3rd Blogiversary Week: Giveaway & 4th Most Popular Flashback Posts

This week marks my third anniversary of blogging here on From Overwhelmed To Organized!  It's been another exciting year!

All week I'm sharing last year's most popular posts.  And to thank you for your support all year, I'm giving away 2 great organizing ebooks and a $25 gift card.  Make sure you enter in the Rafflecopter form at the end of this post!

Here are today's flashback posts!

5 Tips for Purging & Storing Leftover Paint

I'm really excited to be guest posting today over at The Everyday Home!  If you've never read Barb's blog, you should definitely check it out.  She shares tips and ideas for simple country living, including some organizing ideas and lots of ways to simplify life.

Top 10 Posts of 2014!

It's always fun to look back on a year and remember what happened.  We write a family letter in our Christmas cards and each one of us shares what our favourite memories are.  It's a great opportunity to be grateful and to end the year on a positive note.  This year, both my son and daughter's favourite moments were their birthdays (always a highlight), and our family trip to Disney World.  It was a trip we'd been waiting a long time to take, and we really enjoyed our time together.  I'm really glad it was such a highlight for them.  It was for me too :)

I also had fun looking back on the year on the blog!  When I write posts, I never really know what will resonate with you and motivate you to organize.  I'm delightfully surprised a lot of times at the feedback and response I get to certain topics.  So it's fun to look back at the most popular posts of the year!

I'd planned to write this post last week, but I my bronchitis had other ideas of how I should be spending my time.  Better late than never right?!

365 Items in 365 Days: October and November Update

How are you doing in the 365 Items in 365 Days Declutter Challenge?  It's the 332nd day of the year today so if you started in January, your target is to have purged 332 items by now.  But don't worry if you've just started.  Just jump in!  Now is the perfect time to declutter with the holidays approaching so you'll be able to have guests over and enjoy time with family and friends.

{Stay tuned next week for an update on what's happening for the prize for this challenge!}

Today I'll be sharing what I've been decluttering since my last update.  By doing these monthly updates I hope to give you ideas of things you can purge from your home.

5 Tips for Organizing a "Real Life" Garage

Is your garage cluttered and overwhelming?  Has it become a dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a home anywhere else?

Now, be honest, do you avoid organizing your garage because you can't afford those fancy garage organizers you see on Pinterest and in magazines?

There are some mighty beautiful garages out there.  I'm happy for those people who have them.  But most of us have plain ole' ordinary garages.  Sure, we can do some things to pretty them up, but they're still not going to be magazine worthy.  But they don't need to be beautiful.  We don't live in our garages.  We store things in them.  And hopefully have space to park a vehicle in them.  If we have limited funds for organizing, more often than not we'd rather spend those dollars inside our homes, where we spend more time.

Having a "real life" garage doesn't mean it has to be unorganized though!  I've got about as ugly a garage as you can get... you'll see in the pictures.  But I do my best to keep it organized.  And I just use basic stuff to do it.

Day 30 - Garage Organizers {31 Cheap & Easy DIY Organizers}

Think you have to spend a lot of money on costly organizing tools to get your house in order?  Nope!  Getting organized doesn't have to be expensive!

Throughout this series I'm sharing ideas to help you organize your home by either

• making simple organizers with things that don't cost very much OR
• using items you already have in a different way.

If cost has been holding you back from getting organized, now you've got no more excuses!  

Garage organizers really help keep your garage, well, organized.  But they can be very expensive!  You CAN organize your garage without spending a lot of money though.  Just be creative and find items you can use to keep like items together.

Here are some DIY Organizers for your garage.

Organizing With My Friends!

If you are catching some mommy alone time with your computer...check out some of the awesome organization posts my organizing blogger friends have written!

Blogiversary Week: Popular Post #4 {and a Giveaway!}

This week to celebrate my first year blogiversary, I've been sharing some of my favourite and most popular posts from the past year.

And today I'm adding a giveaway as well!  {More on that in a minute}

It's been fun looking back at the past year and I hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane too!  Or if you're a relatively new follower, hopefully you've enjoyed some posts that were new to you!

I'll wrap up this blogiversary celebration today with one last flashback post:

Reflecting back on 2012

What a year this has been!  At the start of 2012 if anyone had told me I would be an organizing blogger, I would not have believed you!  In fact, I didn't even know organizing blogs existed until March.  {And I've been hooked ever since :) }

Now, I've gotten to know so many amazing people that I met through blogging.  And I have learned SO much about organizing and about blogging.  I had no idea I would love it so much.

Garage Clean Out Part 2

In Garage Clean Out Part 1 I told you I joined the Great Garage Clean-Out Challenge and showed you how I followed the first 3 steps of Laura from OrgJunkie's PROCESS.  Today I'll show you the last 4 steps and reveal what the garage looks like now.  Here's a before and after shot of the whole garage:

Garage Clean Out Part 1

For the last few weeks I've been "watching" other people clean out and organize their garages through the pictures they've shared on their blogs.  It inspired me to tackle our garage so I'm joining the Great Garage Clean Out Challenge (a few weeks late but better late than never right?!).  This challenge was designed to be completed over the course of 4 weeks (and 4 blogs) but I'm catching up so I'll do this in 2 blogs.

First of all, let me say that our garage was LONG overdue for a major clean out.  The amount of stuff that gets dumped there or accumulates there makes this an overwhelming area so we keep putting it off.  But no more!  Last weekend my husband and I took on the challenge.  Here's a "before" picture of the whole garage: