National Organize Your Home Day

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January 14th is National Organize Your Home Day–now I don’t know about you, but this is not a task I could ever complete in a single day. Perhaps, I could get a handle on my desk in one day!

I think sewers are always lamenting the fact that they need to organize–whether its upcoming projects, the fabric stash, burgeoning bookshelves or beads and notions filling drawers. If you’re in need of some helpful hints, check out The One-Minute Organizer: A-Z Storage Solutions book, by Donna Smalin. The sub-title notes “500 tips for storing every item in your home.” This handy little tome is organized alphabetically by some common categories of things that can easily get out of control around the house and offers up ideas for storage solutions. The author also discusses the pros and cons of various storage solutions.

One of the things I like best about this book is that it breaks tasks into small bits. Rather than turning away from my computer and staring at a dissheveled sewing room, I am encouraged to focus only on one area at a time–like my interfacing drawer, perhaps, or the cutting table surface. If I take a few minutes to organize a small section of the room at a time, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something, and soon the entire room will be in much better array than when I began. It’s much like Nancy Zieman’s book titled 10-20-30 Minutes to Sew. Using small bits of time to measure accomplishments is a great motivator. I do the same thing during TV commericials–how much can I get done during the 2-3 minute breaks?

So, I would encourage you not to view your organizing project as your entire home, but rather to break it down into smaller portions like this well-written book suggests, and pretty soon you’ll have made significant progress and feel good about what you’ve done.