It can be hard to get organized in the bathroom. The popularity of pedestal sinks means there is a big cupboard missing under the sink, so we need to get creative! One popular solution to bathroom storage is to install a metal legged cabinet over the toilet. I’m not really fond of those since the cupboards are narrow and sometimes the items inside the cabinet springs out and lands in the toilet, but the concept is a good one.
Firstly, remember to keep the toilet lid shut if you are taking something out of the cabinet above it.
Secondly, have a look at these handy bathroom hacks!
- Small baskets from the dollar store come in handy for organizing toiletries, makeup brushes, and more, in tiny bathroom cupboards.
- Don’t store things in the bathroom that could go somewhere else. Cleaning supplies, flashlights, and first aid kits can go in other rooms and closets. Since most household accidents occur in the kitchen, having a first aid kit in a kitchen drawer or cupboard makes good sense.
- Try not to buy in bulk all the time. I know it’s hard to pass up a $9 savings on 32 rolls of toilet paper…but when you have 96 rolls already tucked in to your linen cupboard, you’re overdoing it.
- Makeup expires, and it gets damp in the bathroom, too. Keeping big collections of mascara, foundation, and eye shadows is an expensive hobby if you are throwing it into the garbage. Check through your makeup and see what’s past its “best by” date and chuck out anything that smells bad while you are at it. Also, give those makeup brushes a look and throw out any that are shedding bristles or smell funny. (Extra tip: makeup brushes need to be cleaned once a month.)
- Hooks or invisible shelves are an easy way to keep things organized in the bathroom. If you don’t have a drill for making holes needed by permanent hooks, try the ones that stick to the wall. Command Brand are my favourite removable hooks, and they can be removed with little or no damage to the wall underneath.
- Putting up an extra towel rack or a few shelves makes good use of empty wall space and provides a good way to air your towels or showcase your favourite things.
Need help getting organized in your bathroom or elsewhere? Check out the other articles in this series! If you’d like some hands on help and you’re in Alberta, reach us through the contact form and let’s see if we can help you out!
These series is designed to help you get organized. If you are a lover of DIY and want a few handy hints, check back so that you see the entire series!
The Linen Closet
When we moved into a new house recently, I was a little surprised to see just how much space the chimney took up in the linen closet. What we have is a silly little cupboard with shelves that are about four inches wide! Useless for sheets, it turned out to be perfect for storing toilet paper, flashlights, and extra batteries.
Lots of my linens have come to me as gifts over the years. I hung on to a select few, including two small table cloths my mom embroidered. I use those tablecloths, and think of my mom fondly each time I iron one and put it out. Other things were easy to let go of and gave me much needed space. The soft old pair of sheets with the frayed edges is gone. The extra hair dye towels, a couple of frayed towels, and pillow cases that were just a little too tight are also gone. You see what I’m getting at right?
Commit to Getting Organized
If you have too much stuff, getting organized and downsizing means that some things simply must go. It’s trendy these days to say that things that don’t serve a purpose or bring you joy are supposed to be given away. The trouble is we still have a tendency to buy more than we need and so we have things that bring us joy, but they also make us miserable because we don’t have space for them.
Do you ever shop at a dollar store and leave with things that you didn’t really know you needed? Thrift stores and dollar style stores are goldmines of inexpensive linens like tea towels, dishcloths, and table runners for every occasion. The trouble starts when there is no more room in cupboards, drawers, and baskets. Difficulty gets compounded when the owner wants to move to a smaller space, with tiny cupboards and few closets.
If you aren’t sure you can live without some of your linens, store them away in a box for six months and try out a more minimal lifestyle. If you don’t absolutely need something in that time, you won’t take it out of the box. At the end of your six months, throw the entire box away, or donate it.
Tips for Tidy Linen Closets
- A great way to keep your sheets and matching pillow cases together is to neatly fold and place matching linens into one of the pillowcases from the set. This makes for a nicely stored bundle that is easy to grab.
- Instead of storing facecloths in the linen closet, roll a few up like the hotels do and place them in a cute basket in the bathroom. This keeps them handy and opens a little space in your linen closet.
- Don’t store your linens in plastic covers, as they can age your nice sheets more quickly than you’d imagine. Instead, use natural fibres that breath to store blankets, duvets, and big towels. If you live in an area prone to bugs, don’t store anything right on the floor. Use cedar wood blocks to deter bugs, and keep the cedar “fresh” sanding the surfaces a few times a year to release the oils. You can also purchase moth traps for a few dollars at quilting and knitting stores to avoid having to use smelly moth balls.
