Tag Archives: gift wrap

Do These 8 Things NOW to Reduce Holiday Stress LATER

1. Do the Deep Clean

Now is the time to clean your carpets and refrigerator, dust the blinds and ceiling fans, and disassemble your family room furniture to vacuum under the cushions! If you tackle the deep cleaning now, you’ll be ready to entertain guests after just a surface cleaning of the common areas come December.

2. Declutter

November is the perfect time to declutter your closets as well as the kids’ playroom, in order to make room for the influx of new items that will be arriving in late December.

Decluttering also comes into play as you begin the holiday decorating process. Take time to review your holiday decor; remove any items that you haven’t used in the past few years from your collection. You can either donate the items, or consider hosting a “holiday decor swap” with your friends.

During your declutter frenzy, don’t neglect the kitchen! Declutter the refrigerator, freezer and pantry by tossing unused leftovers and expired items. You’ll need to make room for all of the yummy holiday party food!

3. Take inventory of your food

As we all know, food plays a significant role in our holiday celebrations, so expect to devote a bit more time and energy during this season for organizing and maintaining the areas that serve as home to your food items.

Once you’ve cleaned and decluttered the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry, take inventory of what food items you now have on hand. Knowing what you already have comes in handy when you begin preparing your holiday grocery shopping list. I actually recommend using laminated printable inventory sheets on a regular basis to assist with weekly meal planning (click on the image to purchase a set for yourself!).

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4. Prepare and freeze meals

During the holiday season, you may find yourself hosting an impromptu get-together with friends/family. It pays to cook and freeze a few one-pot meals now so that you’ll have an easy home-cooked meal on hand for these occasions.

5. Organize your coupons

Go through your coupon collection and weed out the expired ones. Create a system for tracking expiration dates for those “great deal” coupons that you definitely plan to take advantage of as you begin your holiday shopping in the weeks to come.

6. Take inventory of your gift wrap supplies

Now’s the time to ensure that you have a sufficient supply of gift wrap, gift bags, ribbon, and scotch tape on hand. If you don’t have a gift wrap station, go ahead and create one (see my previous post for ideas).

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7. Prepare holiday cards

If you choose to send out a holiday card, begin completing all of the sub-tasks associated with getting the cards in the mail…purchasing stamps, updating your card recipient address list, taking the family photo, etc. Even if you prefer not to send the cards out for another month, you can purchase/create cards, stuff and address the envelopes and have them ready for send-off now!

8. Declutter your camera memory cards

Remove the memory cards from your cameras and video recorders, download the contents onto your computer and delete the images/videos from the memory cards in order to make room for all of the amazing images/video footage you plan to capture during the 2014 holiday season!

What other holiday tasks do you tend to complete in early November in order to get them off of your holiday To Do list? Please use the Comments area below to share your tips with other readers!

Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms? Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn

Hot Organizing Tools Featured at the NAPO Organizing Expo – Part 1

1. Organize Your Clothes with Pliio

One of the first products I discovered on my foray into the Organizing Expo Hall was the Pliio Clothing Filer. This product totally plays into my OCD tendencies. Do you struggle with maintaining order within your dresser drawers or closet shelves? The Pliio Clothing Filer is a tool which makes it easy to fold your clothes and store them in perfectly uniform piles or stacks. This enables you to easily see all of the garments that you own. The structure makes putting away and retrieving clothes effortless. L-O-V-E it!

Here’s professional organizer and Pliio co-creator Clare Kumar demonstrating how to use Pliio at the conference:

Not only does the Pliio system reign in clutter at home, it is also a useful tool for keeping the clothing in your suitcase uber-organized while traveling. Pliio comes in several sizes to accommodate various types of garments, including children’s clothing. You can purchase them at Bed, Bath, & Beyond or The Shopping Channel.

2. Organize Your Gift Wrap Supplies with Wrap iT

Raise your hand if you have struggled with keeping all of those gift wrap rolls and supplies corralled and organized. I have. In fact, I wrote a blog post on it not too long ago. For those of you with your hands raised, I’m happy to introduce you to Wrap iT, the all-in-one solution for organizing all of your gift wrap and wrapping supplies. Wrap iT is available in both a regular and a deluxe size. Both options hold up to 26 (yes, 26) rolls of wrapping paper, but the deluxe version can accommodate oversize rolls. There are a number of storage compartments designed to hold gift bags, tissue paper, ribbons/bows, tape and scissors…everything you need to create a gorgeously packaged gift.

As creator Adam Levine demonstrated at conference, the Wrap iT includes a unique system for storing wrapping paper rolls to prevent those annoying frayed/damaged edges that can often occur when rolls are stuffed willy nilly inside the closet or under the bed.

