Home Decorating / Home Organization Tips Newsletter  MARCH 2005

WELCOME!  This Home Decorating / Home organization tips newsletter is designed to give real advice from real people visiting our site! 

Click here to add your personal expertise  to next months newsletter-we will pick our favorite decorating tips / home organizations tips for the home from your suggestions and publish the top 5 decorating tips!

Spring is the time to reorganize! 

Follow these tips for the best results:

1.  Declutter your home in 1 hour: Set your timer for 40 minutes, get a bag or box and collect as much  goodwill, garage sale items and trash as possible.  Work fast and vigorously, challenge yourself to get the job done!  After the timer goes off , spend 20 minutes taking trash to dumpster, loading goodwill into your car, and planning the date of your garage sale.  If you cannot commit yourself to a garage sale date, do you really need this stuff?  If not put in your car for goodwill.

2. Count your junk drawers in your home. Spend 10 minutes a day for each junk drawer (the number of days is determined by the number of junk drawers you have) until the job is finished.  When initially finished, mark your Calendar for next month. 

3.  Limit excess clutter on a daily basis:  If your home is like many other homes, you wonder what to do with various nik-naks that show up on your counter tops, floor, kitchen table, etc.  This is especially true for those items that you know should go upstairs or downstairs but are not about to drop everything and run up or down.  Here is a simple solution: Place attractive baskets that fit your decorating style and store them in strategic  places throughout your home.  Next time you pick up something out of place and it doesn't go in that room, simply throw it in the basket for safekeeping.  When the basket gets full, spend 15 minutes distributing the items around your house in the proper spots.

4.  Put 2 things away each time you enter a room: Every time you enter a room in your home, find 2 items that are out of place and commit yourself to put those 2 items away as quickly as possible.  If you have more time, put 5 or more items away and count as you go.  This idea really brings awareness to your problem areas and what you are leaving out of place.  Eventually you will train yourself to put it away the first time!

5.  Control the paper trail:  THROW JUNK MAIL AWAY BEFORE IT LANDS ON ANY SURFACE  IN YOUR HOME! Find ONE spot  to put your mail, kids school papers, and misc. brochures, invitations, flyers, business cards etc.  This spot should be clear to every family member in your home. If you and your family members can train yourselves to absolutely, positively, commit yourselves to doing this, you will be forever grateful of the time you gain throughout the busy work week looking for times, bills, etc.  Next, Mom, this job will probably be yours, designate one day 15 minutes to quickly sort, trash now irrelevant items, and pay bills.  Make one file per month with current Months label on it to store whatever is still in that spot, this way if it is still needed you can refer to it easily.

We hope that you have enjoyed our helpful decorating / home organization oriented tips!  Our goal is to help people understand the process of maintaining and updating decorating ideas throughout the home!

If you would like to contribute to our monthly decorating / home organization newsletter, please follow this link to add your personal expertise  to next months newsletter-we will pick our favorite decorating tips for the home from your suggestions and publish the top 5 decorating tips!