Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
Sometimes it’s not important to distinguish between being organized and looking organized. Perception is reality. Would you like to know how to fake being organized, even if you aren’t?
1. Keep repeating.
If you are a sucker for organizing magazines and TV shows, you’ll start to notice that repeated forms and themes are pleasing to the eye. Decorated rooms never have just one pretty storage box. There are usually lots of the same one artfully stacked. The organizing stores that you drool over, like IKEA, the Container Store, and Target, often have five to fifteen of the same item in one display. Even cheap plastic bins can be pleasing to the eye if they are labeled uniformly and stacked to the ceiling.
2. Calm the color.
What do you see when you view a really cluttered room? It’s not the amount of stuff that your eye responds to, but that there doesn’t seem to be any order to the items, which are made up of shapes and colors. If those shapes and colors are rearranged and made to relate to each other, the same stuff in the same space can very often be harmonious.
3. Clear horizontal surfaces.
This requires having other places to put stuff besides the counter, desktop, and dining room table. My own house sports a blessedly long kitchen counter that gets covered each and every day, but gets cleared several times a day as well. You may not be able to keep surfaces clear all the time, but being able to clear surfaces quickly is a handy trick. Hopefully you have a home for stuff that lands on your surfaces, but if not, do what you must. You might even know people who appear to have an organized space, but heaven help the unsuspecting guest who opens the drawers or closets. Booby-trapped drawers and closets can work, at least for a while.
4. Decorate for the appropriate season.
Nothing says disorganized more than a Christmas tree out in April. Fake peonies hanging on the porch in January are a dead giveaway that the house isn’t being kept up. Nothing says you have to dress your house to the nines for each and every holiday, or even decorate at all for that matter. But if you are going to do it, keep décor seasonal and current.
5. Take five minutes for you.
First impressions really are important. Take a moment to polish or clean your shoes each day. Before getting out of the car, check your hair and your teeth in the mirror. It may not be fair, but people do judge character by what they see. The Wall Street Journal reported not long ago that workers with organized desks are more likely to be promoted. At home, if you can’t keep the whole house organized, focus on just the entry ways (front and back) and the main room you would entertain in. Your guest room may be trashed, but people knocking on your front door don’t need to know that.
Being organized in your head and your space can lead to an amazing and full life without the guilt that many people report from being disorganized. These tips on faking it might just be the first step to getting a reasonably organized life – for real.
What is the smallest spot most of us need to organize? Our purse or wallet. Purses are command-central-on-the-go for most women. Sometimes they are aid stations for other family members. Purses can lend their style and their function to the overall first impression we form of a person. We take these necessary accessories for granted, and we might be guilty of making these mistakes that sabotage our efforts to stay organized:
1. Too big. A purse that could be used to regularly smuggle small children causes all sorts of problems, like poor visibility and aching backs. Rooting around in the bottom of something the size of a hot air balloon is about as sexy as digging into the bottom of a large bag of popcorn. Wikipedia states Parkinson’s Law as “Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity.” The larger your purse gets, the more stuff you are likely to pack into it.
2. Too small. My own purse is barely bigger than an iPhone. Basically, it’s a wallet on a string. Recently I started carrying my iPad with me everywhere, but my purse is much smaller than the iPad. I’ve been coping, but I don’t have a real solution. All of my essential gear needs a home in my purse, so I may be up-sizing soon. If you find you are always leaving your gear in the wrong place because it all doesn’t fit, you may need to trade up, too.
3. Fear of commitment. Once upon a time it might have been fashionable to change purse and shoes every day, but life moves at a much faster pace these days. Still, we all know women who are always changing purses, and then stating that they left some essential item in their other purse. Why not just move everything to the new purse? Fear of commitment? What if it doesn’t work out with this new purse today? Have a go-to purse for each season, and stick with it for a couple of months, to reduce the trauma associated with changing purses too often. If you can’t be contained to just one choice per season, then spring for a PursePerfector, or one of its look-alikes, which is an internal pocket that can be moved over between purses with just one hand.
