How To Host A Clutter-Free Birthday Party

Is your house overflowing with your kids' toys? Do your children receive tons of toys for their birthdays? Are you dreading the thought of having to organize all the gifts they will receive after their next birthday party?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider hosting a clutter-free birthday party! Not only will you be avoiding the onslaught of new toys in your home, you'll help your child learn to be generous. Win win!

My daughter had a clutter-free birthday party last year and it was a wonderful experience all around. Here are some tips to help you organize a clutter-free birthday party!

17 Tips On Organizing For Sports {from Professional Organizers!}

Once again, I'm so excited to be included in this month's Professional Organizers Blog Carnival!

What is the Professional Organizers Blog Carnival?  It's a monthly blog post that professional organizers contribute to.  Each month is a different theme and includes posts related to that topic from several professional organizers.  It's a great place to find advice, ideas, and tips for the theme of the month.

This month is all about organizing for sports.  Sports equipment can clutter up a home in no time and if it's not organized well, lots of time can be wasted searching for what you need (often when you're in a hurry to get to a practice or game!).

So check out all the tips in this post and find the ones that will help you organize for sports!

3rd Blogiversary Week: Giveaway & THE 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've been sharing last year's most popular posts.  Here are the links to the rest of the series in case you missed any:

How to Declutter When You're Overwhelmed With Stuff & Organizing Playrooms

Organizing a "Real Life" Garage & Decluttering Your Coffee Table

DIY Grocery Bag Organizers & Helping Your Sentimental Child Declutter

Why Simplifying is More Powerful Than Organizing & Organizing Kids' Bedrooms

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!

After all the flashback posts I've shared this week, I'm so excited to share the 2 most popular posts from the past year!

Creating Fall Routines So You Don't Get Overwhelmed

Well, it's happened.  Summer holidays are over and school has started.  Notice I didn't say "summer" is over.  It's not.  Even though it feels like fall here today, summer doesn't officially end until next week and I for one plan to enjoy every little bit of it I can still :)  It's going to be warm, sunny, and even humid this weekend so I'm not putting away our summer clothes and sandals yet!

But, despite what the calendar tells me, it is definitely fall because school has started.  And with fall comes new activities, goals and routines.  September is kind of like January in that it's a new year.  Whether you have kids or not, the school year is a sort of reset.  A fresh start.  A good time to establish new habits.

It's also a very busy time as various activities, clubs, lessons, and sports start up again.  It can be overwhelming if you're not organized.

Routines help keep you organized and reduce that overwhelming feeling when you get really busy.

Today I want to share some of the ways we're getting organized for fall in our home and give you tips to help you set up a fall routine as well.

3 Ways to Stop Your Kids From Saying "I'm Bored!"

Do you have kids at home during the summer?  If so, you've probably heard THOSE words more times than you can count.  The dreaded "I'm bored!".  Or if your kids are more dramatic it may sound like, "I'm booooooooo-oooooord!".  Sound familiar?

Whether those words are uttered in the middle of summer holidays or on the first day, it's always frustrating for parents.

Here are a few ways I've found helpful for limiting how often I hear "I'm bored!".  Feel free to share your ideas in the comments too.  They may come in handy :)

Command Centre: Routines

Do you often find yourself getting overwhelmed before or after school?  Are there arguments on the way out the door?  Do you wish you could have a more peaceful start to the day?

There is always a certain amount of stress or anxiety that accompanies transitions, and the shift from home to school and back again can be somewhat unsettling for kids (and for us!).  But you can reduce that by following routines.  

Today, I'm going to share our before and after school routines.  They're a key part of our kitchen command centre.

Command Centre: Wall Files for Papers

Do you have piles of paper on your kitchen counter, dining room table, or in your entryway?

You know the papers I mean?  Those things that come in your house every. single. day.  Like bills, invitations, and flyers.  Or school work, newsletters, and permission forms.  Or receipts and coupons.

All those things you need to do something with.  At some point.  But not right away.  So you put them in a pile to deal with later.

And the pile gets moved a few times because you need the space for something else.  Like cooking or eating :)

Then when you need something, you can't find it and have to scramble around as you're running out the door.  Or you have to pay late fees because you forgot to pay a bill.  Or you can't return something because you can't find the receipt.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Even for those of us who like organizing, the daily accumulation of paper is a huge challenge.  It just keeps on entering our homes!

If you don't have a solution for dealing with those daily papers, you'll  easily be overwhelmed by it.

I'm embarrassed to show this, but here was where some of our paperwork ended up.

Our New Craft and Activity Area!

As part of trying to have a balanced summer, one of my goals is to create an area for our craft supplies so my kids can let their creativity flow while they're at home for two months.   I've seen some BEAUTIFUL craft rooms and wonderfully organized craft supplies on other blogs.  I've never really been a huge crafter and we do not have the space in our house for too many craft supplies, so I'll tell you up front, this post will NOT be one of those dreamy craft room posts.  But, I'm pretty excited about what I managed to put together and I think it will work well for our level of craftiness and our limited space. 

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:

Organizing Our Backyard Deck Box

We've had this deckbox in our backyard for about 5 or 6 years and in that time it has accumulated many things.  I knew it wasn't being used to it's fullest potential because we had too much stuff in it and we only ever use the items near the top (unless we're looking for something in particular but then we had to dig around to find it which often meant taking a bunch of other things out first).  Here's a look at it before:

Crazy eh?!  This is the only place where we can really store things in the backyard so everything gets dumped in there.  It was getting overwhelming so the other day I took to organizing it!