Plan to Organize
So you’ve decided to join the 28 Day Organizing Challenge and now are sitting staring at your space wondering where on earth to start. Others may have rushed right in without first defining their purpose.
What you need is a PLAN!
This is the first step in my organizing PROCESS and it’s an important one.
Ask yourself a couple of questions about the space you’ve selected. I’ve borrowed these from a great article I found on About.com written by Sarah Aquirre:
1. What do I want the purpose of my room or area to be?
2. What do I need in or near the room to serve that purpose?
3. What can I remove from the room?
4. What problems do I see with the room?
5. What organizational tools might solve those problems?
6. What habits need to change to solve the organizational problems?
7. What kind of a budget do I have to work with right now for storage solutions?
8. What kind of a timeline is necessary to organize the room? (28 days!)
9. What is my plan of action?
Read the complete article with descriptions of each of the questions here.
Finally ask yourself:
10. Who can I ask to help me with this? (working with a friend can be fun, productive and encouraging)
I know you can do this! As part of your plan break down your action steps into 15 minute manageable tasks and set your sights on one task at a time. And remember if you get overwhelmed, Don’t Look Up!
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop ~ Confucius
I loved Tanna’s words of encouragement today from her introductory 28 Day Organizing Challenge post:
I am judging the contest along side Laura and we are looking for your most amazing transformations. That doesn’t mean you have to go all Pottery Barn on us, there are plenty of creative ways to organize on the cheap as well. If your afraid you might not be able to finish or you might get stuck, don’t despair. Laura and I will be checking in and giving tips and advice along the way. We will try to help you as much as we can in the comments over at her site.
How great is that! We both want each and every one of you to succeed. So as Tanna said, if you run into problems let us know in the comments on any challenge post and we’ll try to help.
Also I’ve posted the official 28 Day Organizing Challenge rules on the Challenge page if you are interested. I’ll post them here as well just to make sure no one misses them.
The Official 28 Day Organizing Challenge Rules:
- During the month of February participants have 28 days to organize either a whole room and/or small space in their home
- You can enter multiple spaces if you’d like but participants will be asked to create a separate blog post for each entry
- Two Mr. Linky posts (one for small space and one for whole room) will go up on the morning of March 1st for participants to link up to with a post showcasing BOTH their before and after pictures of the newly organized space. Participants will also be asked to answer a few questions about the process they followed. Questions to come.
- Entries that don’t include both before and after pictures and/or question summary will be eliminated.
- The challenge end Mr. Linky cut off will be March 2nd at 12:00 pm PST.
- Judges will be specifically looking at overall transformation, creative use of space, storage solutions that work and overall experience.
Overall Transformation – A well organized, uncluttered, clearly defined and efficient space that lends itself to easy maintenance.
Creative Use of Space – Using creative solutions to allow you to maximize your space and create zones in a new and manageable way.
Storage Solutions that Work – Using storage solutions that allow you to establish boundaries and limits and contain “like with like”.
Overall Experience – The process that got you to the uncluttered space mentally and physically.
Sidenote: My philosophy on organizing is that it doesn’t need to cost big bucks to do it and so you’ll notice that $$ spent is not even a factor in the judging criteria. Many a creative storage solution can be found for next to nothing. Be creative, think outside of the box and let your organizing imaginations run wild!
Do you have a PLAN of attack in place to organize your space?
Please visit Get Organized Wizard, one of our fabulous sponsors of this organizing challenge. The Design Your Life Program is a comprehensive 1-year program for achieving your goals, organizing your life and being your best.
Welcome to the 28 Day Organizing Challenge!
Looking for Menu Plan Monday? Find it here.
It’s here, time to start your organizing engines! Participating is simple. Just spend the month organizing a small space or a whole room (or even both!) and then come on back here at the end of the month and link up to a blog post (including before and after pictures!) on your organizing success.
