Table of Contents

-Introduction
-Monthly Mission – Living Room
-Check Out These Pages! – Relevant pages and new site additions
-Organizing Your Cleaning Supplies

Introduction

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has at least begun to take down their holiday decorations? We tend to take ours down some time between Christmas and New Year’s Day so we can take back the space in our home.

Our holiday didn’t quite go as planned. My husband had business travel at the beginning of December, and a couple days after he returned he came down with a virus that knocked him on his butt for a few weeks so far. We did manage to make cookies and visit Santa, but we spent 95% of our time lying around relaxing since my husband simply didn’t have the energy to do much else. Thankfully the house is mostly in order so we could relax without too much stressing us out. There are still a few boxes (same ones as last time), but until we can purchase some shelves, they’ll have to remain packed. One thing we did manage to do was furnish the family room so it’s no longer just a storage room. It’s going to be great once our rug gets here! I also worked on putting more things away and every bit helps!

You never know what life is going to throw at you. If you can keep your home mostly organized, these things won’t throw you under the bus. You’ll be able to get by until you can fully jump back into your routine.

Click the logo above to learn more!

It’s time to clean up our living room or family room and to decide how we want it to be. Is it more of a TV room, reading room, family game room? What’s in there that doesn’t belong? To read more about the January monthly mission, click here.

If you’re in a hurry to put some order back into your home, perhaps Mimi Tanner's unique method will give you that jumpstart. Check out her method at Declutter Fast: How To Get Your Home In Order Almost Immediately.

Here are some pertinent pages on the website you may have missed along with any new pages.

After Christmas Organizing - Read up now on what to do at the end of the holidays to get better organized for next year. Don't store broken or unwanted items for another year.

Declutter Home and Life - Getting organized involves a lot more than just tossing some extra possessions. Read more about organizing beyond just your home.

Kitchen Organization - Get your kitchen organized before the cooking and baking begins, so you're better able to find things, and have more space to work.

Travel Planning Tips - Are you taking a vacation this summer? Here are some helpful tips to organize and plan that trip.

Party Planning Page - Getting ready to throw a holiday party? Here are a few tips.

Time Savers - To help streamline your life, here are some daily time savers.

Organize Your Cleaning Supplies

Let's talk about cleaning supplies. I've already made it known that I don't really enjoy "cleaning", the nitty gritty stuff of scrubbing toilets tubs and showers. But it needs to be done.

I have a large amount of cleaning supplies to get the job done too. Currently, most of them are sitting in the garage as I haven’t fully unpacked them and decided how to best organize them. I did a little researching to see what might be the best way to organize my cleaning supplies, so that they get used! How do you organize your cleaning supplies?

In the past, I have always tried to keep paper towels, a sponge and the most frequently used cleaning supplies available under each sink (window cleaner, tub and tile cleaner and toilet cleaner). Now we have an additional bathroom, so that means more cleaning supplies to spread around the house. Also, with needing to do a super deep cleaning of this house when we moved in, I had bought some special purpose cleaners as well, so I’m stocked to the hilt with bottles of stuff!

Here are some of the most popular ideas I found people using:

• 1. Put a suspension rod (curtain rod) under the sink, to hang bottles that have a trigger spray. That helps to leave the floor of the sink cabinet clear for other items.
• 2. Put all your cleaning supplies in one location in the house, such as a closet or laundry room. If you don’t have shelves available to stock your stuff, some people are using a clear over the door shoe bag to put the bottles and supplies in. Great idea to have everything easily visible and available.
• 3. Create a cleaning basket for each task such as dusting, scrubbing, floor cleaning and carry that basket to the location that needs to be cleaned. It should contain all the tools and cleaners you need to get that job done. These containers would be kept in one location and used around the house.
• 4. Put together a small container of products to be used in each room and keep it under the sink. Kitchen supplies in a container under the sink, bathroom cleaning supplies under each bathroom sink.

Having shared these options, here’s my personal thinking on the issue. I am more likely to clean the toothpaste I find on the bathroom mirror if I have some Windex and a paper towel handy at that very moment. If I have to walk across the house to go get the supplies, I can guarantee you I will get lost and never make it back!

Therefore, here’s my plan…

• 1. I am going to make a small basket for under each bathroom sink again so the daily basics can be done easily. The dollar store is a great place to pick up cheap small baskets for this purpose.
• 2. Kitchen cleaning supplies will go under the kitchen sink in a container.
• 3. I will also put together a basket for dusting chores to keep in the laundry room, or in the garage on an easily accessible shelf.
• 4. I will store any surplus or specialty cleaning supplies I have in the garage on that easily accessible shelf.

What’s your plan? How do you store your cleaning supplies now? Do you need to clean out your cleaners and better organize them? I’ll check in with you next month to let you know how it all goes and how it seems to be working.

Until next time, happy organizing!

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com