mental health organizing tips

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mental health, mental illness, organizational skills for little squirrels, tips

Don’t be confused, my little squirrels, it is Thursday. I thought perhaps I’d combine our typical Thursday “mental health” topic with the “organizing skills” thing that we haven’t done in awhile. Why not?

So, here are some of Mama’s tips for mental folks to stay organized.

Day Planner / Calendar

I keep my calendar in my phone these days, mostly because my work email and calendar are synced to it and I can add personal appointments to my Gmail calendar through the same app, but I did used to use a leather day planner similar to this one. A monthly view wouldn’t have worked for me, but everyone is different. The point is to find a system that you find comfortable and easy to use. If it’s not easy to use, you won’t use it. The idea is to have a way to keep track of appointments and tasks so that you don’t lose track of anything.

These don’t have to be expensive. There are places online where you can download and print templates that can be 3-hole punched and put in a binder. The great thing about that is there are ample opportunities to personalize your system for very little money, and express some of your personality while staying organized.

Keeping Track of Finances / Budget

Knowing where the money is going is important for anyone, often it’s even more important for those of us who have extra medical bills to cover. You can setup a worksheet like this in a word processor, or, if you have a little skill with Microsoft Excel, you can setup a worksheet that includes formulas that add your totals for you and even calculate differences. There are also templates similar to this that you can download blank to print and fill out by hand.

What I really like about doing a budget sheet is that I can easily tell where our money is going, and where I can cut costs. I do ours in Excel, and I know just enough to setup the formulas. Well, I did.

Pill Organizers

This is the organizer that I’ve started using for my morning pills. The spaces are the perfect size for the 3 pills I need in the morning.

My bedtime pills go in a larger version of one of the straight ones, and Josh uses one of these for morning and another for night.

The beauty of using some form of pill organizer is that there is never any confusion about whether or not you took your pills. Anything we NEED to take goes into these. My PRNs are in separate containers because it’s up to me if I take them or not, but I only ever carry as many on me as I’m allowed to have. My brain is just too busted at this point to keep track of too many things.

One of my absolute favorite things about using the pill organizers is that I always know that I’m going to run out of something well in advance. Most of my meds are on perpetual refill and the pharmacy just does that for me and then sends me a text, but filling my pills a week at a time gives me a very clear picture of whether I’m running low on something. This is crucial for Josh because 2 of his meds are controlled substances and can’t be “grace” filled like mine can.

Taking pill organization one step further, I keep all of the bottles of pills in the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. They’re all in the center section and they’re separated – the top shelf is mine, middle is Josh’s, and the bottom shelf is for vitamins and other pills we don’t take regularly. This makes it easier when we go to fill pills.

Filing System

This is a family thingy pictured here, but it was so pretty I just had to use it. Anyway, the idea is that any paperwork you need to hang on to – bill statements, papers from any of your docs, warranty info for the car or electronics, etc. – needs to be organized and kept in a safe place. If you don’t have a file cabinet or a file drawer in your desk, you can get free-standing file boxes. If you are just starting to get organized like this, take your papers and start making piles of like things. Once you have all of your piles made, you can make folders from there.

Depending on your insurance situation, saving the paperwork you get from the doc’s office and the pharmacy can be crucial. Having a well organized file system makes it easier to find the paperwork you need when you need it.

Those are the 4 biggies for me. What other organizational tips do you think are especially important for us mental folk?

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organizing with mama, #4

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organizational skills for little squirrels

Welcome to Mama’s Best of Pinterest’s Organizational Tips post! I’ve been gathering ideas from Pinterest for awhile now so I thought I’d share some of what I consider to be the best with y’all.

