Welcome to this weeks Motivation Monday blog takeover by our fellow fab & PowHERFUL femme, business owner and entrepreneur, Cynthia Heathcoe. You recently heard our creator, Nicole L. Rymer on her weekly radio show on Talk of The Palm Beaches chatting it up with this phenomenal femme. She is the owner of Contemporary Living in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I had the pleasure of meeting Cynthia at a SCORE event where she won the entrepreneur of the year award! WOW what an accomplishment! We all struggle with organizing, especially entrepreneurs with insurmountable paperwork. I think we all can attest to that! Read this weeks article for some tips on organizing, then check out Contemporary Living for all your organizing and home furnishing needs! [spacer height=”20px”]
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You’re in a mid-summer night’s sweat and don’t know what to do! School’s out. Work is light. The snowbirds are gone and not even dreaming about coming back yet. You wonder where July has gone. You were going to get SO much accomplished![spacer height=”20px”]
You had so many plans and great ideas. Now what? Maybe your house is littered with pool toys and wet clothes and the remains of a month of day trips and visits to friends and family. Maybe you still have half unpacked suitcases from that summer vacation and piles of laundry waiting for help. Or you haven’t filed a bill or anything in two months, let alone thrown out the junk mail that came along with them. Or the dining room table is covered with paint swatches and magazine pictures of your new vision for that heavily used space that now looks as if you’ll need to bring in heavy equipment to clean it all out.[spacer height=”20px”]
Ok, so your eyes glaze over when you’re urged to clean your clutter, or purge your wardrobe. Well, we’re here to help you get your organizing act together. That may not sound very exciting but these statistics ought to wake you right up! Did you know that you could eliminate about 40 percent of your housework by eliminating clutter, according to the National Soap and Detergent Association? Did you know that as much as 20 percent of the average household budget is spent to purchase duplicates of items that we’ve misplaced because we are so disorganized, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers?[spacer height=”20px”]
When you finally get around to doing that filing, do you spend what seems like entire weekends sorting through old bills, letters, etc.? NAPO says only about 20 percent of these things will ever be looked at again! Who needs the junk?[spacer height=”20px”]
As summer wanes and school and the “season” grows closer, why not seek out elegant ways to organize your home. Organizing lowers your stress and makes moving through your daily activities a smoother, calmer endeavor. Organizing also improves productivity, one pleasant side effect of lower stress. It also gives you energy. What’s even more fun than that is that organizing frees up more of your time, so you can do the things you really want to do. A bonus of organizing your home is that it will help you project a contemporary image to your family, friends, and business associates – in true diva style![spacer height=”20px”]
We suggest you look online to find a professional organizer (try the National Association of Professional Organizers at www.napo.net). Search for organizers who live in your area. Read testimonials about them on their websites and on any home services sites near where you live. Look for blogs or news articles written by or about nearby organizers. Contact several and ask if they conduct free home consultations. If possible, try to select someone to work with who has a home organizing philosophy that closely matches your own.[spacer height=”20px”]
If you can master the organizing adventure by yourself, here are a few tips to make the process easier. First, spend some time researching home organizing tips on various websites. Read any magazine articles or even invest in a good home organizing book, if you see one that appeals to you. Some will recommend tackling one room at a time. Others will suggest setting aside a certain amount of time each day to make progress towards decluttering. Look through all the ideas and choose the few that resonate with you. Write them down as part of a plan and stick to it![spacer height=”20px”]
Set a goal. Give yourself an incentive to get the job done. Plan to reward yourself or your family with a new piece of furniture or media equipment once you’ve accomplished the job. Then choose something that will keep you motivated to stay organized throughout the year.[spacer height=”20px”]
Set up calendar notifications in your telephone or computer to remind you to put everything away when you use it and to toss mail or other papers in the trash once you’ve read them. Also send yourself calendar reminders to go through your clothes closets and dressers several times every year to discard what no longer fits your size, mood, or diva style. Give those items to friends or family, sell them on eBay or donate them to a worthy charity such as those that provide work wardrobes for women in shelters or just entering the workforce. Do the same for your home office, your other closets, and your garage.[spacer height=”20px”]
With a little bit of effort, you can find sleek, modern ways to store what you need and make housework easier. “One of the biggest trends in new residential design,” according to the National Association of Home Builders, “is the pocket office,” a small, hi-efficiency space for paying bills, and other household tasks.” We like these compact workspaces because they can be placed in whichever room in your home you choose – a bedroom, or a den, perhaps, or where they really work well, in a high traffic area such as the kitchen or living room. This kind of a hub can be the nerve center of your organized living space, a central point where your fab-self can be the center of your home’s attention.[spacer height=”20px”]
Whether it’s a pocket office, wall cabinets, or an entire storage system, the right home furnishings adviser can help you find the right desk, shelving, or wall units to hide what needs to be hidden and to blend these necessary parts of your home into your own contemporary style. [spacer height=”20px”]
Cynthia Heathcoe
Owner of Contemporary Living in Palm Beach Gardens[spacer height=”20px”]
