Goals for August!

I cannot believe we are a week into August already. I have set some goals for myself for August and they are well underway. I am hoping to have these done by the end of August, which won't be all that easy considering that we are on vacation up at the lake for a week and I am traveling for work for a week, but I am going to do my best to get these accomplished.

We moved into our house two years ago August 3rd, but we are still unpacking boxes, needing to get organized and realistically, we have too much STUFF in this house for two people. I have been working on purging and getting rid of things as well as getting things organized. I know I need to start with one room at a time so that it doesn't get overwhelming, so I am starting on my office.

The first thing we decided to do was to go through all of our CD's, load them onto my laptop and load them into both the apple and the amazon clouds. THEN, the next step is to get RID of all of the CD's. This will free up a whole shelf in our closet downstairs.

Another thing I have been working on is unsubscribing from email lists I am no longer interested in. Every morning I wake up and I have at least 100 new emails in my personal inbox. That is too much. I have three different email addresses, two that are combined, one that I have not checked in YEARS. I am slowly but surely working on getting that inbox cleaned up, my goal is to wake up to less than 25 emails a day and get it down to just four or five at the end of the day.

I use Microsoft Outlook to read and organize my gmail. I have folders set up for different types of emails that I get every day to help keep me organized. Sometimes I don't even read some of them, but just put them in the appropriate folder. One of the rules I have read about in regards to inbox organization is to follow the four D's. Do it, Delete it, Delegate it and Defer it. I am going to continue to try to follow these rules and get through my whole inbox. I would love to only check email three times a day instead of living in my inbox!

I am also working on getting a lot of filing done of miscellaneous papers as well as papers that just need to be filed. I bought a box a while back and then fitted it with the metal thingy for hanging file folders, now I just need to get it organized. I have my label maker, and pretty file folders, hoping to have this done by the end of the month.

The last thing that I am working on getting organized are all of my magazines. I love looking at pretty pictures, getting inspiration from them and saving them for future reference. I was inspired after reading Centsational Girls post on how she got her loose pages organized and thought it was a great idea.

This is how hers turned out, I love it, I am working on getting through my magazines, I have done a pretty good job, but I also know realistically, I have a long ways to go!

I am hoping to take this last organizing project with me on vacation, it might be a good thing to do with a glass of wine and some mind numbing tv!

29 Day Organizational Challenge - 1st Progress Link Up

So, here we go with my progress report for my 29 Day Organizational Challenge. I have not made a ton of progress (I have been sick in bed since Sunday), but I am in the process of creating my organizational plan. I started by answering these questions.

1. What do I want the purpose of my room or area to be?
My office where I work 3ish times a week, a place to go to unwind, check email, blog, write thank you notes, work on projects, read, watch a favorite show, have a glass of wine and read my mail. My place, my space, where I can get away from it all and be productive.

2. What do I need in or near the room to serve that purpose?
Desk, laptop, printer, comfortable chair, tv, bookshelves, storage, candles.

3. What can I remove from the room?
Not sure yet, but I am hoping to figure it out during this process. . .

4. What problems do I see with the room?
I have too much stuff in here and it is not organized. I have empty picture frames that need to be filled and I need to update pictures. I need one drawer just for mailing prep, which includes stamps, different types of envelopes, stationary (I have a ton of stationary so maybe two?).

5. What organizational tools might solve those problems?
I need to find a better solution for filing.

6. What habits need to change to solve the organizational problems?
Don't just dump mail and papers. Come up with a filing system so that I can store papers simply and file them once a week, even once every other week.

7. What kind of a budget do I have to create the organized room of my dreams?
The room is close to being done, I need a couple of pictures for the wall and I would love to have the crown molding up. No budget though really. I think this is more about just organizing and purging.

8. What kind of a timeline is necessary to organize the room?
I am ready to be done with the room by the end of the month. 29 days.

9. What is my plan of action?
I need to take time to come up with a filing system and I need to get rid of some stuff.

10. Who can I ask to help me with this?
Hmmmm, the boy has done the majority of the heavy lifting, painting and such. It is up to me to do the rest.

Here are some pictures of areas I need to focus on. . . and figure out how to purge or file.. . I really need to make my book case and book shelf look nice. They are nice pieces, but they need to LOOK nice! I need to find some pictures to frame and get a proper filing system in place.

Here is to hoping that I feel well enough to get some of this tackled this weekend. I would really like to find a picture to put up . . . maybe I have something already. . . and I would also like to get to my bookshelf.

29 Day Organizational Challenge - Week 1

I have been in the process over the last couple of months of purging and organizing areas in our house, but I still have a long way to go. SO, in order to hold myself accountable, I am linking up with the Orgjunkie for the 29 Day Organizational Challenge. I figure I hold people accountable all day at work, I need to start doing the same with myself.

I am supposed to pick one area of my house to organize. I have several, but I have been working a lot on my office over the past few weeks, and I would really like to see this room finished by the end of the month.

I have a new (new to me) glass door book case that I kind of just threw in there when the boy got done painting it (it was a dark brown Billy bookcase from IKEA that we bought off of Craigslist for about $80). I knew that I wanted to go through and organize it and make the shelves look nice, but I just wanted to get it in there and get some stuff off of the floor and out of the way.

I also have another bookcase that we worked on back here. It looks like this at a moment, and I know it could look a lot better.

I have a ton of stacks of paper all over the place, and I know I need to be better about organizing those, and I have bought the tools, in fact someone seems to have stolen one of them.

I also have this credenza which is stuffed to the gills and I need to go through it and make sure that what is in it is organized and will be useful. We bought this credenza off of craigslist as well a while back, I think I paid about $120. I really like the way that it turned out. Here are the before and afters.

I know a lot of people have craft rooms and offices. Mine is more of a combo, so I have a lot of bins like this stored all over.

It would be great if I could store some of them in my closet in this room. However, this closet is also my main clothing closet since the boy has the walk-in in our Master (don't get me wrong, I have every other closet in the house, so it really is fair).

I would like to get some new pictures framed, a new rug for the floor, and maybe a new printer that I don't have to spend so much money on ink.

The chair and ottoman are a recent purchase from a couple of weeks ago from an estate sale ($95 and in perfect condition and the perfect color for this room, how could I go wrong). The chair swivels and rocks, and the ottoman rocks and I LOVE it. I picked up the blanket at Home Goods shortly after. Stella likes it too!

The little table we purchased the same day at a different sale for $20. The boy painted it the same pink as the walls. I needed a little table for writing thank you's and also to have my work laptop on. So far so good.

Another place where we need some room for improvement, I think my bulletin board might be a little small. Maybe something bigger on this wall? The Lilly Chinese lantern was a Christmas present from my sister, I recently bought a pink cord cover for it which should be here shortly.

I also think I need a picture for over my chair, not sure what though. . .oh, and behind the chair is storage. . .I think I need to do something about that. I have about 10 years worth of receipts, how far back do I need to go?

I have all of this "stuff" under my credenza. Yearbooks, old laptops. . . old work stuff. Not sure what to do with this yet either.

This will be a work in progress, but I am REALLY excited about having a timeline and a goal!