LITTLE things that help keep you organised?

[starrychime]

There's a lot of threads about cleaning routines, 15 min sessions etc which I love to read but never get round to following (one day, one day I will!)
Wondered if anyone has some little hints and tips that make things just a little bit easier about the house?
I use paper plates for morning toast, lunchtime sandwiches etc as I HATE washing up (no washer) - and it keeps it down a little bit.
Also keeping a small Ikea drawer sorter in the bathroom with DD's bobbles and clasps so they're to hand in the morning helps a bit.
Anyone else have any little tips?

I HATE sewing, so when the need arises to get a button back on (and that is the sum of my sewing) I always have 2 needles already double threaded and knotted at the end, usually white and black or navy blue. Said botton, back on in seconds without having to hunt for it or look for a similar button as it's irredeemably lost. I thread on a metre at a time and reknot at the end again after finishing.

Helenagrace - please can you arrange it with mnhq to do a webchat or seminars or something - I want to sit at your feet and learn..

I do the pillow case thing.
I brought loads of cheap pe style bags and now every activity and person has a bag - swimming, ballet etc These get stored on hooks on the back of the understairs cupboard door. Easy to grab and go.
I have a wooden magazine file (from ikea) that all bits of paper that clutter the kitchen table get shoved in - then sorted at the end of the week.

Hmm, aside from packing things for the next day the night before they're needed, my organisational skills seemed to be hampered by the other occupants of my house. My attempts are as follows:

1. Jot jobs that need to be done down in diary and do them when you say you will.... Reassign said jobs to different days once you have found your diary which has been awol for a week thanks to DD putting stuff in an old handbag and pretending to go to work.

2. Put all birthdays, events, nights out (ha! what are those??) on a family calendar so everyone knows what they're doing.... Put off attending to job listed in no-longer-awol-diary in favour of chastising DH for not putting on calendar the folks coming round for tea when it's just before shopping day, the cupboards are nearly bare and I've put on my slummy mummy clothes after work (which really should be chucked out but they're too damn comfy) as I thought no one would see me. Chastisement suspended when doorbell goes and panic sets in.

3. Put reminders about all important nursery/school letters about field trips or fundraisers etc in as many places as possible to stop you forgetting about them (not-so-awol diary, family calendar apparently only used by mummy, phone calendar with repeated alerts so even if it's mysteriously found its way into DS's bedroom it has a chance of being heard)... Be late for work due to humble, red-faced apologies at nursery/school when my children are the only ones not prepared for the teddy bears' picnic in their PJ's with their favourite teddy and story book - plead yet again that staff refrain from passing on important info to DH as he stuffs it in his pocket and forgets about it. Timetable further chastisement of DH after work...

I should also say that helenagrace is now officially my idol and I too would like to learn her ways to organisation and enlightenment!

It's books, as well as papers, with us.

How do you stop them breeding? I'm now a kindle person but dh isn't.

The problem we have in our house is where to put these hundreds of files with neatly filed stuff. IKEA billy doesn't cut the mustard as too narrow for A4 box files or lever arch files or A£ art work folders.

A3

I do the pillowcase thing but put a label on it so I know if single or double. I store extra duvets in those vacuum pack bags with pillows and set of bedding do its ready when visitors arrive. We have a notebook in the kitchen to note items as they run out and keep all invitations etc on the mantelpiece

And my wine is on an automatic reorder with laithwaites!!!!!

I dream of being organised but fail miserably, however, I do love reading about other people's brilliant organisational ideas in the hope that one day it will start to rub off.

I regularly read this blog Creative Organising

Aby Garvey is a professional organiser (like HelenaGrace) and there are some great tips on the blog. If you look for earlier posts in the blog there are some great ideas that she posted before she started organising professionally and are less focussed on selling her online workshops.

Might help some people. I have a long list of her ideas that I intend to implement at some point.

Love some of the tips here...especially about filing stuff, just hoping I put just a few of them into practise!

Someone was asking about freezing sandwiches (sorry can't find the name of the poster)...but I do it (after my Mum used to do it for me) and the sandwiches are absolutely fine, definitely not soggy in any way...I do cheese, marmite, ham, turkey and combinations of the above! They defrost really quickly, I remember eating mine at break times sometimes if really hungry...

"To those who aren't naturally organised (as I presume Helenagrace must be), how do you force yourself to tidy or sit down and plan rather than MN / go to bed / lie on the sofa eating chocolate etc? I have loads of good intentions and dream up some great systems - but they never last more than a week as I just can't motivate myself to get on with things."

this is me too.

in fact i was reading through this thread thinking, "i must get a notepad and pen and write down the tips i will use" and i will do that, with every intention of putting all these tips into practise. but they will sit in my notebook and be used as a coaster and then i will scribble over the top of teh page when i am writing down the code for the electric meter and adding up how much i will need to spend on shopping down teh side of the page and before you know it the page looks a mess and i rip it out of my notepad and bin it afetr never using any of the tips. this is teh pattern of my life. on repeat. i reallly really reeeeally want to be organised. i just never seem to be able to get a system going and stick at it.

www.realforme.com/self/mind/blogs/FL-Put-Out-Your-Hot-Spots

Link to fly lady hotspot explanation.

Apologies if duplicating this.

IAmBooyhoo just start with one thing. Visualise what a difference it will make to your life (eg "I won't lose my keys if I always put them by the phone"). Do something to remind you to do it everyday - reminder on your phone, alarm somewhere, ask someone to tell you, anything else that works. When you get the reminder spend a few seconds thinking about what a difference that thing will make (eg "I won't be late because I'm looking for my keys"), then do the thing you've decided to do. When it becomes second nature introduce another thing.

Have a dreams book where you write great ideas for things you want to change - but only do one of them at a time.