- You’ll keep your table linens flatter and iron them less if you hang them on pant hangers at one end of your bedroom closet instead of squishing them into a linen closet.
If you’d like some help with downsizing, organizing, or moving and you are in the Alberta region, please complete our contact form. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
One problem with “getting organized” is the motivation to get the work done can be tough to hold onto. If you have a lot of things it can be overwhelming to try and get things organized all in one go. If you don’t enjoy tidying up it can be hard to get started. This series of articles will help you tame clutter by using short blocks of time instead of spending an entire day (or weeks or months) to get things under control.
There aren’t a lot of people I meet who enjoy cleaning house, doing laundry, or matching up odd socks for a family of five. I feel like the work is well worth it if only for the satisfaction of knowing you did a good job. After all, when things are tidy and well organized, you’ve got a space you can enjoy being in. You don’t have to see piles of stuff out of the corner of your eye. I love the way a client’s face lights up when they look into their closet and see how everything they have kept now fits beautifully – both on their body and in the closet!
Read on for some handy tips to get organized quickly and easily.
Fix It or Nix It
Do you have a pile of clothes stashed away that are waiting to be mended? If you haven’t fixed something within a week, there’s a 95 percent chance you won’t ever repair it. Take a good look at your mending pile, and bid farewell to anything that is going to take more than ten minutes to fix within the next seven days, or is beyond your skill level (I hate sewing zippers and I am awful at it). Charities tell us that they cannot repair clothing that is donated, so don’t send them things that need buttons or fixing.
Sweater Dilemma
Sweaters don’t hang up well, and they can take up a lot of room when folded in a dresser drawer. Have a look at your sweaters and set aside the ones you haven’t worn in a year. If you still have too many, then remove the ones you haven’t worn in six months. The rule of making room in your closet and dresser is that if you aren’t wearing something regularly, it’s time to let it go! If your sweaters are nearly new or only gently worn, there are plenty of shelters and charities who need your warm clothes to dress someone in need.
Sock Stash
It can be tempting to hold onto socks just a little longer than needed, and the odd socks can get out of hand quickly, especially if you’ve got a house full or people! Make sorting socks into a bit of a game for yourself, and make sure you have a prize ready for yourself even if it’s just a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar for your coffee.
Sorting socks can be painful because it can seem like the task goes on forever. Set a timer and commit to focussing on socks for thirty minutes at a time, and it’ll make things easier to stick with knowing that it’ll end. Turn on some music and keep your body moving to the beat, or listen to an audio book while you work to keep yourself entertained. Grab your stash of odd socks, and lay them out individually on your bed or kitchen table so that none of them are out of sight. When you finish the matching, give yourself a hearty pat on the back! If you still have odd socks laying on the table, accept that their partners are long gone, and chuck out what’s left. That’s right, I said throw them out! The idea of organizing is to get rid of what you don’t need and there will be things you need to say farewell to, so get yourself okay with eliminating odd socks that have no purpose! BEFORE you put the pairs away, check them over quickly and throw out any pairs where one or both socks are in sad shape (worn thin, holes, or dingy socks that will never be white again).
If you have nothing left except good socks, but you still have more than what will fit in the drawer, have a look at your laundry cycle. If you do laundry every two weeks, you probably don’t need more than 14 pairs of socks and if you wear sandals a lot you can get away with even less.
There you have it! The first article in our series! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks to organize your home. If you’d like some help, reach out to us on our contact form, here.
We see a lot of family treasures in our work, and some of them cause trouble. They’ve been carefully saved to pass on to the next generation…but in many cases, grown children and grandchildren don’t really want what’s being offered. They are being deliberately rude or uncaring. Chances are they have chosen their own things to enjoy, and don’t have room or interest in anything else. Items we see refused include china, silverware chests, crystal, pianos, sewing machines, ornaments / figurines, and tools.
Not all is lost though, because there are certain things that our families treasure. It may help to think about how you pass along a gift addition to when you pass it along. Wrapping a pretty piece of jewellery or Grampa’s watch and passing it along to a grandchild at their 21st birthday can make for a memorable and treasured gift. When you share the story of the gift by writing it out on a card or special piece of paper, the history can be stored along with the gift, and it’ll be seen each time the item is used.
There are some items that our clients and families tell us they would treasure. This list is a work in progress, but seems like a good place to start.
