Things I always do before I go away.

Eat the perishable food in the fridge.
Wash clothes so I have the full range to pack from and clean things when I come back.

Little jobs.

I did some little jobs in the last few days. I defrosted the freezer. I repaired some linen cushion covers my flatmate got second-hand with some free cushions. I brought paperwork to the office and shredded it. Things that aren't urgent like washing clothes and buying food, they're irregular and often unpredictable. It's quite satisfying after you've defrosted the freezer and you don't have to worry about it for ages again. But at the moment I'm getting a real noticeable sinking feeling whenever I find a new little job. When I saw the holes in the cushion covers my heart sank because sigh, now I have to get out the sewing machine and sew around the edges before we can use them. You either do it straight away, or leave them there and constantly see a job that needs doing. Unless you live with someone else who does them for you. That's rare.

I've just invented a new way, "Mad Jobs Monday!!!". Note the fun name. Monday night is a quiet night, I don't do Jillian, there's nothing on TV, I never go out. So last night I punched through some admin after work and did a few chores. I wrote down something to do next Monday: clean the fan. Now I don't have to feel annoyed when I see the dirty fan, I can put stuff off til next Monday with no guilt at all.

Also, I've just spent 99cents on an app called Recur. You enter stuff after you've done it. Then you can see how long it's been since you did it, or set a reminder for when you think you should do it again. Nothing fancy, you could use iCal. But for periodic chores/events, it's very clean and simple. You can't enter something in the future like "next month I should go to the movies with ***", it's more for the "Phew! I should never let the **** get so dirty again" or "must be time to do another bush walk" moments. I'm open to other suggestions of apps people are using for chore/event management. You can use Mad Jobs Monday for free.

My Bathroom "Go Bag".

Yes. I am proud of this. I have organised my travel toiletries! It's fully set up independently of my normal bathroom supplies. If you're going away a lot, you ought to have a ready-to-go pre-packed bathroom bag. It's a lot quicker, you won't forget anything, and when you get home at night and you're tired, you just want to jump in the shower without realising halfway through that you haven't unpacked your shampoo yet. Also, if you do the little bottles thing it's lighter to carry, and OK for airport security when you go carry-on.

The frugal thing is to put in your almost-finished things***, and your little samples of things, and your second best things. Almost empty toothpaste tube or sunscreen. Hotel shampoos. The crappy nail clippers and tweezers. And then after you've collected as much of that stuff as you have, go out and buy anything you don't have, like little bottles to fill up from your big shampoo or whatever.

I've got one of those roll-up bags you can hang on a hook and see everything. I think it's called a valet. It's got 2 small pockets for things like bobby pins and tooth stuff, and one biggish section for bottles of things. I used to fit just 2 x 200ml shampoo bottles plus bodywash but now with smaller shampoo bottles I fit the whole kit and kaboodle, sunscreen and deodorant and hairbrush etc.

*** How can such little bottles last so long? And especially at the nearly empty stage, when they no longer squirt and you have to stick your finger up the neck or cut them open? And I'm so BORED of them and I've got a newer, better sunscreen/moisturiser/hand cream and I don't want to spend 2 months finishing the old things, but I'm frugal! I feel like letting everyone know whenever I finish a product. It's a triumph worthy of a facebook status at least.

Organising paper.

This is how I keep my boring important papers. One expandafile. It lives in a cupboard. I usually just quickly open the cupboard and chuck the papers on top of it then periodically open it up and put things inside properly. I've got everything important in here, from birth certificate to warranties to superannuation stuff. Once a year, at tax time, I get what I need for taxes and I go through all the sections throwing things away.

On the weekend I was looking in here for my cheque book and throwing out old statements and warranties, and I found a cheque for $125, on the bottom of a boring letter that I hadn't read all the way through but luckily I had filed it instead of just throwing it out. Saved by the system!

Deadlines.

To me, the last minute is not the best minute or the ideal minute. It's the last chance minute, the back-up minute, the fall-back minute. If something is due on Friday at 5pm, I print it out the night before and hand it in on Friday at 10am. If there is a printer disaster, I've got a whole day to fall back on. I'm writing a list of Christmas presents for family now, so I can buy things in November. I'm not stressing early, I just like to avoid stress at all.

Deboxing.

