Step 1: Surfaces

OK, ya ready? This is a room in my house. It is not my room, and it was not always
this messy (in the room owners defense).

It is a family member who has been slowly moving out, this family member is a hard working
amazingly productive person who is Organizationally challenged just like like me.

We all know how easy it is to let things go and to put things off when we don’t have
a time constraint or a deadline to follow.

So, I saw this as an opportunity to help her, help me because I am moving into this room, and
help you!

I could video tape the process, get the room cleaned up (because I am moving in there;
it will be my bedroom) and help people at the same time by making a video!

Bada-Bing-Bada-Boom! It is a win-win!

So, it will be a video series.

It started with a Throw it Out Thursday and it is continuing this week as a Motivation Monday.

This works great for my OC (Organizationally Challenged) personality. You know I don’t WANT to
clean this up, BUT I do want it cleaned up.

So! Doing this, is PERFECT!

I work on this room 2 times a week, because anyone can do something twice a week if it is
scheduled to be done!

If you have a room that is a real wreck, if you have a spare room or a guest room that a
guest could never “guest” in, and you have been LONGING to get it cleaned up and ready
for your proverbial mother-in-law to stay in, this is the video to freaking watch! 🙂
Much Love,

Step 2:  The Floor

In this week’s video, we work on the floor & laundry!

We are working in a room together that is messy.

Most likely it is a room that is hidden behind closed doors, like a bedroom, a spare room or a guest room.

Whatever it is, it’s a room that has been neglected, and you have the luxury to work on it a little at a time.

We are doing it together, step by step in a series of videos.

The room I am working on is a family members who is moving out and needs help getting it done.

The first task we tackled was the surfaces, the second leg of the stretch we did all the laundry in the room, including the bedding.

So, if you had a king or queen size comforter you made sure that you took it to the Laundromat to wash in their oversized washers, or you used their drop off service.

That is what I did, and today I picked it up.

I already did my floor. I worked on it from the back, right facing corner to the front, and so on around the room.

We do it the same way that we did the surfaces.

In the video you see the before pictures of the room and the after pictures of the floor.

We work on cleaning up the floor area, the same way we did the surfaces.

Anything that belongs out of the room, we put it in a pile to disperse after the floor is all cleared and cleaned up.

Then we take any garbage on the floor and throw it out.

We take anything that we find on the floor that belongs in the room and we put it away, in the room.

Anything that is storage that we find, like a bathing suit and it is February, or a woolen scarf and it is June, we put those things in an area where we keep our storage.

We will work on the storage area another time.

In the after shot, it is evident that my floor is not in good shape.

It may be that you need to do just as I have too. Maybe you need to put a rug down, maybe you need to refinish it.

I’m not sure what I am going to do, but I know it is going to start with clean.

We need to sweep or vacuum the floor, and if you sweep it, it will need to be washed.

The next step, is working on setting up the room.

I was going to go into the closet, but I need some sense of gratification.

Working on what we can see, and not what is closed behind a door keeps us encouraged and will ensure that we won’t quit.

This room is going to be my bedroom, FYI 🙂

Right now, together, we are going to work on what is hanging on the walls.

If this is a room you are setting up, you may have to think about what pictures you are going to hang, maybe you might have to paint, or perhaps all you have to do is the cobwebs and just dust the pictures that are already there.

We are working on the walls and the windows next.

So look forward to our next time together working on this room, where I show how I got the walls and the windows ship shape.

Curtains will be hung and cobwebs will be brushed away.

If you know of anyone who would like this, please share it with them, and if you go to my website TheTidyTutor.com, put in your name and email,

not only will you get 1 tip a day for 10 days that will rock your world, but videos like this, where I do a series, will be all organized with every previous video attached.

So you won’t have to search youtube for the last one and the one before that, and the one before that!

They will all be connected 🙂

Whelp, that’s it. Thanks for reading and watching, please share with me your before and after shots! It will encourage others and be so fun to get!

MUCH LOVE,

Kathy Roberts
The Tidy Tutor

Step 2B: Revisiting our clothes

We have been cleaning up a messy room together.

This room happens to be in my house.

