Blog: Get Organized
We're excited to return to our blog with some wonderful news – Next Level Organizing was recently featured in Greenwich Time's Real Estate section!
The January 10th article tells our story, from my early days in NYC fashion to discovering my passion for professional organizing. What started as a summer of organizing friends' and family's homes in 2007 has grown into a thriving team of eight professional organizers serving Fairfield and New Haven Counties.
In the feature, I shared our core philosophy: there's no "perfect" organization system – only what works best for each client. Every space and family is unique, which is why we focus on creating customized solutions that truly serve our clients' needs.
For those looking to jump-start their organization journey, here are a few key tips I shared in the article:
• Edit and tidy closets seasonally
• Create designated "homes" for belongings
• Keep lesser-used items out of high-traffic areas
• Establish daily family routines for tidying
We're looking forward to sharing more organizational insights and success stories with you throughout 2025.
Stay organized!
The start of a new season is the perfect time to address your entryway organizing needs. Your entryway not only sets the tone for your home but it should also be functional and support your family’s comings and goings. Whether you have a mudroom, a coat closet or a wall with hooks, these simple tips will help your entryway get and stay organized!
As I prep for the 2020-2021 school year, like most parents I have more questions than answers. It looks like my children along with many others will be starting the school year with the “Hybrid Plan” which means they will be in school 2 days per week and at home doing distance learning 3 days per week. I don’t really understand how their day will be set up while they are at school or at home, who their teachers will be or if they will have friends in their classes. I also don’t know how long this will all be going on for. Frankly, there’s just a whole lot of uncertainly surrounding this upcoming year. For a peek at how my family managed distance learning in the Spring, you can read about it here.
Despite the uncertainly of it all, I am choosing to look at all the positives and focus on what we can control for our upcoming school year. For our family, that means creating a plan and space for at-home learning that fosters success for our children as well as two at-home working parents.
As with all things parenting, at-home learning is not for the faint of heart. I won’t pretend any of this is easy or perfect. I am also sharing this from the perspective of a working parent with flexible hours with children 5 and 8 years old who do not have special needs. This will look very different in each family’s home based on their own children’s ages, needs, parents’/caregivers’ schedules, house set up and too many other factors to mention. No matter your circumstance, I hope you can find at least one or two of these tips helpful as you set up your own at-home learning space for your family.
Mother’s Day during a Pandemic looks a little different than in years past. One thing that’s not different is what mom really wants as her gifts. SPOILER ALERT: It’s NOT stuff and it won’t cost you a dime.
We’ve heard from a lot of mamas out there and we’ve compiled a list of our favorites in no particular order:
Thanks to COVID-19 things aren’t “normal”. My family, probably like yours, is home. That’s not normal. My husband is usually at work in an office building. I am usually all over the state working in client’s homes with my team. My kids are usually at school and at dance and hanging with their beloved babysitter in the afternoons. Not anymore. We are all home and it looks like that is our reality for a while.
After the initial shock of it all, came acceptance and a certain feeling of a challenge posed before me that I had no choice but to accept. I was no longer a full-time working mom but now a very part-time working mom and full-time homeschooler to a kindergartener and second grader. Ever the organizer, I needed to figure out what this was going to look like. It was immediately obvious to me that I needed to keep things as normal as possible for my kids (and also for myself) to cope during this unprecedented time.
Organizing papers may not be the most exciting task BUT it is ever so satisfying once you’ve tackled it!
People ask me all the time what my favorite organizing tools are. At the most basic level I truly believe the best tools come from within - desire, a strong work ethic, and determination to see a project through. With these inner tools, you can truly organize any space.
That being said, most spaces that the team and I organize do involve bringing new product into the home. It’s a fine line we walk with doing our best not to add more clutter to a space and adding useful products that look good too. Come join me today on THE ZHUSH as I talk about my favorite Amazon organizing finds to take your home to the NEXT LEVEL!
We turned 10 TODAY!!! It has been said to me often as a parent, don’t blink…it goes so fast. There is so much truth to that statement! Well the same goes to owning your own business or let’s be honest just life in general. Where does the time go? 10 years flew by in an instant and I am grateful for each moment! Grateful for my clients, my family, my team and all the lessons learned along the way.
As I reflect on the many drawers, closets, playrooms, offices and basements throughout the years I am flooded with the tips and tricks I have learned. You can see a few I mentioned in a recent Cottages & Gardens article here but here is a longer list of my favorite 10 tips in honor of my 10 years in business. Have tips you would like to share? Comment below. I LOVE learning new tricks and especially how organizing helps others!