• This one is just a pic, but it’s so simple that’s all you really need – binder clips to help organize cords. Brilliant. Josh has what I think is the world’s largest collection of charging cables so this tip has been totally priceless for us.
• 10 tips for storage & organization – this site has some great ideas. Several pertain to kids and a couple to crafts.
• Organization Ideas for Every Room of Your Home – this is a compilation of all sorts of ideas. Lots of pics.
• 14 Useful Closet Organizing Tips – easy ideas with pics. I wouldn’t use all of them, but they’re pretty good. The backwards hanger idea is pure gold.
• 52 Meticulous Organizing Tips for the OCD Person in You – some of these are just ridiculous, but some are excellent. #11 would be great for moms with kids old enough to take care of their own drinking cup.
• 53 “life changing” clothing organization tips – not sure I’d call these life changing, but some of them are pretty damn nifty.
• 25 Craft Room Organization Tips – I got through the first 10 and they look pretty good.

I would hope those would keep you busy for awhile, but if not, just go to Pinterest yourself and do a search for “organizational tips.” Be prepared to clear your social calendar for a few days if you do.

organizing with Mama, #3

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laundry hacks, motivation, organizational skills for little squirrels, projects

This week we’re dealing with laundry. I’ve mentioned a bit of how I deal with clothes in our last two installments, but this week we’ll delve all the way to the bottom of the laundry basket to find those precious golden nuts.

Rose requested this week’s installment. When she asked me to address the laundry situation her one comment was, “And I’m talking the whole process…from dirty to clean to folded/hung or otherwise put away. My area is a disaster!” We can’t let Rose have a disaster on her hands, now can we? Let’s begin at the beginning.

I do laundry on the weekends only. I start the towels/washcloths Friday morning after I take my shower and before I head to work. Everything else waits for Saturday morning. I’d rather deal with the whole mess at once than try to do a little every day. Odd, perhaps, but that’s just how I roll, yo.

hampers hidden behind the door, bonus shot of hat hooks and shoe organizer

Provided you have the room for it, keep separate baskets for your different kinds of laundry. We have 2 tall hampers – one for the stuff I wash in hot water and the other for stuff that gets washed in warm water. I also have a smaller basket that I put my delicate stuff in. Presorting your laundry when you designate it as “dirty” saves you time when you’re ready to wash.

If you have room in your laundry facility, I’d put the hampers/baskets there. Since our laundry room is also the main floor bathroom and is shared with Mom, that’s not an option for us. I keep our dirty stuph in the closet because that’s where the hampers are most out of the way yet still convenient.

Speaking of the laundry room itself, keep your extra soap and stain sprays and dryer sheets, etc in there. We tend to stock up on the detergents we like when they go on sale so it’s not at all uncommon for us to have an embarrassing amount of Era on hand. This is our laundry room…

Mom keeps a small basket on top the washer to wrangle a bottle of detergent, a container of Oxy stuph, and the dryer sheets. She keeps an empty basket on top of the dryer to hold her clean laundry until she takes it upstairs. The cupboards above the washer and dryer are used for items we don’t need to access regularly, such as extra rolls of paper towels, oil refill thingies for the plug in air freshener do-dads, and the seasonal decorations Mom likes to keep handy for putting in the bathroom – like that fucking motion sensor talking snowman that always scares the piss out of me. Mom uses the drawer under the washer for extra stain stuff and the hand towels for the bathroom part of the room and the drawer under the dryer for her extra hangers. Again, we’re all about keeping stuff where you’re going to need it or use it most.

I try to fold/hang my laundry as soon as it comes out of the dryer. When I’m folding, I make piles of like things. For example, all of Josh’s work t-shirts go in the same place so I make a pile of those. My work pants go in a different place, hence a different pile. When I get everything folded, I put the piles back in the hamper and carry it down to our room and put it away. The shirts that need to be hung get laid over the top of the hamper and are hung first. I keep our extra hangers stashed on the brackets of the shelf on the opposite side of the closet.

shelf above the vanity in the basement bathroom/closet which also serves as hanger storage

Pulling the hangers out when I wear something makes it easier to find the empty hangers later. I keep hand towels, paper towels, extra kleenex, and shit I don’t want the kids to get into on top of the shelf.

