Blog
In addition to actually doing the organizing, another of Angie’s passions is writing about organizing.
She has been writing a monthly blog on organizing since 2016. Most of the blog posts were also published as monthly newspaper articles in the Kingsport Times-News and Johnson City Press.
To access the blog, you can either:
Click on a category below to see all the blog entries from that category; OR
Scroll the feed of blog entries below
- Apps
- Bathroom
- Business
- Children
- Christmas
- Computer
- Decluttering
- Digital organizing
- Estate planning
- General Organization
- Getting Records Together
- Goals
- Health
- Home Organization
- Kitchen
- Media
- Medical
- Mental clutter
- Minimalism
- Moving
- New Year
- Office
- Organizing Principles
- Paper organizing
- Phone
- Photo Organizing
- Photo organizing
- Preparing for Death
- Purse
- Residential organizing
- Resolutions
- School
- Technology
- Television
- Time Management and Productivity
- Travel
- Working from Home
Organizing is Hard. Chaos is Hard. Choose Your Hard.
Ultimately, we can choose the hard of organizing or the hard of disorganization’s consequences. It’s our choice. After five years of helping clients organize, I can tell you with surety that time spent organizing is worth it. The hard of organizing causes less suffering than the hard of chaos.
The Beauty of Minimalism is Finding the More of Less
What do you think of when you hear the word minimalism? Before reading this book, the word minimalism brought to mind bare white walls, tiny houses, and young tree huggers. I sure had a lot to learn. Minimalism, according to Joshua Becker, is “the intentional promotion of the things we value and the removal of anything that distracts us from them”. Only when we get rid of what is distracting us can we really focus on what is most important. This is a message that is desperately needed in our society, where we are increasingly encouraged to own more and to do more. Our homes are filled with stuff, our calendars are filled with activities, and none of it makes us happy.
Cool Organizing Tips for Your Refrigerator
Most of us would probably agree that the kitchen is the heart of the home. We find ourselves in the kitchen not just around mealtimes, but also when we want a quick snack or beverage. It’s also the space where people naturally gather. If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the refrigerator is the heart of the kitchen. Whether we’re gathering ingredients to make dinner or just perusing the contents for a snack, we’re all looking for a positive experience when we open that refrigerator door.
Help! The Toys are Taking Over!
Each time I help families with young children organize, I notice many similarities. Although most families attempt to limit the amount of toys their children receive, the sheer number mysteriously multiplies. And, despite the family’s best efforts to limit the rooms in which toys are allowed, the toys manage to travel to other rooms anyway. Before you know it, toys are everywhere, and they’re a major contributor to clutter. It’s a constant struggle to stay on top of the situation. In this article, I share some common practices that have proved particularly helpful to tame the toy takeover.
Love Your Family? Get it Together!
One of the most loving things you can do for your family is to get all of your records together so that your loved ones are prepared if anything happens to you. This article will give you the inspiration and tools you need to give what may be the best gift you’ll ever give to your children and grandchildren.
Clutter: It Goes Much Deeper than Just Our Stuff
We live in a culture of abundance. Many of us are able to buy every possession we need and more. We have a full selection of activities available to us. We own devices that can help us find information, stay entertained, updated, and connected to friends and family at all times. But our abundance comes at a serious price. We’ve filled our homes and our lives to overflowing but have neglected to see the damage it can do to us.
Have you ever wondered what our clutter does to us? Wonder no more–read on.
Like With Like
Perhaps the most universal of all organizing principles is the practice of grouping like items together. Finding what you’re looking for is so much easier if similar items are kept in the same area. It seems quite logical and basic for many people. But often I have found that although people may understand the principle, they sometimes don’t know how to put it into practice in certain areas of their home.
A Home for Everything
Out of all the principles used in organizing, this one is the most important by far! Not only is it essential to the process of organization, it is also extremely versatile. It can be used to order anything from dishes to shoes to time to ideas. I dare say that without employing this fundamental rule, any attempt to establish or maintain order will fail. What is this vital practice, and how can you use it to organize your home?
If It Stresses You Out, Create a System
While listening to an organizing podcast several years ago, the podcast guest shared a statement that has really resonated with me. This woman was a small business owner and a homeschool mother of 8 children (from my best recollection). To say that this woman had a lot on her plate is an understatement! Yet despite her situation, she was able to thrive in both her business and her home life. This is how she described the secret to her success: “If it stresses you out, create a system.”
