Get Organized Pittsburgh

Welcome to May! With May comes many things but one in particular is Garage Sales! I was asked to talk to the crew from the KDKA Radio morning show early this morning about garage sales and I wanted to share a few more tips with you here, whether you’re shopping or selling, here are a few things to help you along the way.

If you are looking for sales in your neighborhood good places to start are the Pittsburgh Post Gazette classifieds, the Pennysaver newspaper, and Craigslist. You can also search sites such as Oodle which syndicates it’s garage sale listings with a handful of other social networking websites and newspapers, as well as Garage Sales Tracker’s Pittsburgh area garage sales section.

If you are already on the road than no need to worry since there are smartphone applications for finding a local sale.  A service called Garage Sale App is available for .99 cents. The app mines data from Craigslist to show you what local sales are in your area. If you want a free app than Garage Sales Tracker also has a free app you can use to map out which sales in the area you want to go to that day and route accordingly. Another fantastic app is iGarageSale where you can search sales for specific items! It’s available on both iPhone and Android smartphones.

Now that you know how to find all of the sales, here are some tips for holding your own garage sale:

• Determine when to have the sale. Summertime and Spring are naturally the best times and being an early bird pays off!
• If you have a lot of stuff you may want to break the sale down into 2 days.
• Advertising is very important. Utilize the resources mentioned above as well as signage that you can pick up at any local hardware store or you can design your own sign just make sure you put the address, arrows in the right direction, date of sale, and time.
• Supplies such as balloons on the mail box, proper change, tables, and tags for pricing.
• Placing the the person in charge of the cashbox in the back of the sale makes people walk through the whole sale and increases the chance that they may buy something else as they make their way through.
• Make price tags big and place them on the TOP of the items.

Most of all, Have FUN!

Leslie was featured on KDKA Pittsburgh Today Live this week! Watch her interview here to learn more about some of the best new organizing items!

As we continue through our three part series about working with couples, please see part one about Organizing With Couples. In part two I thought it might be interesting to share some thoughts with you about working with new parents and how organizing yourself and your new roles as a new family is so important as you welcome a brand new member to the family.

New Parents:
I love working with new parents, they are fun because they’re full of possibility and are engaging in a really positive process and are usually very open to new ideas and systems. If you were slightly disorganized prior to becoming a parent, it is really important to acknowledge that and see the need to have systems for your new needs in order to make it work. Otherwise, that new little bundle can swiftly amplify the problem.

New parents are really looking for an answer and it’s a really good time to find these new systems because they haven’t really established the rules yet. It’s nice to help them make those rule together so that one person doesn’t end up doing it all only because they are the one who put the system in place.

Responsibilities:
When talking about roles for couples, there are a lot of different things that happen within a family that need attention like daily money managing, long-term financial estate planning and insurance. When a couple decides on who is responsible for these items it is important to consider which person might be better suited for the day-to-day finances verses who might be better working with the long-term planning and insurance. You might be surprised to find one person may not fit both roles. The same process should be used for deciding who would be better at keeping the family social calendars or making travel plans. Think about who is in charge of what duty and clearly establish the roles.

Historical Roles – Do They Still Work?
We typically fall into similar roles that our parents were responsible for. But it’s important to take a step back and question those roles.
Ask yourself these questions:
Does this work for me in my current position in life?
Can I do what my dad did?
Does that makes sense?
Does the role my mom played work for the life I’m are leading now with the job I have outside of the home?

I think for the most part this is the first generation where previous roles really do not work like they used to. I tell new mothers that you have no role model for this. This is new territory so you need to organize it and think about how you want it to happen because it’s not going to come from the seat of your pants.

Add a little clean up time before meals instead of before bed. It’s almost time for dinner, your children are smelling your meal and it’s the perfect time to get them to think about cleaning up before they eat. I’ve found that waiting to clean up at bedtime usually means they want to take their time because they don’t want to go to bed. But EVERYONE wants to eat right? And they usually want that right now (at least I know my kids do)!

Give it time, 15 minutes before dinner is served, direct a quick clean up of a certain area, toys, entry, laundry. Suggestions like “Let’s just take care of this and when you’re finished dinner will be ready.” Remember to let them do it. As soon as they finish, it’s time to set the table and sit down. Everyone is ready to eat and you’ve got a mostly tidy home. Can’t beat that!

