Thank you to everyone who joined in the fun and I do hope you found the PROCESS steps to be helpful and easy to use.

So here we go.

The winner of the The Ultimate To-Do List Pack from the Get Organized Wizard

is:

Crystal from Underneath the Billerbong Tree!

I picked Crystal this month not only because she followed the PROCESS steps beautifully when organizing her two drawers but also because she gave me such a great quick fix tip for problematic sliding baskets.   She suggests using zip ties to tie them all together to keep them from going all over the place.  Now why didn’t I think of that?  So brilliant!  Be sure to visit Crystal and check out her new drawers :)

Unfortunately I’m going to have to cancel the round-up for the next two months due to my family situation requiring a little more of my time.  Please accept my apologies but don’t you worry because in the new year I hope to offer you more fun organizing challenges of some kind.  If you’ve got any ideas I’d love to hear them.

Thanks all!

Round-Up Winner is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Alrighty it’s time to show off your drawers.  Don’t be afraid, you’re among friends :)

Haven’t organized your drawer yet?  No problem, you still have time.  I’ll leave this round-up open until Wednesday, November 4th at 9:00 pm PST for you to link up.   Need some inspiration?  Check out my post on Organizing a Junk Drawer.

This month I’ll be personally selecting the winner and that winner will receive The Ultimate To-Do List Pack from the Get Organized Wizard!

The Ultimate To-Do List Pack | Home & Family Edition contains more than 250 To-Do Lists, Schedules, Planners & Organizers. With these easy-to-use lists you can overcome the chaos and overwhelm of a busy home and family life – and restore order and harmony.

Everything’s covered – including:

• Daily & Weekly To Do List Templates
• Rosters, Budgets, Shopping Lists & Calendars
• Packing Lists, Chore Lists, Homework & Chore Charts
• Decision Grids, Daily, Weekly & Monthly Planners
• Contact Lists, Babysitter Data Sheets & Checklists
• Home Improvement Lists, Logs, Meal & Healthy Eating Planners
• Grocery Lists, Pet Details and much, much more.

The lists are all beautifully laid out in a fully interactive PDF.  You can simply print and use or you can enter text on screen, save, print and re-use.  The choice is yours.

I’ll be looking for someone that actively followed the PROCESS steps to tackle their project and includes both before and after pictures in their post.  Also please be kind and link directly to your drawer post and not to your home page to make it easier for us to find the link in the future.

More details about past round-ups can be found here.

Have fun!

Monthly Drawer Round-Up is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Okay friends here’s the scoop.  I want to see your drawers.  Seriously everyone has a drawer that needs to be dumped and re-worked for sure.  Whether it’s in the bathroom, the kitchen, the office or kid’s rooms, you must have a drawer that could use a little re-organization.  That’s where this month’s monthly challenge comes in.  We are going to dump, sort and purge our way to success.  Doesn’t that sound like fun!  And this month just to shake things up a little bit I’m making a small change to the way the challenge works.

At the end of the month, rather than pick a random winner to win the monthly prize, I’m going to hand select the winner myself based on who I feel is most deserving.  I’ll be looking for those that actively follow the PROCESS steps to tackle their project and demonstrate these steps with before and after pictures.

What’s the monthly prize?

This month the “selected” winner will receive The Ultimate To-Do List Pack from the Get Organized Wizard!

The Ultimate To-Do List Pack | Home & Family Edition contains more than 250 To-Do Lists, Schedules, Planners & Organizers. With these easy-to-use lists you can overcome the chaos and overwhelm of a busy home and family life – and restore order and harmony.

Everything’s covered – including:

• Daily & Weekly To Do List Templates
• Rosters, Budgets, Shopping Lists & Calendars
• Packing Lists, Chore Lists, Homework & Chore Charts
• Decision Grids, Daily, Weekly & Monthly Planners
• Contact Lists, Babysitter Data Sheets & Checklists
• Home Improvement Lists, Logs, Meal & Healthy Eating Planners
• Grocery Lists, Pet Details and much, much more.

The lists are all beautifully laid out in a fully interactive PDF.  You can simply print and use or you can enter text on screen, save, print and re-use.  The choice is yours.

Don’t delay gals and guys, go dump a drawer today because I’m telling ya it’s fun and addicting and before you know it you’ll have organized drawers all over your house.  Yay!!  At the end of October I’ll put up a Mr. Linky for you to post your results.

So which drawer is it going to be?

More info on past monthly round-ups can be found here.

Monthly Round-Up is going to the drawers is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Follow along with me today and then feel free to show us your own organized purse for a chance to win two great storage magazines.  Details at the end of this post.

