April Challenge: How Are Things Going For You?

This month has been a trial for me, for so many reasons. We're experiencing a lot of change and stress in our home this month, from jobs mostly. I have been absolutely exhausted and have therefore, not been keeping up with my challenge (or housekeeping for that matter) this month. I guess I also haven't been keeping up with blogging either. My bad. Last week was tough, but I think this week will be better.

Since I have epically failed this month's challenge, I'd love to hear how you've done, if you've cleaned and/or organized any closets.

If you haven't already, enter my Scentsy giveaway! It ends this Saturday, April 28.

April Challenge: Closet Inspiration

Confession: I don't have a closet completed to show you this week. Boo (I know). Spring break has ended and getting back into the "swing of things" has really kicked my butt. I am literally so exhausted at the end of each day that I've come home to take a nap. Ridiculous.

Here's my inspiration for you for this week. (** Please do not PIN any of these photos from my blog. Click through to the blog post, which is directly linked to each blog name/photo and pin from their site. They deserve the credit, not me! **)

Reader Shirley at Motivated Mommy of Two revamped her coat closet. I absolutely love it! (Thanks for sharing!)

Lina at Fancy Frugal Life has an amazing craft closet/office transformation you have to see if you love bright, beautiful color.

I absolutely love this coat closet from Better Homes and Gardens.

If I only had a linen closet...(from Real Simple).

See all of the closets on my Pinterest board, here.

April Challenge: Coat Closet

This month's challenge is closets. I shared my "before" pictures on Monday. Some people commented/emailed me and said it doesn't look messy/unorganized. I wasn't insinuating that it was. My biggest issue is that my closets are currently not functional for our needs, not that they're messy/unorganized. I don't want anyone to be under the impression that I'm calling these pictures either of those things.

With that being said, here's my before picture for my coat closet. This closet functions as a space to hold jackets/hoodies, stockpiled items (laundry and cleaning supplies, dog supplies, flavored water [when we have it], etc.), winter accessories, tools, and extra folding chairs. For me (and my husband agreed), it felt too busy. Too much going on in here. We weren't able to keep up with a system for this closet because it's constantly changing - not that it's a problem for a closet to be like this, it just wasn't what we wanted.

While clearing things out of the closet, I found that we have an overstock of dog treats. I don't think we'll need to buy more for a year (at least). The dog treat container was getting low, so I decided to refill it.

Because we have a small dog, we give him small treats. Many need to be cut up. We mostly do this to save money. He only gets a treat when he comes inside if he goes to the bathroom.

I didn't do all of the bags, just two, but it filled up the container enough to last for a month or two.

I obviously have an addiction to candles, Wallflowers, oils, Scentsy, etc. {Am I really going to use all of this?} My box is overflowing.

I had an empty storage box under my bed which fits everything perfectly. These items are being relocated to under my bed.

Here are the insides of the baskets that sit on the top shelf (after they've been cleaned out/reorganized).

cleaning supplies

sports equipment/dog toy/baby supplies (for the future)

napkins/toilet cleaner/light bulbs (in the container)

Hanging on the door is an over-the-door shoe organizer. We use it for the following (see the image for the text).

Command strips

Here are some close-ups of the shelves.

Okay, so it doesn't look a lot different than the before photo, but I can definitely tell the difference. I got rid of a bag full of junk, relocated some things, and cleared out some coats for donation/to sell on eBay. It was hard for me to part with some of the coats...although I'm not sure why. I haven't worn them in the last year, hence why I'm getting rid of them. I know it's for the better. =]

If I were "allowed to", I'd paint the inside of the closet or stencil it to give it a nicer look, but our contact says we can't. Boo.

Do you have a coat closet/multipurpose closet that is driving you crazy? If so, your challenge this weekend is to clean it!

April Challege: Closets

This month's challenge will be closets.

I haven't started yet, because I'm still debating on what exactly to do with my closets. I've cleaned/organized my closets and shared before. They're not messy really, they're just not functional for our needs. It's time to simplify.

I have inspiration, on Pinterest, for ways to organize my closets.

Being on spring break this week, I have plans to visit IKEA and other organization-friendly stores. When I do, I'll post about what I've bought and how I used it to get organized.

So my first course of action is to take a look at the closets and figure out what exactly I want their function/purpose to be. Our coat closet is the least functional at this point, so that one is going to need some creative thinking.

I will post later this week, after visiting IKEA and reorganizing a closet.

