Room switching and life changes

A little over two years ago, when my husband and I were still living in our previous apartment, we spent a couple of days switching most of the furniture between our upstairs and downstairs rooms and changing the configuration of my desk area and some of our other spaces. We did this a couple of months before we got married, and I documented it with this blog post.

A few weeks ago, shortly before the birth of our son, we did something similar in our current apartment. We moved my husband's office configuration to a different part of the house and moved a bunch of furniture around, repurposing some of it. The result is a dedicated baby room and a new set up in our living room/dining room area. 

Empty bookcases -- look familiar?

Books everywhere during the move.

The resulting baby room. Pretty cute!

New bookcase configuration.

One of my favorite observations about organizing is by Julie Morgenstern who says, "Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems." Last time that change was marriage, this time it was a baby, and each time reorganizing our space and shedding some of our stuff was a huge help in preparing us for those major life changes.

 

Multiplying and moving

I have two friends who are both due to give birth in about a month. Both of them are also moving this month. One is moving about 50 miles, while the other is moving about 1,500 miles. I sincerely wish both of them luck with this unique and challenging endeavor.

While I can't (or, rather, don't want to) imagine the logistics of such a move: packing, labeling, moving, unpacking, plus the added bonus of figuring out a new city, figuring out new doctors and a new plan for where you're actually giving birth, I have thought of a few tips that might make the whole process a tad more organized. These two friends are inherently organized people, so they likely don't need these tips, but I felt it was the least I could do. Roslyn and Megan, this post is for you:

• Ask for help. Being pregnant is a perfect time to recognize your limits and engage your family, friends and village to help make this life transition easier.
• Make lots of lists. Lists have a calming effect and help you capture ideas and to-dos that might be in your head one minute and out the next. 
• Try to take it one step at a time. If possible, do a chunk of packing every day and a chunk of planning and preparation every day. 
• Install some support people at the receiving end. Line up family or friends to meet you at the new location to help you settle in. You'll be exhausted by the time you get there and facing a houseful of boxes might be overwhelming.
• Get a lot of rest, if possible. Things will seem more manageable if you're rested.

Good luck!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by awnisALAN

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.

IKEA season

IKEA is a magical place, where you can find almost any kind of furniture solution that you need for a reasonable price, while breathing the particle-board scented air, munching on Swedish meatballs and cinnamon buns and ultimately trying to fit extraordinarily long and heavy cardboard boxes filled with wood into your car.

My husband I have many, many pieces of IKEA furniture in our apartment. We just added a few more, as we ended up with some holes in our furniture floor plan after the move. Every time we go, we are reminded how awesome it is to have all the great choices, all the creative flourishes, all the macaroni and cheese you could want for $1.99. And they we realize how tiring it is to wind your way through the crowds of people and stuff, and how frustrating it is when they are out of the one thing you need to complete your shopping list, and how heavy these things are after you wedge them into the car, and when you have unload them at home and then spend three hours constructing an eight-drawer dresser.

Tips for getting the most out of IKEA:

• Don't go on the weekend. Trust me, I've been there three times in the last week. The two times I went on a weekday, it was a breeze. On Sunday, it was a battle.
• Go in pairs. You need someone to help maneuver the cart and all the oversized stuff. And someone to get the car while you wait with your giant boxes at the curb so you don't put your back out hauling them two blocks to the car.
• Leave lots of time. Time can sort of stop when you are wandering around all the bedroom sets and kitchen floorplans. 
• Eat a lot before, during and after to keep your strength up. I like to finish with a cinnamon bun on the way out. And don't forget to stay hydrated.
• Make a list before you go of what you really need. Otherwise, when you get the Marketplace downstairs with all the 99 cent boxes and trash cans and whatnot, you'll be overwhelmed and end up buying tons of stuff you don't really need.
• Try to limit your IKEA shopping trips to once a year. That's about how long it takes to forget the difficulties and start craving Swedish meatballs again.

Good luck, IKEA shoppers. It's worth it, but it helps to be prepared!

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

Moving, stage six

Well, the move happened. The movers came, were awesome (here they are on Yelp, if you need a recommendation in the LA area), and in eight short hours all of our stuff was moved from one place to another. We turned in the keys to our old apartment yesterday. I feel a sense of achievement that all the preparation paid off, as the move itself was pretty stress free. Unfortunately, I didn't really anticipate how much work there would be to do once we were in the new space.

My husband and I are calling this apartment our "house with training wheels" because it's on the older side and our landlord isn't that hands on. He doesn't mind if we make improvements or changes, but if we want something done, we have to do it ourselves.