We love this product the Lay-n-Go product for easy LEGO clean up. For more toy storage ideas check out our collection of Play Area ideas on Pinterest and be sure to give us a follow there too!

Everyone loves the idea of a household list or planner, but what is it? Basically, it’s an easily accessible collection of information about what’s going on in your house and family. You can separate and arrange this information into different categories. Here are some good ideas of what kind of categories you can organize in your own household binder:

• Planner – Here you can insert yearly, monthly, or weekly calendars and/or lists. In here you can map out any upcoming appointments, assignments, projects, vacations, etc. that are upcoming in your life and your family’s life.
• Home – You can begin this section with a table of contents. Following the T.O.C., you can have various sub sections, such as seasonal projects (spring cleaning, anyone?), cleaning, shopping, chore, and home improvement lists.
• Family – You can store each family member’s individual information, such as any medical or allergy information. You can also keep instructions for or the schedule of your babysitters.
• Contact Info – In addition to keeping the contacts of family members and friends, you can also keep the contact information of vendors, restaurants, and even service providers – like your favorite plumber.
• Meal Binder – Collect your favorite recipes.
• Holiday Binder – Keep track your favorite crafts, ideas, traditions, recipes, wish lists, etc.

Putting together a household binder is not only simple to do, it is also a very fun and rewarding way to stay organized.

Check out some list templates to help you start:
http://www.mckeeorganizingservices.com/resources/resources_free.html

If you are a real list lover – go to : www.listplanit.com

I must admit, I was the mess on graduation day.  I was really busy with work and had set aside the day to catch up on calls and emails and several projects that I really needed to do.  Typically when everyone else is busy and I can get busy, but on that day everyone was off and available and I was trying to work.  On another day that might have been fine, but it happened to be my son’s graduation day and I am looking at an empty nest in late August. I tried to plow through and I was stressing out because my heart was not in it.  I wasn’t able to concentrate and I kept getting less and less efficient.

It didn’t take long for my husband to notice I was upset and he had the wisdom to step in and give me permission to step away from the office and take the day off.  It sounds simple!  I make a living helping people find efficiency while aligning with their goals, values and needs but I didn’t see it.

Once I made that shift in perspective the whole weight was lifted and I moved through the rest of the day like a champ.  I had fun with my family goofing around with no agenda and enjoyed a memorable evening with family and friends.  Interestingly, when I returned to work I was refreshed and ready to go.

Lessons Learned:

1.   It is a privilege to work for myself and have flexibility and I need to step up and pay attention to that freedom and do what is important.

2.   Marry a smart man how can see what you need when you can’t!

Well, it wasn’t the biggest headline in Pittsburgh, post superbowl…but it was fun to make an appearance as the first Certified Family Manager Coach in PA. Check out the video at www.kdka.com

Cleaning up before bedtime is the WORST time to ask kids to cooperate and clean up their toys/rooms. There is no motivation not to stretch this chore out for hours so that they can stay up later. This is when kids are tired and cranky too! Have your children clean up before a meal time. There is a built in reward to get busy and get the job done. It also lets the kids be busy while you are putting the finishing touches on a meal. Keep it positive and make sure they have enough time to succeed.

Sibling Rivalry is a big problem in families that needs to be addressed very early in the process. There are three strategies I found to be very powerful.

1. When one child is mean to another, don’t lavish all your attention on the child that hurt their sibling by yelling at that child. Go directly to the child that is hurt and give them the major share of you attention. Make sure that there is no “reward” for that behavior. It is amazing to watch how that child seem a little deflated because they did not get what they may have ultimately wanted, your undivided attention.
2. A fun exercise to get siblings to show their respect is to simply have them plan an imaginary extravagant birthday party for each other. Help them be outrageously generous to their sibling. What would the cake be made of? How enormous would it be? What movie stars would attend? How many presents would be there? What would be the best one? What would it be wrapped in? Where would it happen? It is a fun way to flatter and respect a sibling.
3. Decide on a family goal and set up a reward that they all the siblings want to achieve. Make it something they can really do and set them up to cheer each other on and celebrate each other’s successes so they all work towards the same goal! It is a delight to see them help each other!