Here are my before pictures.

coat closet

my closet

my closet

Chris' closet

Chris' closet

Review & Giveaway: Rubbermaid 2-in-1 Recycler

This month we tackled organizing paper clutter. How are things going? Has this month's challenged helped you? I'd love to hear about your progress from the challenge!

Have you heard? Rubbermaid has a new product out, just in time for Earth Day (and the March Challenge: Paper Clutter)! Recycling has always been a pain for me because it takes up so much room when you need to sort it all out. I've truly been searching online, for the last 3 years, for something affordable and compact, yet able to hold quite a bit of material.

The Rubbermaid 2-in-1 Recycler is awesome. It holds two separate compartments of materials - both easily detachable from the unit so you can empty them at the recycling bin outside your home. Both compartments also have carrying handles that swing up for easy transportation.

If you don't need as much space for recyclables, you can use the bottom section for garbage. This section holds an 8-gallon trash bag and will hold the bag in place with Rubbermaid's Liner Lock™ system, making this recycler a dual-purpose bin that fits easily in your kitchen without taking up twice the space!

Rubbermaid sent a 2-in-1 Recycler to me to try out for myself. I decided to use mine by my desk and use the bottom half for garbage. I seriously throw out so much paper, it's terrible. This is definitely motivation for me to start recycling. We don't have a recycling bin at our apartment complex, so I'm going to have to take my recyclables to school with me - which is just fine because my school makes money off of the amount of materials we're recycling!

The 2-in-1 Recycler honestly makes me feel better about this month's challenge since I've been getting rid of so much paper clutter. This review/giveaway couldn't have had better timing!

Prize: Rubbermaid 2-in-1 Recycler

Number of Winners: one

To Enter: You must use the Rafflecopter widget below. It's really easy to use and makes giveaways a lot easier for me to manage. The widget will tell you what your commenting topic is! (mandatory)

Giveaway Ends: Friday, March 30 @ 12:01 a.m. (Eastern Time). One winner will be chosen using the Rafflecopter widget. The winner will be announced on this post and will be emailed to claim their prize. The winner has 48 hours to respond to my email to claim their prize.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Rules & Disclosure:

• You must be a follower (through Twitter, FB, GFC, or RSS/email) of The Nest Effect to win.
• The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter.com.
• This giveaway is open to readers living in the U.S. and Canada.
• Please make sure your email is either linked in your profile or on your blog OR that you include it in your comment. If I can't find your email address, I can't contact you as the winner.
• You must comment as your first, mandatory entry. All entries will be verified when the winner is chosen.
• One entry per method per person (3 total).
• This giveaway is sponsored. The prize, information, and giveaway have been provided by Rubbermaid. I was sent a product for free to review and give my honest opinion on. Any opinions about products stated in this post are completely honest and purely my own.

March Challenge: "Must Keep Papers" - What To Do With Them?

Now you get to help me. See this stack of paper below? Student loan promissory notes (a.k.a. agreements). What am I supposed to do with these? I don't know where to store them, how long to store them, and/or if I can get rid of the ones I've consolidated with the government and are no longer open with the original grantor.

That's just so much unnecessary paper.

We have a fireproof safe that is small and doesn't fit a ton of stuff. I keep Social Security cards, birth certificates, marriage license, etc. in it - you know, the usual. I don't, however, have room for all of this junk inside. I could just throw it all in my filing cabinet. Any ideas for me?

Tomorrow I'll be posting a super cool giveaway for the March Challenge. I think you're going to love it! =]

March Challenge: Filing Cabinet Clean Out

First off, my apologies for this being a day late. I forgot my labeler at school yesterday, which I needed for this post, and I've been super sick all week. It's going around in my classroom. My students have been wonderful and taking care of one another (and me) and making sure to sanitize their hands after every nose blow, cough, and sneeze. I hope to be better soon. I'm missing out on the beautiful weather here in SLC. =[

Anyhoo...

One of the best places to accumulate paper clutter - out of sight - is a filing cabinet. Out of sight, out of mind. And yet if we categorize it, we justify it, right? Ha! Just because it's categorized, doesn't mean it's organized.

I am guilty of doing a once a year clean out of my filing cabinet, and that's it. I honestly don't accumulate a lot throughout the year, and only purge right after I do my taxes and need to add a new tax folder.

This only took me 5 minutes to do, but I know for some of you, it may take you an hour or more. If having a filing cabinet is worth it for you and your family, then take the time to organize it in a way that you'll want to keep up with it. I can't even imagine having a filing cabinet FULL of paper that has accumulated over years. Get rid of it already.

Here's the before picture.

I went through each folder and removed old papers we no longer need. I added new folders for taxes, jobs, and a few other categories.