A sampling of the things we have done or would like to do to get our living space the way we want it:

• We had all the locks changed, and a single key fits them all. My key ring is very minimalist now, yay!
• We bought a lightly used washer and dryer. We hired someone to install them, but with a couple of Internet searches we could have probably done it ourselves. Next time, we'll know.
• We've blown a fuse a few times already by using too many appliances at once. Not sure how to address that issue, but for now, we're trying to use things one at a time.
• Right now we have vertical blinds, and we'd like to make (or convince my sister-in-law to "help" us make) curtains for our many lovely windows.
• We have hardwood floors for the first time, and we're going to apply felt pads to the bottoms of our furniture to avoid scrapes.
• We have lots of wonderful storage spaces, but deciding where to store what things is harder than I thought. I'm reminding myself that we have to live in the space for a while before we'll know what makes the most sense.

I could go on, but that would just be a to do list for me and you probably aren't very interested in that. Suffice to say, even though the moving part is over, the work of setting up house is definitely not. And for better or worse, there's no deadline (yet! I'm considering scheduling a housewarming party to create one.) and we can take our time setting things up the way we want them.

Thanks for listening throughout this process. If you're contemplating a move, getting a professional organizer in to help you shed things before you pack stuff you don't need, use or like is a great first step!

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

Moving: stage five

So the heat is on now that movers have been scheduled for Friday. I have never moved with professional movers before, and I am tremendously excited. The last time I moved was five years ago, and I remember the aggravation of trying to get my couch up a flight of stairs and around several corners. I did it, with the help of my husband, my father, my sister and a surreptitious dismantling of an emergency exit sign. Though I'm not sure how the movers will choose to remove the couch and get it into the new apartment, I figure they have experience with this sort of thing and it will work out.

My sister and the couch, September 2005.

There are a few things on the to do list before they get here, though. We are mostly packed, so today we're going to focus on getting the new place painted and clean. The apartment has already been painted a lovely navajo white, but we are adding color to three rooms. Painting is physically demanding, but also satisfying. Once I get into the groove, I like seeing the fresh color bloom across the walls. Pulling off the painters tape once everything is dry is quite pleasurable.

I normally use painters tape with clients to create handy temporary or semi-permanent labels; I've enjoyed using it for its proper purpose of paint prep.

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

Customized Command hooks

An organizing product that I've come to use and love in recent months are Command hooks made by 3M. They are instant stick-on hooks that work tremendously well and come off really easily, in case you want to move the hook. I'm experiencing this feature first hand as I pack up my apartment - the hooks are one of the first things that will be put up in the new place.

Here's a wonderful idea a friend of mine hand to customize the hooks she was using to hold keys in her entryway. When she painted the hallway, she painted right over the white plastic hooks, so they now blend right in to her decor. I love this simple but effective idea.

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

Travel digest and moving: stage four

I'm preparing for both a move and an extended trip. I've found my organizational systems challenged as I manage both tasks in addition to the work of my business, including client work, and the work of day to day life. The trash still has to be taken out and the dishes done, even as the moving boxes pile up and the emails fly back and forth about travel plans.

Having some tried and true packing methods has really saved me, as I haven't had to worry about the trip, and packing for the move has been time-consuming, but not difficult.

Here are some of my packing for the move rules:

• Don't pack anything you don't want in the new place. This includes furniture. We have a sizable stack of stuff that will Goodwilled or Freecycled before the movers come.
• Pack the stuff you absolutely use every day last, even if it means like objects get split up. I need my frying pans, and all the kitchen stuff will have to get sorted out again at the new place anyway.
• Repurpose clothes, towels, bedding and dishcloths as packing material where possible.
• LABEL. I like to quickly list as many specific items that are inside a box as possible. At least write a few things, like "mixing bowls" or "cutlery," rather than simply "kitchen." When you are in your new home looking desperately for the coffee maker, you'll be glad you did.

Here are some of my past posts on packing. I'm doing the carry-on/quasi-minimalist packing thing this time again and loving it.

• Preparing for travel: packing
• Pre-trip planning for reunion weekend
• Minimalist packing - something I aspire to

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

Moving: stage three

Boxes. That pretty much sums up stage three of moving from our one-bedroom townhouse apartment to a two-bedroom that's got a laundry room and balcony to boot. The goal is to put stuff in boxes in such a way that they can't be crushed or broken when movers toss them in the back of a large truck, then stacking the boxes in such a way so they aren't a fire hazard.

