Archive for December, 2009

10 Steps to an Organized home – by Lisa Tuttle

Are they destined to wallow in their debilitating clutter for eternity?  Of course not!  With a little effort, anyone can learn organizational skills and reap the benefits of an orderly life.

If your mess has bested you, give this 10-step program a shot.

1. Fix the leak.
It doesn’t do any good to repair a water- damaged ceiling until after the leak in the roof is fixed. Likewise, you will make no progress in organizing your life if you continue to practice disorderly habits. Examine your lifestyle and determine where the bulk of the mess is coming from, then make a conscious effort to break those habits. Set some guidelines for yourself and your family—”No new messes!” being the primary rule. The first step in changing messy ways is to stop contributing to the problem.

2. Assess the mess.
Take a look around and decide what areas of your home or office need your attention. Maybe just one or two rooms have started to clutter, or maybe every square inch of your property is packed and piled with possessions. Whatever the case, begin with a good look-see.

3. Do the daily dozen.
I know the thought of sorting through those closets and corners makes you shudder, so don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to tackle the job all at once. The hit-and-run approach works much better. Set aside twelve minutes a day to do something simple like cleaning up your medicine cabinet or organizing your lawn and gardening tools in the garage. When your daily dozen is up, walk away. It may not seem like you are accomplishing much, but like running water wears away at a rock, after a few weeks, you will begin to see the effects of your efforts.

4. Localize.
If you are disorganized, chances are your mess has crept through your entire house, with pieces and projects all mixed together in a jumble. Don’t despair! It’s fixable. Start by localizing your messes. Choose a place for each “category” of mess. Paperwork should go by the filing cabinet, tools in the garage, music and videos with the entertainment center. Don’t worry about organizing them yet; just stash them in a box, basket, or plastic tub in the
general vicinity of their final destination. Think of it as a giant puzzle. If you put all the pieces of one section in the same place, the final assembly is faster and easier.

5. Reduce, recycle, resale.
Admit it! You don’t even use the stuff you’re hoarding in that basement storage room, and half the clothes in your closet don’t fit you anymore. And when was the last time you listened to the music cassettes you purchased in 1983? As you begin to sort and localize your mess, find a giant box and write “garage sale” on the side. As you uncover something you can live without, stash it in the box. Recycle old papers, magazines and plastics, and make weekly
donations to a charitable resale shop.

6. Choose a corner.
Pick one area or room and concentrate your twelve-minute organizational spurts on that place until it is finished. Those jam-packed dresser drawers might be your first focus. Or maybe the cupboard below the bathroom sink demands top priority. If your whole house is in chaos, make a project list, placing high-priority jobs at the top. As you clean and organize each area, cross a line off the list and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Seeing the list
dwindle will keep you motivated!

7. Categorize.
When organizing, it’s often easiest to remove everything from its container or cupboard and sift through all the pieces that need to fit into the space. Sort through and separate your stuff into categories. If you’re tackling the bedroom closet, maybe you want work clothes in one section, formal outfits clustered together and casual digs in a separate cubby. Once your clothes are categorized, you can see how much space you will need for each grouping.

8. Case the space.
Take a look at your closet and determine the most efficient way to store your possessions. Which items do you use the most? You’ll want those in an easy-to-reach location.  How much space will the items in each category take up? You’ll want to choose a shelf or drawer that will accommodate them. If needed, add shelves, hooks, closet rods and other gadgets that will improve the organization of a space.

9. Clean and replace.
Since an empty space is easy to clean, this is a good time to pull out a sponge and a vacuum. Once you’ve vanquished the dirt, start replacing the items one category at a time. Work at it until you’ve found the right mix of organization and convenience. When one area is finished, move on to the next until the work is done.

10. Maintain.
Your house or office is organized, but it won’t stay that way unless you do the upkeep. Now that you’re in the habit of spending a dozen minutes a day organizing, spend that time eliminating little areas of mess or disorganization that appear. While putting bath towels in the linen closet, take an extra 30 seconds to straighten the other shelves. Is that
Tupperware cupboard starting to overflow? It only takes two minutes to restack the containers in a neat and orderly fashion. Spending a few minutes each day to stay on top of the mess is much easier than reorganizing the whole house each year.

(Lisa Tuttle is a freelance writer, publishing short stories,devotionals, and articles for newspapers and magazines. She recently accepted the opportunity to write a biography for hire and is pursuing publication for her novels. www.lisatuttle.com)

Lakeshore Home Maintenance is an Oakville based home maintenance company that specializes in taking care of your “to-do” list…inside and out.  We would be more than happy to help you with any aspect of organizing your Oakville home.  Call us at 289-242-8439 in Oakville, Burlington and Mississauga

Wouldn’t it be nice?  One simple step that organizes everything in your home, everything has its place, floors, shelves and surfaces are clean and fresh smelling, and there is order in every room.  Impossible?  In one step?  Yes, that was merely a cheap trick to get you to read this blog I admit.  However, there is hope for that after holiday clutter (and possibly from the rest of the year clutter) to turn your home from disorganized to organized.  It won’t be quick, but if you are committed to organizing your home, there are ways to do this, and the results will change your life forever.

