14 Day Challenge Archives - Ask Anna

Can you believe you’ve made it through the entire challenge!? I am so proud of each one of you and I have truly enjoyed seeing your completed tasks. As a thank you for all of your hard work today I have a little gift for you. It’s a free printable of my cleaning schedule and it’s brand new, hot off the press!

It’s easy to get clean an organized once, but to stay clean and organized is a challenge in and of itself. This year I am challenging all of us {including myself} to get on a cleaning schedule and to do your best, that’s all an of us can do!

When writing this post I did a search on the internet for cleaning schedules, that I might actually like, and was disappointed to only find one. Frustrated I emailed my friend Maria, of Agape Love Designs, and asked her to make me my very own Ask Anna cleaning checklist printables. I’m not one for making printables but I knew what I wanted on each checklist, so together I think we came up with something pretty awesome.

I hope you love them as much as I do! It’s everything that needs to be done daily, weekly, monthly and every 6 months, on a pretty little print out just for you! There is also a blank printout if you want to create your own.

Printable version

Your challenge today is a fun one. Print out however many printouts you would like and then frame them, laminate them, or do whatever you want with them. Get creative!!!

I know these cleaning checklist printables will help all of us to stay clean and organized in 2012, and I am honored that I got to help each of you get your year started that way! Thank you so much for joining me on this 3 week journey! I have lots of fun things planned for 2012 and I hope you will join me for all of them!!!

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Day #13: Storing Seasonal Decorations

Anna — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:28:00 +0000

I have been asked many times how to organize and store seasonal decorations. Since we are starting 2012 clean and organized I thought this would be a good time to tackle this subject.

I store my seasonal decorations in three different locations: baskets above the laundry room shelves, the storage closet in our guest bedroom and the garage. Let me explain.

There are three different types of seasonal decorations:

#1 Holiday decorations that are only used once a year

#2 Candles and small accessories that can be switched out throughout the year

#3 Vases and artificial flowers, plants, etc.

Since I only use my Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations once a year, I store them in the garage on the top of our shelves.

Don’t you love my trash bag wreath holders? I know I should invest in some nice plastic wreath containers but I’m just too cheap!

The rest of my seasonal decoration are stored in the house. I get bored with my house looking the same all the time so I make sure that decoration types 2 and 3 are easy to access.

Candles and other small accessories are stored in my laundry room above the shelves. When I organized my laundry room a few months ago I decided to utilize that space for candles and nick-knacks that I’m always getting in and out of. I’m not kidding you, I change things up all the time. It’s kind of game I play with my hubby, it’s called “can you tell what I changed today?”.

Larger decorations, such as vases, artificial plants and picture frames, are stored in our guest closet. I use the top shelf of my storage shelves for smaller items and the top of my filing cabinet for taller items that won’t fit anywhere else.

My other little trick for storing artificial flowers and plants is to store them in a wrapping paper storage container. It is the only storage container I have found that is tall enough to store them without having to bend them or squish them. Plus it is quite large so it holds a lot of flowers. {You can see mine hiding behind the potted orchid}.

So your challenge for today is to organize your seasonal decorations! Pull everything out and then divide them into the three categories. Well, you don’t have to pull out your holiday decorations, just make sure that they are organized and stored nicely in the garage or attic. Gather the rest of your decor items and use baskets, plastic containers, old boxes, whatever you have, to organize them so that they are easy to access and easy to switch out.

Make sure that when you are looking through your decorations, that you throw away, or donate, any items that you haven’t used in over a year. Our styles change so if you haven’t used it in the past year then you probably won’t use it again. Get your friends to join this challenge with you and then have a decoration swap night! My friends and I do this at least once a year and it’s so fun getting new things for free!

Have fun organizing your decorations today! Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and I have a great printable for you! Can’t wait for you to see it!!!

You can find the full list of the 14 Day Challenge HERE!

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Day #12: Organizing with Binders – Manuals & Warranties

Anna — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:37:00 +0000

Today we are going to be organizing with binder for all of our manuals and warranties!

Manuals are tricky to store because they are all different sizes, different thicknesses, and you probably have about 1,000 of them, one for every item in your house! Ugh! There should be a rule that they all have to be a certain size. It would really make our lives easier.

For years I have had all our manuals stored in our file cabinet. As the years have gone by, and we’ve bought more stuff, it was getting too cluttered and wasn’t working for me any more.

I liked the idea of using a binder for my manuals and warranties, so when I saw this post I created a plan! I headed out to Target, with a little bit of money I had left on a gift card, and grabbed the funnest binder I could find! I also grabbed some sheet protectors so that I could slide the manuals into them, instead of hole punching them.

#1 Then I took my folder of manuals and warranties out and sorted through them. I put them into categories: appliances, electronics, furniture, Malea’s toys, etc. I also threw out any manuals/warranties to items we no longer owned.

#2 Then I slid each manual/warranty into one of the sheet protectors and placed it in the binder.

When I was done the binder was packed full. I think if I buy one more appliance I’m going to have to get a new binder! I like this one though so I’m keeping it for now.

Once I was finished I placed the binder on one of the shelves in our storage closet. Now I have lots of extra room in my file cabinet and all my manuals & warranties are easy to find when I need them.

Here is another great idea that I saw over at The Nest Effect. She purchased this portable expanding file to store her manuals. They are stored in alphabetical order by brand name.

Have fun organizing your manuals today!

You can find the full list of the 14 Day Challenge HERE!

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Day #11: How to Organize Cords & Chargers

Anna — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Storing extra cords and chargers can be a pain because they can create quite a bit of clutter. But today I’m going to give you some tips for making it easier!

I store all of our extra cords and charges in our entryway table. The drawers are wide and deep so they work perfectly for storing them. However they can also get quite messy. Here is what the drawers in my entry table looked like before I organized them:

{YIKES!}
Basically it was just a mumble jumble of cords, chargers, etc.

To organize them I applied the same rules that I do to every other organization task.

#1 Pull everything out

#2 Categorize the items: chargers, iPod cords, running stuff, etc.

#3 Sort them into baskets according to each category.

This is what it looked like when I was finished:

{Much better!}

Cords, chargers, etc. are now easy to find when we need them.

If you don’t have an extra set of drawers for your cords here is another great idea I found over at The Creativity Exchange.

She purchased a large binder and then punched holes in baggies to store all of her cords, chargers, etc. I love this idea!

Here are a couple other great ideas:

Source

I can’t wait to see how you choose to organize your cords and chargers!

You can find the full list of the 14 Day Challenge HERE!

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