Omaha Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Organizing
Put your best organizing/cleaning tips here. I need some serious help at my house! 
Re: Organizing
love is for every her, love is for every him, love is for everyone
Me too.
I need to purge, badly.
I am this II close to hiring a cleaning company and I don't care if dh thinks it's a waste of money. I can't keep up with kids, a house, work, a life. And I know that his mom could come over and do it, it's just, it doesn't sit right with me having her clean my toilets. A stranger cleaning them, I'm okay with that.
Something Nate Burkus said awhile back and it makes since and I would love to do it.
Box everything up as though you are moving, move the boxes out of your room. Then one box at a time, unpack back in the room and pitch the crap you don't need and only put away stuff you do need. And while you are doing that organize.
Another thing to not make it so hard. Is take one week for a room. Each night pick a section in that room and organize, purge and clean it. The next week, pick a new room.
Is there a specific room you are wanting to organize right now?
I'm the most unorganized person I've ever met, so not the best person to give advice, but buying a cheap, $20 paper shredder was a good investment. We would let mail (mostly junk!) stack up piles high before someone gets annoyed enough to do something with it. Now, the shredder's plugged in, right next to our mail stand and we'll shred the junk right away so we're only left with the important stuff.
Another thing I've been trying to do is finding a place for everything. If it doesn't have a place, it doesn't belong and I thrift it.
Our storage ottoman/coffee table thingy (like $70 or so from Target a few years ago) is nice if one has to stash things quickly, i.e. "The in/out-laws will be here in 10 minutes!"
And, that's all I've got. I hope others chime in. Maybe post specific problem areas you've got?
Here are some other tips. That I need to put into practice because we still have boxes from our move 4 years ago we haven't unpacked.
1) If you haven't used it in 1-2 years, get rid of it.
2) For clothes, at the beginning of the year take all your clothes and hang them so the hanger hook opening points towards you. As you wear the clothing, wash and rehang, hang it up the opposite way. At the end of the year or length of time you deem, if the hanger hasn't turned the other way, get rid of the clothes.
3) A practice my friend always did, when she would buy a new piece of clothing, she would get rid of one piece of clothing.
4) The shredder idea is another good idea I have read about. Plus it is always good thing to shred your names on mailings.
5) For kids artwork or school. I put all items in a folder and then at the end of the year, go through and keep what you want and pitch what you don't want. Then put them in a hanging file folder in a box to give to them when they get older.
6) For artwork, scan and save on your computer.
7) Then I also use RealSimple.com for other ideas.
The best thing I have done is sign up for as many e-bills as possible. I absolutely hate getting bills in the mail when the charge is an auto-duduct! This has cut our mail in half, at least.
I am totally going to do this:
.............Waves............
Hi! Have we ever met? I was pretty sure that I was the most unorganized person ever.
We pull EVERYTHING out of a closet/cabinet at least 2 times/year. Purge what we don't need/want, and then reorganize it so it works better for our family.