Peace of Mind Organizing

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!

Take some time for gratitude

25 November 2024

I love Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday that reminds me to be grateful.

While it’s a blissfully stress-free day for me (I don’t have to do anything but eat and enjoy the company of my friends-who-are-family), I know Thanksgiving can be stressful for some. And it’s the launch day for a potentially stressful holiday season.

Here’s what I want to suggest: Take some quiet time this week and make a list of things you’re thankful for. Like me, you may have been through a lot this year. But even amidst challenges and sorrows, you can always find silver linings when you look for them. Can you write down a few this week?

Reflecting on your blessings can help you reduce stress. Science shows that it makes you happier. “Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships,” according to a Harvard health newsletter article on happiness research. And science also shows an inverse relationship between gratitude and loneliness, according to this Washington Post article that details simple ways to create a gratitude practice and reap its benefits.

There’s no better time than now to take a quiet moment and reflect on all you have to be grateful for. I hope you’ll take a few moments this Thanksgiving and do just that.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m grateful for you.

Photo by Megan Watson on Unsplash

18 years of blogging

18 November 2024

This month marks the 18th blogiversary for this blog. On November 10, 2006 I posted my first blog post. Today, I’m publishing my 1679th post. (That includes the posts I’ve deemed worthy of repeating.)

Eighteen years of blogging—I can’t even believe it. I’m very proud that I’ve been able to blog consistently. I’m very grateful to my web designer, Nora Brown for encouraging me to start a blog. It’s possible I had never even have read a blog when she suggested it.

Blogging has required discipline, creativity, and effort, but all that has been paid back in spades. My blog has allowed me to connect with folks I would not otherwise have known (and vice versa), from all over the world. It has helped Peace of Mind Organizing be in the top of the search engine rankings for folks looking to hire a professional organizer in St. Louis. It allows my clients to get to know me before they hire me. It establishes my expertise. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

This blog has paid huge dividends. I do think it has served its original purpose of allowing prospective clients to get to know me (and continues to do so), but it has been useful in so many other ways:

• It helps keep my website high in search rankings
• It establishes my expertise
• It allows me to view the world through the eyes of a blogger—I’m constantly looking at situations and wondering how I can turn them into something helpful for my blog readers.
• It’s made me more reflective
• It’s put me in front of reporters who then interview me (check out my Press Room for links to some of those articles)
• It’s helped record my personal history so I don’t have to rely on my memory (in a way, it’s a very public journal)

These are just some of the reasons I blog. And I obviously enjoy it. In 2012, I added a second blog, Organize Your Family History and in 2023 I started a third one at my budget coaching website, Peace of Mind Budgeting. I try to blog once a week at each of them.

Internet marketing for small businesses has changed so much since I started Peace of Mind Organizing back in 2005. Blogging has taken a back seat to social media and video marketing. People don’t get as much information from blogs as they did when I started this blog. But I keep blogging and I keep benefitting.

It may sound weird, but my blogs feel like friends to me. I love giving them the attention they deserve and they give so much back to me in return.