The best part about Wrap iT is that it stores so much in so little space! When hung in the closet, Wrap iT takes up about as much space as a suit jacket. If you don’t want to hang it in the closet, its slim profile enables you to simply tuck it away underneath a bed. I love this product so much that I plan to become an affiliate and sell it in the Recommended Products page of my website! Until then, you can purchase it directly from the Wrap iT website.

3. Organize Your Vital Documents with LifeinCase

I spend a great deal of time working with clients to organize their “paper life”. One of the overriding goals we strive to achieve together is to create systems for easily retrieving important documents (for them or for their loved ones) in the event of an emergency. Whether the situation takes the form of a medical emergency, a sudden death, or a natural disaster, it is crucial for everyone to have a way to quickly find the important documents.

The makers of LifeinCase recognized this need and created a ready-made system that makes it quite easy for anyone to gather their essential documents and have them ready to “grab and go” in the event of any emergency.

LifeinCase is an organizational tool that’s comprised of:

5 Plastic Folders: To hold Personal, Medical, Financial, Estate, and Property records
Checklists: Summarizing the 50 essential documents that should be stored in each of the 5 folders
Grab-and-Go Tote: 500 sheet capacity that’s small enough to be portable, yet larger enough to hold all essential documents

LifeinCase comes in multiple patterns and colors and is available on their website.
Stay tuned for the next post, where I’ll be describing cool time management and productivity tools from the NAPO 2014 conference!

Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms? Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn

Organizing the Organizer’s Home: Closet Makeover Reveal

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Ever heard the saying about the cobbler’s children who have no shoes? Sometimes this adage holds true for professional organizers as well!

I have a confession to make…there are areas in my own home that are in desperate need of an organizing makeover (audible gasp).

One of my resolutions for 2014 is to set aside time in my schedule to revamp these spaces. As I alluded to in my last blog post, I took advantage of the Container Store’s annual Elfa shelving sale in January and completed the first project – the guest room closet makeover.

This closet serves as a storage area for gift wrapping supplies, photos, scrapbooks, fabric, sewing machine/supplies, and empty shopping bags. These items are seldom accessed, but when I do need to retrieve something, I usually end up uttering a few choice curse words as I sift through the closet contents. This is particularly true when it comes time to retrieve a gift bag:

During the “makeover” process, I followed the same steps that I do with every client I work with, beginning with assessing the space. As you can see in the top photo, it’s quite clear that storing items on the floor is not working. My new storage system needed to take full advantage of the vertical space in the closet. I determined that the best solution for my specific storage needs is a set of freestanding deep drawers for each side of the closet. In addition, I decided to change out the stationary shelving and replace it with a track shelving system. In addition to giving me the benefit of adjustable shelf height, the track system allowed for the addition of a third shelf to be installed at the top of the closet to store smaller, lighter items.

A quick aside…I must rave about the Container Store’s customer service! I called the store to place the order for my closet system the day before my road trip to the Columbus store. When I arrived, they had all the components of my system wrapped up and ready to load in my car. I also love the cute bags that they use to store the small components and hardware:

Once I returned from the store, the transformation began. After removing everything from the closet, the next step in the process was to sort items into categories and purge unwanted items. It was then time to remove the existing shelving system (no small feat), patch the holes, paint, and begin to install the track system:

Do you see that horizontal piece at the top of the closet? It’s called the top track, and one of the awesome features of the Elfa easy hang system is that this is the only piece that attaches to your wall. Fewer holes in your wall is always a good thing.

Ready for the reveal?

What was once my least favorite closet is currently my most favorite. I go in there several times a day and open the drawers to admire the perfectly organized contents!

It would have been ideal to remove the closet doors for the photo shoot, but Dear Hubby said it would be too much effort. I’ve done my best to capture the changes in the photos below:

Here’s a close-up of the amazing drawer system. Elfa drawers can either be attached to the track or set up as part of a freestanding system. I chose the freestanding systems, since they allowed for the wider and deeper drawer size that my project required. Let’s take a look inside those drawers, shall we?

This is one of the two shallow top drawers, which contain small gift bags, wrapping supplies and tissue paper.

Now the gift bags are easily retrievable. I even have separate drawers for everyday gift bags and holiday-themed gift bags! I seem to have a gift bag and gift wrap fetish. So I’ve implemented one of the rules that I teach my clients when it comes to controlling clutter…let the container set the limit for how much you can keep. I can only keep as many gift bags as this drawer can accommodate:

Of course, the last step in organizing the drawers was to label each one so that everyone else is clear on what items live in each drawer:

Let’s shift our attention to the closet shelves. Empty boxes for gifts and the seldom-used sewing kit are the perfect items to be stored up high:

The lower shelves are used to store my scrapbooks, photos, and unfinished projects. I love the addition of the storage baskets for corralling those scrapbooks!

More basket eye-candy…

The left side houses my print photo collection (notice the archival quality storage boxes). There’s another basket that contains gift wrapping ribbon.