Hazel Thornton
How does your home office make you feel? If you have the sort of business where you have clients in, are you embarrassed to let them see it? One of my organizing and redesign clients said, about her cluttered, drab room, “I feel like I’m going to prison every morning.” Oh no, that’s terrible! Depending…
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One of my favorite organizing supplies is the clear plastic shoe box. I could probably count 20 uses for them in my own home. Oddly enough, only one of them (a larger boot-size box) contains actual out-of-season shoes. Mine are more likely to contain office supplies, light bulbs, small tools, vitamins, and such. I use…
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Living and working BY DEFAULT means choosing the easiest path, either by unconsciously resorting to bad habits, or by maintaining the status quo. Sometimes we seek to avoid the conflict that can come with making a change. Sometimes we feel we have no choice in the matter. But I’m with Henry Ford, who said, “Whether you think…
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Last year I decided I wanted a mantra/slogan/motto/theme. Something that I could fall back on to keep me motivated and — dare I say it? — happy. As a fan of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (book and blog), I know that many things can contribute to one’s happiness, from kittens and rainbows and enjoyable…
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We all know how to lose weight. Eat less and move more…right? And we all know that fresh produce and whole grains are healthier than fried foods and sugary desserts…right? I’m not here to tell you what to eat. But I do want to share some tips for organizing your fridge and pantry to set…
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I have always struggled with the phrase “Less is more.” I suppose I have taken it a bit too literally, thinking, “Less is NOT more. Less is BETTER, in many cases, but it’s not MORE, so why would anyone say that? “ But now, from an organizing perspective, I understand the phrase to mean that…
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It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that I was a Girl Scout. I started out as a Brownie and ended up working as a counselor at Girl Scout camps in the mountains of Idaho and Colorado as a young adult. I recently reconnected with some camp friends who reminded me how valuable the skills…
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“Friends, Acquaintances and Strangers” is a popular method of de-cluttering, introduced by Judith Kolberg in her book Conquering Chronic Disorganization. This game can be played with any category of clutter, but I most often use it with clients whose bookshelves are overflowing. (Not to mention their floors and other surfaces.) Readers are loath to part…
Read more...Why is organizing so much fun for me, and not for everyone? Maybe it’s because I’ve always liked games and puzzles. I woke up with a song in my head, “One of these things is not like the other”, from Sesame Street. I’d already written most of this post and realized that “One of these…
Read more...Several years ago, before I moved to Albuquerque (a detail which will be important here in a minute), my neighbor called to ask if I would come over and help her middle-school-age boys with their math homework. Their father wasn’t home, and she was at a loss. I agreed because: 1) I loved my neighbors,…
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