Make Room Challenge 3: Tackling the Paper Tiger.

In Week Three of the Make Room Challenge, Melissa Micheal's of the Inspired Room, challenged us to deal with our paper in the way she does in her latest book, Make Room . (affiliate link.)

I am late with this challenge because paper.

I hate paper. There is so much of it--and so very little we actually need--but my my husband will ask me for that one piece at any random moment and you'd think it's grounds for divorce if I can't produce it in three seconds or less.

So. No pressure.

Let's see what Melissa says we should do:

Make Room Challenge – Week 3 – Clutter and Entry. Make Room for Arrivals and Departures.

The arrival and departure areas of our home tend to collect quite a bit of clutter and often end up in disarray. We bring in a lot of papers, coats, schoolbags, purses, briefcases, sports equipment, homework, party invitations, and bills, and we track in mud and grime from outside. How do those clutter spots make you feel when they are out of control? This week, we’ll be setting up a sorting station so we can avoid paper pileups near the front door.

 This is my front door.

yep. That's my gorgeous dark blue painted ceiling. I need to give you a better look at that!

I cannot stand it when it is out of control. I cringe when people come up the sidewalk. If my husband is home, I sneak off to the back of the house and let him answer the door. Paper only piles up if someone else empties the mailbox. They put it on the blue shelf instead of sorting it...but that's all right. Me, I do not grab the mail when I come in the door. I leave it where it is until I am ready to deal with it. Then, I take it immediately into the dining room and open it.

3 Steps to Setting Up a Paper-Sorting Station

1. Find a spot near your entry or office area where you’ll take all incoming mail. Put a shredder and recycling bin near this station so you’ll be able to immediately deal with papers you don’t want. 

So, no shredder: but I reserve this garbage can strictly for paper. If I have food garbage or any other kind, I take it to the kitchen.

also known as the circular file.

After I've tossed the junk, the mail goes here:

If I got a bigger box, there'd just be that much more to sort.

as does every single other piece of paper in the house. It is my collection station and it is overflowing. But I know where everything is!

2. Plan to sort, shred, or recycle all the envelopes, newspapers, and junk mail, and put your bills in your previously designated spot every time you bring the mail in the house. Everything that is not a bill but has a due date or an upcoming deadline can go on a bulletin board with a clip or pin.

So, there are two kinds of paper--well, four, but first two. The first two broad categories of paper are 1) Action and 2) Reference.

Action breaks down into two more: a) those with a deadline and 2) those without. That's what Melissa is referencing above. Bills are just action papers with deadlines. So are dental hygiene appointments and a notice to order my son's graduation photos.

Reference is divided by time, too: a) near and b) far. In fact, according to Simplify 101 (not an affiliate link though it totally should be, I love them so much) reference (far) is actually called archival paper. And that needs to be waded through periodically and dealt with, too.


Here's the paper from that box divided like so:

Examples of a few things in the piles:

Action, deadline: auto club membership renewal, census notice, House lottery tickets. (I want to go see the houses, not buy a ticket.)

Action, no deadline: credit card agreement changes (I need to read it), a receipt for physiotherapy (needs to be submitted to insurance for reembursement.)

Reference, "near": recipes, (need to be put away), husband's vacation schedule, new prescription reembursement program. Most of my reference papers go into these binders on the expedit.

Reference, "far": bills paid, investment statement, photos. (Most of these are filed away in the basement. Not the most convenient place, but it is where there is space.)

Most of our reference paper goes into one of these binders. I'll explain how I handle all our paper in a future post.

3. If a paper is important and you’ll need to access it later, file it in a designated file box or drawer. Give each housemate an inbox if they will receive mail or have papers that enter the house.

Each of us has a personal inbox, right here. See those file folders. Yep. There. That.

It's been helpful for my husband to have a designated spot for all his paperwork while he's been sick. But honestly? The kids never check theirs. But I keep it so I have a place to put their stuff.

I put up this magnetic dry erase board last fall. I hope it is as close to a bulletin board as we ever get. I hate how messy they get--and things get lost on them, too.

Get Organized Tip: If your child comes home with special papers you want to keep, get a clear box with a lid or a personal file box with folders to store the current year report cards, favorite assignments, art, and other significant papers.

It is a good idea.

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From the Weekend

It's like a river.

Inspired by: Painted Ceilings.

I love the look of a painted ceiling.

Such drama!

source

Such impact!

I was reminded of them recently when I went through some old notes I found while clearing out the basement files. I'd written:

• Ceiling Height: perception of height can be manipulated with colour. "Paint the entryway ceiling a deep neutral and the white ceilings in nearby rooms automatically rise." from Small House, Big Style, BH&G, 2000

Bam.

source

Using colour to change one's perception of the volume of space. What's not to love?

