Winters can be harsh and, in some places, blizzards and snow can totally block your driveways and garages. A well insulated and warm garage can be the ideal place for work or storage during winter.

Cold weather can be unpredictable, the temperatures sometimes drop to frightening-lows and all that there is left to do is stay indoors and prepare to plow snow the next morning.  Garages are often the space you use for not only parking your car, but to store an assortment of miscellaneous items and whatnot.

If you have installed a power washer, the residual water in the pipes will freeze, causing cracks. The same applies for fuel gels that will also harden and cause damage to combustion engines. If you are storing paint in your garage, it is sure to freeze, which will cause it to separate, making it useless.
 

Here are a few tips to winterize your garage to save the damage and hassle:
 

1.Weatherstripping

Weatherstripping is really important when it comes to staying warm indoors and prevents...

Fall is the perfect time of the year to start organizing your kitchen. With the cool breeze blowing outside, it’s time you step up to revamp your kitchen for the season. After all, it’s worth noting that the holidays are just a few weeks away. Here are some simple yet effective tips to organize your kitchen for this vibrant season:

Clear out the fridge & freezer
Clear out remnants from the warmer months such as freezer-burned Popsicle sticks and old food supplies that are past their expiration date. Replace these meals with loads of root vegetables, cans of soup, hearty cuts of meat and frozen meals. While you purge, analyze all the summer leftovers you can use for the fall season. This includes the fresh batch of tomato sauce you made when tomatoes were in season! 

Organize your baking essentials
Fall is the perfect time of the year to bake cookies, pies, fresh loaves of bread – you name it. To ensure you don’t turn your kitchen into a chaotic mess, make sure all of your baking essent...

As simple as it seems to be organized, and as commonly as this term flies around, being organized can be a lifelong challenge for many. The barrier between organized and unorganized people has always been there. Unorganized people can’t figure out how other people can remain organized, and vice versa. If you are someone who has problems staying organized, it could be due to one of the five reasons stated below.

1. You Are the (Dreaded) Hoarder Type

There is often one in the family - you might be a hoarder and not even realize it. Hoarders are people who just cannot get rid of their “stuff”, even when they don’t need it. In their mind, they might look at something completely useless and say “I might need it someday” and then tuck it away for later. This is hoarder mentality and, when you have this condition, you either don’t mind or notice the clutter around you. In some cases, you may even become emotionally attached to your clutter.

2. The Clutter Has Seized Your Thinking

This issue is...

Shoes.  We all have them.  We may not be shoe crazy and have dozens of pairs, or even hundreds of pairs, but we all have them.  Heels or flats?  Sneakers or loafers?  Flip flops or sandals?  Let’s face it, regardless of what your preference is, we all need shoes.

One of the most common sources of frustration for our clients is the growing, unorganized pile of shoes in their hall closet, the bedroom closet, the spare room closet, and…..you get the point.  Shoes have a tendency to pile up all over the place.  The worst thing about shoes is that you can pile them on top of each other so you end up cramming them in every nook and cranny.  How many times have you opened a closet door only to find a pile of  shoes on the floor?  Have you ever had to shove your shoes back into the closet so you could shut the door?!

Not only is it damaging to your shoes to continue shoving them here and there in a disorganized fashion, it is beyond frustrating whe...

Do those three words make you jump for joy, sigh with sadness, or bring on an overwhelming sense of panic?! It's hard to believe that the start of a new school year is just around the corner.  Whatever emotion those words evoke, the reality is that there is a lot to get done in a very short period of time.  Time to think of school clothes, healthy lunches, back packs, school supplies, and so much more.  But don't worry – we at Organize My Chaos have donned our super hero capes and are here to save the day!  We have scoured the globe looking for the best solutions to bring calm to the chaos of 'back to school'.  Plus, there are a few of us with kids who have added our own best practices to the list when it comes to preparing for that big day.

Basics

• Make sure you have the correct date for the first day of school.  Full day or half day? Have you arranged after school care for the children if needed?

• Ensure children are up to date on all immunizations.  If required, mak...

Who would have thought the humble skateboard could be used in so many innovative (ingenious?!) ways to organize?  Not us!  We were looking for new and ‘out there’ ideas to share with you and came across these unbelievable ways to use skateboards.