Photos and photo albums
People of all ages love to see themselves in old family photos, and they are ideal for supplementing family histories. Since so many photos are now digitally stored, you may want to think about gifting an electronic frame so that the pictures can be viewed any time. I love the recommendations from Ellen, the chief genealogist at Shop the Hound. She emphasizes how important it is to print some copies of your favourite pictures, so they never get lost during the upgrade to a new computer. You’ll also avoid the problem where someone has password protected their computer, and when they pass away no one can get into their files to retrieve photos or helpful information. Depending on how your pictures are stored, you may have to include a slide sorter and viewer, or a scanner, as part of your gift.
Creating an album that can be kept in a bookcase or displayed on a coffee table, and adding some comments or dates to the photos, will help future generations know who is there.
There are lots of options available for archival boxes and printing paper so that pictures will last, and books, blogs, or YouTube videos that do a great job of explaining how to look after them.
Scrapbooks
Scrapbooking is a great hobby for crafty people to preserve their memories. They aren’t just for photos, but can hold all kinds of treasures carefully tucked into the pages. Scrapbooks, school yearbooks filled with notes and signatures, and wedding albums are getting scarce as people downsize and remove “clutter” from their homes, and so digitizing a scrapbook can be a great way to preserve it, save some space, and make sure that multiple people have copies of the scrapbook.
If you’d like to pass on a scrapbook, check to make sure it’s made of acid-free archival paper. Look for supplies at your local craft retailer, and watch for deals online. These projects can get expensive, so taking advantage of coupons, sales, and making the scrapbook a gift for a special occasion makes the most of your money.
Letters, Journals, and Diaries
Our journals and diaries tell the secrets and tales of days gone by and the people who lived them. When I read my grandmother’s old letters, I was thrilled to see the stories unfold on old, crisp, airmail paper that had writing in every bit of space available. Documents like land transfers, property maps, immigration records, and birth certificates all add richness to the history. If you have a writer in the family, perhaps they would enjoy turning these letters into a family history that can be shared with future generations.
Creating New Treasures
It’s possible to take a whole collection of things and make something new from them. Costume jewellery that is treasured and yet dated can be turned into a collage shaped like a family tree or an initial, and beautifully displayed in a shadow box. Woodworking tools can be displayed in a tool shed, and sewing supplies can be displayed in a craft room. Large collections – including wedding china, dining room sets, and book collections, are not that popular with heirs, so it’s wise to ask if things are wanted before passing them along. If you have someone who loves to work with wood, they may be keen to refinish old furniture, including chairs, tables, dressers, and pianos.
One of the best gifts I received from my grandmother is an enormous crystal bowl. She bought it while on a holiday in England, and carried it as part of her hand luggage coming home. It’s big enough to hold two dozen Yorkshire puddings, or a trifle that will feed about 20 people. How she managed to carry it through Heathrow Airport is still a mystery to me. She gave it to me when I started doing a lot of entertaining, and I always got a thrill at putting it on the table and having her see it there because she gave it to me while she was still here.
If you’d like some help sorting out your treasures, let us know! You can reach us through the contact form.
Are you a senior who has had a trip or fall at home? Though the initial design of your space may have been ideal at one time, things can change as we age. It’s not uncommon to need some updating in order to keep up with changes in our lives, including things like eyesight, balance, and low lighting.
Falls are a major factor in hospitalizations, causing up to 90 percent of hip and risk fractures, and 60 percent of head injuries to older adults in Canada. They are also the number one cause of injury related death in seniors.Those are sobering statistics, and we want to give you the tools to avoid them!
While we love to create a space a home that is warm and welcoming, the use of area rugs in a big problem with tripping. Sometimes the “look” of a big floor area can be too much, and we fill the space or create warmth by adding a rug. But sadly, even when they seem to be well secured, people regularly trip over corners and edges of area rugs.
To see if you are putting yourself at risk for a fall, consider the following questions:
- Have you fallen in the last six months?
- Do you hold onto the furniture as you move around your home?
- Are you using your hands to help you as you stand up?
- Do you take medication that makes you feel unsteady or lightheaded?
- Do you get up in the middle of the night to use the washroom?
- Do you wear slippers or socks when you are at home?
- Are you using a cane or walker in your home?
If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to some of these questions, speak with your doctor or nurse practitioner about how to protect yourself from a fall. They may wish to review your medications, assess your health, and check your vision. Sometimes a few simple changes at home are all that’s needed to make things much safer.