We're repurposing boxes where we can and filling in with small cardboard moving boxes from Home Depot, reasonable at 67 cents apiece. 

Another, more fun, part of this stage is planning what colors we're painting various walls in the new place. The Glidden paint display at Home Depot has pre-mixed samples of its most popular paint colors. I got two today to try on our walls, before we 100% commit to Robin's Egg and Clear Blue Sky.

I'll let you know how they turn out.

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

Moving: stage two

A week ago, I blogged about how my husband and I had decided to move. In that post I wrote,

Plus, we aren't really in a hurry, so we can take our time finding the right place.

Well, we weren't in a hurry, but we found the right place this week anyway. And since we decided we wanted to live there, the machinery of moving has been started and it doesn't matter how leisurely we'd like the experience to be. We have a deadline now to pack, move and unpack all our stuff, complicated by a two-week-long out-of-state trip we are going starting next week. I'm practicing my deep breathing as I type.

Our plan is to pack everything before the trip and upon our return do the physical move and all that entails (cleaning both places, possibly painting a few walls in the new place, ordering utilities for the new place and canceling the ones here, plus changing our address - the most daunting task. I haven't done it in years. Ahh. Breathing.)

I'm still hoping to achieve what I mention in that previous post:

...that we can maintain this non-stressed-out attitude throughout all the stages of the move!

That remains to be seen, but I'm at least very excited by the new place and the possibilities that it opens up for us!

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

Moving, stage one

My husband and I have decided to move. After five years, we've finally outgrown our apartment and are looking for something a bit bigger, with a few amenities we've come to care about over the years we've lived together in Los Angeles.

I'm lucky to be married with someone who appreciates going about such things in an organized way. We made a list of our non-negotiable items (two parking spaces, gas stove, hardwood floors, etc.) and printed it out so we can take it when we go to look at apartments. He's mapping out neighborhoods that we'd want to live in and cross referencing them with online apartment listings, so we can see two or three apartments at a time. Plus, we aren't really in a hurry, so we can take our time finding the right place, and in the meantime we've thought about how to pack and what we are definitely not taking with us (goodbye hand-me-down dining room chairs). Now is a stellar time to get rid of stuff we no longer need.

I'm looking forward to my first move with movers, and hope that we can maintain this non-stressed-out attitude throughout all the stages of the move!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Bob B. Brown

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 Other Side of Organized

I'm in the middle of the book The Other Side of Organized by Linda Samuels. I heard about on professional organizer Monica Ricci's blog, and ordered it from Amazon recently as I wasn't able to get it from my library system. The slim book is organized by season and its subtitle is Finding Balance Between Chaos and Perfection. It differs from other books about organizing in that it doesn't focus on lots of concrete tips and specific ways to get organized, rather the author takes you on a journey about the different things being organized means.

A couple of things have stood out at me so far. One was about change. Samuels writes about her childhood being very stable and living in the same house for her entire life until she went away to college. She feels that this might be one reasons she says she has to work hard toward being flexible and embracing change instead of shying away from it.

I've been thinking a lot about how the things we see and do in childhood affect us as adults. People often ask me how I decided to be a professional organizer, and as part of the story I tell them that I have always been naturally disposed to being organized. This is true. I wasn't obsessive or extraordinarily neat, but I had a system for things and I was content when I had the clothes I wanted to wear to school laid out the night before, when I had my homework assignments all written out in a to-do list and every week I'd spend part of Sunday afternoon straightening my room and getting ready for the week ahead.

We moved every four or five years when I was growing up, sometimes more often. I think one gets used to saying goodbye to a space one has loved because you learn that you find different things to love about the new space you will inhabit. It makes you less afraid of change when you are exposed to it and it doesn't turn out badly at all.

Similarly, my mother never used the words "clutter clearing" or "purging," but every year or so we'd gather all the stuff we were no longer using or loved, from toys and clothes to artwork and furniture, and put it all outside for a garage sale. By the end of the day my mom would sell a book for 10 cents just to not have to bring it back inside the house! It was our version of clutter clearing and I always looked forward to it. It's funny to look back and realize the feeling of letting go, of renewal and finding the best in a changing situation is something I get to help people find through my professional life now.

My father is a different type, one who buys junk at garage sales and keeps empty (clean) peanut butter jars to store all his gnarly old screws he's picked up over the years, just in case he needs them someday. I feel lucky that I didn't inherit that inclination, but also glad that I've learned compassion for people who think like him.

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