I’ve heard a lot about Personal Planner from some of my Blogger friends who got them after going to Britmums. They sound great, as they are so customisable. You can choose what you want at the bottom of each page out of to-do list, ideas box, section for school/preschool memos and more. Then at the back, you can choose between some fun extras like colouring pages or sudoku. If you want to be more sensible, you can go for extra plain pages or an address section or loads more choices – but personally I have to admit I would be going for the colouring pages on mine! You can not beat a bit of colouring in now and again, it’s relaxing! Of course you can personalise the front cover too – with photograph, name and text of your choice.
I am going to be trying out one of the planners in time for the new year and I’m really looking forward to designing it and then getting organised by using my new planner. It will definitely be a big improvement on my current system of scribbling all my to-dos into a notebook in a random fashion! I will make sure to update you all how I get on with it.
Meanwhile, if you would like the chance to win a personal planner for yourself, enter via the Rafflecopter below:
I really hate it when the house is in a mess, but lately I have noticed more and more clutter starting to accumulate everywhere so I am thinking of taking a weekend just to totally declutter it all. With the children back at school for a new school year (well, 1.5 of them atleast! :D) giving me a couple more free hours in the day, It is definitely time to think about decluttering the home
The children’s playroom is actually the worst culprit at the moment. We have the Ikea Expedit system in their room which I do love, but I made the mistake of buying more boxes thinking it will make everything more organised and in fact it hasn’t. The children can now not see where everything is so they keep tipping everything out, toys are being put in the wrong boxes and mixed up horribly and the whole thing is turning into a disaster. I need to clear out the clutter and rubbish, sort everything, label up all the boxes and hopefully order will be restored.
The children’s clothes are another area which needs sorting out, as they keep outgrowing things! I also want to go through and put away all the summer clothes now that Autumn seems to have arrived.
I do wonder about doing a car boot sale or selling a lot of our unwanted things on ebay but I sometime find we don’t get around to it. I do find it worthwhile to sell the bigger items though to make some extra money while clearing out. It is quite easy to sell old consoles online and this is something we will have to think of doing if we decided to upgrade our Xbox when the new Xbox one comes out.
My to-do list is:
Sort out all the toys, get rid of some of the extra boxes or move them upstairs. Have more toys on display so the children can easily see which ones to take without pouring everything on the floor
New book case for the children’s playroom, and then clear out some of the very young baby books to pass on to friends with younger children
New labels for all the toy boxes we do keep. I am thinking photos of the contents, attached the outside of each box as well as written labels
Organise children’s clothes. Summer clothes to put away and clothes that are outgrown to go to the charity shop.
Sort out and sell any old consoles, phones (I will be upgrading my phone soon I hope!) and clear out any old dvds or games to make space.
I don’t enjoy decluttering it always takes so long but the end results will be worth it! I will keep looking at all the gorgeous rooms on Pinterest for motivation!!
Do any of you have any decluttering tips for me, or great ideas to share especially for toy storage? Let me know in the comments!
As its coming up to back to school time, it’s not only the children who need to get all their school supplies ready, as parents there can be a lot to keep track of during term time so the new school year is a great time to think about improving organisation, and getting our home space organised to easily keep a track of who needs to be where, what needs to be done and when, what needs to be paid, what needs to be bought, and all the little things that need doing day to day.
I had the chance to review some products from the Martha Stewart Home Office Wall Order range, which you can see below.
This is a modular system, so the picture you see above is made up of four wall mounted sections that are each bought separately, and then you can add shelves, drawers and other accessories.
I was really excited to try out this system, I love the idea of it and I often find myself with paper work, pens and various little things cluttering up one corner of my kitchen so I was hoping to take down my old pinboard and replace it with this system to make that area look so much more organised, neat, and much more appealing.
The boards come with an inbuilt spirit level, and four nails to attach each one to the wall. I got my husband to do this as I am not brilliant at even simple DIY, unfortunately it does not seem to be one of my strengths so I leave it to him. I asked him to attach the boards to my preferred wall in the kitchen, without considering what time of wall it is. With it being an external wall it was not easy at all for him to hammer the nails into the wall, they were getting bent out of shape and not going through so we had no choice but to rethink the location.
We decided to attach the boards to the inside of the cupboard door under the stairs, as this is another place that I like to keep things to hand and the surface was much easier to attach the nails.
Once we had attached the wall panels it was very easy to attach the accessories. The drawers, shelf and storage just slot in sideways onto the wall organiser.
As you can see, I was sent two wall panels. The upper panel is a magnetic board which is great for attaching small notices or reminders and the lower section is a really versatile one which can be customised in so many ways, by putting the different drawers, shelves and containers wherever you like within the space of the wall panel and can be rearranged as often as you like. I have included a small shelf at the bottom, a set of two drawers, and a storage compartment at the top. I am keeping post it notes and pens here so that I can write a quick reminder to myself while I am on the go.
I was a little disappointed that I was not able to wall mount this in the spot I had in mind, but it will still be really useful for me to help keep me organised. From September, we are thinking of starting Mr R in nursery for a couple of days. This will mean all three kids in different schools, then there is all the speech therapy and other appointments starting up again for T, the meetings with school and nursery SENCOs, and all the other day to day things to remember once school is back. Now that this is placed on the door, I will see it everyday when taking out the shoes so I can see it coming in really handy for last minute reminders and check lists to make sure everything is remembered and nothing gets overlooked.
The Wall Accessory boards are £13.00, and accessories priced from £2.00 to £10.00