We have some absolutely amazing prizes to offer you as motivation as well. I’m just so excited to tell you about them. These are some of the finest organizing services and products out there, all designed to help you live your best organized life possible. Each winner will receive TWO prizes and there are prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in EACH category. Thank you to all my most awesome sponsors who are all so passionate about helping others get organized. If you are needing encouragement throughout this month please don’t hesitate to visit each of the following sites. They hold a wealth of organizing information!
So here we go:
Whole Room Category
Whole Room First Place Prizes:
1. A comprehensive 1 year Design Your Life program with Get Organized Wizard – valued at $468.00!
Design Your Life is a comprehensive self-improvement program that provides structure, motivation and accountability for creating the life you want. It spans 12 life areas, so everything that matters is covered – like Health & Fitness, Business & Career, Home, Relationships, Money, Personal Presentation, Happiness, and Time Management. Plus it’s structured so you don’t have to work out where to start. And it’s broken down into easy chunks – so you make progress. Quite simply, it’s the easiest and most practical way to design your ideal life – week by week, step by step, action by action.
2. Cash prize from Lifeorganizers.com in the amount of $150.00!
LifeOrganizers.com is your one-stop destination for home and office organization. Hundreds of articles and tips give you fresh, easy ideas on how to rid clutter from every part of your life. From the garage to the kitchen, the home office to the spirit, learn how to organize anything and everything – today! It’s simple. By reading one article each day and putting suggestions into action, you can master the art of organization and bring order to a cluttered, chaotic world – or at least your corner of it.
Whole Room Second Place Prizes:
1. One year Home Office Organizer VIP Membership: The Ultimate Home Office Maintenance Program – valued at $299.00!
As a VIP Member, you work with Brandie , The Home Office Organizer, once every month in group setting via teleconference and the rest of the month on the interactive Members Only Site. This helps you stay on task, organizing your office in small steps. Spend your getting the important things done, rather than organizing and dealing with clutter.
Whole Room Third Place Prizes:
Developed by professional organizers, household labels will keep you as organized as your kids! The Neat Freak Combo offers a huge selection of labels for storage, sundries and spices. The Crafter PackCord Control will help you store the scissors, brushes, paints you have amassed. Labels will give you just that: control over the mess of chargers and cords in your house. Curbsides will help your neighbours return your bins that have rolled down the street.
2. One year subscription to Blis (Best Life Information System) – valued at $125.00!
Too busy to waste time looking for important documents? Have a hectic family schedule which makes it difficult to communicate and organize everything? BLIS: best life information system, can house all your household information in one central and organized location so that important information can be found quickly and conveniently. In addition, the web-based home-life management system simplifies day to day life by color coding multiple family members’ schedules and communicating events with detailed email reminders, pop up reminders, and to do list reminders so that even busy families can keep it together. From menu planning to home inventory documentation to warranty expiration tracking, BLIS organizes the fine details of life.
Small Space Category
Small Space First Place Prizes:
1. A seat in Simplify 101′s Organize Your Paper Clutter online workshop – valued at $75.00!
Paper, paper everywhere! That paper mountain growing on your countertop represents a loss of freedom, a loss of control, and a nagging feeling in your gut that something important isn’t getting attended to. Your paper, and the feelings it creates, makes it hard to relax, focus or even have fun. Here’s the good news: there is a better way! With the right paper organizing systems in place—those created with you, your paper, and your home in mind—you can free yourself from paper clutter and the stress that comes along with it. In Organize Your Paper Clutter, you’ll learn a step-by-step process on how to decide if you need a piece of paper (and for how long!) and how to organize it so you’ll find it again right when you need it! Your piles (and your stress!) will be replaced by organizing systems you love, and feelings of confidence, relief and peace of mind!
2. One set of Clearly Organized Bags – valued at $35.00!
The organizing bags I absolutely love are back! New owners Lynette and Holly have just opened up shop and are once again selling these bags online. Your prize sample set will include 1 xsmall bag, 2 small bags, 2 medium bags, 2 large bags, and 1 xlarge bag.
