Take advantage of lighter schedules and brighter days and use the Summer time to make progress on your organizing projects.  Summer projects should be short and easy, especially if you want your family to lend a hand.  And any project goes smoother if you reward yourself and family with a fun summer pay-off like a trip to the park or for ice-cream!

First, get together and make your wish list, see Balance Your Summer Time blog from last year.

Don’t know where to start organizing?  Walk around your house with a clipboard (it helps you look at your home objectively) and note areas of concern.  Also, pat yourself on the back when you see an idea or space you really love.

So what are your projects?  An informal FB poll about summer organizing projects tells me the most popular projects were toys and photos.  I was stymied, trying to figure out how to address both in one blog article and under 1,000 words. 

But the great thing about organizing is that the process is the same, no matter what type of item we are trying to organize!  You can learn from these tips – just swap out “books” or “Clothes” for toys, and yes, it really is that easy!  Also, before you get start any project: 

1. Break big projects into little pieces – don’t try to organize all the toys or photos in one day. Tackle a room or even an area of a room (like the toy box or the book shelves) first.  Spend an hour, take a break, and come back tomorrow.

2.  Assign a destination for your clutter.  Old DVDs and book clutter will be donated to our local library for their book sale, Nintendo games will be sold or swapped, clothes will be donated to charity, etc.  Knowing where things are going helps us let them go. 

To Organize, Per Julie Morgenstern, We Sort, Purge, Assign a Home, Containerize and Equalize.  So, toys:

• SORT toys by type (outdoor, indoor, books, games, size, shape, color, by child or developmental age, or in whatever other way that makes sense to you and your kids).
• Clutter is anything we don’t Need, Use or Love.  PURGE all the things you don’t need, use or love.  Duplicate toys, broken toys, baby toys or toys we just don’t play with any more.  PURGE can mean donate, sell, trash, recycle, share with friends, or put away for a rainy day.
• ASSIGN A HOME and CONTAINERIZE (these two are very closely linked):  Figure out where to store the toys and how, based on where and how the kids play with them. For example:
  • Last summer, to make space for 2 growing boys, we moved all the toys out of my older sons’ bedroom and into the basement play room.  Once we chose where to store toys, then we decided how to store them.
  • We have Legos, good golly do we have Legos, in every color and size and shape imaginable.  We store them in a couple of ways, though, based on how we use them.  
  • Assembled kits like monsters and space ships and castles have book shelves dedicated for display.
  • The big table is for active play and assembly. 
  • And we have large shallow see-through bins (think under-bed storage bins) beneath the table for the extra pieces.  I assembled a lego sorter for a client’s son, a neat item with shallow pull-out drawers for each color.  If your kids build based on color, perhaps the sorter idea would appeal to you.  My guys like things all jumbled up, so that’s how we store them.
• And EQUALIZE means Maintenance.  Once we sort our toys, clear out the clutter, and determine where and how to store the items we keep, we just need to put things away once in a while (I know, easier said than done).  But consider how much easier it will be for everyone to put stuff away now that there is less clutter, and an official home and storage options for the toys. 
• Photos:
• There are organizers that specialize just in photo organizing and they are not me.  I admire my scrapbooking friends for their creativity and tenacity, but it is not a hobby of mine. BUT, the same organizing rules apply.
• Sort:  First things first, bring all your pictures together.  Data cards and keys, camera cards, hard drives, boxes and envelopes.  When you are sorting photos, sorting chronologically is the most meaningful.  You can also sort photos by subject matter, but sorting first by date really helps, especially with digital pictures. 
• Purge:  Purging is tough with photos, but you can start with duplicates, bad photos of you or others and photos that just don’t matter anymore. 
• Assign a Home / Containerize:
• I need to mention data retention and back up.  With digital photos, I recommend at least one back up (external hard drive, disc, flash drive, etc), or perhaps on-line storage.
• How do you want to use your photos? Are you just storing them for some day, or do you need to print them for distribution or craft projects?  The answers to these questions will determine how and where to store them. 
• And Equalizing, or Maintenance, is critical for success.  In all things.  Once you have your photos organized, make sure to download and save your photos regularly, say, once a month or after every vacation, and make sure to back them up.  Print photos if you want to use them.  Just do something with them!
• So  my challenge for you this week is to look around and see what projects you might have, and decide when and how you want to address them.  Take advantage of the summer time for long-term and outdoor projects, or projects you want your family to help with!  Happy Summer, and Happy Organizing!