Office and Art

January 11, 2015 by: Davonne

Davonne’s Live Declutter

I’m so excited to offer a huge peek into my house as I live-blog about my full home declutter project this winter!

What you can expect to see in this series:

Before & After Photos. Because who doesn’t love to be inspired by a transformed room?!
Time & Stuff Breakdowns. I’m adding up the hours spent decluttering & the number of bags I get rid of.
Realness.While I’d really prefer for everyone to think I have a perfect house, this world needs honesty, not perfection. So I’m opening my home and inviting you into my mess!
Updates! Regardless of whether I meet – or miss – my goals, I plan to post updates about this project each week.
Motivation. I hope this series will inspire, encourage, and motivate you to organize your own home!
A vlog to two! That is, if I get brave enough to talk to a camera 🙂

What you shouldn’t expect from this series:

A magic formula. Cleaning isn’t always fun! There’s no magic wand. No fairy godmother. Just old-fashioned hard work.
How-to articles. This series is more for inspiration than anything else. I very specifically cover the how-to part of decluttering in my eBook, Chaos to Clutter-Free, so make sure to read that if you need help with knowing how to declutter your home.

Pretty simple, right? And now that you know what to expect, you can go here to see all of my live declutter posts, or you can click on any of the titles below:

Preparing our Hearts for Decluttering:

Part 1: The most important thing to remember in 2015 (hint: it isn’t organization)

Part 2: Why I’m decluttering my entire house again (plus info about the secret Get Organized Facebook group!)

Declutter Projects I’ve Finished:

Day 1: Getting a head start on the school & toy room

Days 2-5: Preparing my home for a full declutter project

Days 6-8: My house is READY!!! (Part 2 of preparing my home for a declutter project)

Day 9: Kids’ room & living room

Days 10 & 11: When decluttering feels too hard (and master bedroom update)

Days 12 & 13: Yes. It was that bad (Master bedroom & kitchen)

Days 14 & 15: What you didn’t know about cleaning (with kitchen update)

Days 16 & 17: Top 10 ways to make cleaning more fun (plus the school/toy room reveal!)

Day 18: Why I’m okay about not meeting my January goals (storage closet, bathroom, and basement update)

Day 19: Why I stopped waiting for perfect (Nathan’s spare closet is done!)

Day 20: FINAL PROJECT – The Laundry Room (I’ll update this day with a link after I declutter it)!

Are you excited to get started? I know I am! And if you’d like to see details about a completed home-declutter project, then make sure to check out this article about how I decluttered my entire house in six days last year!

December 31, 2014 by: Davonne

Reader Success Story: Baby Toys & Home Office

Today’s success story was submitted by Jenny from Something New. You can see before photos with my tips about Jenny’s spare room here, and before photos with my advice about her baby gear in this post.

Here’s what Jenny had to say:

Hi, Davonne!

Thank you so so much for your reply and ideas!

I hadn’t even thought that a future baby may not be interested in the those items and will discuss this further with my husband.

Unfortunately, the shed is still not an option. However, after writing to you, reading some of your other motivating posts, and starting to read Created to be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl, I got inspired to solve the problem quickly!

It turns out that all of the baby toys except the large swing could be folded down with some work. I rearranged my son’s closet and made room for the toys in there. Then I took apart the swing the best I could and placed it on top of one of our Christmas totes, freeing up so much floor space!

I moved empty bins from my son’s room onto the large bookshelf in the spare room. Then I put toys, blankets, and craft items from the desk into the bins.

I also moved some larger toys from in our living room coffee table into the spare room, which made space in the living room for exercise equipment. So now all of my workout things are right where I need them to be – with the TV!

It is so wonderful to have space in our spare room and my son already loves going back there to play with his toys by himself or with us! We’ve already had more fun family experiences in that room than we used to!

I even started using some empty bins in our large hall storage closet for donations and consignment items. The rule is to deliver the items when the bins are full.

I also made more room in our living room by moving our dining room table bench out into the mudroom. This makes an awesome place for people to sit and put on/take off their shoes!

Well, now that I started I can’t stop organizing things. Just today I reorganized our bathroom closet and found some more storage containers that weren’t really being used in there for our desk area and spare room storage.

Thank you so much for all the inspiration and motivation, and especially for helping to open up space for our family to live. I wouldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t stumbled onto your blog! I would like to note it was especially helpful to read ideas from someone who has truly struggled with cleaning and organization too.

