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Jul 15
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Why the Kitchen is the Heart of the Home

By Blog, Home Organizing, Quick Organizing Tips, Simple Living No Comments

What’s one thing we can all agree on about our homes?

 

It’s that no matter where you live, whichever the size of your house, how many heads are under the roof… The kitchen is the heart of the home 💝

It’s the place where we gather for all things important; breakfast, after-school lunchbox drop off, baking, and hosting social events.

And by optimizing this space in our own unique ways, we can craft a specific aesthetic through a mix of organization and color.

Setting a schedule for decluttering and cleaning will also help your kitchen to become more efficient. It will do so because you will not have to clean irregularly or at a moment’s notice for guests, and there is less of a buildup of “stuff”. 

Download your free Kitchen Cleaning Checklist here.

But beyond just the look of a kitchen and pantry, what often stands out most is the feeling we get when we step in 😌 This is something we can curate, too.

Personalize. Add color. Textures. Are you looking for warmth and liveliness? Or cool tones and calm relaxation?

All styles are welcome here, and I invite you into my guide for optimizing your kitchen space.

Our Influence from Kitchens

Let’s talk about efficiency.

If the kitchen is not efficient, we will not be efficient in the kitchen either. It’s important to understand the flow of how a kitchen works, and then to dive into the fun decorating part!

You will soon be able to minimize cooking time and maximize family time with these optimizing tips.

🥣 Cooking

Near your stove and serving stations, the closest drawers can be used for cooking and serving utensils. These can be sectioned with either acrylic or wooden drawer dividers.

This way, you’re not running to the other side of the kitchen for a wooden spoon as your pasta boils over!

You can also keep your plates and meal dishes in a closeby cupboard or drawer for easy serving. Use plate dividers if you’re going to store them in a drawer to avoid chipping.

🥂 Beverages

A convenient location for drinking cups is your cupboard next to the fridge.

If your beverage zone (coffee, tea, drink mixes) is also in this area, at-home and to-go mugs can live here as well. Try a few ideas of arranging them in a decorative way!

💦 Kitchen Sink

Have you heard the saying “everything but the kitchen sink”?

People often forget that under the kitchen sink can be a very useful storage spot, if fitted correctly. Utilize a cleaning caddy and small shelving unit to maximize the space.

Here you can store your kitchen cleaning products, extra sponges, garbage bags, and a compost bin.

💐 Decor

Undoubtedly the best part of styling any home, decorations!

You will want to limit the number of decor pieces on counters. Be cautious to not clutter surfaces, make sure you refresh often (seasons, holidays, change of taste), and dust frequently.

A fun way to make your kitchen more of a social hub, is to incorporate interactive decor pieces. This allows guests to interact with the room itself, therefore feeling more at ease and engaged.

Share more of YOU in your kitchen

Become the home where everyone who stops by wants to be invited in. The comfortable one where kids will not feel distracted or embarrassed by clutter.

One where you wake up and smile, already looking forward to brewing your morning tea 🍵

What features are you most proud of in your kitchen? Share with us below!

 

 

 

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You’ll love this one👉 Clutter + What You Eat

Jun 06
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Reduce Stress and Mind Clutter: Minding Your Mind

By Blog, Quick Organizing Tips, Simple Living No Comments

“Hey Sherry,

Could you write about how to free mind clutter?”

 

Have you ever gone to bed at the end of a stressful day, only to lay there for hours thinking of all the things you need to do the next day?

 

You stress over all the things you need to do and try not to forget when you get up in the morning. Things like calls, emails, and texts to reply to. Kids’ school papers to sign, groceries to buy, what to cook for dinner, and a birthday party to plan. Oh, and don’t forget all the errands, too!😮‍💨

 

Next thing you know you’re waking up exhausted in the morning with a major lack of sleep from all the mental notes to remember.

 

This is called mind clutter.

These are stress signs from your brain that you need to slow down your mental pace and reduce mind clutter.

You could organize your house a hundred times over but when it comes down to it – your headspace follows you everywhere in life. You need to declutter your mind in order to really take care of your personal well-being.

 

No amount of reading quotes online or thinking “I need to get back to myself” is going to transform your mind to a state of peace. You just simply have to do the work.

 

Which brings us to the question…how can we reduce stress and mental clutter? As a Professional Organizer, I have had a ton of experience teaching how to organize both physically and mentally.

 

I see firsthand every day what works and what doesn’t. These habits are what I incorporate into my everyday routine and I now reap the benefits of my mind clutter being off my mind.

 

Saying Goodbye to Mind Clutter Anxiety:

 

✍️ Write it down:

Do a “brain dump” and get your thoughts onto something visual like a notebook or your phone. Write down all the tasks, reminders, errands, dreams, and goals that are cluttering your mind and keeping you awake at night. Don’t evaluate or try to organize this list, just let it flow onto the paper. This exercise alone will remove most of the mind clutter causing you stress, anxiety, frustration, and sleepless nights!

Download "Brain Dump" Exercise

📝 Prioritize Your List:

Look at the list you just made from the mind clutter brain dump and highlight or circle the most important tasks that you want to accomplish next week. This will make the biggest impact on cutting your list down! Sometimes completing one task will take care of many other small tasks, kind of like a domino effect.

