5 Tips for Spring Cleaning

So it´s that time of the year again. Yup, you guessed it, Spring has finally sprung! Although it seems like it´s taken it´s time to come, it´s official...it´s here! I like to think that when a new season comes, especially Spring It´s like a new phase in the year and so a clean out is necessary, quite literally, for a good and effective Spring clean. As you know, I am a great believer that clutter bogs us down and curbs our creativity so let´s get started.

Springtime is the time for new beginnings; physically you let go of stuff, clean, and open up the house for the air and the light; psychologically you make room for new ideas and projects.

Below are my Top 5 tips for Spring Cleaning.

1. To do list: I´m a true believer and follower of to-do-lists. I find it very satisfying to check things off as I feel I have accomplished something. So, this is no different. Make a list of the things you wish to organize, tidy or simply tackle at home and get started.
2. Room-by-Room: This ensures you will have a stress free Spring Cleaning experience. It´s simple, just go room-by-room and tackle whatever you have on your to-do-list.
3. One season rule: The one season rule is simple, if you haven´t worn it in a season remove it. Yes that´s right, I like to narrow it down to ONE SEASON. Most of the times, we keep clothes we never wear because of their sentimental value or because we think we might wear it in the near future. So have a good look and remove anything you haven´t worn. I normally give the things I have removed to a local charity.
4. Make piles: This is especially useful for clothes. If the weather has finally gotten better and you want to do your wardrobe change, make a few piles before you take out your summer ones. One pile for things you want to keep and put away, another for things to give away and finally the last one for things to stay in your wardrobe.
5. Storage units: Make sure you have enough boxes, containers or storage units for the things you want to put away, such as clothes. With this, ensure you have anti-moth sachets to put into each box for protection.
   
   
   
   
   

And now, relax and enjoy it. Once you´ve finished, you´ll feel satisfied and will be able to relax and enjoy the beauty in everything being perfectly organized.

Have yourselves good and safe weekend!

Happy Women´s Day!

Women´s Day | 08.03.2013

“Women have always been the strong ones in the world”

-Coco Chanel 

HAPPY WOMEN´S DAY!!!.....

A thousand and One Boxes

I am finally back and writing on the blog again- I had abandoned it a bit truth be said. As you might recall, I just got back from my first international project and I must say, I've come back rather satisfied with the work done. It has also been an exotic adventure in a country and continent I had never been to. So, I won't waste time and will start telling you all about this adventure from the very beginning.

The moving company's truck arrived early in the morning and in about one hour, the 6 men employed efficiently brought out all the boxes and pieces of furniture from the truck . Once they had done that, they formed a human chain to bring everything into the client's house.

At this point, I can now tell you about the following phases of the move:

The moment the truck arrives

• Indicate where each box goes
• Open the boxes with the moving company in order to get rid of the cardboard (very important)
• Set up the necessary furniture (tables, beds, shelves, etc)

Start organizing room by room

• Begin organizing furniture in basic order
• Place objects, clothes and other bits inside or on top of the pieces of furniture where they belong (ex: towels inside a cupboard) in order to later place them according to the needs of the client.
• Organize the contents of each piece of furniture (cupboard, chest of drawers or shelves) room by room.

From my many years experience in organizing moves I have to say that what is most crucial in terms of organization is the moment the truck arrives. It is important to be centered since you will have to tell the company employees exactly where each box should go. Moving companies have the full list of all the boxes, properly numbered and with a clear explanation of the room these boxes came from. They also have an indication of what sort of objects are inside the box. The client receives a copy of this list so that he/she can monitor the arrival of the boxes. Once all the boxes have been taken out of the truck and placed in the rooms they belong in, it is important that the moving company helps you to open all the boxes so that they can take the cardboard with them as soon as possible, in this way, your work will be significantly easier. The company should also help in setting up furniture when needed.

In the moment where the cardboard and the rest of the packaging materials disappear and each piece of furniture and objects are in their corresponding rooms that is when the actual organization work begins. At this point in time, the first thing that needs to be done is to analyze the available space well in order to assign a new “home” to each object. I usually begin by doing this with the house linen (bed sheets, towels, tablecloths...) since they usually take up a lot of space.

As you can see from the photo, I usually organize towels by colour. I don't only do this for aesthetic reasons but also because it makes it easier when you need to pick out a new set.

Detail of the tablecloths

Once I was done with the house linen, I worked with the client to unpack and organize the clothes. The good thing about this move is that when packing back home the client decided to put the clothes in synthetic bags that were easily closed with a zipper. The client had divided the clothes by category, in other words, by shirts, sweaters, trousers, etc. In this way, sorting out the clothes is done much more easily.

The shoeboxes are from IKEA

Detail of the customer's handbags.

View of the tablecloths, winter clothes, organized bags in a wardrobe also from IKEA (cheap, pretty and very practical).

Once I was done with the upstairs rooms, we began organizing the crockery and glassware.

The storage cabinet chosen for the glassware with all the objects duly arranged.

Detail of the glassware

Cabinet where the crockery was placed.

Before I say goodbye, I wanted to leave you with a piece of advice: do not stress, this doesn't help you at all. The most important thing is to remain calm and centered each day, focusing on organizing, opening boxes and placing each object in its new place. It is useless to carry out a move in a “global” way, trying to organize all rooms at the same time. First thing, do a semi-organization of each space. Then, you can perfect each room, one by one, in order to reach their most perfect state (this is what I find most satisfying).