When I put out the call for volunteers to show me their purse and let me help get it organized, Cathy, one of my readers and author of the blogs Strawberries are Gluten Free and Desperately Seeking WordPress, kindly offered to let us take a peek inside her purse.  I loved the comment she left me.

Help!!! Pick me! Pick me! You can take a picture of anything you want! lol (or I can). Whatever!

If you pick me or not, I’ll TRY, but I’ll probably do a better job AFTER I get to see the inspiration at the end of this month. For about 2 months I’ve been thinking of purchasing another bag. But I’m totally stuck!!

I want mature – but I want fun. I want leather, but I want color. Orange leather with buckles? ROTF

Other than the bag, i also need to be able to FIND stuff! I carry only a few touch-up things, chapsticks, but then I keep coupons, (coupon organizer too), as well as receipts, to-do lists, and phone numbers jotted down on scraps or the back of business cards. Plus I’d like to find my business cards to give away without digging through the ‘emergency pad’ in the view of everyone.

Do I sound desperate? :) I think I have a home for most everything in my junk drawer, and in our office- 2 places are still crazy – the van, and my handbag!! Ugggg. I have 3 different wallets – none of which fit all those cards, temporary discount cards – that change every season(!) – cash, change, and the essential cards – drivers license, debit, etc.

Oh dear, poor Cathy!  She does sound a little frustrated.  How many of you can relate?  I sent her some recommendations based on the information and pictures she sent me and she took it away and came up with a pretty amazing solution.  Let’s walk through what she did.  Here is her purse “before”:

and the inside:

I didn’t mind the purse actually, it had a lot of pockets and plenty of potential so I didn’t recommend a new one, sorry Cathy! :)

Right away I could see that all that was lacking in Cathy’s purse was some boundaries.  Everything was sort of muddled together.  It’s no wonder she was having trouble finding what she needed.  Containerizing your purse is similar to how we do it anywhere in our homes.  It’s important to provide a separate container for the various collection of items you have in order to keep “like with like”.

There are a number of ways to do this.

Purse organizers such as these work wonders:

The Pouchee:

The Pouchee is a purse insert that keeps your purse essentials super organized and makes switching purses a piece of cake.  You can read my review of it here.

The Joey Junior:

These type of organizers are great for purses or bags with no inside pockets.  Look at all the sorting possibilities, such fun!

Let’s go even more inexpensive now shall we.  Take a trip to the dollar store and you will find all sorts of things that can be used for purse dividers.  Pencil cases, makeup pouches, even ziploc bags.  Any of these will do the job.  Cathy took a trip to her dollar store and was able to find herself some great zippered pouches.

here it is all containerized and ready to go back in

How excited was I when Cathy told me she even had a color coded system:

- black – my sophistimacated makeup, compact, girls hair ties
- red – STOP (as in inedible): meds, hand sanitizer
- green – GO eat: snacks, breath mints

She could also use one for coupons, loyalty and business cards.  However I think Cathy decided to go with a black card organizer though for those and now has them all in one location.  Yay!!

Cathy also found at the Dollar Store an eye glass case to stop her glasses from getting all banged up in her purse.

To take care of never losing her keys again, I highly recommended to Cathy the carabiner method. She was able to pick up one of those at the Dollar Store too and it works like a charm!

Also on Cathy’s to do list:

- purge expired coupons – check

- get rid of old receipts – check

Finally after getting all that together Cathy realized that all she really needed her wallet for was bills, credit cards, license and various bits of important paper.

Let’s check out the after pictures.  Oh and guess what, she couldn’t resist and bought herself a fabulous new purse!

and the newly organized inside:

Beautiful and aside from the cost of her new purse she only spent $8.00 for supplies at the Dollar Store.  Not bad at all I must say for less stress and chaos!

So remember, sort like with like, purge excess, and then containerize to set some boundaries.

Well done Cathy, that was fun!

**********

Now it’s YOUR turn.  Show us your newly organized purse by adding your link to the Mr. Linky list below and I’ll chose one lucky participant to win both of these storage magazines….Better Homes and Gardens Summer 2009 issue and Storage 2009 issue.

Please remember to show us your before and after pictures and as well link directly to your purse post and not to your home page to make it easier for us to find the link in the future.  And remember you need to link up prior to Oct 3rd at 6:00 pm PST to be eligible for the giveaway.

More details about past round-ups can be found here.

Have fun!

Organizing your Purse + Round-Up is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Check out the video below Updated:  Click here to see a very handy way of organizing 14-28 of your purses and bags on the back of a door or hanging on a wall.  Love it!