 

🧘🏽Meditate:

The goal of meditation can fluctuate. It doesn’t always need to be a deep experience or take a lot of time. Allotting yourself time throughout the day to focus on yourself is highly rewarding. The length can be flexible; maybe some days you have a good hour, some days only five minutes. It can be however best fits your lifestyle and however often you feel will give you the benefits you desire. Try asking yourself what you really need in the moment and allow any feelings, words, or images to flow.

 

Listen to your body and notice how you feel after just these few exercises. Are your shoulders more relaxed and not up at your ears? Are you breathing more calmly? Do you feel more in control and confident that your reminders aren’t slipping through the cracks?🤔

 

All these emotions and feelings are mind clutter. Let’s uncover some more on how to reduce stress and mind clutter:

 

📆 Use a Calendar System:

Pick your tool and stick to it! I can’t stress this enough. Use a digital calendar or a hybrid of a paper planner, daily task list, and/or digital planner. Digital lets you capture appointments and reminders within the moment no matter where you are. Writing down in a traditional paper planner to plan the next day works for others who are more hands-on. Personally, I use a paper planner and a digital planner and I like to plan my day the night before. This sets my mind at ease – which means I get better sleep and I’ve already put my plan in motion for the next day.

🕐 Batch and Block Time:

This is the secret sauce to being highly productive. When you batch time to do specific tasks, you reduce the mind clutter of switching back and forth between different tasks. Batching also saves you time as you’re not multi-tasking and unfocused.  Things to batch are; calls to make, checking your email twice a day, content creation, errands, organizing your computer photos, family time, meal prep, and the like.

 

In conclusion, the more we can consciously manage our to-do lists, the more we are able to unpack our stresses. When a weekly schedule is organized it leaves us with more time to relax and enjoy that time with our loved ones – and who doesn’t need more of that?❤️

 

If this article reminds you of someone who needs to declutter their mind, pass along the tips!

 

 

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You’ll love this one👉 3 Tips for Making the Most of Your Time

May 31
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Making and Keeping a Family Laundry Schedule

By Blog, Inspiration, Quick Organizing Tips 2 Comments

Okay, call me crazy, but… I love doing my family laundry! Seriously, I look forward to it😍

 

And you should too!

 

Though I was definitely not always like this. I used to let it pile up to an embarrassing height – some weeks I could have put Mount Everest to shame!🙈

 

But there came a time where I was just… well plainly, sick of it.

 

I grew tired of feeling lazy. I was tired of seeing piles of clothes everywhere and having to guess what was clean and what was dirty.

 

So I want to lend you my hand. I will help you up and over to the other side of Mount Clothing-Catastrophe. Because I know you can do it, too!

 

If you find it challenging to get your family laundry done consistently without having a backlog, here are some tips you can use to help make it a habit:

(Based on my personal experience!)

 

✨ This may be hard to swallow, but doing your laundry is self-care. I know, it is a chore, but it is a chore that benefits you and your well-being. So, by changing your mindset for how you approach getting your washing done, you’ll already win half the battle. Try sprucing up your space with products you enjoy using, that way you’ll be more inclined to do laundry when the reminder pops into your mind because it will be fun! Be sure that the products are still useful to your specific needs though.

 

✨ To build an actual routine – select a day(s) that makes sense for your needs. I’ve chosen Saturday. By then we usually have 3-4 loads: darks, whites & sheets, towels, and occasionally delicates.

FREE EDITABLE LAUNDRY PLANNER DOWNLOAD

✨ I recommend for a large family household doing laundry as many days a week as you physically can. Of course, this depends on your work schedule, how many kids you have, and how busy they are in their activities. A way to reduce your amount of laundry is by being mindful of the materials of clothing you’re buying, and how you launder them.

 

✨ Look at your work and family schedules to decide the best days and times for getting a load in. By doing your laundry little by little and as often as possible, you can avoid a buildup.

 

✨ This is my favourite trick and what I find to be the most efficient way. Doing certain types of loads on a specific day and making that a ritual. Example: Sundays are for whites and sheets, Tuesdays the darks, Thursdays for towels and rags, and Saturdays for delicates and kids’ school uniforms or the clothes they wore to school.

✨ Another way to get your routine organized is to get the whole family involved. Washing your own clothes is a life skill and habit you can teach kids at a young (but appropriate) age. Even little-little ones can help you collect scattered pieces of clothing! And on the plus side, when you send them off to college, they will already have had plenty of experience taking care of their own laundry!

 

✨ I believe my habits have stuck so well because I built my routine around my life. Not the other way around. Now I do it without a second thought. That’s what you should strive for too!

Example: On Saturdays, my husband and I like to go for a walk or bike ride in the morning. When I wake up the first thing I do is remove the bedsheets and put them in the wash along with the whites. The washing machine finishes by the time we have breakfast and get ready to leave, and I can then put the sheets into the dryer. Then, I’ll put a load of towels in the wash so that two loads of laundry are almost done when we come back from our walk. Then, when the sheets come out of the dryer, we make the bed right away, then put in all the darks.

 

And just like that, our weekly laundry is done!

 

Feeling inspired to organize your laundry room to its maximum efficiency? Check out this 10 Day Decluttering Challenge!

 

Bookmark this for later and share it with that friend who always has all her clothes in the hamper😆