I do entirely segregate my clothes, and Josh’s. I’m guessing most people do this, but just in case, here’s a bit of what I’m talking about. I have one whole drawer of nothing but underwear – panties, bras, anything worn under my clothes. The clothes in there are folded and stacked in piles. Sounds neurotic I know, but I can open that drawer and know at a glance whether or not the bra I want to wear is clean.

You might remember this pic from last week – my segregated closet. Again, neurotic, but I find it helps. For one thing, I know that there’s room for my clothes if I put them in the “right” area. This isn’t an issue for those of you not using this kind of closet system, but for me it’s a factor. I don’t think there’s much worse than spending time laundering a garment only to have it get all wrinkled to shit because it’s crammed in an over full closet. And it really does save me time, both when I’m putting the clean laundry away and when I go to find what I’d like to wear.

Anyway, the whole routine is an every weekend event. Josh carries the laundry up Friday after work so that I can start first thing Saturday morning. Our laundry room is right next to where our dining room table is, so I usually fold clothes there. There’s also a small shelf with pegs on it that Mom and I hang some things on to finish drying. In the rare instances that I don’t have a full load of something, Mom and I combine loads.

Here are a few other “tips” that have come mostly out of being broke, but really do help.

I have one set of nice towels that I like to have out so I take care of those on Friday. That way after I clean the bathroom on Saturday I have fresh towels to put out. And it means I don’t need to have a place to store those. I do have a few extras just in case.

In that same vein, I tend to only use one set of sheets, this time of year in particular (the other set has snowflakes on them). I try to have those be one of the first loads through Saturday morning and then rather than mess with folding those obnoxious fitted sheets, I just put the damn things right back on the bed.

Yes, I am totally lazy. Who asked you?

Those are my tips, what else can y’all share with good friend Rose?

organizing with Mama, #2

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life, life hacks, money, motivation, organizational skills for little squirrels

Welcome to this week’s installment of Mama’s Organizational Skills for Little Squirrels. This week we’re going to focus on inexpensive ways to corral your crap because, chances are, you’re like me – not exactly shitting Benjamins on a regular basis. Anything we can do to live the champagne lifestyle while making beer wages is more money we can spend on actual beer. Mmmm, beer….

Ok, so here are some of my favorite little inexpensive tricks.

Over the door shoe organizer

I like this one for several reasons. One, it’s not that expensive and is fairly well made. Two, it keeps me from buying more shoes. My shit has to fit in there, period. I cheat like a mothafucking fiend by putting a pair in a single slot whenever possible. Still. And three, it makes it quite easy to find both shoes when I want them. Saving time is almost as good as saving money. On the other side of the door is a hook that fits over the top and has room for several hangers plus a regular old hook at the end. I use this to keep my shirt for the next day easily accessible and out of harm’s way. (Evie likes to sleep on clothes)

Baskets

I’ve got a tiny basket on my nightstand to hold misc bits, Josh has one on his dresser for bits, there’s a big one on the counter for my current craft projects, there’s a small one under the basement bathroom sink for misc medical supplies, there’s a medium sized one with a lid on top of my desk that holds extra pens and markers – you get the idea. They’re great for little things that tend to get lost easily or don’t lend themselves to other forms of being corralled.

Speaking of pens, this is the pen holder I have on my desk at home. In a former life it was a candle holder. I needed something to put my pens in, I couldn’t light a candle in this where it had been living, so voila. The moral of this piece of the story is “get creative.” Just because a container is designed to do one thing doesn’t mean it isn’t totally suited to doing something else. Time to literally think outside the fucking box, kids.

Greeting Card Organizer

I know, who the fuck sends cards anymore? Me, that’s who. And for a time when I was in college (the first time) I worked at the Hallmark at the mall. And I bought one of these. It’s a spiral bound book with a pocket for each month and places to write people’s names and birthdays. You could totally make your own with a 3-ring binder. Or use a shoe box with dividers. Or keep making fun of me because I’m the only fucking idiot who still sends paper cards.