I know a pattern must exist out there online to make one of these yourself if you happen to have some sewing skills, which I unfortunately do not. If you do know of one please share in the comments. Thanks!

PS:  Just so you know I am not affiliated with this product.

Product Highlight – Handbag, Scarf and Hat Organizer is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

The winner of both the Week over Week Calendar and the Fridge File is:

Jamie from Grace (upon Grace)

Congratulations Jamie!!

Now for this month we are getting our purses and bags organized.  Shouldn’t be too hard and shouldn’t take more than a half an hour to an hour tops.  We can all do this one!  In fact I’d like to personally walk someone through the process so if you’ve got a messy purse and are okay with me using your pictures of it on my blog then leave a comment below letting me know you could use some help.  Let’s inspire someone else together because that’s what it’s all about around here.  For more information on the round-up please visit Org Junkie’s Monthly Organizing Round-Up page.

Also I’m still working on the prize for this month but should be able to let you know that within the next couple of days.

Thanks everyone!  Hope your day is a happy one :)

Some catching up is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Command Central Reminder is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Hello friends!  As you know this month through Org Junkie’s Monthly Organizing Round-Up we are tackling our Command Centers in time for starting the school year off on the right foot.  I had totally hoped to spend some more time on this topic than I have but with everything going on I just haven’t been able to.   So this month I want to do things just a little bit differently.  In order to offer you as much inspiration as possible and because I think this is such an essential part of EVERY home, I’m going to go ahead and put up the Mr. Linky today and open it up to anyone who would like to share what they do to keep their homes running efficiently.  How do you manage the school papers, schedules, to do’s, etc.?  Show us a picture, describe how you do it, share any special products you use.

I’m hoping this will compile a big list of Command Central ideas to highlight the many various ways there are to organize in this area.  No one way is right or wrong.  We all have different needs and requirements, so hopefully you’ll find something here that will inspire you to create something for your own home, if you haven’t already.

The Prizes:

One random participant will receive BOTH of these fabulous prizes:

These are two of my favorite products for organizing my week.  The first one is the Week over Week Dry Erase Magnetic Calendarthat I use for multiple purposes.  I love it!

The second prize is an AWESOME tool for organizing very important papers.  It’s called the Fridge File and you can read my review about it here.  The winner will be able to choose between the white or blue one.

Both of these tools keep my day organized and running very smoothly.

The Rules:

* your post link does not have to be current

* you must include at least one picture of your command central in your post – this month “before and after” pictures are not necessary.  Of course these are the most inspiring of all so if you have them please share.

* please link directly to your command central post and not to your home page to make it easier to find in the future

* please link to this post within your post so others can also see the list of ideas for inspiration and encouragement

* I reserve the right to delete any links that don’t follow the posted rules

* deadline to have your link submitted for prize consideration is Friday, September 4th by 6:00 pm PST.  Draw will take place shortly thereafter.  The winner will be chosen from the Mr. Linky list below by random generator.

That’s it!  Please encourage others to link up if they have a post they’d be willing to submit.  The more ideas we get the more inspiration we provide.  Here is a quick twitter update if you’d like to use it:

Check out the Command Central Organizing RoundUp at @orgjunkie. Link up & share your own ideas & pictures. Details here http://tiny.cc/jpPql

Thanks everyone!

Related posts:

Command Central Ideas

Command Central Round-Up & Giveaway is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Today I have a special guest post for you.  The author herself, Jennifer Ford Berry, is in the house!  Jennifer’s dropping in with some more tips for getting your hair and makeup supplies organized.  So if you didn’t have a chance to tackle this area of your home last month, then maybe these tips here today will be the inspiration you need to get it done.  Thanks Jennifer!

Step 1: Sort and Toss!
Start by pulling all of your supplies out and sorting them into piles of “Keep” and “Toss”. You know that blue eye shadow you haven’t worn since high school? Well, it is time to let it go so that would definitely go in the “Toss” pile. (It’s OK! I am sure you have some pictures of you wearing it with big hair if you start to miss it).

Some Things to Toss:
-Dull tweezers
-Dried up mascara
-Worn out applicators and old makeup sponges
-Dried up nail polish
-Hair dryers, curling irons, straightening tools that you never use or that are broken
-Foundation that does not match your skin tone. Sweep a little across your cheek and if you can see it, it does not match.
-Cracked blush or powder. These are too hard to use and they really make a mess!
-Outdated or worn out hair accessories.
-Styling products over 2 years old.
-Makeup you haven’t worn in over 1 year.