Ceilings seem to come in two versions.

Flat.

Traditional Bathroom by Seattle Architects & Building Designers Michael Knowles, Architect

and liquid.

source

As much as I love a lacquered ceiling, the surface beneath the paint has to be perfectly perfect. And mine is most definitely not. In fact, I am kind of hoping a dark ceiling will help hide the gouges and cracks.

So guess what's my next project?

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Week 4: The Launch Pads (or Entry Ways)

Turns out, I am taking this challenge much more seriously than I thought I would. I have not been able to get over to my Mom's as much as I should--whenever I've been free, she's been sick or otherwise unavailable. So I have a bit of time on my hands to focus on my own place--and I don't want to decorate--so cleaning it is!

The "launch pads" --or entryways-- are such practical spaces. They are the spot for all things coming into and out of the house. I have a small shelf in the front entry hallway for letters and casserole dishes and such. The bucket beneath it is for library books.

Around the corner, in front of the coat closet, I have my communication centre.

Friday, I spent cleaning up the front hallway. I washed all the walls, the door, the trim and the baseboards with a weak solution of T.S. P. (Tri-sodium phosphate.) Then I vacuumed the floor, washed it on my hands and knees near the door and then mopped it. I washed the entry way rug--and ruined it.

It didn't come completely clean and the edges started to unravel. I had had a bad feeling about it. Next time, I'll listen.

I had to fold it to get it to fit in the machine. If it weren't for the chewed up edges, I'd throw it back in. As it is, I now need to buy another one. sigh. 

Saturday was the back entry. It is a terrible place to get pictures of.

So much more work!

I wanted to declutter this pocket hanger--so I googled to find out when the mosquito repellant expired. Turns out, it doesn't. These are from at least a couple of years ago. Last summer was so odd: no mosquitoes, no butterflies and no bees. The only insects we really saw were some wasps at the end of August. (They made a nest in our front eaves.)

So, again, I washed the walls and door and trim. I vacuumed the carpet on the landing. I washed the stairs to the kitchen and the stairs to the basement. I tidied the baskets going down to the basement and washed the boot shelf on the other side. Somehow, it took me all day. (I also cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen, but that's another post!)

The floor underneath the carpet still needs to be painted.

I felt good at the end of it all, though. The area doesn't make me scowl anymore--so that's something.


This coming week: The Living Room.

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A Retrospective: 2. Passageways: Entry ways, Hallways and The Stairs

This is the second in a series of looking back at the changes I've made to the house since this blog began --over eight years ago.

Passageways are all those spaces we pass through--like hallways and entry ways and the stairs. I like them to be functional--and most especially plesant. They are scattered all over the house, though, so I made up floor plans in order to help orient ourselves.

Comings and Goings

today's sunrise. 

Assignment #14.

Create a Landing Strip.

The idea, of course, is to have a place near your exits and entrances for all the stuff that finds its way into your home, no matter who brings it in.

This is a multi-faceted problem. Let's take this systematically.

The Front Door.

Who uses it?

Myself and the kids.

What comes in? (What do you need a place for?)

1) Boots and shoes

2) Coats, Jackets (Personal items like scarves, hats and gloves are stored in the coat pocket and/or sleeve.)

3) Papers my son delivers once a week

4) mail

5) my purse and my daughter's backpack


What goes out?

6) outgoing mail

7) library books to be returned

8) things to be returned to various people

What do we need to store? 

1-8

What have we got?

A narrow hallway right by the front door and around a corner,  a wider hallway with a coat closet. Let's take it in turn.

By the front door we have the carpet for boots, the small wooden child's chair for all sorts of things (currently holding my son's papers. When I am getting ready to leave for work in the morning I put my purse and lunch kit on it. Sometimes, it is a place to put my purse down so I can get my boots off.) The child's chair is in the entrance arch to the living room. Across from it is the doorway to the dining room/home office.

That shelf is mostly decorative, but it does hold outgoing mail at the moment. The bin underneath it holds some library books and a bag of borrowed items to be returned to its owner.



Around the corner is really where the hard work happens.

yes, the two hallways are different colours. That will likely be changed during the Spring One Room Challenge in April.

That dresser (and the calendar above) is command central. School papers which need signing go into my folders--and then get returned to the kids' folders. (Well, that supposed to be how it works. In my son's case, he tends to give them to me right when he comes home from school and immediately retunrs them to his back pack. My daughter wakes me up the morning they are due and frantically waves a pen in my face. We're working on it.) My husband and I also have our own folders. I highly recommend that everyone in a household have a place like this for their own papers.

