Organization Tips - 6/12

Ending the Mud Room Mayhem

Hi Idea Room readers – it’s Becky from the Clean Mama Blog and Clean Mama Printables! I’m excited to be here today sharing a little organizational tip or two about mud room mayhem (or any place the coats, boots, cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, etc. collect). Every home has a place where stuff gets stashed, coats are dropped and supplies are hidden. This may be in several areas of your home or you may have a mud room as your go-to place for these items. Regardless, adding a little organization to the general area(s) is always helpful. This week I’m going to show you how I organized the closet portion of my mud room.

Our mud room has a closet with double doors – it’s not as functional as it might sound because there’s a dog kennel in front of one of the doors, but there’s a lot of room to store mud room-type stuff.

Here are a couple ideas for getting and keeping the stuff organized:

group like items together – in baskets, bins, boxes…

I put all the weird household stuff (legs for the washing machine, cabinet knobs, door stops, etc.) in Ziploc bags and then put all those bags in a bin labeled miscellaneous

Plastic shoe boxes are great for storing smaller items like batteries and electrical cords. I put the batteries in individual Ziploc bags by type/size inside the box for easy access.

hang what you can off the floor to maximize your space

label, label, label

I printed my labels on cardstock, cut them out and laminated them

I attached them to my containers with stick-on velcro so I could move them around and change if needed

overview of the mudroom closet

Do you have a mud room that needs some identification?

Go here to get some specific mud room labels like the ones that I used.

You can go here if you want some blank labels like these.

Thanks for having me, Amy – Happy Organizing!

February 3, 2011 · Filed under: Clean Mama--Organizational Tip Series, Cleaning Tips, Moms, Organization Tips Tagged with

Organize Address and Phone Numbers–The Idea Room Organization Tips with Clean Mama

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I am so excited to kick off our new Idea Room Organizational Tips series with Clean Mama! I always feel the need to clean, organize and de-junk my home during the month of January and Clean Mama is just the person to with the skills and know how to get me headed in the right direction. If you don’t follow her blog get on over there…you don’t know what you are missing. And lucky for you…she is going to be posting here every other Thursday for several weeks helping us get our homes and clutter in tip top shape. But enough from me…here’s Becky aka Clean mama!

Hello Idea Room Readers – I’m Becky from the Clean Mama blog and I’m so excited to be here today! For the first installment of “Organizing Tips”, I’m going to show you how I made my own address and telephone number box – to replace my beloved Rolodex.
I love to have numbers and addresses handy in the kitchen by the phone – but I wanted to come up with a cuter way to keep those contacts handy.

say goodbye to this little guy

start with a box – this could be a vintage recipe box tin, an old recipe card box that you no longer use, or (this is what I did) you can purchase an unfinished hinged box here at JoAnn.com (get an online code from retailmenot.com to get an even better discount)

choose your paints – I mixed these three colors to get just the right color to accent my kitchen

paint entire box (inside, outside, bottom)

in a word document, type up dividers for your sections – or I made a printable of the ones that I used – there’s a black and a teal version

print out labels to divide up your contacts alphabetically (I printed mine on a patterned piece of scrapbook paper, cut to 8 1/2 x 11 inches)

cut into desired shapes

decoupage label to box and paint the gel medium on the entire box

(I use Martha’s, but Mod Podge is awesome too)

glue labels to index cards – carefully space the labels so you can see all the labels at the same time, like file

folders

put your addresses and phone numbers in your new box

some ideas for how to organize your information:

hand write names, addresses, numbers, birthdays the old-fashioned way

mail merge your digital address book on labels (use a cute font and center it) and affix the labels on index cards

print out the addresses and numbers on cardstock using this Avery template (you can buy perforated note cards too, but I like to cut the cards so I have a nice clean line)

I like to put birthdays and anniversaries on the cards too for an extra place to reference those important dates

glue down business cards to notecards to keep everything the same size and easy to find

Thanks for having me Amy! I hope this is a fun organizing tip for all of you – I’d love for you to come and visit me at my blog, Clean Mama – January is Cleaning Month, so there’s lots of dust flying around.

★Amy

January 6, 2011 · Filed under: Clean Mama--Organizational Tip Series, Organization Tips Tagged with

The Mom Planner and Clean Mama Giveaway

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**This giveaway is now CLOSED**

Like most of you, the start of the new school year gets me excited to get things organized! One of my projects has been to make myself a “Mom Planner” to help me stay organized and on top of the many responsibilities that are involved with keeping a home and raising a family!

So I started to put together a binder that contained some lists that would help me do just that…keep it all organized. Well you can imagine how excited I was when I was contacted by Becky from Clean Mama about her amazing collection of printables just for moms.

I was able to review many of her products and I have to tell you that I LOVE them! They are nice and clean looking and are set-up to be really user friendly.

Meet Clean Mama: Becky, a clean-freak trapped in an artist’s body, a stay/work-at-home mom to two little ones and former art teacher. In her “spare” time she looks for new ways to simplify, organize, create, cook and clean – she chronicles these endeavors on her blog – Clean Mama.

Clean Mama Printables is the Etsy shop where Clean Mama sells her homekeeping and organizing printables, designed to make your life easier.

Becky has put together Kits to make everyday tasks a little more fun: The Busy Mama Homekeeping Kit (18 documents), The Cleaning Kit (her bestseller), a Meal Planning Kit, and The Christmas Planning Kit. She also sells individual documents that include customization – like the Weekly Docket and Shopping List. Everything she sells is customizable for your homekeeping needs. She loves special orders, so if you have something in mind but don’t see it, just ask!

Clean Mama would like to give THREE Idea Room Readers a free kit of their choice from her shop. All you have to do is head over to Clean Mama Printables and have a look at all the great kits she offers. Then come back here and tell us which one you would like to own.

For an additional entry you can follow her blog, follow her on Twitter or on FB. Just leave a separate comment letting me know.

This giveaway will end on Wednesday, October 8, at 11:59 pm PT.