This is my obsession at the moment: getting rid of things that are sitting in boxes and not being used, and taking up more space than they need. Recently I sorted through a couple of boxes of designy stuff, and put my art books on the book shelf so that I can see them, and threw out a lot of printed material I designed. Old newspapers and brochures and stuff. That day I reduced about 2 cardboard boxes and a green bag down to 1 box.

Then I moved on to my box of CDs. I want to keep my legal copies, but I don't need the breaky plastic cases. Innefficient. I bought these plastic sleeves from officeworks last week. They fit a CD and a sleeve, or 2 CDs, in each one. $20 for 100 sleeves.

I've been so excited about this! I reduced a boxful of space down to a reasonably small pile of sleeves! And then fortuitously I got a nice CD box from Kikki K for $3!

Empty cases and besleeved CDs. I kept CD cases designed by friends,
or that were otherwise special, or already thin and cardboardy.

While I was on a roll, I opened my glory box--which is my romantically named wooden chest. It's got all my best homeschooled handiwork (quilts and things) that I can't find a place to use at the moment. Not much to throw out here but I got rid of another cardboard box and some odds and ends. Next project is the art/utility cupboard, which contains many boxes.

The trouble with cardboard boxes is that when you move house, you put everything in boxes, but then you don't need everything straight away, so it's just seemingly efficient to leave stuff in boxes under the bed or in cupboards. It's not proper storage where things are sorted and easy to access, it's just sort of in cardboard deep freeze.

Closet dreams.

When I was young I read a book that had matching coat hangers in it. Now that little dream has come true. I have matching coat hangers. I kept the nice crochet padded coat hangers but I've thrown away all the wire ones and kept the sort-of-nice plastic ones to maybe give someone.

I also organised my sleeping bags. It's good to store them loosely apparently, rather than stuffed into their tight bags. Big IKEA skubbs.

Hanging, laundry bags.

Elsie has a hat-stand. I am a huge fan of hooks behind doors. Half the doors in my apartment have hooks on the back. Stick on hooks or hang over the top of the door hooks or suction hooks, I love them all. They store umbrellas, scarves, aprons, clothes I want to wear again before I wash them. And as of recently, my laundry bag for "delicates". I sewed a ribbon to the corner of my laundry bag, and when I have finished wearing stockings or something I put it straight in the bag. Then when I wash I just zip the bag shut and throw it in the laundry basket. Easier than rummaging and sorting.

Home Decor.

These are my new doilies, 4 for $3. I soaked them in napisan, and now drying them. I'm not sure what I will do with them, but I can't resist buying them.

Also in the picture is my new strategy for organising the messiest part of the kitchen. Bench space is so limited that the freezer (which is turned off and used as storage for TV plugs and vacuum cleaner nozzles) is about 1/4 of our bench space. It's the section with pens, shopping lists, garlic bulbs, and things that haven't made it into the cupboards yet. It is the section with the mess. I had an idea to get some storage drawers to put it all in. But then I remembered I've got this paintbox I made when I used to go to a craft group and do oil painting. I designed it myself. It's almost been thrown out several times, because it is so useless and ungainly. I recently painted it with leftover white bookshelf paint, so it looks rather Swedish now. I thought, I'll give it a go as a bench tidy. I'm putting some unused white coffee cups in one section to hold pens etc. It's really good, so far! I love that I have used something I thought was useless to conquer a really annoying area and make it usable.

100 Ways To Uncomplicate Your Life

I'm a big fan of Hellen Buttigieg, a personal organiser from Canada, who has her own tv show. She recently published a list of 100 ways to uncomplicate your life. It's a great list and I highly recommend it. As Jess said, "That is so much Jelssie in one spot!"

How I organised my work handbag

I put a bit of thought into organising my day-to-day handbag for work and I'm pretty chuffed with the results.

Firstly, here is my beautiful blue handbag, which my generous sister bought for me, second-hand from Tokyo. Thank you, Ali!


On the side of the handbag, there is a pocket and a tag with a hole in it. To this hole, I attached a short, black leather strap with a key ring at one end, and a hook-keyring (which you push down to open and close) at the other end. At this end, I have attached a ticket holder. Here, I'll put my travel pass and tuck into the side pocket of the handbag, which means I can easily fish it out when I get on public transport, and I won't lose it because it's attached securely to my handbag.

[In an ideal world, Sydney's public transport ticketing system would be more technologically advanced and we'd be able to just tap our transport passes against the ticket machine, rather than fish out our tickets and insert them into the machines.]