4. Lack of systems. Most purses, no matter how cute, just stink at organizing. If the interior lining is black, a low-visibility situation gets even worse. If you’re lucky, they come with one or two small pockets sewn into the interior lining. Exterior pockets will cost you extra. I swear that most purses are designed by men who don’t actually have to carry much. When it comes to well-thought out storage, there are a few standouts, including the Butler Bag and the Thirty-One Gifts line. The Butler Bag has a built-in compartment that encourages items to stand up in several compartments, instead of piling on top of each other.
If any of these purse mistakes are happening to you, give yourself permission to buy a better purse. It’s a little thing that could mean a lot in your day.
What other purse mistakes could you change to become better organized?
Babies don’t stay babies for long. My babies have grown out of baby bug rattles and hundreds of adorable, cute outfits. ‘Tis the season for fall consignment sales, especially for childrens’ clothes. My clients are often tortured with the idea that by donating their goods, they are somehow losing money. Is selling on consignment, eBay, or Craigslist any better? I decided to run the math on my own involvement in a community consignment sale and see how it compares to donation values.
Let’s set aside the emotional distress tied up in pawing through teeny tiny clothes, hand-knitted sweaters and beautiful booties. Look, I’m a professional, and even I did a mini fashion show for my husband as I tagged items for sale. (Aaaaw, remember her in this cute little outfit? It hardly looks worn!)
Let’s examine facts. I had about 250 outfits, shoes, and baby gear that were consignable: in good shape, no stains or tears, matched in complete outfits, and looking like-new or lightly-worn. I signed on to be part of a local one-day only sale, but working with a consignment store is similar.
First came the scramble for child-sized hangers. Clothes on hangers tend to sell better. Every dollar I spent on prep would reduce my profit, so I scoured Freecycle and hit up friends and clients, but it was tough coming up with enough extra hangers.
Using straight pins to attach sale tags is a no-no. One DollarTree package of safety pins cost, yep, just one buck. Sale tags were provided by the event host, but some sales require consignors to print tags at home, adding paper and printer ink costs.
Then came the real cost. Little outfits had to be checked for condition, put on hangers, steamed in some cases, grouped and priced. I spent at least 10 hours, maybe 15 hours or more. At minimum wage of $7.25 my “cost” for time spent would have been at least $73 bucks.
Last came the trip to the sale site for drop off. Loading items and delivering to the sale site took a little more than an hour, so rack up another roughly $10 in opportunity cost and aggravation.
Now comes the fun part. Each sale works a bit differently, so read up on what’s available in your area. This sale gave 60% of the proceeds back to the consignor. I opted to volunteer at the sale and earn a higher percentage of the earnings, in my case 75%. I donated two hours of volunteer time for greater profit and an additional shot at end-of-day markdowns. I scored big, getting an all-wood three-piece play kitchen for just $10.
I priced nearly all my items at $2. Price items to sell, for sure. Remember, folks, pricing something unreasonably high at a consignment sale actually lowers your chance of earning any profit at all. Most people come to these sales for deals, so play along or don’t play.
Potential Results:
My results:
I’m not surprised that $61 is just about what I spent at that very same sale. My check came in about two weeks. Unsold items can be donated by the host, but I picked up mine to take to another sale or perhaps donate for the tax deduction. That means I dragged home 150 outfits, which was no easy haul back out to the car, but they are still worth another roughly $75 back on my taxes when properly documented.
So was it worth it? People who itemize deductions, about one-third of us, can use charitable donations on Schedule A. If I had bagged and dropped off those same 250 items at my local Goodwill, I would have been able to assign a thrift value to them of the same $2, and taken the deduction on my taxes next April. My donation would have reduced my taxable income by the value donated ($500), and reduced my tax bill by about $125. (Note: Please check with your tax advisor regarding your situation.) Hmmm, that is suspiciously close to my net, but without the time that I spent prepping, delivering and retrieving my unsold items, and volunteering at the event.
So should you or shouldn’t you? If you enjoy consignment sales, if you absolutely need the cash more than the time, or if you have some current, quality items that you know people are willing to pay top dollar for, then go the consignment route. I appreciate it, because I’ll probably be buying your stuff. Just remember, the longer you wait to send items to consignment, the less likely they will be trendy and desirable. If, however, time is more valuable to you, then donate your goods to a charity like Goodwill or any local charity that will provide a receipt for tax purposes, knowing that the financial outcome to your bottom line will likely be similar.
