I have a few simple tips that I’ve found make a huge difference for a lot of us. You might not find every single tip useful for your space, but I bet you’ll be able to take advantage of one or two.

Here’s a simple tip for a busy bathroom: Edit your hair and bath products so you only keep the ones that really work.

I used to have so many different bottles of hair product in my bathroom, including shampoos/conditioners (hello, curly hair!). I’d buy new brands to try, and if they didn’t meet my expectations, I’d still have the half-full bottle after moving on to something new. My bathroom looked like the clearance rack at Ulta, I had so many bottles to sort through.

It is so much more refreshing and simplifying keeping only what I need. Plus it’s much easier to clean the bathroom with fewer bottles lying around. When I stop using a product because it no longer serves its purpose, it is time for me to say good bye to it and kick it out of the house!

This tip is also good for other personal grooming products, for instance, makeup. If that lipstick or foundation doesn’t make you beautiful, out it should go.

Do you have any quick bathroom organizing tricks?

Elesheva E. Soloff is a professional organizer with Soloff Space Solutions, based in Boston, MA.
www.soloffspacesolutions.com
email: ees@soloffspacesolutions.com

If disorganization, clutter or a lack of systems negatively affects you and those around you, you are being held captive by what you own and allowing it to control you.  This will cause stress in your life and ultimately your relationships.  Sometimes people have simply acquired more than their space can comfortably contain, but the belongings are relatively current.  Other times clients are drowning in an avalanche of memorabilia or things associated with memories.  This habit will hold you in the past, keep your present from being enjoyable and even your future from moving forward.

It is essential to visualize what is most important to us, and also those around us.  When we can clarify and then agree on what that vision is we become more able to live and exist with less.  Remember less is truly more!

Rebecca Burley
A Spacious Place
www.TheSpaciousPlace.com
Rebecca@TheSpaciousPlace.com
978-895-6362

There are many cleaning schedules online where all the common household chores are spread out over a series of days so that you can work consistently towards a clean home. Here are a few websites that I found with sound solutions:

• Weekly Chore Schedule by Home Ec 101 - http://www.home-ec101.com/clean-it/weekly-chore-schedule/
  • If you need a simple schedule, Home Ec 101 provides a great chore chart (in PDF form) where each day of the week is a single type of chore such as Laundry day or Bathroom day.  The advantage of doing chores this way is that you have one type of chore to focus on. This is great for those who often don’t know where to begin.
• Motivated Moms Chore Planning System - http://www.motivatedmoms.com/
  • Motivated Moms takes all of your chores and house maintenance tasks, balances them across the year so that “you don’t spend your entire day doing housework.” You get a specific set of chores and tasks for each day of the year. What’s great is that they tell you what to focus on and what you can let slide, taking the guilt away for not getting something done. This is great for those who are trying to avoid marathon cleaning sessions. Available in ebook or app format.
• Chore Buster - http://www.chorebuster.net/
  • If you know what needs to get done but want some assistance spreading the chores amongst your family members, take a look at Chore Buster. You enter into the website the people in your family, the chores (specifying their difficulty/undesirability and frequency) and the program “generates a fair schedule of chores.”What is even better is that your schedule can be automatically emailed to each family member so no one can say they didn’t know what they were suppose to do.

For my needs and personality, I feel that the Motivated Moms ebook is going to help me with my cleaning goals. Note that the three web sites above are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to chore schedules so take your time to find the solution that feels right to you. On a side note, if you feel really ambitious and want to tackle two New Year’s resolutions at the same time, you might want to check out cLEANmomma (http://www.cleanmomma.com/) where founder Carolyn Barnes shows you how to turn your cleaning tasks into a workout.

Happy cleaning!

Gabby Burgman is a Professional Organizer with Living Peace LLC of Salem, MA and Winchester, MA.  Check us out at www.living-peace.com.  Or call (617) 519-5693.

Not sure what you use and what you don’t?  Here is a tried and true way to find out.  Empty the contents of your kitchen utensil drawers into a cardboard box.  For one month, only put a utensil back into the drawer if you take it out of the box to use it.  At the end of the month seriously consider discarding everything that’s still in the cardboard box.  Face it: If it’s still in the box after four weeks, you don’t need it!

This is a great tip for helping reduce the number of stirring spoons and spatuals that may accumulate.  I will admit that there are items such as an apple slicer that I do not use monthly, but I will keep as it is immensely helpful when making apple pies.  You will likely have items along those lines.  Just be honest about the likelihood of you using the utensil in the future.

Hillary Adams Case is a Professional Organizer with Living Peace LLC of Salem, MA and Winchester, MA.  Check us out at www.living-peace.com.  Or call (617) 519-5693.