Here are some things you can do at home that can help keep you safe:
- Remove area rugs
- Install night lights so it’s easier to see if you get up in the middle of the night
- Wear runners or shoes with a non-skid sole instead of slippers or socks in the house
- Take a fall prevention class
- Strengthen your muscles and core with supervised exercise or occupational/physical therapy
- Install secure handrails throughout your home, including in the shower and near the toilet
- Meet with a social worker or home care worker about home health services
- Hire a professional who can organize your home to make it safer for you
For more information on fall prevention and some helpful resources, see http://fallpreventionmonth.ca/ and https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/aging-seniors/publications/publications-general-public/you-prevent-falls.html
Elder Move Inc. staff are specially trained to help you to organize your home, and if you are moving we will also pack, relocate, and unpack your belongings. We work hard to provide you with a safe, comfortable home. You can contact us here and we’ll help you get started!
One thing that drives me bananas is when I can’t find my digital “stuff”! Have you ever searched for a file on your computer and no matter what, it seemed to have disappeared? Me too! It drove me crazy, especially when some of my favourite things – pictures, books, emails, were there but out of my reach. Now, I have a system of tools, folders, and backups set up that keep me on track. 
A few years ago, I had files on a laptop and they were different to the files on my desktop. I also had a backup drive, but honestly, have you ever tried to get files off a backup drive? It’s not for the weak kneed! Because I didn’t know how to get particular files off a backup, I’d email important files to myself so I could access them from anywhere. Of course this meant I had the same file in multiple places, and was not efficient at all.
Do You Have Backup?
There are plenty of options, from storing your emails and pictures on the cloud with OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and many more. Some of these platforms offer a little free storage and you can buy extra space if you need it, although I haven’t found one that meets all my needs. I find that when I want to access something off the cloud and then edit the document, I have to download it to a computer. Then when I am finished making the changes, I have to load it back up. This feels like too much fiddling around, especially if I am working on multiple parts of one project at a time.
My solution was to use an external drive where I can copy files regularly, and they are easy to find and work with. However, my IT friends tell me that I shouldn’t store my external hard drive at home. It’s too easy for files to get lost or damaged. Instead, I store some things in the cloud until I copy them onto an external hard drive.
You have to identify the best method of storage and backup for you. What’s handy? What’s easy to manage? What’s affordable?
My Kind of Gadgets
I have a large external hard drive, and its 4TB is plenty of space. You can see it here (and order from my affiliate link if you like): http://amzn.to/2AfHLAi and to be adequately covered, I also have a backup drive, where with the help of an IT person I could get myself up and going on a new computer if I needed to. http://amzn.to/2AqCrKT
One of the things I love about putting my photos on an external drive is that I have them handy to look at, anytime I want. I don’t have to pull out big albums (although a lovingly created photo album or scrapbook is marvellous, I admit), and I don’t need a set of bookshelves to store my album. The pictures, on an external drive, take up very little space at all. I can also keep important papers, from bank statements to tax returns, and don’t have stacks of paper around the house or tucked into closets.
What To Do About Your Favourite Digital Things?
Have you ever lost important files from your computers or gadgets? If so, think about getting yourself a gift of storage and backup! Perhaps consider it for the techy person in your family. Don’t lose your documents and photos that you’ve so carefully saved; make sure you save them, carefully.
Do you have collections of pictures? Photo albums in shelves and framed snaps up on the wall? Hundreds or perhaps thousands of digital files? If you’re looking for a gift for someone or you’ve got family who wants to know what you’d like for a gift, going digital is a great way to go.
With the right tools, you (or you can hire a professional photo organizer to do this) can have all your photos scanned and then, instead of having photos tucked under the stairs or in an attic you can actually look at them! After all, a photo that’s sitting at the bottom of a box somewhere is just a piece of paper instead of a treasured memory to be enjoyed.
My sister recently took on a massive project for my parents which involved not just scanning their photos – a quick exercise but not helpful for anyone outside our folks who might be looking at the pictures. She is annotating them so that the notes on the back or beneath a photo in an album are also preserved. No doubt, you know the stories connected to your own pictures, but over time those stories get lost. This is no longer a problem when a complete job is done on your photos.
There are some fabulous gadgets available to help you scan, preserve, and then share your digital photos with family members. Digital scanners can be used for photos, slides, have recorded messages attached, and more. My sister was able to take a dozen photo albums and put all the files on one USB stick to share among the family. Our mom and dad love watching the photos on their digital frame, or to see them on the larger television screen.
Programs like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox allow you to easily share photos among family members, as will a USB Flash Drive. Another great way to share is to store the photos on digital frames that you can give as gifts. This is even better than in the “olden days” when we would sit together in the living room and view the family slides, because there is a lot less work required and less space in the room needed for the old projector.
If you’d like to learn more about organizing and downsizing, check out the other blog posts on this page. If you’re in Alberta and you’d like some help, we’d love to chat with you. Just fill out the contact form here on our site.
