All this stuff

So, as my husband and I round out our last few days in Hong Kong for the year with school work and job work and crazy philosophy barbecues, we got an email from some American friends of ours who have been staying in HK for a semester as lecturers (ahh academics). They told us they were leaving within two days and were hoping to get rid of a few things that we might have use for. When my husband heard the words "toaster oven", the words "of our very own" popped into his mind and he was sold - we were going to sort through stuff. Just a few things, right?

So after a long walk on a bum knee (my knee, not his) and a ride on the metro, we get to their by-the-month hotel apartment to look at "a few things". A few things turned out to be six huge bags worth of stuff - and we didn't even take everything they offered us. Two large bags that we use as luggage when we travel, plus a huge mesh laundry bag full of dry food products, two huge tote bags of items and a large insulated freezer bag. We ended up with all this stuff to put in our apartment: more than 2000hkd worth of food, blankets, pillowcases, the contents of an entire medicine cabinet that they didn't want to haul back, foldable drawer space, plastic bins, water filters, kitchen utensils AND a toaster oven.

Now the question really is... what are WE going to do with all this stuff?

Your stuff in the comments. :) Happy Rabbit-rabbit day.

October Post: Get Organized II

So I got some great comments on Monday's blog post about getting organized! Laura @ Catharsis shared her love of cozi.com - a site that helps you keep your life together using your tablet or smart phone. If I had a phone, I'm sure I'd be all over this. You can connect with all of your family members so that everyone uploads their schedules onto a common calendar, you can create to do lists for everyone so that you can stay on the same page. Very cool site.

Jamie @ Chosenchaos pointed me in the direct of Erin Condren organizers. You can find some gorgeous bound organizers at this site filled with bright bold colors, useful tabs and great holiday/event ideas.

Thanks for sharing!

Source: eighteen25.blogspot.com via Carina on Pinterest

The last organizer that I want to share with you today is all about getting ready for the holidays. The blog eighteen25 brings us this awesome holiday organizer for those of you with long lists of holiday cheer to spread. The site gives you a step-by-step rundown of how to create your own holiday organizer from a composition notebook, some scrapbook or wrapping paper and some of their nifty printables. They even help you create tabs for your coupons, your gift lists, your Christmas cards and that calendar to help count down to the big day. If you're big on the holidays and always feel the stress come on the week before Thanksgiving, then this is the book for you.

Leave a comment to let me know you stopped by! Tell me how you beat the holiday stress and keep yourself organized.  :)

October Post: And you thought you were busy before

This week's October posts will be dedicated to the current state of affairs in my household: BUSY! I know that I've been having a tough time fitting it all in and as we start creeping up on those big family holidays (Halloween - especially for those with kids, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's), work and shopping and cooking and cleaning and cards and every last thing that you never wanted to worry about at the same time will all start coming together.

Breathe folks! Don't let that above paragraph give you anxiety. This week's going to be about keeping it all under control, setting some goals for ourselves and keeping a master plan. The thing to do isn't to try to organize your life in one swift go - it's to start by making small parts of your life organized and then starting to organize outward.

The first resource I'm going to talk about is an entire website getting and staying organized. The ladies at Get Buttoned Up are some serious planning people! They have lists for reducing your lists - which is meta-listing. That's how serious these women get.

But you don't have to be that serious (or even have obsessive compulsive tendencies) to use some of the fabulous resources that these ladies make available for free on their Free Tools and Downloads page. Here's my favorite list that I've started using:

I started using this for midterm goals (a few months) and I've found that it really worked for me. It's great to be able to break a project down into small pieces and set deadlines for yourself. I created this chart and found that I actually got ahead on the first three tasks, so I had time to do the last two at a slower, more reasonable pace. This could be used for holiday planning, your Christmas list, cooking for Thanksgiving, arranging a party, or just getting a project done around the house. 

Another great resource that I don't think people use enough is a calendar. When I think of calendar use, I tend to think of the one calendar at my parents house on which the birthdays get written every year. Once a month (usually) my parents sit down and write general plans that they know about on the calendar and then it hangs on the wall... never to be touched again. Or at least not usually. 

Personally, I've taken to using a weekly planner, which helps me keep my job and master's work in order - gotta keep those deadlines straight! There are, however, dozens of ways to make calendars more accessible and useful:

-Set up a dry erase board weekly calendar on your fridge. Use it to remember which nights you or the kids have events and activities, plan meals for the week, remind yourself that there's a birthday you really shouldn't miss on Thursday and that Wednesday is the day you're husband/roommate/live in occupational therapist has a late deadline, so you're only cooking for one. 

- Find a nice planner that you feel comfortable writing down goals and making plans in.

- Create your own holiday planner, complete with calendar and lists of to dos on a manageable schedule (MORE ON THIS FRIDAY).

Get free calendars from sites like Calendar Labs where you can find free printable calendars of all kinds, or even your own gmail or microsoft outlook. People forget all the attachments these great accounts - and they appear right in your inbox. 

So tell me, folks. How do you organize? Or, maybe more interestingly, how do you go nuts in the fall preparing for the holidays?

Please leave me a comment and to let me know you stopped by! Also consider stopping by lovelinks, where I've submitted this post.