The categories I use are: health, memberships, personal files (for records, voter registration, etc.), banking, job, taxes, apartment, Jazz (our dog), major purchases (things with warranties and such), utilities, and vehicles.

Here's the after picture (with few differences).

Not sure why I was keeping my old driver license. Most of this paper pile is old (paid off) bills from my gallbladder removal surgery - which was a financial treat, let me tell ya! Everything is now destroyed via paper shredder.

You challenge today is to clean out of your filing cabinet, if you have one. If you don't have one, I'd love to hear how you file/organize your paper!

March Challenge: Making Paper Digital

Want to make paper clutter digital instead? There are so many advantages to doing this, as long as you don't need the physical paper copy. I have an example below in this post. I used to keep teaching and home decor magazines for the articles and pictures. I bought a HP wireless all-in-one printer back in August 2010 and absolutely love it. It has a document feeder on top, which I use all of the time, and is so useful. I have used my scanner to digitize all of my school handouts, magazine articles, recipes, mementos, etc. For me, keeping paper digitally on a backed up external hard drive works best. I like that I can take the files anywhere with me (especially the school files). Here's how I scan my files (of course, the process will be different with other scanners).

These pages are from Scholastic's Instructor magazines - one of my faves. I scan almost all of their articles from each issue. SO useful!

The papers get placed on the top feed tray (or can be placed on the inside glass to be scanned, on at a time.

On my computer I have the HP Solution Center software, which helps me scan pictures and documents into my computer. Documents scan in and save as PDFs, which is awesome because they can be opened on any computer. I select "Scan Document" from the menu.

On the scanning options window I select "Document to File" so it saves as a PDF and not a JPEG (which is for pictures). Then click "Scan".

The document will now begin to feed through the reader and start to show a preview as it's scanning.

Once the scanning is through, I can view all of my pages using the pictures in the bottom right corner. The large picture preview shows me the current page selected. Once the scanning is done, I can add more or delete pages, crop, change the quality, rotate, and rearrange page order.

When I am satisfied with the way my scanned images look, I click "Finish", which saves the files in a folder called "My Scans". I can then rename it to the article name. I love that it saves the files in the same place every time, that way I never lose files.

I then move the scanned file into my school folder. I have a folder in My Documents called "School" where I save all of my education files. Everything is categorized by subject, and each subject is categorized within that folder by concept. For example, the math folder contains addition & subtraction, fractions, graphing, multiplication & division, etc. Anything that is super grade specific, I'll include the grade at the beginning of the file name (for example, 3rd - Layered Curriculum - Ecosystems). I have had no problem finding files with my system. And if I do ever forget where I put something, I just go back to the mail "School" folder and use the search box to look for it.

I back everything up twice a month via an external hard drive that I keep in our safe. If anything were to happen to my computer, I wouldn't want to lose anything. I use Dropbox to sync my school files so I can access them at all times at school. I literally have thousands of files saved in this folder. Everything from worksheets to Teachers Pay Teachers units I've purchased to eBooks I buy on dollar sales at Scholastic Teacher Express.

So what do you think? Are you willing to give it a shot? Any scanner will do.

March Challenge: Decide on a System/Solution

This week I took my worksheet from last Thursday's post and created a solution for each item. I simply used a piece of lined paper to do this and put them in order by annoyance level. Here's my list.

My biggest realization is that I want to go digital as much as possible. I think it's going to be killer for me, but I'm going to try it. I absolutely love pen and paper for everything, but recently I've been wishing so many things were available via cell phone/internet when I'm not at home. So for these things (meal planning/grocery lists/bills/etc.) I'm going to attempt to digitize myself. We'll see how it goes. {Now, I know this is not an option for everyone, so don't think you have to just because I am. I'm not saying you should, it's just what I'm choosing to do.}

For more ideas on conquering paper clutter, please visit these two posts from last October's Paper Challenge: conquer paper clutter / my favorite paper clutter organizers.

These solutions I came up with are going to need reminding for the next few weeks, so I'm going to leave this list on my desk, where most of my paper clutter accumulates. I'm happy to say that my paper basket has been empty for the last few days. I've been doing a good job...so far.

My absolute favorite solution that I came up with is for my school/work papers. I'm going to scan everything that I can and recycle the originals. So many of the things I have from other teachers and from college are great resources, but not necessarily things I'm going to use right now. If I can scan everything and save it on my PC as a PDF, it will make things so much more manageable - and accessible from home and school. Genius.

I would love to hear about your paper clutter realizations (what you found comes in your home and annoys the heck out of you) and your solutions.