At Elder Move Inc., we help people to downsize, move, and get settled into new spaces. Often, the new space is smaller than the previous one, and that can take some getting used to. Here are some of our clients’ favourite ways to settle into their new space, quickly creating something cozy.
- Stools and coffee tables with storage space are perfect for tucking away throw blankets, cushions, and all those remotes you use for the television, pvr, stereo, cable box, and more.
- Ikea sells a lightweight, small drill/screwdriver combination tool that makes putting cabinets together – so much easier than being on your knees sweating through it with an allen key! The bits that come with the drill can be used on practically all your home organizing projects, including the ones from Jysk, Wayfair, and Canadian Tire.
- Using glass or crystal and hanging mirrors helps to project light and makes your space seem bigger and brighter. They are easy to keep clean and shiny with inexpensive microfibre cloths.
- Cables from your television, computer, and charges can look untidy and make your space cluttered. Cutting space out of the back of cabinets and using cable covers to contain the mess keeps your space looking cheerful and organized. Make sure that your cables are safely tucked away so things cannot overheat.
- Pare down your clothing so everything you need fits in your closet and dresser, and within your laundry cycle. If you do laundry once a week, there’s no need for 21 pairs of socks, or 10 pairs of trousers, or seven spring jackets. If you are tight on space, store seasonal clothes in totes to keep them out of the way.
To make getting organized easy, limit yourself to make one change or one room at a time. If you’re in Alberta and you’d like some help downsizing and getting organized, or you are getting ready for a move, we’d love to hear from you. Please fill out the contact form here on our site.
As adults living alone or in a place that doesn’t “do” holidays, Halloween can be boring. No kids in cute outfits at the door, no jack o’lanterns decorating the doorways. No boxes of candy beside the front door to sneak a few treats. Boo!
Fear not, Halloween lovers! There’s still time to gear up for some fun, and we’re happy to provide you with a few ideas that don’t require hours creating fancy costumes or decorating.
- Carve cute jack o’lantern faces into a sweet potato or a big turnip and enjoy the activity and the fun, just as if you had emptied out the insides of a 30-pound pumpkin. Take pictures of your creations to save them or share with friends. Don’t waste your hard efforts, either. Afterwards, you can cook and then eat your lanterns!
- Watch some great Halloween classics on TV, a streaming service, or arrange a movie night in the common room of your building. Fun movies like Hocus Pocus starring Bette Midler, or The Nightmare Before Christmas from Tim Burton are dark classics that you can enjoy without getting scared to death. Of course, if you’d prefer a good fright, there are plenty of movies at your disposal. Prepare some Halloween treats to go with the movie, and you’ve got a celebration on your hands.
- Go for a drive and check out all the great displays near you – some neighbourhoods are decked out more for Halloween than any other time of the year!
- Challenge yourself to eat themed food for the entire day. You don’t have to limit yourself to sugary junk either. Try soups made from squash, or some simple carrot sticks. If you want to go all out, you can bake shortbread cookies with almonds shaped to look like witch’s fingers and really get into it!
Happy Halloween from all of us at Elder Move!
I like to meander through the aisles of second hand stores to see what the deals are. Sometimes I go looking for something specific, like this particular day when I wanted to make some mittens out of old sweaters, until I came upon the housecoats.
The store I visited was very popular, and I had to wait a few moments to get to the stand of sweaters I wanted, so I let myself get distracted by the housecoats instead. There was something about several of the housecoats there that reminded me of being little and at home with my mom, because she always wore these cotton housecoats, usually floral, some with zippers and others with ties. There were about six of them hanging on the rack, and I looked closer.
These housecoats were soft and faded, and had obviously been washed may times. Some were floral, some were printed abstract, all were looking a little old and worn and tired as they clung onto the wire hangers. I looked up at the first one, and saw a name tape ironed in the facing just below the collar. Agnes, it said. I looked at the next one, and it said Ruth. The third one had a name tape ironed on top of another name tape; Carol. These were housecoats that had been donated to the second hand store, seemingly from a senior’s home of some sort. They made me feel just a little sad as I looked at them, because each housecoat had someone’s name written on iron on fabric tape, and pressed into the collar. Obviously, they had come from seniors who had them labelled so they didn’t get lost in the laundry of the facility where these ladies had lived, and I wondered how they felt as adults wearing labelled clothing, similar to how a young child would have their coats and boots labelled for school. I felt the fabric, thought of the women and the lives they had lived, and tried to honour them for a few moments.
