Category: Blog

My top tips for packing for your holiday!

Summer is well and truly here and children up and down the country have broken up for the summer holidays. Hurray I hear you shout!

If you’re going abroad this year, you’re probably thinking about packing very soon. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be trying to take way more than you actually need, because you never know what you’ll need!

Here are my top tips to help maximise your packing:

  1. have a small bag that is your power pack and assign this to someone to be responsible for the entire journey – pack passports, boarding passes, hotel booking print-outs, money, inhalers and essential medicines so that they are available whenever needed. This can be stashed in hand luggage if required as long as its secure
  2. make a list outlining the activities for each day that you are away – now plan outfits for each day (including changes and underwear)
  3. Ensure you have enough suitable outfits for each day and the day you travel home! Take tops and bottoms that you can mix and match and take Travel Wash to freshen them up between wears
  4. Use a roll-up compression bag to reduce the size of items that don’t crease – swim wear, underwear, bulky sweatshirts etc
  5. If you need to take shirts and other smart items in a small carry-on or rucksack – use Shirts Bag to ensure it all remains neat in your bag
  6. Get out the shoes you want to take – take shoes that can go with multiple outfits to avoid needing to take lots
  7. Take a quick drying sports towel for the beach as it takes up less space in your luggage and has the added benefit of drying quickly after each use (great for the last day when you need to pack after the pool!)
  8. Remember you can only take 1 litre of liquids in carry on and they must be in a small plastic bag. Take multi-purpose products if you can – all-in-one shampoo and conditioner or shampoo/bodywash are great examples
  9. Decant your face creams into smaller bottles or jars to fit them into your allocation
  10. Buy compressed deodorants and travel toothpaste as these are in smaller containers
  11. Get a multi-port charger so that you just need to take 1 plug and multiple cables to charge a number of devices
  12. Don’t forget a bag for dirty washing

Whilst we are talking about getting organised, don’t forget to:

  • Dig out EHICs and check they are in date if you are going to Europe
  • Find out your passports and make sure that they are all in date and crucially you can find them!
  • Check-in and print your boarding passes as soon as you can – there is nothing worse than coming to print them the day before to find you’ve run out of printer ink
  • email or save your insurance policy and contacts to your phone so that you have them for reference

About OrganisedWell

Would you like help getting organised?

Laura Williams, Founder and Professional OrganiserIf you need guidance, ideas and practical support to make more of your home, organise your possessions in a way that supports your best life or to get started with your decluttering project, then give me a call.

We provide tailored advice and practical support to clients looking to make changes, to create calm, ordered space and free up time and money to focus on the important things in life. We specialise in organising rooms, garages, wardrobes, paperwork and much more; see our services or get in touch.

Mental Health – How to stay happy with being at home

Do you spend a lot of time on your own? Whatever the reason, it’s important to look after your mental health. Here are my top tips to staying sane.

There are lots of reasons why you may spend a lot of time at home; you might be a full-time Mum, a home-keeper, self-employed, retired, long-term sick or any other reason. But whatever it is, it’s important to look after your mental health and stop the walls from closing in on you.  After all, your house should be your home and not your prison.

Being based at home has so many benefits, but it can also have its downsides. It can be lonely, you can feel isolated and if you don’t look after your mental health it can start to get you very down.  The more time you spend on you own, the more it can lead you to not wanting to socialise.  But humans are pack animals, we need human company to keep us happy,  So how do you look after your mental health and keep happy with being at home?

I’m not a mental health expert, but I am someone that has been at home a lot.  During my life, I’ve been unemployed, a full-time mum and now I’m self-employed and run my business from my spare room.  I also have a mum, who is retired and lives on her own.  So, although I’m not an expert, I am someone who understands how important it is to look after your mental health when you spend large periods of time in your home alone.  So, I wanted to share my top tips that help me and my mum, to help you stay happy!

My Top Tips to Look After your Mental Health

Don’t sit in silence

Make sure you have background noise of some sort. I tend to have radio 2 quietly babbling away all day, barely loud enough to hear, but the sound of chatter makes me feel like I’m not on my own

Keep in contact

When you feel like you’ve not spoken to anyone all day, you probably haven’t! Pick up the phone and speak to someone.

Get out of the house

First and foremost your house is your home, keep it that way. If it’s starting to feel like a prison you need a change of scenery. Go for a walk, go to a café, visit a friend for coffee – have a change of scenery!

Go for regular walks

It will clear your head and get oxygen into your lungs. It also gives your brain new stimulus by seeing different things to your four walls. And, you never know, you might bump into someone for an impromptu conversation!

Join a group

There are lots of different local groups for different hobbies; singing, keep-fit, golf, art – there is probably something for anything you can think of.  Do some research, try your local library and Facebook is a great tool if you know how to use it!  If you’re retired, you may want to think about joining the U3A (the University of the Third Age, is for retired and semi-retired people who come together for their educational, social and creative interests).

Set yourself goals

What is it you want to achieve today? Don’t overwhelm yourself, but set yourself an achievable goal and do it. Whether that’s just to go to buy the ingredients for dinner, going for a jog, or clearing the spare room.  It doesn’t matter what, but try to achieve something you want to do today.

Don’t despair

Feeling isolated comes to us all at times! You just need to find the right way for you to get through it.

I spend my time working with small business and start-ups, many of them are people working on their own and feeling of isolation has affected them all.

Not Making Time to Declutter?

