Top tips from the Ship Shape Shoppe for organising and decluttering your home.
In a world that can (and for many, currently is) feeling very chaotic, finding a place of clam can be essential to maintaining both emotional and physical wellbeing.
With all the objects that we accumulate in modern life, maintaining a home as a base that is organized and peaceful and somewhere that we actually want to be, can feel like an impossible task. While I am not a hoarder, I do seem to have an affinity for clutter, and I am the first to admit that all.the.stuff most definitely gets in the way of my efficiency, my ability to stay organised, my energy, my general state of mind, and my ability to parent the way I want to parent.
Someone who knows all about the relationship between wellbeing and an organised home is Rebekah Holmes, a professional organiser (extraordinaire) who runs the Ship Shape Shoppe. I was lucky enough to chat with her earlier this month and tap into her wisdom which you too can soak it up by watching the video here where she shares some really easy, manageable tips to help us not only get organised, but stay organised.
Her first tip is around sharing the domestic chores between the family. This one really struck a chord with me because it makes so much sense, but because of the “I can do it all” mentality, many of us choose to carry it all on our shoulders. More on this topic to follow in a separate blog post very soon! If you are looking for a way to chart and track domestic chores, you may find our Responsibility chart a useful tool.
As a mother herself, Rebekah is completely realistic about time pressures around maintaining the home so I absolutely LOVE her strategy of focussing on one area to organize per month. This takes the overwhelm out of transforming a space because it allows you to break down the task into manageable bite-sized chunks. Making the task more achievable means less guilt from not getting something done that you had intended to do. As Rebekah says “no one wants to promise away their weekend, dealing with clutter and piles of stuff around the place, time is precious, that time we want to be spending with our loved ones and our friends and doing things that fill our cup”. Rebekah has created this fantastic planner to help you implement this strategy, and she has even made us an exclusive video to show us how to get the most out of the chart.
Getting the kid's toys under control doesn’t have to be a daily battle. Rebekah explains how giving each child a named or colour coded box to tidy away their toys is not only a fast way to clear a space, but it also gives your child autonomy and a sense of accomplishment which is a win-win
When you have been doing something for so long it can be hard to consider that another way is possible. This is how I felt when Rebekah explained her technique of sorting her laundry, and in particular, how she hangs T-shirts on the line. By using no pegs and batch hanging, she is saving a ton of time each wash, which begs the question of how have I never heard about this before?!
One of the things I love about Rebekah's approach is that she is 100% realistic about what can be achieved and how it can be done. As well as offering a heap of free advice on her Facebook page she offers 1:1 support to her clients either in person or as a virtual service where you send her details of your space and she gives you an action plan on how to organize it, including product recommendations to save you time and money sourcing your own.
Such a huge delight to connect with Rebekah, I think another chat will be on the cards very soon!
