Tip of the Day: Spring Cleaning with your Husband

     Hello organizers! I know I haven't been around for about a month now so I thought I would share a quick update and a tip with you all today!

    So first, the update! Things have been super crazy around our house lately! Both my husband and I have been looking for new jobs recently. My husband has been looking really hard and will hear back on Monday to see if he got a sales job that he thinks he nailed the interview for! And as for me, I think I found my dream job. Cue the drum roll *insert drum roll here* I am a nanny!!! I just finished my second full week as a nanny for an incredibly intelligent and adorable two year old girl and a super cute and lovable 14 week old boy! I'm already completely in love with these kids! So much fun to be with and care for, I'm so lucky! I'll try to share some ideas relating to kids on the blog now when I can. My schedule is super packed now and the only reason that I am blogging today is because I will have Fridays off through June and then my job will be Monday through Friday. But maybe I will try to blog every Friday for a little while. Sorry to ramble on but as you can tell I'm super excited about all this! Okay, so now to the tip of the day!

     Today's tip of the day is actually something that I am going to be practicing today! Maybe its the fact that its spring, maybe it is the new super busy schedule and wanting to be organized or maybe I am just ready to purge but its true, you really can spring clean with our husband! Now maybe the husbands aren't always the first to jump at the idea of spring cleaning but they can be a huge help! Maybe they may clean and organize the garage for you but they can also help you with things you may not think of right away, like going through your clothes! (Wait, what? Did she just say my husband can help me with my clothes? Is she crazy?) Okay, well maybe I am a little crazy but its true! If you are anything like me, you will look at your wardrobe and you are embarrassed to admit that you see things you haven't worn for years, clothes that have a stain but are still okay if you were them with the right thing that covers it or there is that piece of clothing that needs resown "someday" but you've never done it. It's time for that to change! Now maybe you aren't as lucky as me to have a husband who loves fashion and who you can trust to make fashion decisions for you but you may have a husband who wants some more room in your closet (I'm totally guilty with owning 3/4 of ours!) or maybe he secretly wants to tell you that a certain outfit isn't the most flattering without hurting your feelings or he wants to tell you that he just simply doesn't like something in your closet. So like I said, I'm ready for a change and I'm ready to finally get rid of things, so today is the day! Graham is going to help me go through all of my clothes and I am going to try my hardest to listen! Just because I bought or was given something and "might" wear it "someday" (I'm realizing that never happens) doesn't mean I have to keep it! So now that I know my husband is going to help me and I have told you about it... lets do this! Let's get OrganizedForReal!

Quick Tip of The Day: Pillowcase Pack

     So I'm sure that you've gone to your linen closet to grab a fresh pair of sheets for the bed or maybe its time to put on the flannel sheets for winter. You have to dig to find them, they are all messed up and wrinkled or you can't find one that one last pillowcase. We've all been there right?
     Well, no more! Today's quick tip is make a pillowcase pack of your sheet set. Once you've folded all of your sheets nicely, go ahead and take one of the pillow case to the set and slide your fitted sheet, your flat sheet and the other pillow case into it. Then fold the outside pillow case underneath and you have the entire set of sheets together and contained. No more missing pieces! When you do this, you'll be OrganizedForReal!

Project: Organizing My Niece's Dresser

     As you can guess, I love when the opportunity arises for me to help someone else get organized. So yesterday while I was babysitting my nieces, I went into the 14 year old's bedroom and this is what I saw!

     (Sorry about the picture quality, I didn't have my camera with me so I had to use my cell phone.) I was in an organizing mood so I decided to show her how I had organized my dresser! 
     I had no idea how long this would take, I guessed about an hour. I had my 9 year niece 'help' me too. I was actually surprised though, she did help me fold some of the shirts and she actually did a good job. 
     So the first thing that I did was open all the drawers and see where she was keeping her different clothes. She keep her capris in the bottom left drawer and her jeans in the middle right drawer. She didn't have them folded, well she didn't really have any of her clothes folded. So that was the first thing I changed, I moved the jeans down to the bottom right drawer. I folded them in half length wise and then folded it in half 3 times. So instead of looking like this...

The two bottom drawers now looked like this...

Then it was on to her shirts. The top right drawer is her t-shirts that she wears when she goes out of the house and the middle right drawer that used to hold her jeans, is now where her t-shirts that she wears around the house goes. This was her "lounge shirt" drawer before...

And after...

Look at how much more space it gave her!!!!! And now she can see all of her comfy shirts too!

Here was her "casual shirt" drawer before. She couldn't even close it because there were too many and the doll was in the way.

And now...

Perfect!

Then in the middle right drawer she had all her long sleeve shirts. We found a lot of long sleeve shirts in other drawers simple because there wasn't room for them to be all in one drawer. Before...

And after, all of them fit!

And finally in her top right drawer, she had her swimsuits and cover-ups as well as her casual tank tops. 

Before it was so annoying to have to dig through all of the clothes...

And now...

It's great! The left row has all of her swimsuits, swim-shorts and cover-ups. Then the other two rows are her tank tops.

So then once it was all organized it looked like this!

AWESOME!!!!

So you tell me, which one is better?

This?

Or this?

I think it's pretty obvious. And guess how long it took me? Only 45 minutes! Now that's OrganizedForReal!

Project: Organizing Dresser Drawers

     Have you ever opened up one of your dresser drawers only to wonder how you are ever going to find what you are looking for? Have you ever decided to refold all the wrinkled shirts in your drawer only to realize that there are shirts that you have forgotten about but actually love? I think we have all been there and done that. But what if I said that you will never have to deal with messy, overfilled drawers again? 

     This had always been one of my problems that drove me crazy until about a month ago. I was watching an organizing video on YouTube and it has changed everything! Alejandra Costello has an amazing channel on YouTube called HomeOrganizing. 3 weeks ago she posted a video on How to Fold A T-shirt. Check this video out so that you can see how to do it. 

 Sounds stupid and way too simple right? WRONG! I'll admit it, as soon as I saw the whole video, I refolded all my T-shirts! She used a tool to fold them this way but there is no reason you can't fold them by hand. Why buy a tool that will take up more of your valuable room to "simplify" your life?
     I wish that I would have taken before pictures (I will from now on with any of my projects) so that you could compare but I didn't. Here are the after pictures:

  

     This is my drawer of T-shirts as well as my long sleeve shirts. I slightly had to modify the way I folded them from the way that I folded T-shirts. I just folded the sleeve in first and then continued to fold them the way described in the video. 

     Then this is the drawer where I keep all my dressy shirts that don't need to be hung up as well as my sweaters. The two rows on the left are shirts, the two rows on the right are sweaters. I also organized them but color so that they are easy to find.

     Then finally here is my drawer with all my camisoles and tanks (a lot, I know). To fold these, I just folded the top down to the bottom of the arm hole and then folded in fourths. 

     And there you have it! I really love this system because I can open the drawer and see every shirt I have, none are hidden. When you take a shirt out, it doesn't ruin the row and shirts are very easy to put back where they belong. It is also very nice because the way you fold it allows you to see the front of the shirt so you can easily identify which shirt you are looking for! Try it out, I know you'll love it! It's what has made my dresser drawers OrganizedForReal!