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My New Home -- An Organizer's Adventure in Building, Selling, Moving by Ginny Gassman

What better second career could I have chosen than professional organizing? My husband and I have our own Humongous Plans for the rest of 2007 and 2008. Our project seems as massive as the Great Pyramid and as endless as the Sahara desert. It's as chaotic as a sandstorm, as scary as a flood and as complex as predicting the weather. From now until sometime next year, we will be designing and building a new house in the place where our summer home stands today. We will be selling our current year-round home. And, we will be consolidating all of our stuff from both existing houses into one. In this Organizer's Adventure blog I plan to share my strategies, surprises, successes and struggles during our King of All Projects. Stay tuned and hold tight! Our journey seems sure to encounter rough weather.

Latest Posts:


Kitchen Considerations The kitchen is typically the most used room in the house. Not only do you cook, clean, eat and socialize in the kitchen, it also provides storage space for pots & pans, cutlery & crockery, paper & plasticware, cleaning products, not to mention food, mail & paperwork, trash & recyclables, pet food, small appliances, phone books & cookbooks, wine & liquor, batteries, light bulbs, buttons, vitamins, paperclips… well, you get the idea! The storage strategy itself is a challenge in a lot of homes, but to ensure the kitchen is efficient for all the things you want to do in it there are many more considerations than "will it fit?" Below are a few tips for organizing your... Read more... posted on: 3/28/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

You Might be an Organizer If... You Might Be an Organizer if…. You only give gift certificates or money for birthdays You specialize in craft projects that use leftover yarn, buttons, and fabric You drop things off at Good Will several times a week You love going to the recycling station more than anything You won't let your family buy things because "there's no place to put it." You put your CDs and DVDs away alphabetically and by genre (after loading them on to your IPOD and logging them in a spreadsheet.) (You adore spreadsheets) You never shop without a list Your favorite possession is your label maker You pick up... Read more... posted on: 2/29/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Getting Ready to Sell If you're building a house you're probably also selling a house. In today's market, it's imperative to carefully prepare your house to give a good impression to prospective buyers. My husband and I have been working on this over the last several months. ... Read more... posted on: 2/22/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Designing Your New Home Office The nice thing about new construction is the lack of constraints. When designing your home office you can have anything you want. Forget the windowless 8' X 8' office cubicle where the only choices are whether your door is in the middle or to the side and whether your desk will be L-shaped or straight across the back. I've found, however, that the staggering number of possibilities in a new house can be paralyzing. It's easier to pick two or three things from a system of 5-ft high industrial office systems than to start from a clean slate. To narrow down the number of decisions on your new home office, it helps to develop some strategies to guide you. *Key Question:... Read more...* posted on: 2/15/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Little Things Make All the Difference In organizing, sometimes a little thing makes all the difference. Don't know why you can't keep your kitchen island cleared off? It could be because there's no designated place to put new mail for each family member. Do your clothes pile up on the arm chair in your bedroom so often that no one ever sits in it? A few pegs on the wall for your robe and your thrice-worn-between-washes dungarees could solve the problem. *Is your laundry room clogged up with dirty and* clean clothes? It could be time for a sort & purge of the things in your closets and bureaus to make more space to put things away. Can't find your car... Read more...** posted on: 2/8/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

The Organized Project File In a previous blog I talked about the Project Notebook. The Project File goes hand in hand with the notebook. A filing system that allows you to find the information you need is paramount whether you're building a house, moving, renovating or buying. Most projects generate a lot of paper that's necessary during the project but expendable after it is complete. For a big project like building a house I recommend a separate file system than your regular household files. In our case, we knew we'd be moving back and forth between our... Read more... posted on: 2/1/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Know Your Goals Sometimes as things go along in a project you get more into "doing" than planning. There's a tickling sensation at the back of your mind that you ought to check your plan to make sure you aren't missing something. But you're involved in completing tasks and you think "I've got some momentum, here. I'm on a roll. I don't have time to stop now." It's a judgment call when to get back to the drawing board, check your task lists, measure yourself against your original goals and make sure any milestones coming up in the near future are supported. Sometimes a project is a journey. It can be enriching and productive to let things take their course for a while. The creative process can demand a laid... Read more... posted on: 1/25/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Joie de Vivre There's a problem with over-organization and it's a biggy. The problem is not just with organization, but with everything that goes with it -- everything I preach-- including focus, productivity, lists, plans, all that stuff. Here it is: If you get too good at it, it can suck the joy right out of your life. You see, something nasty can happen when you become the Super Successful and Organized Project Manager. You plan so much, you lose your spontaneity. You focus so hard on productivity, you forget to do things that aren't in your project plan. ... Read more... posted on: 1/18/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Feel Good about Making Progress! The weeks have flown by since I reported progress on our building project. As you can see from the picture, we have stairs! Uh, I mean we have a hole for them. Seriously, it's so cool. The framing is well underway. Lots of the inside walls are up. I can feel what it will be like to enter via the front door and walk down the hall. For a long time – years actually – there were only plans to show for all the time we'd spent working on our house. It's important to assess progress as you journey through a project. Knowing steps are accomplished keeps you motivated and helps you to... Read more... posted on: 1/11/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

Stave Off Clutter in 2008 Now that the holidays are over, here are some tips to get the year off to a good start, organizationally. *Put everything away right away.* Why leave the wrapping paper leaning in the corner of the dining room when putting it down in the basement today gets it out of sight for the entire year? *Put seasonal things in deeper storage than everyday things.* If you have resolved not to bake one more thing until next Christmas, special bakeware – the rolling pin, the cookie cutters, the Santa Claus cake pan – can all be stored out of the way in the attic or... Read more... posted on: 1/4/2008 1:30:00 PM by Ginny Gassman category: Moving

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About Ginny:

Ginny Gassman is the owner of Tidy Cove, LLC, which provides professional organizing services for the New Hampshire Lakes Region. Tidy Cove publishes a free organizing tips newsletter.

Ginny's Website:

www.tidycove.com

Things that make me happy

15 minutes more sleep
Labrador Retrievers
flat water
pasta
sunshine
nieces and nephews
champagne powder
Casablanca
The Pats