PROJECT PORTFOLIO: Be the Donald Trump of Your Kitchen! Counter Tops as Valuable Real Estate

Not everyone is blessed with forty linear feet of clutter-free counter space (Oh. In my dreams...in my sweet, sweet dreams).

For the rest of us, we need to make the best of our valuable kitchen counter top real estate.

When you think about it, viewing our kitchen counters as "expensive real estate" is actually a great way to think about how to best use our counter tops!

Let's imagine: If you own valuable property on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or a storefront on Park Avenue, you wouldn't just use that space for storing your random crap that you don't use, would you? Would you treat that Rodeo Drive storefront like it's just some storage garage you rent? Probably not.  

You would choose only the best things that will be the most useful, or add the most to your life (or your bottom line).

To use real estate "talk," let's think of it this way: What is the "highest and best use" for our kitchen counter tops (Say, if you are a busy family with three kids)?

• Space to prep kids and mommy and daddy's lunches? Check!
• Place to store washcloths, daily vitamins and baby food to feed and wipe down little grubby faces? Check!
• Counter space to spread out my chopping boards and prep food? Check!
• Appliances and coffee maker close to where we store our food, beverages and glasses? Check!

Anything else? Well, they are not as important "uses" of the kitchen, so they do NOT get any of the valuable counter top real estate.  Simple as that.

From Project Portfolio

Have you ever thought of the rooms in your home as "real estate"?  What are the highest and best uses for YOUR counter tops and the needs of you and YOUR family? Please leave a comment below!  I'd love to hear from you!

PROJECT PORTFOLIO: Simple Bedroom Makeover - from CLUTTER to CLARITY

What happens when you need to move out the personal possessions for a physically disabled roommate and prepare your home for a new roommate to come in, all at the same time?

Chaos.

So ORGANIZED. By Jenny helped this IT professional to get some order in her otherwise disheveled bedroom. We taught her some basic principles around knowing when to keep items, and where to place things you use the most often for daily living.  Here are the results.

From Project Portfolio

She still has a nice mound of "To Sort" but now she has a closet that works for her everyday needs.  Believe it or not, she was actually getting her wardrobe from a couple piles in the middle of that madness on her bedroom floor.

This is what we did:

1. Clear out all the junk stuffed into the closet and onto the floor so we can assess what's useful.
2. Talk through her daily activities for getting ready for work, relaxing and coming home to rest.  Where are the things she needs to do these activities? Let's place them within reach in designated "zones" or "homes."
3. What is the clothing that she is ACTUALLY wearing on a daily basis?  Great! Let's put THOSE items back into the closet with plenty of room to spare!
4. Create space in the closet for 

• Laundry baskets,
• Daily wardrobe,
• Smaller essentials like underthings like socks and underwear in the drawer units,
• Workout supplies,
• An extra bed and linens for when mom comes over once a week and
• A space above the drawer units for your purse and backpack (you'll know exactly where it is for when you run out the door).

 Then let's put the shoes you actually wear in a shelving unit by the door, with some of your daily vitamins, medicine and hair products at eye level above the shoes.

That's it!  Your daily routine, simplified and clarified.

What do you think about the "after" closet? Do you have some "empty" or "white" space around YOUR clothing?

two hours of power: a quick pasadena office makeover

a hot office mess "Before" From Project Portfolio - Pasadena Offices

This tiny storage room conversion couldn't afford all the floor space that the stray wire filing racks were occupying. She could barely walk in the front door without needing some high-level cirque du soleil agility to get past the janky wire files and to her chair.

janky wire files "Before" From Project Portfolio - Pasadena Offices

There was no filing system for her active files to speak of so she had to eyeball and flip through every single one of her files to look for one folder!

The solution? organized. by jenny.

Getting those files off the floors and in some sort of order took little effort and time for a huge payoff!

right angle, open space nirvana. cue the choir. "After" From Project Portfolio - Pasadena Offices

It was like a tornado of organizing. This office was done in only 2 hours! This included assessing what the client needed for her work, taking a quick trip to Staples for some inexpensive exposed filing crates (she preferred seeing things out in the open rather than hidden away...a "seeker"...not a "hider" as they like to say), and creating a totally new filing system by using only four main categories organized by alphabetical order. So simple! We threw some colorful personal pictures and artifacts up on the bulletin board, cleared the desk space and she was finally rockin' and rollin' in no time!!