Inside my handbag, there is a D ring, so I've attached a bright yellow, retractable key ring. The bright colour means it will be easy to find in my bag (a lovely contrast to the blue as well), and the retractable cord means I'll be able to open my mailbox and front door more easily, knowing it's still securely attached to my handbag, meaning I have less chance of losing my keys.

Finally, the contents of my bag. I've organised most of the contents into four bags. This is so that "like" is stored with "like" and things will be easier to fish out of my bag. The bags are also transparent (or transparent enough), so that I can see the contents at a glance.

Bag 1: Frequently used items
- hand cream
- lip balm
- lip stick
- pocket mirror
- tissues
- mints
I considered including sunscreen, but for the moment, I have decided against it.

Bag 2: Fun
- iPod touch
- headphones

Bag 3: Less frequently used items
- female stuff (you know what I mean)
- band aids
- face oil blotting paper
- paper soap
- travel hairbrush
- Panadol (which have probably expired)

Bag 4: Writing
- thin, monthly calendar/diary
- thin notebook
- pacer and two pens


Other stuff, such as my wallet, mobile, glasses, sunnies and fan, I'm just chucking in as is. There is enough room for a thin paperback, otherwise I will have to carry a book separately (or get a Kindle!). I've decided not to carry water because I should be able to last my commute without a drink.

Hopefully, you can see that the aim of all this is to make it easier to find stuff in a bag without compartments.

I do have a bag organiser (another bag with lots of compartments which you put inside your handbag to organise its contents), but I'll see how I go with this.

How do you organise your bag?

Packing

I like this idea of packing bags inside your bag when you go travelling. It appeals to me because it applies the organising principle of storing like with like, and I like how bags compartmentalise everything. You could use travel organisers or packing cells. I like these clear ones because you can see at a glance what you've packed.

If you loathe to buy new things, an alternative could be using laundry bags (I have quite a few in different sizes) or maybe even packing things in pillow cases?!

The storage bug.

I realised one day last week that I don't have to live with a mess corner. All the things that don't fit in our tiny kitchen, like green bags and the food processor, or should be kept in my bedroom but I use it in the living room all the time, like my sewing machine and overlocker, are all piled around the fridge and under the dining table. Above is the 'before' photo.

I am opposed to buying big furniture like cupboards and shelves, because I have to move house with them, and ideally I should get rid of stuff, not store it. Buying storage furniture is a slippery slope which leads to hoarding.

However, I don't have to live with a mess corner. So I found some cheap and very strong garage shelving on the Bunnings website, and asked my parents to buy it for me before they visit (Bunnings is more a Dad place than a Jessica place). $20 will transform the mess corner into something cool and functional.

Oh boy, I am so unnecessarily excited about these shelves.


It won't look like this, but I can't wait to show you an 'after' photo.

Tupperware!!!!!!!!!!

I have just received my first order of brand new Tupperware*! No more moths in my flour! (although maybe moths show I don't bake much.)

Nothing spectacular, just a basic set of pantry storage. It is really hideously expensive, but since moving out of home I have been given and have bought a few different types of food storage containers. Decor is all right, but it isn't 100% leakproof and air-tight. The few random Tupperware bits I have I use all the time. The price per use with Tupperware is pretty good, because I use it so much and it lasts so long (lifetime replacement). So I have decided, after over a year's thought, to finally buy some. If I am ever going to buy it, I should buy it soon so that I get the most value out of it in my lifetime. Soon I will have lovely organised matching air-tight food storage! It warms the cockles of my pantry.

* Purchasing Tupperware, by the way, is a coming of age experience. It is so much more significant than just pantry organising. It is like wearing make-up, or getting your full license. It is often accompanied by the congratulations and envy of all your friends.

Breaking rules

When it comes to buying storage containers, one of the golden rules of decluttering is:

1. Cull the stuff you want to store, so you're left with stuff you want or need, not junk
2. Assess your stuff and work out what kind of storage you need
3. Buy the storage containers according to your need
   

This means you don't end up wasting time and money buying containers to store junk.

However, I broke all the rules today. I have a pile of stuff on my desk I can't deal with at the moment but I need the desk space. So I bought some containers. It occurred to me: in the time it took me to get to the shopping centre, look around, buy the containers and come home, I probably could have dealt with the stuff. Eh, I'm sure I need the containers anyway :P