Sometimes buying on sale isn’t such a good thing. Take my client Carly, who made it her mission to only buy on sale: it didn’t matter to her if she needed, would use or had room for the item. But she’d have nowhere to put said item, and so tossed it in the basement with the other bags.
Carly, hubby and two kids live in a cute two-bedroom bungalow — a snug fit for any family, but in this case, they were bursting through the foundations. When my team came in, we found that both bedrooms were completely dysfunctional. And the basement was an unusable fire hazard.
The children’s’ stuff had spilled over into the master bedroom, which had extra dressers to accommodate kids’ clothes and mountains of stuff on the floor in front of the closet. Meanwhile, the kids’ room had no dressers, and toys and books were piled on every surface.
So we re-zoned the master bedroom, putting all the kids’ clothing back in their room and giving them dressers.
We labeled everything, and relocated most toys and books to the playroom.
As for the basement, we took everything out to the backyard, and sorted it into costumes, office, crafts, games, toys, sports, keepsakes etc. Every category was sifted through and pared down. We zoned the empty space for a seating area with media centre, and office, crafts and toy areas. We bought a five-shelf unit to hold bins of sorted toys. All excess items were sold, given away or boxed, labeled and stored in the garage. Now, after thousands of decisions about items she never knew she had, we’re hopeful Carly’s sale addiction will be kept under control.
Please come out and meet me at the International Home Show Oct. 6 to 9 at 6900 Airport Rd., and join me for one of my free organizing seminars.
Brenda Borenstein is your professional organizing guru. For more tips and ideas, visit www.organizedzone.comor call 416-665-2165.
