Peace of Mind Organizing

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 3

13 January 2025

Today I turned my attention to a charging cables, which are a constant challenge. My husband and I organized a bunch of them into Ziploc bags, which are stored in a container under the console table in our living room. That table is our charging station and so far it’s worked out well.

But I’ve always had my own stash of charging cables that I store in my office. In our house, which started its life as a two-family house, my office was on the first floor and our living quarters were on the second floor. So it made sense to have cables in two places. And it seemed like I was always trying to organize those cables. (Here’s the most recent blog post about that.)

But in our apartment, my office is just steps away from the living room so there’s no reason for me to have my own stash. Even so, I had a bit of a hard time convincing myself to let go. I decided today’s the day. The last time we were looking for a particular type of cable, I took one of the containers I store cables in out and left it on a surface. It’s been there mocking me since.

Here’s how it was looking.

Today, I decided to integrate the cables. I went through the container in my office and sorted the cables into the Ziplocs in the living room container.

I left the cables related to powering my MacBook in the office, as well as a few random adapters that didn’t really fit into the categories stored in the living room. Not perfect, but good enough.

Here’s the after photo:

And in case you’re interested, here’s a photo of container of charging cables that we keep in the living room. It has a nice lid, so it’s not too unsightly.

That tiny project took maybe half hour, but I was watching TV at the same time. It feels nice to have the office container out of my sight line. And I know that I will be glad not to have to search in two places if I’m looking for a particular cable!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 2

10 January 2025

Today my tiny project was the deep drawer in our kitchen that holds dish towels, cleaning cloths and aprons. When we moved in June, these items were placed in the drawer without much thought (the drawer was a different shape than the ones we used in our old house). It’s been functional but for the last six months I’ve frequently thought to myself, “I need to organize this better.”

So today was the day.

Here’s a before photo. What you can’t see are the many towels and rags lurking beneath the dish towels.

I emptied the contents of the drawer onto the dining room table and sorted them out. I had various types of dish cloths and cleaning cloths, as well as aprons in there.

Here’s a photo of the sorted piles—that drawer was like a clown car!

My husband is the cook in our family and he sometimes has strong opinions about things. So I consulted him. I learned that he hates the cloth diapers I bought for cleaning cloths years ago. (I typically use high-quality microfiber cloths now.) So it was easy for me to let go of those.

There were five aprons in the drawer, one of which is mine. He said he needs only two, so I kept the two with the longest ties. (His criterion.) There were a few dish towels with big holes, so those went into the discard pile as well.

I put the keepers back in the drawer. It doesn’t look that much different, but I love that the excess is gone and that it’s going to be easy to find what we need. I’m trying to avoid using paper towels for little clean-ups, so I kept a small pile of rags I’d cut from an old dish towel awhile ago and placed them next to the aprons.

Here’s the after photo.

Is it beautiful? Heck no. But it’s more functional and now I can check it off my mental list.

The project took about a half hour since I had to involve Barry. But it was a satisfying tiny project!

Stay tuned for more—the other three projects next week!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge: Day 1

9 January 2025

Yesterday, I wrote that I was going to take on five tiny projects around my apartment in the next five days. I want them to be tiny so they can be fun to achieve and not take too much time.

My first tiny project was the top drawer of the elfa rolling cart I keep under my desk for easy access. This drawer houses the supplies I use daily for bullet journaling. It also houses dry-erase supplies because my desk has a dry-erase surface (!). I use those supplies every day as well.

Here’s the before photo. It was pretty functional but not particularly tidy.

And here’s the after photo.

I use Washi tape in my bullet journal each day to designate the date and I’ve accumulated a collection. (I change up the style every month.) I tidied them up and added a yogurt jar to hold the Washi tape sets that come on small tubes. I contained the dry-erase supplies more nicely. And I moved the frequently accessed Post-it® notes to the front of the drawer, so I don’t have to pull the long drawer out as far to access them. I also changed up the rubber stamps I’m keeping in the drawer. I used the containers that were in the drawer plus added one little box to put the dry erase pens. I used negative space for my small Post-it® notes and for the white board spray cleaner.

I took me longer than 15 minutes because I got distracted creating an envelope to hold a little pile of stickers. I then abandoned the envelope. Ignoring that fun little diversion, I think the project took about 20 minutes. It’s a fairly subtle difference but it’s actually very pleasing. And I had a good time doing it!

January 2025 tiny projects challenge!

8 January 2025

Back in 2020, during the lockdown, I did a series of personal tiny projects challenges to create order in my home and keep me sane. I repeated it a few times over the next couple of years. (Check out the tiny projects tag to look back on those posts.) We’ve been in our apartment for six months now and there are a few little spaces that either never were fully organized or have become disorderly in that time. I thought I’d try to address five of them in the coming five days.

