Bedrooms are for Sleeping

What do you see when you look at the corner of this bedroom? The simple, serene statue on the shelf?  Or the messy, massive piles of papers on the chair? It is too bad as the chair by the big sunny window would make a sweet spot to stop and contemplate, or maybe read one of the magazines in this photo. But there are just TOO MANY magazines to digest and the clutter invades what should be a room for rest and rejuvenation.

In about 90 minutes the client and I sorted these papers, cleared the chair and moved the matching pillows to their proper place. But this progress is only temporary if she doesn't have a long-term, workable plan to manage her papers.

This generous, nurturing woman saves catalogues for potential gift purchases and hangs on to magazines with recipes, decorating ideas and articles to send to family and friends. My bet is that she will not ignore her impulse to save what she reads and share it with her friends in the name of clutter control. So what she needs is a way to store it until she has time to send it and a way to retrieve it once that time has come.

Her best bet is to tear out the relevant pages, write the date on them and file them by category: cook, mail, buy, decor. Then once a week she can open the files and in about one half hour: order the things she wants to buy, make a grocery list for recipes she wants to try, mail the articles she wants to send and move the best decorating ideas to a more permanent folder.

Then she can relax on her paper-free chair, look at her statue and enjoy her distraction-free bedroom.

From Tired Tile to Sparkling Spa

Here is a quick way to perk up a bathroom.

This bathroom had dark, dated tile that made the room look small and uninviting. Replacing the tile would be messy and expensive.

A quick resurfacing saved time, money and mess and transformed it from tired tile to a spa-like shower.

rePURPOSING Things: 1957 Edsal Villager

On a recent walk down 4th street in Long Beach I came across public art by Tom Walker. I think you will agree that his Cherry Four (door) has taken repurposing to a whole new dimension!

Office Closet Overhaul

This client is very lucky to have a large closet outfitted with shelves and drawers in her home office. She had so much space that she never tossed anything; she just kept loading up the shelves. Consequently, she lost track of what she had in there and was storing things that she no longer needed. The surplus was spilling out on the floor blocking her access to some of the shelves.

We started by evaluating, eliminating and integrating her books, putting like with like.  We shelved the travel books together, the special interest books together and the novels together. By the time we were done we had boxed and bagged tk# of books to donate.

Next we tackled the binders and papers from her many projects, presentations and conferences. After emptying and saving the best binders for future use, we filled her entire  tk recycling bin with outdated reports, research papers  and brochures. In the process we found numerous conference tote bags to donate.

Then we clustered the electronics, office supplies and current projects and found she had ample space to hide items from the rest of her office in the closet. But now it looks so good it is a shame to close the doors!

Bicycle Safety

With sixteen years worth of kids sporting equipment, school projects, camping gear, construction left-overs and tools this Palo Alto garage was cluttered enough before a relative died and family memorabilia to sort "later"wound up the middle of the floor. Getting the bicycles out became a hazardous assignment.

Our goal was to make the garage passable, evaluate the family items, eliminate the ones we could and integrate the rest into a safer storage arrangement until the owner had time to really focus on them.

We accomplished our goal and in the process filled a van with items for Goodwill, freecycle and recycling.

The family things  are now in plastic storage bins, in one place and on a elevated shelf to keep them from the damp floor. Clearly labeled, it is easy for the owner to retrieve one box at a time for sorting .

Although the garage still needs more work, we met our goal to organize the family heirlooms and have safe and easy access to the bikes. After this initial project, organizing the rest of the garage will take no time at all.

Travel Tip

Lay your credit cards, license and passport on your scanner and scan them all at once. Flip them over and scan the backs. Import these two files into iPhoto and add them to your smartphone photo library where you can enlarge them to read the pertinent numbers to report lost or stolen cards. Just be sure password protect access to your phone.

Walk-in Pantry

The owner of this pantry has an eye for art and likes to entertain in style but finding the right serving piece in her jumbled pantry was no fun.

We evaluated, eliminated and integrated her collections, grouping her vases, pitchers, serving bowls and platters by function and color.  Now, not only is her pantry more useful, it is so visually pleasing that just peeking in the door is pleasure. Time to accomplish this: one hour.