1. Assign a home for incoming mail.  Whether it’s the corner of the table in the hallway or a paper tray on your kitchen counter, you need a specific, designated spot for the mail once it comes into your home.  Nothing else lives in that spot. Whether you process your mail daily, weekly, or whenever you get around to it, at least you know ALL the mail is right there waiting for you.

2. Keep the following items near where you open your mail:

• Recycle bag or bin for openned envelopes and junk mail
• Shredder for any paper that has sensitive information but you don’t need to keep
• Letter openner to prevent papercuts

3. Have specific, designated homes for papers when you BARF, or process your mail:

• Bills
• Action Items
• Reading Material
• File-able Papers

This can be as simple as writing “Bills,” “Action,” “Read”, and “File” on sticky notes and making four piles on your desk.

You can also watch this vlog post by my colleague Susan Stone about how she processes her mail.

Amanda Darlack is a Professional Organizer with Living Peace LLC of Salem, MA and Winchester, MA.  Check us out at www.living-peace.com.  Or call (617) 519-5693.

Place anything that has expired or is no longer needed in a separate bag for proper disposal. Pills that you no longer use but that haven’t expired can be donated to some non-profit clinics for patients in need. Since not all clinics accept medicines, I recommend calling before bringing over your donations.

Expired medicines and ones that can’t be donated should be destroyed so they can’t be found and misused. Unfortunately, the old advice to crush and throw them out or flush them down the drain can lead to these powerful chemicals contaminating our water. The Office of Diversion Control (part of the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration) sponsors National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day to help ensure old medicines are responsibly destroyed. The annual Take-Back Day falls on Saturday, April 27, from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm. Click here to enter your zip code to find the nearest location to drop off medications for safe disposal.

For more information on the National Take-Back Initiative Collection.

Experts advise that you cross off your personal information off the bottle labels before dropping off prescription drugs. Expired over-counter medicines can be dropped off here as well.

Earth day is on April 22nd this year! Even small steps  make a HUGE difference to help the earth.

Elesheva E. Soloff is a professional organizer with Soloff Space Solutions, based in Boston, MA.
www.soloffspacesolutions.com
email: ees@soloffspacesolutions.com

1. While you’re getting out your spring and summer cloths purge those items that you didn’t wear last year and any items that are a bit too snug. Donate to a local charity or look into a consignment shop.

2. While getting out your grilling tools and uncovering your grill, weed out and pare down your recipes and cookbooks. Pick a number and only save that many, and make a vow not to print any more from the internet.

3. While tackling your spring yard work, sort through your lawn and garden tools. Get rid of rusty tools and duplicates. Keep only the ones that you really use.

4. While airing out the house, sort through your linens. You only need three sets of sheets per bed and three sets of towels per person. Donate any extra to an animal shelter.

©2013 Janine Cavanaugh, Certified Professional Organizer®. All Rights Reserved
For more information or a consultation please contact Janine Cavanaugh at
janine@helpfulorganizer.com (508) 699-6652 www.helpfulorganizer.com

This solution, while so simple and intuitive, seems to have evaded me for the first year I have lived in my apartment. The irony is that in a client’s house I would have seen the same issue a while ago and made the proper storage suggestion. Why did it take so long? Even organizers can get stuck in a rut. We all do it. We are used to using our space a particular way. We are accustomed to viewing it a certain way. This means that every space, even one belonging to an organizer, needs a tune-up every once in a while.

Spaces that could benefit from a tune-up are highly used, high traffic areas such as an entryway, kitchen cabinets, a closet or an office drawer. I like to open up a cabinet, step back and ask myself:

• Does this set-up work well for me? What don’t I like about it? What would I change?
• What can I do to suit my daily needs more effectively?
• Is there a product that would make this space more efficient?

I would encourage you to perform a tune-up every six months unless the need arises earlier. Remember that any well-organized space at some point needs a little reassessment to ensure it is working well and to its fullest potential.

Rebecca Burley
A Spacious Place
www.TheSpaciousPlace.com
Rebecca@TheSpaciousPlace.com
978-895-6362

Can’t you just feel the excitement in the air?  The season is upon us…TAX SEASON that is.  It’s that time of year when weary eyes abound and refrains of “where did I put that?” can be heard uttered through out the land. Most of us are fortunate in that we can hand over documents and information to a qualified accountant (who mysteriously understands the language spoken by the IRS) and thus magically transforms it all into a completed IRS tax return.  I certainly am not a qualified accountant…I am not even an unqualified accountant.  But I am an office organizer who specializes in home offices and in my travels I hear a lot of confusion about this issue…so I sought out advice from tax expert and CPA Marietta Z. Courtney who helped me understand the “home office” tax deduction…explained simply.

