We’re back from vacation and ready to Play, but before we get those toys out they need a bit of organizing. Maja’s major headache is her Toy Room!

In our “Toy Room Tantrum” episode today we’ll explore what you need to create an organized and functional toy room that your kids will love, and will hopefully ease that clutter headache for all the moms who listen in.

How to do it:
1 - Shelves (tall ones are best)
2 - Baskets and Bins
3 - Labels or Graphic picture for front of the bin (take out your camera and snap pics of what goes in, your kids will pick it up fast and be able to put away toys in a snap)
4 - Ditch the big ole’ Toy Box (it’s a black hole!)
5 - Widdle down your toy collection and be ruthless. Don’t forget our Mantra - “Top to bottom, left to right, focus, Focus, FOCUS!”
6 - How to maintain it is simply to have quick cleanups twice a day, then it’s simple and fast to keep it organized and beautiful

*If you have an area in your home or office that requires organizing, but you just don’t know where to start, shoot us an email to: thesavvyorganizer@gmail.com and your question might be featured and answered in an upcoming episode.

With the birth of baby #4 only weeks away and in the heat of the summer, I am finding it harder to get excited about organizing. The weather is just so beautiful!

But as I am typing this, I am realizing that with a baby only weeks away, now is the time we NEED to get geared about organizing again so I don’t get buried alive when he comes! I have also been seriously considering homeschooling my kids (because, you know, why not?!?!) and while looking investigating it a little further came across this great post on the popular blog “Balancing Everything”(formerly Very Mom).



Her idea for divvying out chores and letting your kids have choices was great and appealed to the side of me that is trying to not be so controlling! Not only that, but it is SO chic and adorable!!! I loved her blog entry and while it does provide details on what she did, there are no explicit instructions on how it was done. It looked like a great project though and had the benefit of including/teaching your kids to work - which you all know I am a huge fan of! I can’t wait to get busy on my own chore tickets. - Maja

**Photo Credit : Balancing Everything.com.

Home Economics 101 - get great cleaning products!

For cleaning I love Method cleaning products – they smell oh SO good, are nice to use and you can feel good because there is nothing bad in them. They are naturally derived and biodegradable. I also enjoy their line of hand soaps for my family. If you have kids, you typically go through pump hand soaps like crazy. I love the foam soaps because they dispense just the right amount of soap, and somehow makes hand washing fun for your child!

We regularily blast through the stuff, so my sister-in-law gave me this idea:

*Take an empty foaming hand soap container and fill it with Method dish soap to about a quarter full. Then fill the rest up with water, give it a shake, and you have a very economical way of refilling the more expensive foam soaps. The biggest expense will be when you initially buy the foam soap containers, and then wait for the savings to kick in!

I recently went to a parenting night held by our local school board. It was called “Raising Children of Character: 10 Principles” by Dr. Thomas Lickona and it was absolutely outstanding!! If you have kids, I highly recommend checking out some of his books, or his website as they are FILLED with amazing parenting advice. This leads me to one of his points about character building through hard work. Now we are back to ORGANIZING!! Dr. Lickona recommended that each child in the house works, independent of any monetary reward (allowance), are to do one chore per year of age. I thought this was fantastic and the perfect way of teaching the kids to help around the house, as well as helping me let go! I could pick things that wouldn’t take very long and that I was confident they could do well enough that I could live with it!

I spent some time today making a chore chart for my kids and bought 1000 stickers at the dollar store last night so we should be all set. While I was at it, I made a list of most of things I also need to make sure I am doing on a daily basis, and funny enough, there were just as many things on my list as how old I am!! I can’t wait to get the kids started on their own habits tomorrow, as well as remembering all the things I want to do in the order in which they need to be done! I hope you take the time to look at Dr. Lickona’s site, or just make a chore chart for yourself (no stickers needed for you unless you really, really want them!), for your kids. You will soon all be working together for the goal of a tidy house while teaching your kids some great principles while you are at it. WIN WIN!! Good luck.

Additionally here is a site that offers examples of age appropriate chores to help spark your chore chart mania:  Ideas for age appropriate chores

When you’re encouraging your kids to keep their rooms tidy, there is no better way to do it than to make it seem like a game…think Mary Poppins - “a spoon full of sugar, makes the medicine go down, in a most delightful way”!!

These fun hampers are the perfect way to engage your kids, and teach them to put their dirty clothes in the right place. I love so many things about these Bongo Buddy hampers by Redmon, besides how adorable they are they come in a variety of animals and colours to fit in any decor. So many in fact, that you can find one that both you and your kids would appreciate and adopt. I also love that they are collapsable - you can take them with you when you go somewhere for the weekend! You still want to keep some semblance of order when you are on vacation and there is nothing I hate more than garbage bags of dirty laundry, or worse - dirty clothes everywhere! The portability of these was the ultimate sale for me.

I am certain your children will find it a much easier task keeping clothes off their floor when they “feed” the animals their dirty clothes. I hope you enjoy these and find the perfect one for your decor! Be sure to comment and let us know your FAVE buddy.

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