That buzz in your head… Could it be clutter chatter?
Cheap Thoughts and Stuff
Making that noise disappear probably requires a commitment to live a simpler life with fewer, although higher quality, things instead of hoarding cheap, unnecessary stuff.
Refrain from fooling yourself into thinking that you save money when you find something at a low cost and buy more than you need. Money is spent when you buy stuff, not when you get rid of it.
When you buy cheap stuff by volume and refuse to discard or donate what you don’t need, you continually waste money and reject better possibilities in your life.
We All Know This Person
Here’s an example. Consider someone who finds no money to have some home repairs done but has bought all gadgets sold by infomercials between midnight and 5 am for the past year.
This person now has every possible iteration of cat litter boxes, 18 different lines of weight loss products and programs (because nothing works), seven different mops, laptop gadgets, several high-end electronic toys, four Roomba vacuum cleaners, and three other systems of oil diffusers, to name a few.
If added on a whole year, the amount spent on all those things could be enough to tackle significant repairs or upgrades in the home and buy the top-quality item in every category they genuinely need.
Yet, they continually spend their money on useless things (on sale), continue living in a house that is falling apart due to lack of maintenance, and continue hoarding cheap, low-quality versions of items they might or might not need. Does that make sense?
And remember that the more you have, the more you need to keep up with, more to clean, more to store, more effort to find what you are looking for, and so on.
Ah, let’s remember the cost of storage. You pay for every square inch of your home, which should be living space, not storage space. And the monthly fee for a storage unit? Do not even go there! Why do this to yourself and your family?
Turn Those Feelings Around
It seems very hard for people to let go of useless things accumulated in this manner. They might need to shift their emotions around stuff and money if they wish to break this spending cycle and upgrade the quality of their life.
Shifting how they feel about money and themselves would be a fundamental change if they aspire to live a simpler, stylish life that makes them proud.
Please understand that an elevated lifestyle has less to do with your financial situation or the size of your home. Instead, it is about your mindset, priorities, how deserving you feel to receive the best of life, and where you direct your attention to and your intention from now on.
The ability to notice details and the willingness to creatively tweak little things are crucial to achieving the perfect space in a project. Organizing takes skill, patience, strategy, time, and attention to detail. Those are a Professional Organizer’s tools of the trade. However, Organizers are exceptional at developing systems that take organizing to its next level. Systems usually increase clients’ efficiency in utilizing their space.
Consider the kitchen cabinet and notice all details involved in the process resulting in an organized, functional space. However, organizing this cabinet also resulted in two efficient systems.
Systems Take Organizing To The Next Level
The Kitchen Cabinet Situation
this cabinet had lots of cookbooks and recipe binders
it also had a myriad of serving items
books stacked sideways because some did not fit the space
recipe clippings were sticking out of books and binders
nothing was labeled or had hand-written post-it notes
Also….
recipes were hard to remember, identify, or use
meals were boring, repetitive, and unhealthy
medicine and supplement bottles occupied the lower shelf of this cabinet
taking meds and supplements was inconsistent because of the sorting and opening of bottles required, and it was hard to remember who took what and when
The kitchen cabinet needed some tweaking to become a functional cabinet with valuable, organized content.
The Process
removed all cabinet contents
sorted through contents and removed what was no longer wanted or needed
pills presorted in bags according to dosage/time of intake for each person
pill bags divided into baskets for each household member
system benefit: a streamlined process where everyone knows where, what, when, and how when getting their meds
The development of systems improves efficiency in the use of your space. Therefore, designing systems that increase productivity and make life easier is one of the most valuable benefits you can get from working with a Professional Organizer.
If you want to experience some of “Organizing magic,” let’s talk! We’d love to hear about you and see how we can help.
Whether you are a caregiver to an older adult or a mom managing a family who values wellness, you might find that administering pills can become almost a full-time job. But here are 7 steps to ease your pill pain.
I want to share a system that can simplify pill management and increase consistency in taking meds and supplements for everyone. The secret is the pillbox!
What You Need
Here are some tools you might need for this process.
Pillboxes with morning, noon, evening, and bedtime compartments that you can find at your favorite pharmacy or Amazon)
Label maker (optional)
Sharpie
Medium to large plastic bin or container (these Multi-Purpose bins work wonders, as well as my favorite plastic box ever created).
The Steps
Place all prescribed and OTC meds and supplements that household members regularly take in the plastic bin or tote. The amount and size of pill bottles on hand determine the size of your container or box. This step only happens once because this bin will become the forever home of ingestible medicines and supplements at home. You may benefit from a second plastic container for all OTC medicines NOT taken regularly (like cough syrup, painkillers, allergy medicine, etc.)
Write each person’s name (or initial) on each bottle lid. Include the intake frequency of that product. For example, “M 1-am/2-pm” indicates that person “M” takes one of those pills in the morning and two in the evening. Repeat this process with all bottles to make it easy to identify from the top inside the bin.