As our lives flash by at the speed of light, it’s so hard to find time to tackle our homes, especially when the muddle has built up a bit. But can we afford not to when we spend 10 minutes everyday looking for things we know we have but can’t find?

As our lives flash by at the speed of light, it’s so hard to find time to tackle our homes, especially when the muddle has built up a bit.

We expect to fit so much in! We need to work, care for family, maybe care for pets, keep up with housework, the garden and DIY, ferry children to clubs and social commitments, want to spend quality time with loved ones, keep in contact with friends, have our own hobbies (if we are lucky!), maybe want to keep fit and more! There’s a lot of pressure.

People say to me that they don’t have time to tackle their clutter and I understand, it can feel like that. But actually we are making a choice, anything can be a priority if we make it so. What we have to decide is whether having a less cluttered home is a priority.

The Benefits of Decluttering

Decluttering Can Transform Your Home by:

  • making more space to play or work and creating a calmer environment
  • saving us money on replacing items we already have but can’t find (and possibly earning money selling some items)
  • removing the visual clutter and mental ‘noise’
  • enabling us to relax and not feel guilty about the state of a room
  • making it easier to see and find what we need, when we need it

A study by Esure home insurance found that we spend 10 minutes everyday looking for the things we know we have but can’t find. This is time we could be reading, having breakfast with family or getting a job done around the house!

a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days is spent searching for stuff, over our lifetimes.

These Top 5 Ideas Could Make Things Easier:

1. ‘Declutter as you go’

Have a ‘declutter as you go’ mindset and try to simplify at every opportunity; use the 1 in 1 out rule when you buy new items and clothes, if you come across something that you have not used for a long time. Ask yourself whether you expect to use it in the next 6 months and if not set it aside. You could set-up a small bag/box to add things for the charity shop or recycling centre and ensure you take it when it’s full. (I have a bag in the boot of the car and add to this when I come across things we no longer need)

2. Quick Declutters

Practice Saturday morning half-hour declutters. Engage the rest of the family, put some fun music on and have a competition – get everyone to rush around putting things back where they should be and removing anything that is no longer needed. You might ask children to rotate any pictures that you have up on the wall, adding new pictures created that week and deciding which pictures are to go into a keepsake box and which are to be recycled

3. Schedule Time

Diarise a day periodically to have a sort out in anticipation of new items entering the house (pre-birthday, Christmas and the start of school are good points in the year). Take the opportunity to remove any old/ill-fitting clothes, toys and books that are no longer played with. The promise of new items can make the removal of old items easier

4. Create Homes for Items

Allocate a space for everything (it may help to label drawers and containers) and as you leave a room, pick up items that don’t belong there and return them to their place as you move to the next room/upstairs. I have a friend who has a stairs basket that works really well, she adds any bits that need to go upstairs to the basket and takes it up when she goes, and vice versa when coming down

5. Make it a Routine

Treat decluttering like any other household activity (like ensuring you have clean clothes and groceries) and schedule it in to your weekly/monthly diary. I love the analogy of rocks in a jar. To ensure that we make time for the activities that need to be done, fit them amongst the important activities so they are not left out. If it’s important to you that you maintain a clutter-free home (get clear in your own mind why it’s important – what do you and your family gain – maybe less time wasting in the mornings, less stress, less expense) then you will ensure that you get to it.

Whether you blast your clutter every 3 months or declutter as-you-go, what’s important is that you find what works for you, enjoy your home and life is a little less stressful!

Would you like help getting organised?

If you need guidance, ideas and practical support to get better organised, see my services or give me a call.

Book a free enquiry call with laura

The ‘Office in a box’: Organisation for Flexible Homeworking

Join me as I share my approach to decluttering my things and organising my ‘office in a box’ so that I have everything I need to hand.

Working from Home can be Challenging

It can be challenging to carve out some space to work and focus at home. Our home is traditionally our private space, safe and supportive, it is the place we nurture our family, feed and support our daily needs and  play and relax.

But more and more, and particularly during the pandemic, our homes also became our work places. We started to work from our kitchen tables, sofas, bedrooms, sheds and anywhere else we could carve out some space.

Not only can it be challenging to find a space to work and focus, but it can also be difficult to ensure that you have everything you need. You need your work essentials to hand including charge cables, equipment, stationary and files  otherwise you waste valuable time and energy trying to locate them when you need them.

Tidying up after you’ve completed your work is also a challenge. How to tidy up so that the space can revert to a functioning home for your family, whilst also keeping everything together, 

I often work from home and before I was able to set-up an office for myself, I needed to ensure that I had everything to hand and could tidy it away quickly when my working day was done.

The Solution: My Office in a Box

To solve this problem, I created an ‘office in a box’ that I could take to the space I fancied working in each day.

Join me as I share my approach to decluttering my things and organising my ‘office in a box’ so that I have everything I need to hand.

And here is my finished box! I hope I’ve given you some ideas and inspired you do a quick organising session of your own!

 

Would you like help getting organised?

Laura Williams, Founder and Professional OrganiserIf you want guidance, ideas, or sensitive practical support to make more of your home, organise your possessions in a way that supports your best life or to get started with your decluttering project, then get in touch with me.

I provide tailored advice and practical support to clients looking to make changes, to create calm, ordered space and free up time and money to focus on the important things in life. Find out more about my services or book an Enquiry Call to talk in more detail.

 

“Laura at OrganisedWell supported me to declutter and organise my office. This assistance has benefited my work allowing me to save time and have clearer head space.” – Barbara Demetriou

Contact Laura Today