How I Organize My Home, Confessions of a Professional Organizer

I think a lot of people are curious about how a professional organizer lives. I believe they think professional organizers must have a perfect house all the time. Well, I must confess, I do love it when everything is in its place in my home. It gives me a great sense of peace, calm and comfort. I must also confess, I live in a real home with a real family and it’s not perfect. I don’t have custom closets, I don’t have a housekeeper and, oh yes, sometimes I even leave clothes on the bathroom floor when I’m in a hurry!

How I organize my home is not based on keeping it perfect 24/7, that’s not realistic. How I organize my home is based on having a place for everything and by keeping belongings from taking over. If you ask me where a piece of paper is, I will have my fingers on it in an instant. If you ask me to find my holiday letters from the last 10 years, I will have them for you in an instant.

So let’s start with having a place for everything. It’s all about giving items a home to contain them and to make it easy to know where to retrieve items as well as where to put them back. I add a label wherever I can; I love labels! When you give belongings a ‘home’ it’s easy to find what you need when you need it and it’s easy to clean up after getting something out.

As far as belongings go, I don’t necessarily follow the ‘one in, one out’ rule, but I am very careful to keep a balance in our home by letting go of items we are done with so we have room to add something new, whether that be clothing, toys, books or anything else. When you don’t have overabundance, it’s easier to keep up with decluttering.

How I organize my home keeps my household running smoothly and I never have to stress about finding anything I need!

House Training: Is Your Dog Refusing To Follow Your House Training Rules?

Some dogs just absolutely refuse to become house trained. No matter how long and hard you have tried to implement techniques to get your dog to use the bathroom in the proper areas, he still chooses to be “vengeful” towards  you by not following your instructions, right?

Wrong! The common misconception that your dog is trying to be vindictive and countermine your housetraining efforts by refusing to follow the rules is a complete myth.

Dogs only have the capacity for simple, direct emotions, such as being happy, sad, or scared. Their minds are not capable of plotting ways to seek revenge for that swat on his rear, or how you scolded him an hour ago.

Dogs do, however, remember and draw upon past experiences that they associate with current situations.  But it is important to understand that these associations only create an emotion in which they will feel when going through a similar experience. 

In other words, lets say that you punish your dog for urinating on the front porch. If you continue to scold him for this behavior then eventually your dog will become fearful of using the bathroom outside. All he knows is that he is “outside”, not on the front porch. Your efforts will countermine your housetraining goals.

For this reason alone, it is important never to punish or yell at your dog when he uses the bathroom inside the house. Most housetraining problems actually stem from owners who completely instill fear in their pets when they go potty on the floor. This creates enough trauma to completely halt all of your housetraining efforts.

The key is trying not to react. Instead, remove your dog from the room and take him outside in a very calm and relaxed manner. Be sure that he does not see you cleaning up his mess. Quietly clean the area and be sure to use an enzyme-containing house cleaner. Vinegar or liquid soap will do just fine as well. By completely removing all of the older, this helps reduce your dog’s need to urinate and mark the same spot over and over.

Dog House Training Tip: Avoid using ammonia because the smell is very similar to that of a dog’s urine and can stimulate him to pee in the same area.

When all else fails, schedule a visit with your veterinarian so that the doctor can do a complete health checkup of your dog to make sure that there is not a health-related reason for his inability to become house trained.

House training a dog problems… Some dogs can be harboring illnesses that may prove to be the cause of not having the ability to control their bowel movements. Such illnesses could be caused by ticks, such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, or the most common reason: a urinary tract infection.

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