We collect grocery and gas receipts (separate from our other receipts) so there are envelopes to catch them set up here, too.


One drawer in this dresser is devoted to hats, mitts and scarves, year round. I go through and purge it in the fall. (This way, too, if I do find the odd hat or glove lying around, I have a place to put it without having to find its owner or her coat.)

The coat closet also doubles as a broom closet, so I have all sorts of things here. Most importantly, it is the home for our coats, bags we use to take to the grocery store, bags we re-use, empty backpacks and my purse.

The Back Door.

This is the way to the back yard and the garage.

Who uses it?

Mostly my husband, the dog, sometimes me and the kids.

What comes in?

My husband and his workboots (which he likes to change out of before he goes out to play with the dog), his lunch bag and book bag. Groceries. dirty, filthy dogs paws.

What goes out?

All of the above, plus, in summer, sports stuff.

What do we need to store?

In addition to the above, I need access to gardening supplies, (gloves, a hat, secateurs, and a trowel), a table cloth and roasting forks.

What do we have to work with?

A teeny tiny entry way, and stairs going up to the kitchen and down to the basement.

The shoe pocket organizer holds mostly mosquito repellant and odd bits at the moment. The drawer underneath holds things we won't need until summer.

First, the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

On the left wall, a strip of wood with cup hooks holding keys and the dog's leash. On the right, a towel bar with the long shoe horn and a rag both for the dog's paws and my husband's boots. On the ledge, the spray bottle is to discourage the Beagle's barking. (On the floor to the left is a bucket with cleaning cloths to be taken to the basement laundry room.) Those are my husband's work boots and winter boots/shoes on the stairs.

As you go down the stairs there's boot shelf with a curtain rod above it on the right.

Those sandals are being held up by a bent hanger, the boots by a hanger clip. Sandals and keds live in the pink magazine holders. Beneath the shelf are hooks for bike helmets and a bag holding fishing gear.

Opposite this are the baskets, also suspended from the flooring joists.

They hold hats, summer work gloves, ball mitts and rollar blades and knee pads. They've held all sorts of sports equipment through the years.

(That mess underneath the baskets belongs to the epic basement clean up project which is next month!)

As far as curing goes, I dusted the navy shelf, cleaned off the top of the white dresser, and sorted through the paper work. I decluttered the baskets at the back door, vacummed the magazine/shoe holders and the wire baskets. Then I washed the walls and swept and washed the stairs. I vacuumed the hallway and the coat closet floor, too. Yep. I'm tired.

So, there we have it. I think I've covered how we --and all our stuff-- come and go.

Any questions? I'll answer in the comments.

Converting Zone 1: The Front Entry

This is part of a series of posts on The House that Cleans Itself by Mindy Starns Clark. I will be recording what I'm doing to transform my house into "one that cleans itself." I will also be helping my Mom work on her house and she has graciously given me permission to blog about her transformation, too. You can find all the posts in the series by looking for the label HTCI. Today we're talking about my place. My apologies, it's long.

Clark stipulates that the first zone or area to work on is the entry way.

Mine is essentially ell shaped.

At the stairs the hallway turns left where there are four doors and a dresser.

Preparation:
Identify the housekeeping issues in the area and figure out the cause of them. Solutions come later, much later, but since I am presenting everything at once, I will list those here, too.

• The front hall carpet and the floor is filthy.
• -------I have no cleaning routine in place for the floors.
• solution: schedule a time to clean the rug and floors. Once a month is fine for now.

This needs to be washed in the machine and hung out to dry.

• The back dresser is piled up with junk.
• ------Once again, I need a routine for regularly cleaning it off.
• solution: I think that once I get back to the daily pick up, this will resolve itself.

• Coat closet is crowded.
• -----Too much stuff. My husband has probably one too many coats in there, there's ironing which has been in there all summer and the drapes I've been meaning to sew. Time to get those things done.
• solution: There's not much I can do about this--stay on top of the ironing, I suppose.

closet, before

• The hall lights are not working.
• ----It hasn't worked properly since I took the fixture down and painted it a year or so ago.
• solution: Replace the light bulbs and see if that fixes the problem. It did!

• The back hallway is dingy
• ----The wall colour absorbs too much light for the space.
• solution: Paint with a new colour.

The steps to Convert your area into one "that cleans itself."