Label each side of each pillbox with the person’s name taking the meds/supplements from that box. Assign a pillbox to each person taking any product regularly.
Line all pillboxes on your counter or table and open their lids.
Select all bottles of one person and place in their pillbox all medication and supplements that person takes, according to the timing and dosage needed. Alternatively, you might prefer to work with one product at a time. In this case, distribute that medication into the pillboxes of everyone that takes that product.
Repeat the process for each person or per product bottle (depending on your preferred method).
Close all pillbox lids when each box is complete with all medications and supplements for that individual.
**Devote 30 minutes to this task every week. Make it a commitment and calendar this activity!
Where and Why
Ingestible medicines and supplements are best kept in the kitchen, not the bathroom. The bathroom humidity affects the product’s power. Keeping medication and supplements in the kitchen makes sense because we ingest these, usually with water or another beverage. The pantry or a cabinet in the kitchen are optimal places for these pillboxes and the container with bottles.
On the other hand, things we apply to our skin, hair, teeth, or nails go in the bathroom. This group includes things like rubbing alcohol, H2O2, antibiotic creams, muscle pain patches, cotton, gauze, bandages, and the like.
It is simpler to take medications and supplements when we do not need to sort the product, open several bottles, and make the same decisions over and over, several times per day. Therefore, it makes sense to streamline this process.
When medicines and supplements are in one place, it is easier to find what we need at any moment. This central location of meds and supplements also facilitates knowing what needs reordering and when. It also eliminates having multiple open bottles of the same product.
The best thing about this process is its inherent accountability – we can easily see who did not take their supplements or medicines and when just by looking at the pillbox. Thus, this system also increases the consistency in taking medications.
Make It Happen
Hopefully, these five steps described above will make it easier for everyone to consistently take their meds and supplements. But to make it happen:
Devote 30 minutes to this task every week.
Place this activity on the calendar as a recurrent weekly activity.
Make it a commitment.
Pro-Tip:Consolidate medicine when it arrives at your home. Usually, medication bottles come half empty. There is no reason to have several half-empty bottles of the same product, which takes up a lot of space and leads to expired medication around the home.
23 Things To Make 2023 The Best Year Ever offers ideas to enrich our lives in the next twelve months. And as we know, getting organized can improve our lives immensely. So, LocalProfile Magazine invited My Space Reclaimed to collaborate on this article.
Ringing in the new year with a clean home is necessary for most households. However, cleanliness does not always equal organization. Maristella Bertram, the owner of My Space Reclaimed, is a Professional Organizer who works with clients to find the root cause of disorganization in their homes.
“Lack of awareness results in us putting things down instead of away.” Instead of just rearranging clutter into bins, Bertram offers guidance to clients who typically feel “perfection paralysis” and guilt over not organizing on their own. If this is you, don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Here’s my take on the greatest pitfall in home management.
That laundry basket seems to travel around the house and never gets emptied. Do you know that basket? Families don’t have time to finish the laundry. It looks like cleaning up the kitchen is another problem for most people.
Laundry, paper, and kitchen are the nemeses of so many! I repeatedly hear an argument: “there is not enough time to keep the house in order.” The problem here is probably a lack of systems and time management skills.
Have You Ever Had a Managerial Role?
I have identified a common pitfall among household managers — not acting as managers at home. Most people do not apply in their homes the skill set that makes them successful at work. But why not?
If you work outside the house, you have managed to keep your job, staying on top of things. Regardless of the type of work you do, there are out-of-the-ordinary projects and day-to-day ones. And those routine tasks most likely comprise the backbone of your job. Whether you supervise those tasks or execute them, the responsibility is yours. If you stopped ensuring those processes were thoroughly performed, things would go south rapidly.
Why can’t we all plan and execute like true managers at home? One might think it is because home is where we rest and do not want to think of chores and duties.
Here’s the Irony
But the irony here is that the more you feel that way, the more chaotic your home environment will be and the less you can rest and relax.
Looking for the million things you can’t find in the home, buying duplicates, wasting time, effort, and money, forgetting essential family commitments, or not having a dining room table available to gather around.
Each time we neglect our home duties, we add a new layer of chaos to our most intimate environment and the corresponding energetic shift that such chaos brings. Are you sure your home is where you want to rest and forget about the stress of your job?
What Get Scheduled, Gets Done
Running the home like a well-oiled machine requires planning what needs to happen. Remember that what gets scheduled gets done.
You would not leave it to chance or rely on “when you have time” to make client appointments at work or to write that report for the boss, right? So then, why not schedule house chores and involve every household member? This way, everyone contributes to the home and learns to execute all these domestic chores. This knowledge is essential. Your kids don’t want to go to college to realize they don’t even know how to boil an egg.
Then Schedule It!
Much of our household stress would decrease if we transferred some of the management skills we proudly displayed at work to the home and startedplanningand schedulingthe many menial household tasks.
Planning allows us to control when and how these things happen, while scheduling means that those chores will stop interfering with our lives — they will be part of it.
