Day 4: Organizing the files on my Card

While I was transferring files last night, I noticed that I was nearing the end on of my room on the external card on my phone. Since cleaning off my card has been on my long to do list for a while, I figured it was about time to actually remove files. Some of the files are left over my three phones ago and are related to apps that wouldn't run on my current phone. I used my extra card for apps because the phones had no room on them. I also realized how many files that I had viewed at some point were still on my phone and left lots of orphans. 

I need to go through the downloads on all of our computers also.

Day 3: Organizing My Closet

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I am still unpacking from our Passover Vacation away. For the most part we got almost everything unpacked and in the laundry room rather quickly. But I left my suitcase until the end to try to keep the clutter to the mess. While we were traveling we did a side trip to the outlets in Maryland and I was able to find a bunch of really great deals at the outlets for pieces to just expand my options with outfits. I work at a more corporate building and when I started working I was pregnant, so this is the first time I am not pregnant or breast feeding, so my wardrobe was definitely in a need of a little updating.

Most of the time I keep my closet separated into sections. My dresses and long skirts in one area, my suits in another, my skirts in another, my summer weight shirts in another, my sweaters in another, and then all my jackets and cardigans. Over the last month as I was hoping for warmer weather, I started keeping everything I had worn in one section of my closet. I was hoping to try not to wear anything from that side of the closet until I had tried to use more of my wardrobe. The other reason was so I could figure out what was just sitting in my closet and no longer being worn.

Tonight as I was unpacking I decided it was a perfect time to go through the closet. I went through all of the items I hadn't worn and asked myself three questions:
1. Why didn't I wear it? (was it too cold, too warm, or not appropriate for work)
2. Would I wear this item in a different situation? (Like a formal affair, etc.)
3. Do I have something to match it?

I made pies of clothing to go away into my drawers that are no longer filled with Maternity/Nursing clothing. And then piles to try to sell or donate.

There are a ton of places to sell clothing to, but the issue with most of them is that they only want items from the last year or so to try to sell. I can understand they want to stay with the trends and styles.

We have a lot of great resources in our Jewish community to donate clothing. This is usually my first choice if I have the time. We even have a Jewish Freebay group on Facebook that I can post everything I have and give it to other people in the community.

There are also so many resources of places that will come and pick up. In other communities we have lived in that were not so fortunate to have a Jewish Freebay, we have donated to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore, Big Brothers & Big Sisters, NCJW, etc.

I wear a lot of different scarfs in my hair, so I found this great hanger and they take up a lot less room.

Home Basics 2-Piece Velvet Scarf Hanger, Purple Flowers - $5.99

I wear a tank top under a lot of my clothing, so I found these great to hold tank tops and camisoles. It works much better than trying to get them to stay on regular hangers or being lost in a drawer.

Women's sport Tank Top, Cami, Bra, Strappy Dress, Bathing Suit, Closet Organizer Hanger, Set of 2 Black - $9.99

For my husband, we bought these in the fall and they have been great.

Twirl-a-Tie Tie Rack/Organizer - $3.54


We inherited them from our first house because the previous owner made one of the bedrooms into a walk-closet and so there were lots of storage items and organizational items that were left over. My favorite thing were these crystal clear shoe box size stackable drawers. I think I have seen them at the Container Store before.

Do you need some inspiration for closet organization? 
I've been reading a lot of blogs lately about pairing down wardrobes, but one of the ones I find most intriguing is Project 333. I'm not sure I can pair down to only 33 items. Could you?

Day 2: Laundry Organization

Today I am sharing something I started a couple months ago, that has helped organize us and keep up on at all the laundry that piles up with three kids. When the kids were in swim lessons, I also added bathing suits to be washed to the mix. It will definitely go back on the list at least one time a week this summer if not more.

When Shabbat ended earlier, I would get a head start on the week and run laundry, but now by the time Shabbat ends, it is too late to get anything done. If I do this, I just mark off the laundry I finished and work on the next set of laundry that has enough to merit a load of laundry. I use this more a guideline. It also helps me keep enough time between non-dryer runs, to let the clothing actually dry.

Day 1: Organizing Cards and Important Documents

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Today, I tackled organizing our cards,

Store Cards
While we have put many of our "store cards" in Google Wallet, we have a most of them in a bin. I need to add to the todo list to register some of the cards, but that is a task for another day. I also got rid of bunch of cards that were no longer valid or that we had multiple copies of.