I have permission to share this so I can tell you abut a client I had who came to me after years of trying to be organised and failing. After one year she had developed and embedded the following habits:

1 getting her clothes ready the night before
2 doing a weekly on line shop
3 setting up and running a bring forward system
4 got the family to write their appointments on a calendar
5 menu planning
6 having a regular ironing session
7 one Saturday morning a month set aside as an errand slot - dry cleaning, paying the paper bill etc
8 doing a load of washing a day

She did this one step at a time. Because of these changes she saved enough time to join a choir with weekly rehearsals.

One step at a time!

thank you helenagrace

washing is something i would really like to get a handle on. i would like to be doing a wash a day without thinking about it. i set my machine to come on so that it finishes just in time for breakfast to be over but somehow i never find the time to get it out before school run and when i come back i do the dishes and floors and ds2 is messing around. i always say "must get the washing out" but 9 times out of 10 it is still in teh machine at dinner time when i just bung it all in teh dryer. thsi costs a fortune and sometimes i dont even manage that.

in fact just thinking about that now, i know my washing problem is caused by not leaving enough time to do it in the morning which is caused by me oversleeping which is caused by me not sleeping most nights til gone 1am. i think i need to tackle my sleeping habits first TBH if i am ever going to be succesful in getting good daytime routines in place. my tiredness is at the root of my lack of motivation. have you any suggestions for how to cure a night owl? i have always been thsi way, i can never settle down early to sleep and set a good bed time.

Helenagrace, that is so inspiring. :)

You're right on doing things slowly - I always try to do things too fast - for me, doing 1 Flylady babystep per fortnight was too fast: I could keep going as long as I was concentrating on the current one, but as soon as I stopped concentrating I stopped doing it.

I find it hard to give myself 'permission' for time off - so if I work hard, I feel I'm rewarded by having more time available to work on all the other never-ending jobs. I like the pomodoro technique idea.

Actually, something which does save me time is using under-bed storage boxes in the wardrobe instead of a laundry basket. Dirty washing gets 'filed' according to colour / temperature of wash (at least in theory - DH is in the course of being trained ) so I don't have to sort through the baskets before I put a wash on.

Iambooyhoo - could you do the washing in the evening and hang it out on an airer indoors?

Can you use your evening energy?

I do one load a day, one day lights, one day darks.

i dont have any heating so drying on airers isn't an option. i'm on a pre pay meter so my electric costs the same at night as at daytime but i usually have it in teh dryer at night anyway as that is when i remember there is a wash in the machine and once dry it stays there until the following evening when i realise it's there as i'm ready to pu tthe next load in. it's not reall working for me as i end up getting frustrated that i'm having to unload the dryer to put a fresh load in. or sometimes teh washing isn't fully dried (as it finishes during the night when i'm sleeping so cant check it's dry and put it on again) so then my next load has to wait in the washing machine until teh semi dry clothes are fully dry. it's just creating a backlog and frustration. i need to be getting my wash out in teh morning so it's dry by evening and i can put away while dcs are doing teeth/getting pjs on after their bath etc. it's really down to me being able to get to sleep at a decent hour.

IAm I do my washing in the evening. If I think it's going to be dry the next day (ha ha we live near the Lake District) I fold it in a box and put it with the pegs ready to be hung out the next morning. If it's going in the dryer I put it in there at night ready for me to switch on the next morning.

My DH is a night owl. He now gets up twice a week at 5.30 for a commute to South London. He developed a wind down routine and is now asleep before midnight most days. One thing he finds helpful is no screen time after 10.30pm.

i've tried the no screen time. i just replaced it with other things like hour long showers and painting my toenails and writing lists and knitting and reading and crosswords it is a hard habit to kick! but i need to break it. i really do. it's having a massive knock on effect on pretty much all of my life which is getting me down. it needs sorted. going to go and google ways to help me wind down of an evening. thank you for washing tips!

I sorted out my bedroom today so that everything is in a sensible place for the order I do things in.
Rather than to-ing and fro-ing a million times,like things are all together and organised.

I think its amazing when you actually step back and think about it,how we get used to functioning in a less than efficient environment and I found its really paid off today to make some sense of things I normally just do on auto pilot.

If you have to go to a particular place often to put things away,but its a bit tricky to get to (eg under bed drawers where you have to battle with the duvet to open them),the temptation is just to leave the stuff on the side to put away later. Far better to spend some time finding a more accessible storage place.

I was always forgetting about laundry in the WM or TD, so now try to think about it 3 times a day In the morning, when I've put the kids to bed & before I go to bed. There is nearly always some that can be moved along to the next stage (wash/dry/put away)

I try to do a load a day & have set days for doing some things (e.g. Kids bedding on Sundays) which have now become so ingrained I do them without thinking. I can strip their beds after afternoon nap & bung in WM, transfer to TD at tea-time, & it's dry by the time they are in bed.

I am pretty organised about most things, except when it comes to food.

the problem is, that whether we're all going to eat at home each evening is very flexible.

dd pretty much always - she has a very limited number of foods, but is easy to cater for & I always have about 4 or 5 choices in for her.

dh sometimes doesn't eat lunch, and comes home starving, other times he has lunch out & wants nothing. he also is very unpredictable about what time he'll be home.

If I knew he wouldn't eat dinner, I'd just eat with dd & that would be it. But then he wants food.

I am actually considering just cooking for dd & I, then leaving him to buy his own food & cater for himself.

Anyway, as a result, I never really know what to buy, as I can't meal plan, as I don't know how many meals are needed.

Can I just ask - do you all have dh's who put as much time/effort into keeping the house running as you do?

hot spot explanation and flylady link
www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/fly-faq/#hotspot