First and foremost, before any organizing takes place the most important step in the process is ensuring that you are in the proper state of mind to begin.  This is a life change, a major life change for some, and until you have made that personal affirmation that you are going to make this change there is no point in moving forward.  Often, a disorganized home is a sign of another problem.  Some of us have seen the television show Hoarders that profiles people who have a serious problem.  For the purposes of this blog, I will not be addressing these issues, but you can learn more here. 

Ask yourself the hard questions.  Why do I want to organize my home (and ultimately, your life)?  What is keeping me from doing this until now?  Am I in some way comforted by the extra “stuff” around me?  Are there people and circumstances in my life that are keeping me from organizing my home?  What excuses am I using for living this way, are are they valid?  Difficult questions all, and ones that are not easily answered but once you are in the mindset you will be amazed at the changes that will begin to happen.

At this point, there is a process that begins and there are multiple websites and suggestions as to what is the best way to organize your home.  I am going to discuss one way to tackle the rooms in your home.  Most importantly, be realistic about your timing, and give yourself a set of multi tiered goals, beginning at the beginning, and ending with your home with everything in its place, and a place for everything. 

Next blog – 10 Steps to an Organized home 

Lakeshore Home Maintenance is an Oakville based home maintenance company that specializes in taking care of your “to-do” list…inside and out.  We would be more than happy to help you with any aspect of organizing your Oakville home.  Call us at 289-242-8439 in Oakville, Burlington and Mississauga

 Lovely shot of sludge coming out of a downspout huh?

Yes, we see it all, the good the bad and the downright ugly.  We have worse, stay tuned.  However, for this particular story I am going to focus on the work we do with eaves, downspouts and all the lovely things we find in them, and repair about them.

One question that comes up a lot, is that of the fallen downspout.  Usually after a particular windy day, we get calls about two things; fence repairs and downspout repairs.  Two areas are particularly common to get calls from for these issues, Joshua Creek and Oak Park.  When these areas were built, the builders wanted things really tall, and yet when the downspouts were being installed, no-one seemed to think they needed to be actually ATTACHED to the eavestrough.  To explain, one inserts into the other, and then the downspout follows a path down the side of your house, and is attached to the side of the house with little metal tabs that are screwed into the brick or wood siding.  Funny thing about that, when we go to do the fix, there is zero evidence of a screw ever being inserted at the top, where the downspout actually begins at the top.  You are asking an awful lot of those little metal tabs to be able to hold up close to 30 feet of downspout down a building during a windstorm in Oakville.  Not fair.  And the metal tabs are actually attached to the house, but with the tiniest screw you ever did see, basically, with the same size screw that should be used to attach the downspout pieces together. 

We fix em.  Tall, short, big and small, we fix them up and attach them so well and so securely that they are not going to fall down for a very long time, certainly much longer than their original life span.  We have the tools – from our humble 27 foot ladder all the way up to the 40 footer (necessary in Oak Park and Joshua Creek with your super tall houses) and we have the tools, knowledge, expertise and INSURANCE to do this job properly.  Carrying insurance is a huge part of our business, it is a cost for us, but protection and peace of mind for you.  If I am up on my 40 foot ladder repairing your eave and heaven forbid something goes horrifically wrong, you are protected from all liability.  This is not just a service that we provide, it is for your benefit and protection and if you hire anyone to get up on a ladder, you should ensure that they are carrying liability insurance.  We have $2 million in liability insurance and $5 million in general aggregate liability insurance.  Basically, if something goes wrong with what we do, you do not need to worry. 

Often people want to know the cost upfront, and we happily give it to them.  The pricing depends on how tall your home is, if we need to bring our biggest ladder, the minimum charge is higher as the risk is higher to us.  Some people seem to think that they can just go and purchase or rent the largest ladder and do the job themselves.   What they may not think about is that they need to transport the ladder home, have someone there to help them open the ladder, and then they actually need to have the right tools, drill and proper self tapping screws, and new eavestrough possibly (which needs to be the right size and colour).  At this point, they need to go UP the big ladder (truthfully, the scary part) and drill the screws in.  Simple on the ground, trickier 30 feet up, trust us. 

Save yourself the hassle and call us first.  We work with suppliers who can match any eavestrough or downspout, and we get the job done for you, without the fear of heights factor. 

Lakeshore Home Maintenance – Taking care of your “to-do” list…inside and out.  And fixing downspouts in the process.  289-242-8439