"I'm So Overwhelmed!" Five Tips to Go from Paralysis to Progress
“I’m so overwhelmed!” It’s a common refrain in times of stress. When we reach this point, despite the growing mass of work to be done, we can sometimes reach a standstill where we’re getting absolutely nothing accomplished. The intimidating mountain of tasks looms menacingly in the distance, but we are stuck. How do we combat this paralysis and actually make progress?
How Scary is your Basement?
Basements have been frequently utilized as locations for scary scenes in movies. In Silence of the Lambs, the basement is a holding place for kidnapped victims. Who can forget the scene in Signs when an alien hand reaches through the coal chute to grab an unsuspecting child? More recently, in A Quiet Place, the basement used to muffle the sounds of the family’s newborn baby eventually becomes the setting for battles with aliens. We’ve become so accustomed to scary basements that as viewers, when a character opens the door to the basement, we yell, “Don’t go down there!”
What to Bring with you to College (or not!)
The biggest challenge of campus housing is a lack of storage space. Whether you’re in a dorm room or an apartment, your lodging is likely much smaller than you’d like. The smaller the space, the more important it is to use every bit of space you have as efficiently as possible. You’ll need to plan ahead and look for inventive ways to use every square inch of space. Don’t forget to consider using wall space if possible.
Tips for an Organized Move
There are a few particular times in our lives when being organized is especially critical. Preparing for a move is definitely one of those times! Whether you’re moving across town or across the country, moving is one of the most stressful activities of all. Planning well for each stage of the move can significantly decrease the stress level and increase your odds of success on move day. Having just completed two local moves in the past year, I’d like to share the tips that proved most helpful for us.
Time at Home, Not Time Wasted
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” So begins what I believe is one of the most well-written chapters in all of literature. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens was writing about the stark contrasts during the time period of the French Revolution, a time that brought both despair and joy. I wonder if someday we might look back at this extended time we’ve had at home during the Coronavirus pandemic in a similar way. This time has brought despair to many – uncertainty, furloughed or lost jobs, sickness, and death. But it’s also been a time of joy – more time with family, lighter schedules, time to reflect on our priorities, and good people rising to the call of the needs around them.
Beginnings: My Business and My First Book
If you had told me even as recently as three years ago that I would someday write a book, I might have laughed at you. In fact, both writing a book and starting a professional organizing book are two goals I could have never dreamed I would attained in my lifetime. Here’s how both of these bucket list tasks began.
How to (Really) Work from Home
The Coronavirus pandemic has drastically changed so much about our home and work lives. Because of the need for social distancing, many more people are working at home, some for the first time. While some excel in adapting to this new setting, others struggle to remain productive. My husband Eric began working remotely in 1998, well before it was so commonplace. Over twenty years of experience with remote work has given him valuable insights that can help those who are still settling into this new normal. For this article, I asked Eric some questions about how to work effectively from home.
Should I Buy It? Shopping Tips to Prevent Excess
I’ve written many articles with an emphasis on decluttering. I’ve shared plenty of tips to encourage us to let go of what we don’t love and don’t use. I realized recently I haven’t yet written much about the other side of the equation. We could theoretically continue to declutter consistently but not make much of a dent in our excess if we keep on bringing too much into our home. An influx of items can come from items people give us as gifts, either for special occasions or just because they feel we need something. But the main influx into our homes is primarily of our own making. We are simply buying too many things we don’t have room for and don’t need. I’d like to share some tips to help us change that habit and to be more mindful of our shopping habits.
Organizing Your Media
In my work as an organizer, I regularly help clients make decisions about their belongings. One category of belongings that we regularly encounter is media. By media, I am referring to music, movies, “home movies”, and books. How do you decide what media you need to keep and which ones to let go? How do you best organize and store media that you keep? What should you do with media in outdated formats? This article will address all of these questions.
Stop Giving (Meaningless) Christmas Gifts
I fully expect some controversy with this article. I may even be likened to Ebenezer Scrooge, that archetype of misers, for daring to write it. Though I don’t relish negative reactions, I believe Joel Waldfogel’s 2009 book Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holiday is worthy of inclusion in a discussion of holiday gift giving. (By the way, I am only scratching the surface of this well-written, interesting, and comical book. I recommend a full read.) I promise to also include practical tips outside the scope of this book. My ultimate goal is to lead you to smarter purchases that could decrease clutter, increase the satisfaction of your gift recipients, and even contribute to world well-being. A lofty goal indeed.