Organizing is not natural for me. Not at all. Things start piling up quickly and I feel like I have a ton of projects at once. I think I have prejudices when it comes to being too tidy or organized. Visions from "Sleeping with the Enemy", ie. stacks of canned food all lined up in rows in the pantry, towels perfectly aligned in the bathroom and too many episodes of CSI come to mind and freak me out.
Then last year Raul and I bought our first house and we were confronted with how to manage the upkeep here which is very different from our yardless condo. Add on our baby girl and when I mentioned things piling up, the piles are in overdrive now.
We both want to spend more time with our family, painting, creating, learning, reading, etc. Everything is more fun than figuring out what to eat daily, what laundry to do daily or when we get a chance, etc. This has led to researching and becoming obsessed with managing our household. Not only that, but I have a self-made deadline of getting organized and clearing things off the floor before Addy starts crawling. R and I work full time and lately we have been doing what we can to maintain during the week, which leaves the weekend to do nothing but chores. After our first weekend of doing this, I have been looking for solutions.
I love Pinterest. This is where I daydream and look for design solutions others have found. So this is where my inspiration lives before I even think of changing a thing.
In my Googling craziness I stumbled upon A Bowl Full of Lemons. Toni Hammersley is a professional organizer among other things and this woman is amazing. She does admit she has a house cleaner once a week but I am still beyond envious of her home. She has a 14 week challenge going on and so far it has been pretty doable for us. We have tackled the mail station, laundry room, master bedroom, kitchen and we are working on our offices now.
Another place I love is YouTube. I follow beauty gurus (if you have faves, pls share), so I started searching the subject of organizing. So much great info out there! Just yesterday I found another professional organizer,Kacy Paide, and now I'm a big fan of hers as well. Lateral files are now my friends, I think the Elfa File Cart from the Container Store will be good fit for my office and our receipts are under control. Right now I'm working on a management folder (via ABFOL) to help with scheduling weekly meals, blog updates (what are those?), shop updates, etc.
It's a journey but I see a light at the end of the tunnel.