Jenny, thank you so much for sharing your success story! Your home looks amazing and your $5.00 Amazon gift card should be in your inbox!

Readers, if you want to receive FREE personalized organization tips for your own home, then check out my Get Organized page for details on how to submit your questions! Want immediate and complete organization help? My eBook Chaos to Clutter-Free is only $2.99 through the end of January.

December 7, 2014 by: Davonne

3 Simple Tips for Organizing Your Spare Room

UPDATE: Jenny’s success story is up! Go here to see her after photos!

Today’s messy situation was submitted by Jenny! Go here to see other before photos of Jenny’s space.

“Hello! I am excited to get some help with organizing this area of my house. The desk is one of the biggest dilemmas in the spare room.

“The desk is currently housing all of my drawing, arts, crafts, and office supplies. The totes around it are holiday decorations, office supplies, file folders (important papers), and wedding memorabilia.

“I like that we are using storage bins and file folders… but they are just sitting out on the floor taking up space! My ultimate vision for the space is a playroom/future big brother bedroom for our son. Therefore, just about everything that is currently in there will have to have a completely new solution.

“I have suggested making wall shelves (or buying them) and my husband doesn’t want to do that. We have to be careful what we do to the structure of the house, as it is military base housing and we won’t be here permanently. I know I could reorganize the desk and throw some things away but that won’t solve the issue of what to do with the desk, gun safe, large totes, and large baby toys when we need a guest room or when our son needs a new bedroom!

“Any creative solutions would be wonderful for this space, temporary organization and long term/future organization, please!” – Jenny

Jenny,

I love that you’re thinking ahead with your storage options! I mentioned five ideas in my previous note to you about baby gear storage solutions, so today I’m going to focus on the rest of the spare room.

1) Purge your belongings.

It doesn’t look like you have a ton of clutter in your spare room, but if you start decluttering and purging items as you’re organizing, you may be surprised at what you can toss!

Here are some declutter articles that you may find helpful:

2) Create under-the-bed storage.

Something else that jumped out at me is that your spare mattress is on the floor. You could probably find an inexpensive bed frame at a local furniture shop (without the headboard or foot board) so you can get your mattress off the ground and utilize under-the-bed storage! My husband Nathan and I hunted for a bed frame several years ago and our local furniture shop just gave one to us for free.

Under the guest bed would be a perfect place to store things like your photos and gift wrap supplies!

3) Do what works for your family now.

It’s excellent that you’re thinking long-term. I like to do that too! But, we need to be careful that we’re not looking so far into the future that we forget to do what works today.

For example, it seems that having your spare room as a storage, guest room, office, and work-out space works for your family right now. Embrace that! Who knows – maybe you’ll move before you have another baby and needing two kids’ rooms won’t even be an issue.

Or maybe the older sibling will really want to share a room with the baby (that’s what happened to Nathan and me AFTER we spent weeks preparing another bedroom!).

Plus, if you do a full-home declutter, you’ll be able to purge a lot of items from your other storage areas and move things from your spare room to other storage later. In the meantime, don’t let having full storage stop you from enjoying your spare room now!

I hope this helps you, Jenny! I can’t wait to share your success story!

UPDATE: Jenny’s success story is up! Go here to see her after photos!

November 20, 2014 by: Davonne

Four Must-Have Organizational Resources for Bloggers

Every blogger needs a little inspiration from time to time, as well as practical ideas for keeping their thoughts organized!

I’ve seen some great blogging organization and inspiration articles this month, and today I want to share some of my own favorite blogging organization resources.

1) My Blog Plan by Hedua.

I love, LOVE this planner. It has everything I need to stay organized with my own post ideas, contributor and guest posts, deadlines, social media, blogging to-do’s, etc. Plus it’s super cute!

If you’d like more blog planner ideas, check out Renee’s post of top ten planners, or North Laurel’s list of favorite FREE blog planning resources.

2) Balanced: Finding Center as a Work-at-Home Mom by Tricia Goyer.

This is hands-down the BEST book I’ve ever read for work-at-home moms! Tricia is very real and honest, and in addition to fantastic work-at-home tips and realistic scheduling ideas, I felt like she was giving me permission to do something I love in addition to raising my children.

3) Pinterest.

I have an entire board dedicated solely to blogging and writing! Any articles I read that have excellent…

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