A family member moved out, and needed help getting the room together, she was so busy, and things had gotten a bit out of control, so I volunteered… with an ulterior (Tidy Tutor) motive.

I began to think lots of us have rooms that are a disaster like this, and we feel FROZEN not knowing where to start!

So VOILA (don’t you wish it was spelled WA-LA?) a video series was born!

I kinda blew by the laundry part of our “working together” instruction, and also didn’t address the clothing there might be in the room.

The clothes in this room were not mine. There weren’t many dirty clothes for me to deal with in there, and the other clothes that were still in drawers and the closet did not belong to me, so all I had to do was box them up.

But of course that is not the case in everyone’s world, most likely, it isn’t in yours…

So, after I thought about it, I decided to revisit this portion of our “to-do’s”

Here is how it has gone so far:

The first week we worked on the surfaces, the second week we did laundry and took care of all of the stuff on the floor.

Since then we have washed windows, hung curtains, made the bed, moved furniture and took care of the walls.

(when you click on the image, all of the videos previously will be
presented)

So in this video we talk about the CLOTHING RULES:

We can only keep what fits in the space we’ve got.

Laundry needs to be done on a regular basis. see this added video.

We have to get ruthless with ourselves in deciding what to keep and what to get rid of.

Realize that “TOO MUCH STUFF” is our biggest problem.

So here is what we do about clothes…

We ask ourselves for each item we pick up: Do I don’t LOVE IT? Does it fit me? Do I wear it?

If the answer is no to any of those questions… those things go.

Now what if you are IN LOVE with way too many of those things, and they fit you, BUT there is no room for them all?

Be selective. Be very selective.

To be brutally truthful, I don’t really believe that is true. I’ll bet there are lots of those items you never wear.

Remember YOU CAN NOT ORGANIZE CLUTTER, and OUR NUMBER ONE PROBLEM IS TOO MUCH STUFF!

We can not keep what doesn’t fit in the room.

Make a decision now to let go. To live differently. To begin to practice the art of living an organized life.

It is an art. It is your life and your home is the canvas.

Paint your world beautiful! Love yourself enough to let go of things, because what you are doing is making room for what you really want to come to you.

Let me know how you do. Send me pictures. It will inspire others and I will surely give you cyber hi-fives!

Much Love!
Kathy

Step 3: Furniture, walls, and curtains

We have been working on a room that has been a mess.

Maybe it is one that is closed up like a spare room or it could even be your bedroom because we can easily close a door on it, and no one goes in our bedrooms without permission. Because of that it isn’t that difficult for it to become the drop all spot for stuff we don’t know what to do with, or a place to throw things in when company is coming.

It is also wonderfully, a room that we are able to work on, a little bit
at a time, and we have been doing this together.

This is our 4th video, ane when you scroll down you will be able to see all four videos that we have worked on so far.

The first thing we did in our room, was the surfaces, the second thing was any
laundry that needed to be done, the third thing was the floors.

Now, I am going to move the furniture around the way I prefer it, and take care of the walls.

What I mean by taking care of the walls is we are going to clean the
pictures that are hanging on it.

In my world I am taking pictures that are in this room down, maybe in yours they need to be dusted or maybe you need to put pictures up.

In any case, we pay attention to what is on our walls now.

It so happens, that in this video I say that the doorways and woodwork needs to be sprayed and wiped down, (which they do) but I actually don’t get to it in this video.

By the time that task comes around, I declare that I am DONE! meaning I don’t want to do any more today! and we will work on those things next week.

What we do work on are the cobwebs and moving furniture.

But wait! There’s More!

In this video we take curtains down, wash the windows, hang curtains, make the bed, move out furniture, move in end tables and a lamp.

We also discuss the shape our curtains are in that we take down, what to do with
them, and Feng Shui.

I discover my radiator cover is yucky and ask you to check out any ledges that may need scrubbing and we move on to looking forward to next week, which I declare to be: getting the closet done, wood work, doors and light switch plates.

Send me pictures of your progress! It will encourage others! I look forward to hearing from you. Send your emails to: Kathy@TheTidyTutor.com xxoo

Much Love,
Kathy