Neat and Tidy and Green

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One of my ongoing quests is to get my family and myself organized. It’s something I’ve been attempting to do for at least a decade now. I’m wondering if I’m ever going to succeed.

You see I came of age in a household where stacking things in piles was the norm, and when you had time, you attacked those growing piles. When you could see a blank tabletop or countertop again, you knew you were in a good place. Problem was if you were used to making piles, you never stayed in that clean countertop “good place” for very long.

It’s no wonder that as I sit here typing, I am surround by piles–pile of newspaper to be recycled, piles of coupons to be filed, piles of kids’ schoolwork and artwork to be filed, framed or tossed. My husband isn’t much better either, and neither are my kids. I guess years from now when they were undoubtedly complaining about our bad parenting to someone (therapist, college roommate, future spouse), our lack of organizational skills will probably be top of their list.

A couple of years ago we hired a professional organizer to come in and get us into shape. And in the two sessions we worked with her, she did help us a bit. It’s thanks to her that all (OK, most) of the crayons, pencils, pens and markers in the house are in labeled Rubbermaid-like boxes in our mudroom. I can also give this organizational expert props for showing me how to turn a plain binder into a makeshift cookbook and to purge my magazine collection at the same time.

She had me purchase a new binder and a box of clear, three-ring-punched sheet holders. Then she taught me that as I found recipes I liked in magazine, I was to tear them out, put them in one of these sheet holders, and then toss the rest of the magazine. This was clearly a better option than holding on to the hundreds and hundreds of magazines I’d had, you know, just in case I wanted to make a recipe one day (which you know I never would have been able to find anyway).

While a few of these changes have been wonderful, the bottom line was that this organizational expert wasn’t cheap, and she wasn’t very flexible at all. She had her ways of organizing a house, and because her ways didn’t jive with my ways, we quickly clashed, and I never brought her back.

Also, having a professional organizer coming to your house can be a real time-suck. Sometimes, it would be like those of us who once had cleaning ladies and felt that we had to “clean” for the cleaning lady. I always felt like I had to straighten up before the organizational expert got here.

Because I am organizationally challenge and frugal and don’t have a lot of time in my day, I keep on subscribing to FlyLady, a free online service I’ve mentioned before. However, I was really thrilled to learn about a virtual organizational expert named Debbie Jordan Kravitz who has a bona fide organizing company called D&R Custom Organizers in York, Pennsylvania, as well as a blog called Virtually Organized for those of us who don’t live near York. Thanks to her online presence, Debbie can help anyone living anywhere get organized. And she swears she won’t charge you an arm and a leg to do so.

Recently, Debbie wrote to introduce herself to me and to share some green-oriented organizing tips she thought The Lean Green Family’s readers might enjoy. “I really enjoy the challenge of organizing clients by reusing, or repurposing items they already have, rather than running out and purchasing the latest and greatest organizing gadgets,” Debbie wrote. Hey, I like that idea, too. Here are some of the examples Debbie shared with me.

She turned her grandmother’s Hope Chest into a lateral filing cabinet/bench. “Now it’s an eclectic piece in my office,” she says, “that is functional, discreet, beautiful, and sentimental.”

When organizing “junk drawers” (hey, Debbie, I’ve got a couple of those in my house), “I like to repurpose rarely used items, rather than waste money on drawer dividers, that are both not very pretty and often are not exactly the size you need for your items anyway,” she says, offering the following examples:

* the glass top of an antique butter dish to hold pens in a draw
* a floral frog for holding pens on a desktop
* clear baby jars as a container for paperclips and other small items
* empty stationary boxes and box tops as drawer organizers, too, along with a shallow kitty litter box (brand new and unused, of course!).

Debbie also added this: “Virtual Organizing Consultant services, by their very nature, are ‘green’ given that I do not need to pollute the earth driving to and from a client’s home.”

Let me know if any of Debbie’s ideas work for you and/or if you have other green organizing tips to share.

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Filed under FlyLady, organizing