Posts Tagged ‘organization’

The holidays require flexibility.  It is not for everyday living.  It is a compressed time of celebration.  Family, Friends, Food, Fun all of them can be amazing, and sometimes not.  The purpose of this blog post is to offer home & hospitality related ideas that will increase your ability to be guest-focused this holiday.

Reconfigure Furniture – Last year we hosted a holiday birthday celebration at our home for a friend.  [And this year we are doing the same thing for her husband.]  Offering the location and Kristin handling the logistics of the event is our gift to our friends.  To fit 12 people for dinner comfortably we actually turn our living room into a formal dining room for such events.  The couch and chairs move, the table moves, we light a fire, we remove all the kid toys [all things plastic & primary colored] and the room is transformed.  Think outside the box and move some furniture for your holiday gathering.

Rent linens – How many of us have spent $50-150 on table cloths only to have guests arriving in 30 minutes and realize someone [you] needs to iron a ridiculously long table cloth.  Spend $10-30 on cloth rental.  It comes pressed and when you’re done you throw it in a trash bag dirty and return it.  It allows for changing the mood and color scheme for an event with just an Andrew Jackson instead of a Benjamin Franklin investment.

One-In-One-Out – This trick will bring so much peace to your life.  If I buy a new pair of shoes, I throw an old pair out.  If you move a large piece of furniture into a room, move a piece of furniture out (even temporarily).  If you get new oven mitts as a gift then donate the old ones.  This trick works for ALL things holiday other than guests in your home.

Make extra holiday gifts – For the entirety of our marriage each holiday season I run into the room and beg Kristin to let me steal one of the small gifts she has made for our friends, family, house guests for an impromptu holiday event I have to attend.  I have learned to add to her list on the front end and she now makes a few extras because she knows I am going to ask.  There is nothing worse than being short a gift in a group.

Favors – This weekend Reagan (4) and I assisted Kristin in making 600 truffles.  Kristin is on the board of a local women’s center that helps at-risk women in Grand Rapids.  400 of the truffles are for their open house next weekend.  The other 200 will get pretty packaging and become small gifts for people in our lives.  Tis the season, and having something special and small is one of the ways my wife is so classy.

Drinks – Here’s your reminder to stock up on wine, beer, or the makings for a signature non-alcoholic drink.  Why can’t this be the year you make fresh eggnog?  Add a little ritual to drink making and it becomes an event in itself.  Did you buy extra coffee?  Don’t forget the Decaf for those kids like me who can’t have caffeine after 3pm. Man tip: Drink making is a great way to hide from guests if you get overwhelmed from the small talk.  Better to MAKE drinks to get out of an uncomfortable conversation than to DRINK your way through the conversation.

Slippers – if you are ultra-conscious about dirt in the house here is a tip for your kind of crazy.  Look for slippers on sale and buy as many pairs as you need.  As passionate as you are about maintaining a clean floor some of your guests are as passionate about not wanting to take their shoes off.  Slippers may be a great way to get those shoes off, preserve your guests’ dignity, and creates a conversation starter for your event.  Hey, don’t forget a shoe bag or some designated place for people to put their shoes.  Reverse tip – I have easy-on, easy-off shoes because I am in literally hundreds of homes a year.

Shoes & Coats – Clean out the mudroom and make the kids keep their coats in their rooms or the basement so you have room in your entryway for guest coats.  Use a basket to contain hats, mittens, scarves – make it available for guests too.  Add a second and/or third floor mat to facilitate getting multiple people into your house quickly so the door can shut.  It will make the welcome process go smoother.  If you want to protect against wet boots get one of those plastic shoe trays for $7-15.  After the holidays the tide of kids shoes/boots can return…until you hire me to fix that permanently for you.

Last tip:  See my article Guest Room Design Tips for how to make overnight guests comfortable.

Happy Holidays!

This is the time of year when our mudrooms are being put through their paces.  If you have school-aged children or had grandchildren visit you over the holidays you experienced first hand how much stuff it takes to keep a family warm.