1. Clear the clutter.

There really wasn't all that much to do....get rid of the mop I never use.......collect the odd gloves and wonder what to do with them........iron the shirts which have been patiently waiting in the closet all summer.......find a new home for the few art supplies which still remain.  It is no exaggeration to say that I have been working on this area for more than six years. All you have to do is follow the label "Front Entry" to read of all my different attempts at decluttering and reorganizing this area.

drawer before

drawer after

2. Open Up and Clean

....washed the drawer (hint: vacuum it first, then use a damp rag to wipe it out.)
...the dresser top and sides
...the walls, doors and door frames
...the floor
...cleaned the mirrors, the glass in the door, blah blah blah....



3. Neaten, Organize, Solve problem spots.

I think figuring out the purpose of the room or area is absolutely essential to know how to organize it at all. Clark doesn't talk about this in her book though Julie Morgenstern does in Organizing from the Inside Out. An entry way is fairly easy to figure out and it is basically the same for all of us, though the details will differ. Essentially, entry ways need to be set up to handle things coming into and going out of the house and store those things we need to wear outside the house.  As well, it is prime real estate so only the most frequently used items should be here. That means the camo hunting jacket and matching pants would ideally be somewhere else!

closet, after

Here's my in and out system:

IN:
The front door is used primarily by the kids to go and from school. My husband pretty much uses the back door (closer to the garage) and I use both. The chair in the hall way captures my daughter's back pack. I have met her half way on this--and I only require her to move it somewhere else--her room, the closet, I don't care--on Fridays. My son's room is on the main floor and he just carries all his stuff into it directly when he gets home.  Shoes and boots stay on the mat as needed. Mail is sorted the minute I bring it in. It is taken to the "office/dining room." Any papers which the kids need me to sign go into my folder on the dresser.

OUT:
Library books to be returned go into the bucket (now lined with a library bag).  Letters to be mailed go on the shelf. Any papers or other similar items which I need the kids to get go into their folders on the dresser. Bags we use for shopping live in a basket on the floor of the closet.

STORAGE:
The coat closet and the one drawer in the dresser. The closet holds coats, and sweaters. (It also holds projects and ironing (there is no where else, I'm afraid.)The drawer has scarves, gloves and hats...and the dog's mitts and coat. We only have one toque each and maybe two sets of gloves. We each have a scarf. That's it. When the kids were little we had more, of course, but not that much more. The more you have, the more you lose.

 

4. Verify the Rabbit Trails and Set up Stations.

I have no rabbit trails. Really, I don't. My daughter will be leaving not just her backpack, but her coat here soon. For many years I considered it but I decided not to hang up hooks because hanging a back pack and a coat out in the open for everyone to see, here, in my front hallway would be just as ugly as the coat and backpack lying on the floor or set on the chair.

Clark (as well as Garvey at Simplify 101) makes a distinction between a home "good enough" for living and a home that's "company ready." One of the things a house that cleans itself does is convert from the former to the latter pretty quickly. I think that asking my daughter to move these two items when we're expecting company is good enough, thank goodness. I don't know what I'd do if there was my son's stuff to deal with, too.

By the way, the collection bucket for the library books could be considered a station--the rabbit trail all the library books left all over the house. The thing is, we've had a designated spot  for finished library books for so long, I barely even think about it.

The silver bucket is our library book collection bin.

5. Examine Sight Zones.

Is everything within view of the entrance to the room that could turn into a disastrous mess out of sight?
Yes. As much as it can be. Though, I noticed when I was taking pictures that the mirrors reflect and import messes from other rooms. I don't want that!

6. Record Future Improvements Needed.

1. Scrape popcorn off the ceiling of the back hallway
2. Paint the walls to match the front hallway.
3. Paint the trim and the doors in the back hallway.
4. Re-paint the stair risers. They look pretty ratty.

7. Take Steps Now for Ongoing Maintenance

In Clark's book, she has a long discussion about setting up "Quick Cleaning Stations" in each room. It mostly involves keeping things like disposable wipes handy suitable for each of the surfaces in the room. I will not be doing this for this area. Again, if my kids were still littles, I just might stash a package of mirror wipes in the top drawer of that dresser. I remember the kids used to play in front of it quite a bit. And a little hand held vac would have been handy for the dustbunnies which collect in the corners.

8. The Checklist.

The checklist is a review of the principles introduced in Step 9 of the preparation chapters. Unfortunately, it is a long list and it is not entirely clear to me what Clark means, for example, by  “Use your family’s natural tendency towards convenience to keep your house clean" except, of course, to hang hooks in the hallway to catch my daughter's coat and back pack which I've already discussed. I imagine I'll go into this part in more detail when working on my Mom's place.

Next area for me is my back entry way. Hopefully, I'll have a post about Mom's soon.