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Small Space Second Place Prizes:
1. Organize Your Home in 12 Weeks e-course with Take Charge Solutions – valued at $47.00!
Marcia Francois offers support and encouragement as she walks you through the process of getting your home organized in just 12 weeks. You’ll receive one email every week for 12 weeks with four separate 30 minute organizing projects, access to a members only website with tons of organizing forms to help you on your organizing journey, a 60 minute audio on How to Organize Any Space where she’ll teach you how to get organized and give you practical examples in the home and office, plus much more!
2. The Clutter Code Six Step Organizing System DVD created by Organizing Connection – valued at $29.99!
In this instructional yet entertaining DVD you be will guided from start to finish through the Six Step Organizing System™, putting you back in the driver’s seat of your life. Included in this DVD is four distinct videos: Organizing The Kitchen, Organizing The Bedroom, Organizing the Entrance/Mudroom and The Organizing Paper Trail. As an added bonus you will have access to download the companion worksheets for each of these videos.
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Small Space Third Place Prizes:
1. Prize package from Organize It Mom! – valued at $30.00!
Organize It Mom! is THE place to find solutions to problems that drive moms crazy. The winner of this $30 gift prize will get to choose from the products on www.organizeitmom.com – from chore charts to toy labels, from routine cards to budget envelopes.
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2. One year download membership to List Plan It – valued at $30.00!
A Download Membership to ListPlanIt.com allows you to have instant, 24/7 access to the hundreds of lists & planning pages available. Find grocery lists and menu planners in Meal Planning, cleaning and project lists in Home Management, birthday and holiday planning pages in Holidays & Occasions, blog post planners and financial tracking pages in Business Planning, calendars and to do lists in Time Management, and so much more! Simply view the pages you want, type your own information right into them and save to your computer, and print whenever you would and as often as you would like.
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Plus I’ll be giving away TWO random prizes as well and they are:
1. Another prize package from Organize It Mom! – valued at $30.00!
“Organize It Mom! is THE place to find solutions to problems that drive moms crazy. The winner of this $30 gift prize will get to choose from the products on www.organizeitmom.com – from chore charts to toy labels, from routine cards to budget envelopes.”
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2. The Household Helper’s Guide To Home Organization For Busy Moms – e-book valued at $8.97!
This guide teaches you great techniques on Home Organization. Some of the things you’ll learn from reading this e-book are what it means to get organized and how to get started, discover how to rid your life of clutter for good, how to stop kitchen chaos, how to quickly & easily get the family room under control, the A-B-C formula for tackling the bedroom & bathroom and discover the no lose way to organizing the home office, garage, car, and all those seasonal items too! Also included is a bonus report “Organizing The Kids” as well as the recording and transcripts to a tele-seminar answering YOUR questions on how to get started organizing!
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Whew! Is that exciting or what?! Over the next month, my friend and guest judge Tanna, of Complete Organizing Solutions, and I will be helping you along the way with support and encouragement as much as we can. On challenge posts we’ll be answering questions in the comments and hope to be as interactive as possible. I’ll post the judging criteria separately.
So for today if you are feeling brave (and why not!) please feel free to link up in the Mr. Linky below to a pre-post introducing us to the space you will be tackling along with giving us a snapshot of your before pictures. You can totally do this!! Remember the bigger the mess in the “before” the bigger the transformation :)
Updated: If you are linking up please link directly to a challenge post. To be fair to the other participants I will be deleting links that only link to a blog home page.
Of course it isn’t a requirement to show us your before pictures now (you will have to at then end though :) ) but accountability goes a long way to getting the task done! If you aren’t linking up to a challenge post, just let us know in the comments what space you’ll be doing and what you think your biggest challenge to getting it done will be.
Also if you’d like to let others know you’ll be participating, feel free to tweet that you’re joining in:
I’m participating in Org Junkie’s 28 Day Organizing Challenge with @orgjunkie during the month of Feb. Wish me luck! http://tiny.cc/KYtro
Good luck!!
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