It is so easy to fall into the trap of doing what others think we should be doing — from the kind of bins we use to organize to how we manage our days. The truth is there is a pattern for you that works for you. And when you find that pattern it is much easier to manage your home. This is how I flow from roller coaster to sloth and still manage to keep a home that is relatively orderly. I have ebbs and flows in my life. I go from being like a rollercoaster that races through as fast as possible creating and generating ideas and projects to a sloth that hangs out and rests. I have very little i ..read more

Professional organizers live in this weird space. We are not house cleaners, but we will help you keep your house clean. We are not stylists, but our work in your closet can improve your wardrobe. We are not designers, but our work can feel really pretty. This made me realize that there are some distinctions that needs to be made in the organizing world. For me, there are two part of organizing - functional organizing and esthetic organizing. It might seem like a small distinction, but I’ve found making this distinction allows clients to make clear decisions about their space. Instagra ..read more

Sometimes we get so stuck trying to be Pinterest Perfect, we forget we are better than perfect with are real. Real is dynamic and creative. That is my fancy way of saying life is messy and this shows up in our homes. Even the media proclaimed queen of tidy, Marie Kondo, got real recently and admitted that having kids forced her to live in an untidy state. Now, here is another truth, living in an untidy state can give us all sorts of anxiety. Two of my favorite content creators talk about this. @SteadyParents put out this reel about clutter outlining the sensory systems that get involved when t ..read more

When it comes to something like holiday decor, it is easy to get a bit carried away. I’ve been in those aisles of Home Good’s and Marshall’s filled with the sparkling, light up, holiday fun. It can be really easy to fill the cart with all that holiday goodness. And then we get all those gifts that we want to display. For some of us, it is just really fun to decorate and it can be really easy to get overwhelmed with all that stuff. And on top of all of these we have massive expectations about what we should do during the holidays. In this past blog post, I outlined practical strategies for man ..read more

Pre-kid and pre-partner, when I was all by myself, I decorated for Christmas because the lights made me happy. Sometimes, I participated in the Secret Santa events at work…so I had a positive focus for the season. Those were some dark ass years when I did everything I could to hide the sadness I felt during the holidays. Over time, and with years of therapy, I’ve come to truly love the holidays. I now decorate because I want to. I also have real boundaries around what I do and what I don’t. These boundaries around my time and my space have saved my mental health, and I want you to know you a ..read more

Sometimes all we need is a new way of seeing things. One common approach to sentimental items is to decide if the item sparks joy. While this approach works for some, it is really just too abstract for many of us who find joy in oh so many items. As such, I am constantly on the look out for new strategies to make "joy" more concrete. In this previous post I discuss using your vision to decide if you want to keep an item.  In another previous post I discuss using your values to clarify your vision and decide if something brings you joy.  These two strategies can help us decided if an ..read more

Chaos in our home management systems happen with transitions. You can read more about that here and here. If we can manage the transition from summer to fall/winter thoughtfully, we can save ourselves time and chaos. That is why this year my challenge is for you to document how you use your home differently as the weather changes, and see how you naturally respond. If you like the natural response, by all means keep it. If you don’t like the natural response, try to figure out how you can make the smallest tweak possible to your natural response. This documentation can come in many forms. You ..read more

M.O.M. recognizes that we are all in different spaces in our lives. Sometimes we are in the space to minimize and sometimes we are in the space to organize. The main focus should be on our needs, and not on the strategy of the season. Sometimes sparking joy is in fashion other times sorting our books by color is in fashion, and those are great tools when they work. But the bigger goal is to be in tune with the season of our lives and use the strategy that matches what we need. When I was childless, minimalism made a lot more sense in my life. Now that I have my little man, organizing is the st ..read more

In the last post we looked at spaces that have physical transitions - entry ways and pantries. Now, let's take a look at how life transitions, such as a birth, moving, death, divorce, etc. impact the home management. A dear friend of mine hired me to come organize her closets. She had a new job, a new baby, and a new apartment in the last 19 months. (Plus…2020!). Additionally she indicated they planned to move again in the next two years. As I worked with her, I quickly realized she had both theoretical and practical knowledge of home organizing. She’d read many of my favorite authors and lis ..read more

Transitions, or times of change and/or movement, can make it incredibly difficult to keep your home organized.  These transitions, changes, and movements in your home can be both physical and in your life circumstances.   In this two part series, I am going to share with you two aspects of transition.  They are very different, but they illustrate how much transition impacts home management.  In this post we will look at how physical transitions in a space impact home organization.  In the follow up post I will write about how life transitions, such as births, dea ..read more