Let’s talk laundry with kids. I will be the first to admit that it is not one of my favorite household tasks to say the least. It often feels never ending and can sometimes even feel daunting. **As write this post I want to be clear that we divvy up the chores in our home and laundry is one of the household tasks I choose to take on. Frankly I prefer my folding to the hubs ;) so it just works for us**
As we near the end of September and Save Your Photos month, we wanted to share one last tip to help you on your photo organization journey. DELETE your unwanted photos! (Clearly advice from a professional organizer- let go of the things that don’t serve you)…
If you’ve been following along with our Save Your Photos month tips to save, share and enjoy your photos you already know how to “favorite” your best photos. Check out our post from Friday if you missed it…
In honor of Save Your Photos month, we’ve been sharing our favorite tips to save, share and enjoy your photos. Today’s simple tip is to “favorite” your most favorite photos. Many of you probably already do this, but if you don’t this would be a great feature to try...and I’ll tell you why we love it so much (I think you’re going to love it too)…
If you own a smartphone I can safely assume you have lots of photos on your device. I mean LOTS! Having all those images at your fingertips is wonderful for many reasons...yet so often most of those images just sit there not being enjoyed and shared…
What is Metadata and why is it important to my photos? Metadata in the digital form is information about your photo that is digitally attached to your photo file. Remember the days of printed photos when you’d scribble the dates and important facts on the back of your photos?…
A photo hub is the foundation of an organized photo collection, but what exactly is it? It is one designated spot where ALL of your photos live. When your photos live in multiple locations, it makes sorting and locating them difficult and even stressful. Creating a photo hub will make it easier to locate your images as well as put a backup system into place…
Whether you are starting a photo organizing project or not, we always recommend backing up your computer. We recommend the trusted 3-2-1 Backup Strategy…
Did you know that September is #saveyourphotos month? We are passionate about preserving and enjoying our own family photos and know that our clients are just as passionate! We live in a time when we are taking more photos & video than ever before yet, they are more at risk to being lost…
Happy Summer! I hope you all enjoyed the glorious Summer Solstice we had this week. The weather was perfect and I had an awesome day sharing it with my kiddos…which brings me to this blog post…
Happy spring!! I love spring and the emerging green colors I see, the reclaimed time spent outdoors with my family and the longer daylight hours in the evening. Truth be told, I also love that spring is a time when we tend to evaluate and take extra care of our belongings. Home repairs are planned for, garden beds are spruced up and our off-season belongings get a fresh look see…
If you have children of any age in your life I can only assume the answer is a big old Y-E-S!!! With little ones at home, the artwork comes in daily! Even if you have adult children, chances are you still have a backlog of their artwork tucked away somewhere. Our little ones (& big ones too) are such prolific artists that it’s hard to keep up and honor all that they create. So what is a parent to do?…
Happy New Year!!! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with your family! I was lucky to share some truly wonderful moments with my kids, my husband, and my extended family. We shared lots of food, gifts and most especially lots of love and laughter. As much as I enjoy some extra time off and all the celebrating, come January 2nd I always appreciate getting back to routines and setting into motion some goals for the year ahead…
It’s the start of December which means that the holidays are in full swing in my home! Trees are lit and decorated, stockings are hung, and Christmas music now fills the air. We (adults) are doing our best to enjoy all that the holidays bring while trying to reduce the stress that comes along with it. It’s a learned skill and is something I am always trying to improve on…
Get Organized for the Holidays….really??!! But it’s not even Halloween!! I know I know….I hate rushing through the fall holidays just as much as the next person, so why even bring it up? Well, this year wouldn’t it be great if you could save money, save time, create less waste, give back and most of all enjoy the holiday season with your loved ones?? Well, you’re in luck because I’ve come up with 3 Super Simple Tips to help you Get Organized for the Holidays starting today! So here goes…
After learning what I do for a living, usually the first thing I hear in response is “your house must look perfect!” or something with a similar sentiment. Well, let me first clear the air about that. In some ways, YES my house does look neat. The living room and dining room typically look good and tidy on a daily basis…
Being organized can look (very) different in different homes. The way I see it, being organized means being able to find what you need when you need it. That’s it. So what does that mean? It means that all items in your home should have their own home that makes sense for how you live. If you have to check five different locations to find your hammer, favorite t-shirt or magic markers, chances are your home needs some organizational tweaks…
There are two truths I have learned when it comes to organizing:
1.) It feels good when our space is organized.
2.) It feels good when we like the way we look.
This second truth may not seem like it relates to organizing but I assure you it does. The way I see it, if you have a perfectly organized clothing closet but you don’t actually wear the clothes because they don’t fit or are no longer your style….what’s the point of an organized closet? A truly organized closet not only visually looks good but also reflects your current style with what fits and what you actually love to wear and see in your space. More on that later.
Whether you are wearing jeans, pants or shorts this season, we’ve got you covered with our folding tips here!
No matter your shelf or drawer space, these folds are our go to favorites.
For a step by step video tutorial of all of our favorite folds, check out our folding tutorial video below!
*Pro Tip - For all pant and short folds, tuck in the seat of the pants toward the middle of the leg to create a tidy fold.