Having said this, I have to leave now since I need to prepare a new move... in this case... mine!

Preparing for a semi-move

Let's be honest, who really likes organizing a move? I am sure that most people don't. Me, on the other hand, well I love it. I'm serious. For those people who know me, the reason is quite obvious, because since I was quite small I've had to pack and unpack boxes many times. As a result, I've had to get used to the constant movement of my belongings.

At the beginning of November, I was called by a client to help her prepare for a move. This was a different kind of project since it didn't consist of a full move, but rather a semi-move. The home, would remain exactly as it was, but the client needed to make a selection of the things she wanted to take with her. The rest of the belongings would stay in this first home.

The client explained to me that she needed help in three areas of her home, listed below.

One of the proposals I put forward to the client was to create harmony and organization in their pantry. Since the client would be away for many months the objective was that upon her return her house would function at the same rhythm. As if she'd never left. On the other hand, in the other two areas she was interested in, we would need to select what she would take to her new home. The three areas we would work on were as follows:

• The pantry
• The towels
• The tablecloths

Below I will explain exactly how I applied order and harmony to the pantry. Upon analyzing the space, I decided that in order to optimize the space I needed to follow these simple steps:

• Take out all the products
• Categorize them
• Eliminate the expired products or those that should not be kept in a pantry
• Clean the space
• Find a way to improve the way products were kept in order to maximize the space*

*I used additional shelves to do this. You can find similar products in shops like IKEA.

Below is a selection of photos to illustrate the process I applied for each section:

The Pantry:

The first thing I did was to take out all the products

Once they had been removed I cleaned the space.

Detail of an empty shelf.

Categorized shelf with all products in jars and tines.

Shelf for refreshments.

Shelf for sauces and seasonings. 

Cupboard for towels:

The cupboard for towels before the selection and organizing.

The cupboard after the selection. Here I organized it all according to size, model and colour. 

Detail of the towels organized by colour.

Cupboard for tablecloths:

The cupboard before the selection process.

Detail of the cupboard.

After the selection, we categorized according to most and least frequently used tablecloths.

The shelf at eye-level I placed the tablecloths for daily use..

Final result after the selection and categorization of tablecloths. 

Tomorrow I'm taking a flight for my first project outside of Spain and it's precisely to complete the move: setting up the house at the new destination. When I get back I'll tell you all about it so watch this space.....

Part II: Organizing a bookbinding studio

The next day I came back to the luminous studio in Madrid’s well-known Alcala street to complete the final part of the project: organizing two more pieces of furniture.

At first glance, the first piece of furniture seemed like it would be quite complicated, since it was a large support table, used daily and covered with many things. In any case, my instinct told me that we could take better advantage of the space and to apply a method of order that would be easier to follow. As usual, my first step was to remove all the objects piled up on the table and to clean the surface.

Before:

Cleared up:

When I got to this point, I consulted with the client so that she could tell me what could be disposed of and what should be kept. In this way, I could begin categorizing things. Once I categorized everything, I placed them on the long table again. What I found was that many of the previously stored things did not really need to be kept there, so as a result, there were fewer things to accommodate.

What most dominated on the table were colourful rolls of leather that the client, and her students, used to bind books. I took a box the size of a shoe box and rolled-up the leather according to colour. In this way, they would find it easier to find what they needed for work. The rest of the table was easy to organize, all I had to do was make separate piles by category (as mentioned earlier, this is a support table, not generally used for working on).

The second, and last, piece of furniture to work on, a set of shelves, was simpler since all I was asked to do was to organize the contents. The shelves were made up of several planks of wood that served as open drawers. The content of the shelves was used for a very specific phase in bookbinding and they are used very frequently, which is why the shelves are easily un-tidied.

Before:

After:

In total, it took me 8 hours (5 on the first day, 3 on the second day) to complete the project. I consulted with the client throughout the entire process to accomplish the most suitable organizing for her needs. For a project as complex as organizing a work space which is rather artistic in nature, I realized that the most important characteristic needed to meet objectives is: good listening skills.

Part I: Organizing a bookbinding studio

A few weeks ago, a client asked me to organize a few pieces of furniture used for storage purposes in her bookbinding studio.

Apart from many other materials, my client mainly uses paper and wood, but of course, daily use creates disorder, almost involuntary in nature, and that is exactly the problem she faced. She told me that the disorder makes her lose a great deal of time since it means she can not find the materials she needs easily.

I arrived at the luminous studio, an attic on Alcala Street and the client explained how she and her students worked on a daily basis so that I could better understand the use of the furniture I would be organizing. Following that, she showed me the first piece of furniture: a metallic chest of drawers, five in total. Each drawer had thousands of painted pieces of paper of different size and shape. Many seemed delicate but especially, what I found in this first drawer was a lot of variety. I felt it would be difficult to categorize them in the most efficient manner. The only thing the client specified was that these papers needed to remain in that drawer- to my surprise this would make my job easier.

How could I organize each drawer? My objective was to optimize the space, and to do so I began by tidying the contents. I decided that the first step should be to take everything out of the drawer. As I took everything out, I categorized the paper by size, shape and colour, so that they would form a pyramid in the drawer.

Below the first drawer before organizing it: 

After taking everything out and leaving the drawer empty I passed a sponge over it so that it would be ready to be organized. I did this with every drawer until the end.

Here are the organized drawers:

The next day I went back to complete the second phase of the project: organizing two pieces of furniture. Shortly you will have the second entry recounting the last part of the project.