot, it means you need to do some dishes, not that you need to keep looking in every drawer until you stumble across one. It also saves time when you are putting things away, since the decision of where to put things has already been made. It takes the guess work out of cleaning up, since there is only one place CDs belong and only one home for loose change. 

There are only a couple of exceptions to the keep like things together rule. Scissors, I find, come in handy in nearly every room of the house, so I keep a pair in my kitchen, one on my desk top and one in my top desk drawer, a pair in the bathroom drawer and another in my bedside table. Tissue boxes and trash cans should have homes in nearly every room as well. I like to keep an emory board in my bathroom drawer, purse, desk drawer and bedside table drawer.

Creative Commons photo posted to flickr by visulogik