Table of Contents

-Introduction
-Did you know?
-Monthly Mission – Holiday Planning
-What’s New on Plan-and-Organize-Life.com – Recent site additions
-Holiday Gift Shopping
-Garage Makeover - Before and After

Introduction

Yes, it’s already that time of year again. Can you believe it? The holiday season is here. I know, the Halloween candy is still fresh and some of you, you might be thinking you have a lot of time until the holidays. But for others, (such as myself) it’s time to jump into action and get the holidays planned out so I can do it with less stress and actually enjoy myself.

PLEASE, don’t skip this month’s monthly mission (see below) which is to get your holiday planning done, the earlier the better.

I am also excited to share with you before and after photos of my garage makeover. Check it out below.

Thanksgiving is not an American holiday, but a centuries-old tradition held by most cultures around the world?

You can read more details here: Thanksgiving Fun Facts

On top of keeping your home relatively tidy and maintaining all the work you’ve done so far this year, we should do a little planning so that our holidays go smoothly.

Thanksgiving (USA) and Christmas will be here very soon. Don’t wait until the last minute to get things prepared. Waiting only causes stress. Planning ahead will allow you to get your dinners planned, gifts bought, your home decorated and in order, and allow you to relax and enjoy the holidays.

Do yourself a favor and read the full monthly mission for November and get your holidays started off right. For tips on planning ideas and checklists, click here.

Here are some of the more recently added pages to the website you may have missed.

Garage Makeover - before and after photos of my personal garage makeover. See how we tackled the problems and ended up with a functional garage.

Streamline Your Morning Routine - Ideas to help you get out the door in the morning and be on time for work or school.

Storage Shed Organization - Before and after photos of my storage shed reorganization project.

Toy Organizing Project - After Christmas I had to do some toy re-organizing. Here is a before and after of my little toy organizing project.

Bathroom Drawer Make Over - How to organize a bathroom drawer, an example with before and after photos.

Stop Clutter - Quick simple tips on how to stop the clutter from coming into your home in the first place.

Organizing Your Magazines - Suggestions to help you downsize your piles of magazines and how to store them neatly.

Organize Your Junk Drawer - take control of that drawer you toss stray items into. Give it purpose with a few minutes and a little organization.

One fun part of preparing for the holidays is gift buying/making.

As for me, I have already printed out my holiday checklist and I have a few gifts stashed away. I prefer to do the majority of my shopping online because it’s much more convenient and it saves me money. I went to the mall to shop around for the first time in a few years last month. Wow! Craziness, and it’s not even that busy yet! Thank you, but I’ll stick to my computer shopping!

I always do my online shopping through a website that pays me a rebate for my purchases. My two favorite websites are: BigCrumbs.com and Ebates.com. And I always check Retailmenot.com for coupon codes for free shipping or other discounts.

No matter where you do your gift shopping, be sure to check out my gift shopping tips to make sure you get it all done in plenty of time and with less stress so you can enjoy the holidays.

I know it’s not officially garage organizing month, but you’ve got to do it when it works best for you. I wanted to share with you the results of our ongoing garage project. We’ve been working on it bit by bit for the past couple years. It was somewhat organized with shelves and a loft to hold lots of stuff. However, we wanted to put up insulation and drywall and some other shelves that would put things up off the ground, giving us more space. In the meantime, my husband decided to buy a motorcycle to put in the garage! That put a spark under us to finally hire someone to do the drywall portion of the project. Then we were able to paint and install the shelves and organize all our belongings.

It’s not perfect but it’s a large improvement as things are up off the ground and we actually have a lot more space in the garage now, even with the motorcycle in it! There are a few things we’re still working on getting rid of and in a dream world, it would look like a magazine garage if all the storage boxes were of the same shape and color and labeled with the label maker. But that’s in a dream world. This is the real thing and it’s definitely more typical of the average organized garage than those ones in the magazines anyway!

I’m proud of the great progress we made and I wanted to share it with you. To look at the before and after pictures, click here.


Until next time, happy organizing!

Sincerely,

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com

P.S. Sometimes links to website pages get broken. If a link doesn't work, you may need to copy and paste the entire link into your browser.