Segregation (in the closet) is an awesome thing

That’s my closet, part of it anyway. I separate my dresses from my skirts from my work shirts. Sweatshirts and t-shirts are folded on the shelf. Shorts I can wear to work and all capri pants I can wear to work come next. The rest of the shelf is Josh’s – 2 stacks of t’s and 2 stacks of long sleeved shirts. My work shirts are sorted by color. When I decide that today is going to be a purple day, I know right where to go. Does this make me a touch neurotic? Ask me if I honestly give a rat’s ass. It takes me next to no time at all to find what I want and it’s super easy to see if what I want is clean.

Well kids, there you have it, five of Mama’s least expensive organizational tips. What are your best budget friendly organizing tips?

organizing with Mama

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life, life hacks, motivation, organizational skills for little squirrels, projects

Greetings and welcome to Mama’s first installment of Organizational Skills for Little Squirrels. I’ve decided that I might as well share some of the stuph I’ve been doing lately to help stay organized. We’ll start simple.

But before we start, I need to get something off my chest. Why the fuck is it that every goddamn time I go looking for images to use to create my cute little banners and shit I end up with at least one picture of someone’s tits? For fuck sake, I didn’t ask for that shit! What part of “organizational clip art” equals “tits?” I have a pair, I don’t really care what anyone elses look like, because honestly, they essentially all look the same. So hey, internet, knock that shit the fuck off already.

Rant over.

Where were we? Ah yes, organizing shit.

Here are some tips that I find useful when starting any kind of organizing or even cleaning project.

1. Make a list of what you’d like to accomplish, and be specific. “Clean the kitchen” is great, but it probably consists of smaller things like “load the dishwasher” and “wipe out the microwave” and other awesome things. If you’re like me, and a big ol’ list with lots of shit crossed off makes you giddy, be specific.
2. I tend to start with the smaller things and then work up. If a task feels too big, I work for a little while – 20 minutes or so – and then take a 5 minute break. This helps keep me charged up longer.
3. Realize that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and as such, you might not get everything done in one sitting. That’s perfectly ok.

Now, on to the goodies. This week we’ll focus on what Josh usually refers to as “life hacks” – not necessarily pure organizational tips, but things I do to help simplify the chaos.

• Put stuph where you are most likely to use it. For example, I realized that I rarely remember to take my morning pills if I leave them up in the bathroom because they upset my stomach if I have them before food. Now I bring my morning tray to work on Monday morning, set it on my desk, and then take my pills after breakfast.
• And yes, use pill trays if you take pills on a regular basis. It streamlines the process and it’s very easy to see if you took them or not. Added bonus – you’ll find out several days in advance if you’re going to need a refill.
• Going back to my first suggestion, I keep my folders o’ shit on top of my desk in a file tree at work because that’s the stuff I get into most often. Everything else isn’t worth printing out, generally speaking. I use the file cabinet for storing snacks. At home I have a mail rack mounted to the side of the hutch on top of my desk. Bills that need to be paid, correspondence that needs to be dealt with, etc. lives in there until it gets filed – and that stuph goes into the file drawer. This way nothing gets lost in that proverbial shuffle.
• Plan ahead. If you’re not a morning person, do as much as you can to get ready for the morning before you go to bed. Josh makes his coffee and lunch the night before. I usually either put together what I’m taking for lunch or concoct something to eat at the same time. We both get our clothes out. I pick out my jewelry and put it in a little dish and set out the shoes I’m going to wear. I make sure that my work bag is packed with the things that don’t require refrigeration and that my phone is charged. Honestly, anything you can do ahead of time, do it.
• Thinking of laundry – if you have room for it, have a separate hamper or laundry basket for the different kinds of loads you run. For example, we have one hamper for the hot water things, one hamper for warm water, and a smaller basket for my dressy stuph that I wash on cold. This saves time because everything is already sorted when I go to start laundry AND because Josh knows what gets washed how so he can start running the laundry for me if I’m busy doing other things. (and to stay the hell away from that little basket for fear of death)

Good enough for this week, methinks. I’ll try to make this a regular Monday feature. Lawd knows I’ve got plenty more where this came from.

What about you all – what kind of “life hacks” do you do?