My goal is that each project will take no more than 15 minutes to accomplish. (We’ll see.)

I jotted down a few ideas so I’ll have plenty to choose from each day. They include:

• The two drawers of our primary bathroom vanity
• Our dishtowel/rag drawer in the kitchen
• The two kitchen pullout shelves that serve as our main pantry space
• The bank of elfa drawers that serve as kitchen overflow and junk drawers
• The elfa drawer bank under my desk where I store pens, washi tape and other important things. I access them daily.
• The bulk spices drawer in the kitchen
• Charging cables (a constant challenge)
• My fountain pen collection (which I started in the 1980s and haven’t touched in probably 20 years)

Keep an eye on the blog in the coming days to see the results of my challenge!

I encourage you to join me in decluttering and organizing a small space for a few days. If you’re in, let me know in the comments.

My word of the year for 2025: Flex

31 December 2024

I love coming up with a word of the year (WOTY) each year that inspires me throughout the year. Some years, I go through exercises to come up with it, but this year it came to me while I was floating in a flotation tank. I was contemplating my WOTY when the word FLEX popped into my head. It just felt right.

So in 2025, I’m going to embrace flexing my physical and mental muscles as well as work on my flexibility in body and spirit. Now that my husband and I share a car, I need to be flexible with my schedule as well.

The practical applications of my word of the year include:

• working with a personal trainer (I found one and have scheduled four appointments!)
• doing at-home yoga regularly (I’m now putting down my yoga mats at night to make it easier to just do it in the morning)
• pulling open the doors in my apartment building, rather than opening the door with the button intended for people in wheelchairs (why not take advantage of an opportunity to flex?)

I can’t wait to see how the word FLEX pans out for me. I feel like this is a good one.

How about you? Do you have a word of the year? Feel free to share it in the comments!

Yoga with Adriene's 7-Day yoga journey

17 December 2024

For the last five years or so, I’ve eagerly anticipated Yoga with Adriene’s 30-day yoga journey, which was presented every January for ten years. Last year, Adriene announced that 2024’s 30-day journey would be the last. She certainly deserved a break.

This month, I was thrilled with her announcement that it just didn’t feel right to her to do nothing special in January. So she’s created a seven-day practice, starting January 1. It’s called Prana and, I believe, it’s focused around breath and meditation.

Here’s the video she posted about it.

Unlike other years, there is no sign up required and there won’t be daily emails. Just go to Yoga with Adriene’s You Tube channel each day and click on the new video. (She’s letting it be easy!) I am looking forward to practicing every day with thousands of people at the same time. As always, it’s completely free.

Let me know in the comments if you’ll be participating. I can’t wait; it feels like a wonderful way to start the new year!

Worth repeating: Storage solutions hiding in your house

9 December 2024

I wrote this post a couple of years ago and when I stumbled on it today, it made me smile. All the pictures were taken in the house we sold this fall, but looking around my current office, I see that those storage solutions almost are still in place. That’s a real endorsement!

Next time you’re inclined to go to Target or the Container Store to buy some bins or other storage solutions, I encourage you to take a look around your house and see what you might already have on hand that you can use.

I started noticing all the containers I use to organize my things that initially came into my house for another reason. Here are some ideas:

Vases. If you’re like many people, you have a collection have vases that have come into your life over the years. The sheer variety of sizes and shapes make them an excellent first stop if you’re looking store something. Here’s an example from my home: I ordered some pens from Amazon that (to my surprise) came individually packaged. I couldn’t just put them in a jar as is my custom (see below), so I pulled out a vase. It’s working beautifully!

Jars. I love jars so much. (Especially yogurt jars!) I use them for a variety of things (including to hold eyeglasses), but my main use for them is to hold pens. Here’s a snap of one of the shelves in my office that holds pens in jars and drinking glasses.

I also use canning jars to hold paper clips and binder clips.

Pretty boxes that came with other things. Back when I used to buy makeup, I loved these boxes that (if I remember correctly) Bare Minerals sets used to come in. Now I store card-making supplies in them in my office.

Now that I’m a bullet journaler, I go through journals pretty quickly. Some of them come packaged in nice boxes. I used one of them to store overflow Mildliner pens. The two boxes on top in this photo are awaiting their purposes.

Dip bowls. Years ago I bought a bunch of dip bowls from West Elm that I love. I use them for dips, for decoration, and to hold stuff in my medicine cabinet. I also use them to store my Scrabble tiles. I don’t play Scrabble, but I bought a set of tiles to make blog headers. I have divided them into three bowls for easier access, divided into the beginning, middle and end of the alphabet.

The list goes on. These were just repurposed storage solutions I found without leaving my office! Serving bowls, food-storage containers and cups are all possibilities. I encourage you to look in your kitchen cabinets for items you could repurpose. I hope you’ll be inspired!