Store Credit Cards and Bank Cards
I didn't realize how many credit cards I had multiple copies of because I had credit cards that had expired several years ago still around. Or several copies of the same credit card.

Important Documents
I organized the copies of our important documents and other documents so they would be together.

Health Cards
The one item that I did not get rid of was Health cards. We have so many old Health Cards, but I am hesitant to give them up. Partly because I feel like because billing sometimes takes so long, that I just got a bill in December for something that had happened in June on my previous Health Provider.

30-Day Organizing

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There are 30 week days between the end of Passover and the beginning of Shavuot. Looking back at stats for my blog, I noticed there has been a lot of action on my organizing/cleaning between Purim and Passover. We haven't really made Passover in a few years, so I haven't really found the need to do a full cleaning before Passover.

This year, Passover ends right around the time it is finally getting warm. So there are a number of organizing tasks that I have had on my list forever that I am going to try to handle.

Stay tuned.

Passover Shtick

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Purim has come and gone and I often try to think about Passover. We are lucky to spend the holiday and sederim with family so I close up the house for the week and we head over to my in-laws. One of my joys and challenges is looking for fun stuff to add to the Passover table. I should note, we did this even before there were children. We've had shower caps for animals, jumping frogs, wind up frogs, ping pong balls, and more.

Here are some fun items I have found:

Passover Bingo

Free Passover Bingo Cards (Art by Dina)

Passover Puppets

Passover 10 Plagues Puppet Kit

Plague Masks

Passover Plague Masks, 10ct

Passover Seder Plate Mold

Cybrtrayd R300 Seder Plate Chocolate Candy Mold 

Blood:

Fake Blood Novelty Toy

Frogs:

Stretchable Flying Frogs (1 dz)

Cybrtrayd A126 Frog Chocolate Candy Mold

Lice

Creepy Ants Halloween Prop

Wild Beasts

Mini Wild Animals

Cattle

Fun Shower Cap. Choose - Shark, Pig, Cow, Frog, Duck, Bull. (Cow)

Boils

Avery Permanent Color Coding Labels, 0.25 Inches, Round, Pack of 450 (5790)

Hail

Practice Ping Pong Balls - Table Tennis Balls

Locust/Insects

Darice 1029-03 16-Piece Plastic Insects, 2-Inch

Glow In The Dark Critter Assortment - 144 per unit

Darkness

Animal Print Sunglasses Assortment (1 dz) (colors may vary)

Death of the First Born

Bendable Skeletons (1 Dozen= 12 Pcs.)

Edible Plagues

Check out edible Plague treats at Cook Kosher.

Some interesting ways to contribute this Purim

There are four main mitzvot that are associated with Purim.
1. Hearing the Megillah read
2. Seudah Purim (what Jewish holiday doesn't have something to either eating or not eating)
3. Mishloach Manot (sending small gifts to friends)
4. Matanot L'evyonim (gifts to the poor)

I am truly fascinated by the creativity and the energy that people put into making Mishloah Manot. It's even more amazing that they people figure out how to match their Purim costumes with their Mishloah manot. I wish I had the time to be so creative in thinking far enough ahead to be able to be so thematic. But my concentration is usually on where we are donating our money and thinking about different places that we can help. We usually focus on Jewish organizations that help people who are hungry during Purim.

Here are some of the few I have donated to in the past:

1. SOVA- this is what I grew up with contributing to in Los Angeles. I remember we would often do food drives before Yom Kippur and Purim/Pesach. When I was in High School, the youth group I was part of would not only collect money to donate, but we would also volunteer our time for SOVA.
2. Mazon- In the past we have found it easy to make Purim donations.
3. Leket Israel - Leket is by far the easiest one to make Purim donations. They are set up and ready to go for the Purim holiday. You can easily make donations in honor of people.

Have you thought about thought about how you are following along with Megillah reading:

I'd like to point out an app for Megillah Reading that's a couple years old. It's easy to follow along or even learn how to read Megillah with. It's available for the desktop, iOS, and Android. It's built using the same technology as Pocket Torah. It's really easy to use to learn how to read or just to follow along during the reading. When you are juggling children and listening, sometimes it's much easier to have something to follow on your phone instead of a book.