Step 2: Organize:
Whether you store your supplies in bags or drawers make sure you choose storage that will work with your lifestyle. Do you need to grab makeup on the go for traveling? Do you keep a few items in your purse? Personally, I am a huge fan of clear, plastic drawers under the bathroom sink for hair supplies and makeup. You can stack them to make the most of your space and they are inexpensive. I use the smaller drawers for my daughter’s rubber bands, barrettes and hair clips.

Tips:
* Consolidate whenever possible: night/day cream, hand/foot lotion, face/body self-tanner, base/topcoat nail polish. Save room (and money) by buying one product for both areas when possible.

* Don’t buy more until you use up what you have. I admit buying make up and hair supplies can be fun (and addicting). But don’t fall prey to the mass marketing that wants us to believe that all of these products will change our looks and our life! Stick with what you know works for you and don’t over buy.

* If you stop using a shampoo, conditioner or body wash because you don’t like it, throw it away or give it to a friend. Don’t let half-full bottles take up valuable space in the shower!

* Silverware organizers work great in a drawer to keep your makeup organized.

* Store pony tail holders on a shower curtain ring to keep them all together.

Note: For more great organizing tips check out Jennifer’s book, Organize Now: a week-by-week guide to simplify your space and your life.

Guest Post: Organize Your Makeup and Hair Supplies is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie

Today’s question comes from Melissa of Seven Matters. Melissa’s question is such a common one that I knew I had to try and answer it.

I have a question about mail and other papers that come into my house. I have tried for so long to find a system that my husband can get on board with, but he still comes home and puts his papers and keys and briefcase etc. on my kitchen counter! I only have a small amount of counter space and what I do have is a catch-all for junk, and important papers alike. It drives me crazy! As you can see in my pictures, there is some wall space to the left of the counter. Can you recommend a wall hanging organizer that might help de-clutter my counters, but is budget friendly?

As with many families, the kitchen seems to be the hot spot for accumulated paper such as incoming mail, school papers, receipts, newspapers, etc. Finding a system that works for the whole family is a must in order to relieve some of moms frustration and free up valuable counter space.

What we need to establish here is a Command Center and Melissa has a great space in the corner that is ideal for this purpose. It’s ideal because it is centrally located in a room that is frequented by all and can be utilized by all. I think Melissa’s suggestion of a wall hanging organizer is a terrific suggestion and I was able to find a few that might work for her.

A Command Center is a beautiful thing. It’s somewhere to capture the bits and pieces of life that are happening right now and can’t be filed away just yet. It is not a solution to the permanent filing. No, no, no. Instead it is a revolving display of miscellaneous documentation, a communication center for the goings on of life. Perfect for things like important telephone numbers, birthday party invitations, receipts for items needing to be returned, school papers with specific information on an upcoming event, bills to be paid, and so on.

In Melissa’s case I think she has room to incorporate either a bulletin or magnetic board as well as a wall organizer. I personally like the idea of giving each member of the family their own space (or at least a section for mom/dad/kids) so some of my selections below will allow for that if she so wishes.

First let me show you a picture of one of my favorite Command Centers from Organize Magazine. Isn’t this something! The links to the products they used can be found here. The green bins are my absolute favorite and were purchased from Staples. Unfortunately I can’t find them online but further on you’ll see I found a pretty good replacement.

I have so many ideas and in my research discovered all sorts of wonderful products out there, it really was hard to narrow it down. Keeping in mind Melissa’s desire for it to be budget friendly, this is what I came up with. Clicking on the pictures will take you to where I found them online.

1. I LOVE this one from Amazon for $34.95:

2. NiftyTin HoldIt Organizer Bin for $8.99 each:

3. Fabric Organizer from the Container Store for $14.99 each:

4. The Fridge File for $10.76.  I love this product.  Also available in white.

5. Wall mounted mail basket for $31.46:

6. Charging Station Memo Board for $19.95.  Also be sure to check out Etsy for cute memo boards.

7. Desktop Sorter for $19.99 ~ even with a wall organizer something like this might still be nice for the counter:

8. Magnetic Magazine Pockets from Organize-It for $19.99 each:

9. Bulletin & Magnetic Strips from the Container Store for $14.99 each.  I’ve also seen these at the dollar store.

10. Make your own wall organizer with Momready, this is fantastic!! Instructions here.

The thing to remember is that no matter which organizer you select it will take some discipline and consistency to establish the new routine of putting the papers where they belong and not on the counter. It CAN be done though and you CAN succeed!

Happy Organizing!

Related posts:

Organizing your entryway

Create a Kitchen Command Center with Real Simple

Awhile ago I posted about using an inexpensive plate holder to organize papers

Creating a Mail Center with Declutter It!

Command Center Ideas is a post from: I'm an Organizing Junkie