Organize Your Gardening   May is a great month for gardening!  I thought this might be a good time to offer some tips to help save time and make your gardening experience more productive and organized. If you haven't already done so plan your garden.  Research what plants look good together. Plant some vegetables along with your flowers.  Many vegetables provide wonderful color and you get the added benefit of FRESH vegetables. Schedule time each week to work in the garden.  This prevents weeds from taking over and revives you. Get your family to help.  It's a wonderful opportunity to spend time just being together.  Consider a child garden in a portion of the larger garden.  Let the child(ren) take care of it. Use a sprinkler or drip hose to water the plants. Use good tools and maintain them well.  Store larger tools in an upright tool container. Have fun!  Gardening is supposed to make you feel good.  If it doesn't, don't do it or do it on a smaller scale.     We provide professional organizing services in the following areas:   Closets   Rooms   Homes   Home Offices   Organizations   Projects   Events   Life Goals If you or your business could use the help of Professional Organizers in any of these areas, rest assured that we can and will provide prompt, courteous, completely confidential, service to you? Feel free to contact us with any questions or for an initial evaluation of your situation at 405-820-5845 or ethan@highperformanceconsultants.com

Large Projects

June has been a busy month so far. I hope the same is true for you. This month I thought I'd talk a little about organizing a large project with minimum time. The example I'll use will be a garage that has become a warehouse and storeroom of "might be needed" items. Decluttering a large area can be a daunting task, especially when you must operate under tight time constraints. I recently consulted on a project just like this. The owner had a very busy schedule and could only allocate a partial day over a few weekends. The garage in question was a two-car garage with room for some shelves and the wash area in there as well. Trouble was the garage had been a catch all for about a decade and was so full you had to climb over and around items to get to the overhead door (no automatic garage door opener). There were 3 motorcycles (50 cc to 1200 cc), 5 bicycles, 2 huge industrial style shelves, 1 large metal shelf, some smaller built in shelves, a couple of small built in closets, and tons of stuff from baby and kids clothes and toys, to work and camping related items, assorted old car and appliance parts, and the washer/dryer as stated earlier. Stacked almost to the ceiling. We initially laid out a plan of attack after assessing the situation and time allotment. The large shelves were on either side of the room (full), so we decided the first thing to do would be to take his first available partial day and move ALL the items inthe space between the shelves out onto the driveway. During this session we purged the obvious junk and sorted the other items into related catagories. (I must confess we also found a few items on the shelves that were obsolete and could be discarded...thereby freeing up a little shelf space for some of the returning items.) Wal-Mart came in handy here for the conveinence and relatively inexpensive plastic storage containers. Like items that would fit were placed in these containers and were then stacked on the floor or placed in available shelf space. Other items too large for containers were moved into available nooks, and spaces. Then the items with wheels were moved back in. Finally, the items that wouldn't fit in the trash can were moved to a predetermined spot in the back yard along with setting up a spot for wood and related items that could be stored outside. End of day one. A couple of weeks later we met again and were able to quickly clear the floor space via the use of a dolly and the fact that the bikes, cycles and some other items had wheels. (Did I mention that we were able to leave a large walkway throuh the garage from kitchen to both the backyard and overhead doors during the first pass.) This time we chose the shelf on one side of the garage as our goal for that day. Following basically the same plan as before we moved ALL the items from the shelves to the driveway, placing these in related piles and stacks. Using the same system as before we were able to consolidate space once again by the prudent use of plastic storage containers and the trash area and can. We also began sorting these items into garage sale items and items to keep. Labelling the containers made it easier to access the garage sale items when the big sale day came. Also this would prove to be very handy on the next cleaning day project. Items were then returned to the garage. Again more space. A few days later, a relative needed a place to store a few items during a move, so some new items including a bed, mattresses and all, were added to the stuff still in the garage. This slowed the next cleanup day a little. But we still managed to get the other shelf containerized and labeled, although we didn't have time to consolidate the similar items from the previous shelf. There were two more days required to finish this job, one where we consolidated and determined useful organizing systems for the shelves, i.e. seasonal, work, camping, clothes, and garage sale. The second where stored paperwork and books were sorted, many shredded then trashed, and recontainerized according to new criteria. When I left there wasn't yet room for the car, but after the garage sale I'm confident there will be. Interestingly, while just sorting through the items people would stop and ask if it were a yard sale, even though it wasn't the client made almost $150.00 while cleaning. This individual has now requested that I help them with the businesses organizing needs, as well as being very interested in attending one of our Project Management Training Programs and learning more about our other programs. If we can be of any further assisstence to you please do not hesitate to contact us. 405-820-5845 or ethan@highperformanceconsultants.com We provide professional organizing services in the following areas: Closets Rooms Homes Home Offices Organizations Projects Events Life Goals If you or your business could use the help of Professional Organizers in any of these areas, rest assured that we can and will provide prompt, courteous, completely confidential, service to you? Feel free to contact us with any questions or for an initial evaluation of your situation at 405-820-5845 or ethan@highperformanceconsultants.com