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.

rePURPOSING Things: Single Earrings

If after organizing your jewelry box you are left with single post earrings, rePURPOSE them into pretty push pins. They will be a subtle, unexpected eye treat in your kitchen or home office.

rePURPOSING Spaces: Garage Work-out Room

The owners of this double-length San Jose garage wanted to turn the space closest to the house into a rainy-day work out area.  The first step of this rePURPOSE was to evaluate, eliminate and integrate the garage storage.

It took about one hour to sort through the piles, fill up the car for a run to Goodwill and eWaste recycling and rearrange the shelving to store like with like.

                                    

Now they have easy access to their storage items, a nice clear space to set up exercise equipment, plus protection for their car.

rePURPOSING Things: Cute Little Clutch Purse

I fell so hard for this darling, tooled leather clutch purse that I completely ignored my own rule to only use crossover purses.  I had bad experiences with clutch bags: when you put down the bag to use your hands for something other than carrying it, it often gets forgotten. Just that word - clutch - makes me shudder. But I WANTED this one and convinced myself I needed it.

This time I was going to make it work for me, dammit. To that end I bought a cute tote bag...to tote my cute clutch purse. It made perfect sense to me at the time.

When I came to my senses I was in the possession of not one, but TWO bags I couldn't use, bags that became clutter.

On a recent cleaning spree I rediscovered the cute little clutch. With a frustrated little foot stamp I whined why oh why can't it work for me. I felt determined to re-coup my investment.

So I  bought a yard of cord, had the cobbler install two tiny grommets and voila! A totally useful, and extremely cute, crossover purse!

What do you have hiding in your closet that you can re-make and actually use?

Discovering the Desk

No one in this family used this dusty desk. It was covered with faded photos and obsolete computer accessories. We began our full office clean up here. The client was so inspired she went on to finish the room, letting go of outdated projects that would not be completed, purging and re-vamping her filing system and taking an entire box of cables and connections to eWaste recycling.

Now she has an inviting space to work and write.