Author Archives: ourvirtualholiday

Yard Sales are a great way to turn your trash into someone else’s treasure. The new trend is to have Virtual Yards Sales.

As long as you’re home getting driven up a wall you might as well grab a piece of chalk on your way.

There are specialty paints that look and act like a chalkboard. They also have paint that works as a dry-erase surface. Now the walls in you kitchen or family room can have a great many purposes.
Naturally some of the first things that come to mind are using them for homeschooling, chores or calendars but what about using them as a background for Zooming. You can quickly decorate and change the background for your mood or occasion. If you post on social media you can use them to illustrate a point or list steps and ingredients.
Family members can post a quote of the day, play tic tac toe, draw challenging mazes or make wildly inappropriate caricatures of each other.
And when you’ve finally had enough you can write a note to the rest of the family about how you “just can’t take it anymore and are running off to Bora Bora but that you should be home in time for dinner”.

Organizing your home can be very uncomplicated if you take the subjectivity out of the equation. Don’t analyze, read or debate, simply sort items in the appropriate bins like an emotionless robot. Organizing goes fast and then there will be plenty of time to reflect on the sorted items in your fresh, clean and open space. Think of how happy your Roomba will be!
I visited a friend who is a lawyer. When I walked into her office I could not believe my eyes. There were stacks of paper 2 and 3 feet high on every surface. It was a mix of mail, receipts, newspapers, books, things that had fallen over and things that were about to fall over. I said let me help you take your office back before we find you underneath an accidental avalanche.
We put together about 10 filing boxes with the following titles:

• Trash
• Recycle
• Shred (then recycle)
• Mail
• Immediate attention
• File
• Donate
• Put Away
• Long Storage

The name of the game is “pick it up and put it in a box.” Then I told her the rules of the “game”. “Nothing stays in your hand for more than 5 seconds and there is absolutely no dwelling, discussing or storytelling involved in any of the items you’re organizing.”

Not only did we make it through the entire office by the end of the day but she also found some important correspondence and two missing checks. One of which she used to buy me dinner. She even let me have a McFlurry for dessert. A few days later she told me that she had gotten everything in all those boxes put where they belong.
Obviously if you are attacking a room with bigger or more diverse items you might need a few other categories and some larger bins. Also just because you have things organized into categories doesn’t mean the job is finished but getting things put away can be wonderfully addicting.

There are so many projects and designs that can enhance your homes beauty while creating more space.

Mom where is the ……everything? Free up space, get rid out of day items and organize.