Male, female, teenager or adult, we are about to blow you away with the most incredible organizing ‘tools’ we’ve seen in a long time.  And trust us, we’ve seen literally thousands of ways to organize, but this is the most exciting thing we’ve seen in a long time.

Those of you who have tripped (repeatedly!!) over a skateboard will truly appreciate why we are so eager to share these ideas with you.  I mean, where do you store them?  They fall out of the closet, trip you up at the doorway and slide down the wall when you try to prop them up.  So how is the best way to store a skateboard?

Ta-da!!  Now we realize the skateboard isn’t being used as an organizational tool, but what a cool way to store your skateboard AND organize at the...

Have you completed all of your spring-cleaning tasks?  Dusted? Swept?  Purged?  Scrubbed? Enough already!  We get exhausted simply thinking about trying to cram so much into a short period of time.  Won't you be glad when summer finally arrives and you can say so long to this cleaning craze?!

By now you know that we prefer the term 'non' spring-cleaning.  Easy does it when it comes to cleaning and organizing.  The mere thought of having to do so much at once can be completely overwhelming.   We prefer the slow and steady approach.  Setting reasonable goals, and allowing a reasonable amount of time to complete them. 

No matter which space you decide to work on, there are basic guidelines to follow in order to make the process less stressful.
 

1. Determine what the actual space is to be used for

2. PURGE all unnecessary, unwanted, and unused items*

3. Create three separate categories of items:  Keep, Donate, Trash

4. Be brutal when pu...

We are certainly all for ‘spring cleaning’, but not at all costs.  In the last blog we talked about slowing down and approaching your spring-cleaning in a calmer, more relaxed pace.  Let’s be honest.  How many of us can actually accomplish the 100 Top Things to do for Spring Cleaning, within a one week time period?  Or worse, in one weekend? Between working, caring for families and pets, grocery shopping, doing laundry and trying to have a life, our weeks are all a bit full.  Trying to find the time to accomplish the impossible is, in our opinion, an exercise in frustration.

Relax, breathe, turn on the music (we love organizing to music – makes the time fly by), make a list of what spring cleaning tasks you want to accomplish in one day, and make sure you have the necessary cleaning and organizing tools you’ll need close at hand.

Today we’re talking about the white elephant in the kitchen – the refrigerator.  That wonderful invention that stores our food, houses our out...

Sit down.  Breathe.  Put down the mop, bucket, dust cloths, window cleaner and every other cleaning product known to mankind.  Take a couple of deep breaths and count to ten.  Feel better?  Now, put away the Spring Cleaning List you’ve been reading and relax.  Just breathe.  Its okay, we promise.

Yes, we know that spring has sprung, but that doesn’t mean we have to work ourselves into a frenzy cleaning and organizing everything from the attic to the basement and every single space in between within the next week – all because someone, somewhere, told us we were supposed to.

There are hundreds of lists telling us the top 100 things to do for  spring cleaning, 50 ways to clean our houses from top to bottom in one weekend; and lists telling us hundreds of things to get done ‘right now’.   Overwhelmed?  Heart palpitations?  Feeling of panic?  It’s simply too much to process all at once.     Bedroom, living room, family room, dining room, basement, and attic…...

It's in the corner.  Over there.  Buried under the mountain of clutter.  The mail you innocently tossed on the table in your hallway. You meant to read it but were too busy at that moment.  No matter, you could read it later. But then dinner had to be made, laundry had to be done, lunches needed to be made for the next day.  You said you'll read it tomorrow.

Tomorrow came, and so did the mail, just like yesterday.  More junk mail, a magazine, and the newspaper.  You tossed it on yesterday's mail and said you'd read it later...maybe tomorrow.

After many tomorrows, the pile grew so high that mail was falling off and your floor became an innocent victim of clutter.  You grabbed three bags from the pile of plastic bags that had amassed in the kitchen, and told yourself you would organize the untamed mountain of paper that had accumulated on your table. One bag for garbage, one bag for items to be shredded, and one bag for mail that needed to be dealt with. Yes!  Yo...