For the past 6 years, the St. Margaret’s Guild has produced the country’s longest running Decorators’ Show House & Gardens Event. It has been an annual tradition for my husband’s stepmom and me to walk through the doors and celebrate design within the Indianapolis community.
So imagine my delight when I was asked to participate this year, collaborating with Erin Moore from California Closets.
Read MoreIf we’ve ever worked together, than today’s resource probably looks familiar! Whenever I’m starting a new project with a client I pull out my handy organizing printables, which help keep track of which pile is which (because those piles can get pretty large after awhile).
I wanted to share this resource with each of you, because you may find yourself with a few minutes to tackle an organizing project of your own while we stay safe at home.
If you have the space, consider dedicating a portion of your garage for donations, or a spare closet for items that you intend to sell. Recyclables and trash can be dealt with as you go. And for those items that you wish to keep, take care of them! Put them on display, use them for more than a special occasion, tell stories about the items to your kids. Don’t let them collect dust or be boxed away for another time. Your future self with thank you!!
Read MoreWe are living through some intense times as of late, and my guess is a lot of you are working from home in the coming weeks. So if you are anything like me, and need a cleared-off desk to get any work accomplished, let’s chat about some ways to keep things organized.
Here are some easy tips for getting a system in place so that your desk is always ready when inspiration hits (or you simply just have to get your to-do list knocked out).
GET RID OF THE CORDS: Use a mixture of these Command Cord Bundlers and Command picture hanging strips to disguise all of your cords. Consider using the strips to attach your power strip to the side of your desk (or even underneath). Then the cord bundlers come into play to keep that tangled mess off the floor. Nothing screams “organized office” like having a cord-free environment.
This year takes the cake for being my favorite yet!
On a personal level, our not so little Pair of Baers have totally transformed our lives! Our house is louder, messier and happier than we ever could have imagined. Their laughter, smiles and snuggles bring us so. much. joy.
On a professional level, after taking time off to settle into motherhood, I came back to organizing with so much renewed energy and excitement. I mean I’m always excited to help clients feel like they’ve got it together, but I felt like I could relate on a new level after becoming a mother myself.
A few of my favorite moments of the year are:
Read MoreThis time of year, one of the most frequently asked questions in the world of organizing is something along the lines of…How do I store my wreaths?! Is a bag or box better for storing my tree? What on earth do I do with all of these ornaments?! Is it normal to spend 5 hours unraveling Christmas lights each year?
So today, I’m sharing some of my favorite hacks and the products needed for organizing your holiday decor just in time to take advantage of those big SALES starting on December 26! And better yet, a lot of these solutions utilize items you might already have on hand.
WREATH + LINEN ORGANIZER
If you’ve got a blank wall in your storage space begging to be filled, consider using Command Hooks to create a gallery wall of wreaths. Bonus points if you organize by season! Imagine a tidy grid of wreaths with Spring on the top, summer in the middle, and Fall/Winter below. I can envision it now and it has me E X C I T E D.
I continue to be introduced to incredible local organizations (and a handful of national + international organizations) that tirelessly work to put your donated items into the hands of the most deserving individuals.
My hope is that you share this guide with family and friends, post in your neighborhood Facebook group, or print it, laminate it and post inside of a cabinet door! Then, take things one step further, and think through how you might be able to tackle some of the spaces in your own home where items are gathering dust.
Ultimately, I hope this guide serves as a reminder that those items that are stacked up in our basements, garages and closets could be utilized TODAY by someone trying to make a better life for their family.
Read MoreGarages…dirt collectors, dumping grounds, heck, junkyards. Am I right?
With Summer just around the corner, I partnered with Monkey Bar Storage to share a step-by-step guide to your most organized garage yet. Imagine a clean and clear, streamlined storage space that has this season’s items accessible, next season’s items stored away and space for your vehicle. This is the stuff of dreams, people.
I’ll hand the baton over to Olivia from Monkey Bar Storage to enlighten you on just how this can be accomplished.
Read MoreFor many of us, spring signifies a fresh start! We set to surveying our belongings, decluttering items, re-organizing what is left and finally figuring out what to do with all that unused stuff.
As a professional organizer, I find clients struggle with getting rid of items because they feel a sense of guilt – maybe you spent too much money and never used it, it was a gift from a loved one, or carries special memories for your family. The following options may help ease the burden of letting those items go.
There are many organizations throughout the Indianapolis area where your items can be placed directly in the hands of someone in need. Hop on over to our homepage and download the Indianapolis Donation Guide (available here when you sign up for The Minimal-List monthly newsletter).
Read MoreLet me introduce you to my new favorite room in our house…our twin’s nursery! We are less than two weeks away from our due date and this room has been such a labor of love. We still do not know the gender of our babies, but that didn’t mean that I had to keep this room neutral, did it?
I have never been one to shy away from color when it comes to decorating my home, so our nursery was no exception! The biggest design challenge was taking this relatively small space and making it work for not one, but two babies. That second crib really threw us for a loop.
I knew I wanted to have an element of whimsy in the space and wanted to bring that in with wallpaper. I searched and searched for a statement print that I could base the rest of the room around and landed on Hunt Slonem’s bunny wallpaper. When I saw this paper up at Drapery Street in the Design Center, I knew I had to have at least a touch of it in the nursery.
This was also the first time I have ever painted walls white in my home, so I pulled in my signature stamp of color for the furniture and added a dark chair rail to break up several of the walls.
Without any further ado, here is our not-so-neutral twin nursery.
Read MoreI can’t believe this LOVEly month is coming to a close! But boy, am I ready to turn over a new leaf from this winter weather we’ve been having and kick it into Spring gear.
With so much hype around tidying and decluttering, you have probably tackled a closet or two in your home already this year. But what comes after that? I think that there is something to be said about taking some of these newfound decluttering skills one step further and applying them to your technology (desktop, photos, iPhone, etc).
If any of you have started to get the screentime updates, you are probably wanting to decrease the number of minutes (okay, hours) you spend on your phone each day. Having your home screen organized will definitely give you a bit of your precious time back. So today we focus on purging unloved and unnecessary apps and finally get after organizing our iPhones.
I am going to walk you through how to purge unused apps, organize and categorize your favorites and suggest a few new apps to keep your entire life organized.
Read MoreGuys…when people ask me what I do for a living, my eyes light up as I tell them I have the privilege of helping families get more organized in their daily lives and homes (with a dash of party styling and event planning on the side).
But it is super common for them to say in response, “I didn’t even know that was a thing.” You see, everyone is aware of hiring house cleaners, wardrobe stylists and interior designers, but home organizing sits somewhere in between.
So if you are feeling bogged down with clutter, are prepping for a major life change or are convinced that there must be a better way to maximize the space in your home, enter the beauty of a session (or two) with a professional organizer. I wanted to lay out some of the reasons why I think hiring an organizer might just be the answer to your prayers (or at least help you whittle that To-Do list down this year).
Read MoreWow! 2018 was a HUGE year (my first full year in business) for The Baer Minimalist! So many exciting transformations for clients, collaborations with realtors, countless cups of coffee shared with businesses and individuals making waves in Indianapolis, and tons of drop-offs to charities in need!
What better way to say goodbye to this last trip around the sun than by highlighting my top 10 for 2018.
Read More