I enlisted Marietta’s assistance not only because of her tax expertise but also because of her ability to explain complicated issues in a simplified manner.  After all, who does not need an extra dose of “simplified” especially at tax time!  The goal of the Home Office Deduction (HOD) is to reduce the taxable income of a business or an employee.  In order to qualify there are 2 very important criteria that must be met and they are found in 2 little words…
“EXCLUSIVELY” and “REGULARLY” says Marietta “are the important words AND BOTH words must apply if any ONE of the following qualifications is met…

#1…An entrepreneur or employee qualifies for the HOD if they use part of their home as a place of business.  However, this defined space or room must be used EXCLUSIVELY and REGULARLY for that business and ONLY that business.

YES:  A room or area that has a defined work space where ONLY that business operates.

NAY NAY:  A sofa or dining room table on which a lap top is used. A guest bedroom containing a desk and file cabinet…these spaces are NOT deductible!
 
#2…A place in your home where you EXCLUSIVELY and REGULARLY meet clients or customers in the normal course of business.
 
YES: A seating area or conference table that is ONLY used for meeting clients
 
NAY NAY: Usually you meet clients or customers at Panera Bread but 3 times in the past year, you met them in your living room…your living room in NOT deductible!
 
#3…A separate structure that is used EXCLUSIVELY and REGULARLY for that business
 
YES: Part of your garage contains an office that you only use for business purposes
 
NAY NAY: There is a file cabinet in your garage that is used 2 times a year for your business…your garage is NOT deductible!
 
#4…Part of your home is used for storage of inventory that is used EXCLUSIVELY and REGULARLY for your business
 
YES: As an Avon representative, you store products to be sold.  Or to promote your organizing business, you have written a book and store the inventory on premises.
 
NAY NAY: As an organizer, occasionally I use my Ziploc bags to help my clients get organized…my kitchen cabinets space would NOT be deductible!
 
Okay so you’ve determined that at least ONE of the 4 requirements listed above have been met.  Now what?  Now it’s time for math…determine the square footage (that’s length x width) of the space that meets the requirement. Next, using the total square footage of your home (don’t forget upstairs and downstairs), you determine what percentage this Home Office occupies within your home.
 
EXAMPLE: 
I have a room that I use for a home office.  This room is 15’ x 16’ or 240 square feet.
Total square footage of livable space in my home is 1200 square feet.
240sf divided by 1200sf is 20%
My home office occupies 20% of my home
 
WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF THE “HOME OFFICE” DEDUCTION?

According to Marietta, meeting one of the 4 requirements above now enables you to deduct that percentage of personal expenses. These are expenses that normally would not be deductible.  Using the example above, 20% of expenses is now deductible. Expenses such as…
·         Home Utilities (except the first telephone line)
·         Home Insurance
·         Indirect Home Repair (such as a broken furnace)

Remember THE GOAL of the HOME OFFICE DEDUCTION (HOD) is to REDUCE THE TAXABLE INCOME OF A BUSINESS

Marietta is clear that there are exceptions and side rules that apply to the HOD so ALWAYS consult a tax professional first.  For example Day Care Facilities and even Employees that work out of their home to benefit their employer could reap additional benefits.  The important thing is to know when this is a conversation you should be having with your CPA.  As Marietta says, “this is not trying to get away with anything. This is a deduction that the IRS allows…so why not take advantage of it?”  However she strongly recommends that people to consult a tax advisory as Home Office Deductions do come under close scrutiny by the IRS.  Additionally Marietta suggests checking out the IRS 8829 form and worksheet to gain more insight about the HOD.

Marietta Courtney is a CPA providing tax services to business owners in all phases of business, from start-up to established businesses.. For more information go to her website at  www.Courtneycpa.com.

With the help of a stylish pal, I finally found a great new coat. When I brought it home, I did what I always try to do when I update my wardrobe: I looked for the old one to put in the donation pile.

It’s a policy I encourage clients (even my family!) to follow: bring something home, send something out. The “something out” can be the old version of the new purchase or some other worn or unused item. But when I remembered that I’d already donated the old coat, I let myself get away without culling.

What do you do to help balance bringing new items into your home?

On a different note: Many places across the USA are now accepting donated formal dresses for high school proms. For donation guidelines, check my previous blog. The links are current. The deadline to donate a dress in most places is April 1, 2013.

Elesheva E. Soloff is a professional organizer with Soloff Space Solutions, based in Boston, MA.
www.soloffspacesolutions.com
email: ees@soloffspacesolutions.com