Here are a few tips to share from our small mudroom:

1. Extra coat hooks for guests.  Are hooks okay or do you need hangers?
2. Ice melt away from kids – we have small children so our Ice Melt is way up high out of their reach.  I keep the refill downstairs on a storage shelf so we don’t hav a 50 lb. bag on the mudroom floor.
3. Baskets – Kristin labeled each basket with a picture.  That is so cool!
4. Boots & Shoes are directly on resilient flooring.
5. Mailboxes – We have our at home Inboxes, and there is one for Bills.
6. Electrical outlets – there is an outlet down low for the paper shredder and there is a quad outlet in the cabinet for cellphones & the ipod docking station.  We have a no cellphone rule in the bedroom so this is where my smartphone gets parked.  Yeah, you know who tried to take his phone to bed.
7. Bead board – This is a simple architectural detail to make this very simple built-in look like a piece of furniture.

The cost on this built-in is very reasonable, it looks cool, and it functions great!  Thank you, Sara Tow, www.MomsBloom.org, for the inspiration for this column via Facebook.

We three Thompsons think about how to make living in your home easier all the time. We just can’t turn it off…

Here are some practical, often overlooked storage secrets for the bathroom, kitchen, and other important storage areas around the house.

When thinking about storage:
1) Remember: “A storage system must be a retrieval system.” Sandie Thompson
2) Carefully plan your storage areas, before you create the storage system.
3) Buy your storage containers before you build any shelves/cabinets.
4) Is this storage for adults or do you want the kids to use the storage system too? If you want them to put stuff away, make special plans for it to be easy for them.

Storage Secrets by Space:
BATHROOM
1) Put towel hooks within easy reach of the shower.
2) Consider a low towel bar for the kids.
3) A household of 2 people may need 6 bath towels. 3-6 bath towels require 15″ of vertical shelf space when folded.

PANTRY
1) Paper towels are 11″ x 6″ – makes it difficult to have 2 deep in a 12″ cabinet
2) Napkins are 7-8″ squares
3) Toilet paper (4 pack) is 10″w x 6″d x 9″t
4) Kleenex – 4 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ x 5″t
5) Canning “Mason” Jars – 16-17″ tall between shelves is recommended to stack 2 high.
6) Don’t forget to leave space for the broom or small vacuum.

KITCHEN
1) Soup laddles don’t fit in a standard 5″ deep drawer. We recommend at least (1) deep drawer near the cooking area of the kitchen for extra utensils if you want to get the utensil crock off the counter top.
2) Roll out trays are always helpful.
3) It’s not just the trash anymore…we also need room for a recycle bin.

Pre-planning your storage spaces will maximize the space and help keep your storage system a retrieval system. When in doubt, clean it out! Thank you, Sandie Thompson, for these helpful tips.

Have you heard it said that when a company cleans up their back office how amazingly revenue soars?  The same is true in your home.  When you clean your basement, when you build lockers at the back entry, or steal some space from the garage to create an actual mudroom your enjoyment of your home will skyrocket.  Allow your home to make living your life easier.  Convenience, intentional living, and organization are three virtues [core values] I work to keep central in my life.    Chew on these thoughts the next time you’re folding laundry on the couch…

When your cupboards feel packed it’s time for a cardboard box and a marker.  What is this for?  It’s to put all the things you haven’t used in the last 3 months into said box.  Then write the contents on the box and DATE the box before putting it into storage in the basement.  Many benefits will come of this:

1) You’ll free up cabinet space – if you can see what’s in your cabinets you will use what’s in them.

2) The streamlining process reduces stress (it’s subtle, but when you experience it you’ll appreciate it.)

3) You don’t have to throw it away immediately.  Many of us have an emotional reaction to throwing something away.  “What if I’ll need this someday?”

4) Power comes from labeling the box with the date.  Let’s quantify “someday.”  The next time you get up the courage & energy to clean your basement you can approach the boxes in your basement with a plan.  You’ll go through the boxes that have been sitting on the shelf longer than 1 year.  It still has some value, but just no active value to you because you haven’t used it in a year.  So donate [or sell] the contents of the box so others in your community can pit it to use.

5) I love surprises – and when you go back through that box, you’ll find something you just cannot live without and you’ll take those few items out of the box and put it back in the kitchen.  An example could be the waffle maker you put in the box, and that rediscovered waffle maker will cause a new Saturday morning tradition.

I promise that clean and organized cupboards will help you love your existing kitchen.  Try it out.