As living spaces continue to shrink, maximizing small spaces has become a top priority for homeowners and renters alike. In cities where real estate is at a premium, the need for small space solutions has never been greater. Fortunately, with creativity and clever design tricks, it’s possible to turn even the tiniest of spaces into a functional and stylish home.
One of the biggest challenges regarding small spaces is making every inch count. It means finding ways to use vertical space, utilizing multi-functional furniture, and being smart about storage solutions. The right approach makes even the smallest studio apartment or tiny house feel spacious and inviting.
Maximizing small spaces doesn’t have to mean sacrificing style, either. In fact, designing a small space can be an opportunity to get creative and inject personality into your home. From light color choices to unique lighting solutions, there are endless ways to make a small space your own.
Small space solutions are essential whether you’re living in a tiny apartment, a tiny house, or just looking to make the most of a small room in your home. With some ingenuity and careful planning, you can create a beautiful and functional space that feels much larger than it is.
Living in a small apartment can be challenging, especially when making the most of the limited space available. However, you can transform your small space into a cozy, functional home with creativity and thoughtful planning. Below are some tips that will help you maximize space in your small apartment.
When maximizing small spaces, start by decluttering and organizing your belongings.
Remove redundant items and only keep the essentials. Use storage boxes, baskets, and shelves to keep things organized and easy to find. Consider investing in furniture with additional storage, such as a bed with drawers underneath or a coffee table with hidden storage.
One of the small space solutions that is effective is to use multi-functional furniture. Choose pieces that can be used in various ways, such as a sofa bed, a folding table, or a storage ottoman that can also be used as extra seating. It will help you save space and make the most of every square inch in your apartment.
When working with limited floor space, it’s essential to utilize vertical space. Install shelves or cabinets on the walls to store books, decorations, and other items. Hang pots and pans in the kitchen, or use a hanging shoe organizer to store cleaning supplies or toiletries in the bathroom. It will help free up space on the floor and make your apartment feel more spacious.
Using soft colors and mirrors is one of the small space solutions that can make your apartment feel bigger. Light colors reflect more light, making a room more open and airy. Mirrors also reflect light and create the illusion of more space. Hang a large mirror on the wall or add a mirrored wardrobe to make your bedroom more spacious.
Living in a small house is equally challenging to maximize small spaces. But there are some tricks you can apply to make every inch count.
Furniture with exposed legs not only looks stylish and modern, but it also creates an illusion of space by allowing light to pass through and creating an airy atmosphere. It is particularly true for furniture like sofas, chairs, and coffee tables, which can take up a lot of floor space. When these pieces are elevated with exposed legs, it makes the room look and feel more spacious.
In addition to providing an illusion of space, furniture with exposed legs can also be functional. For example, if you have a small living room with limited space for storage, using a sofa or a chair with exposed legs will allow you to see underneath and use the space for storing baskets or bins.
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Maximizing small spaces with small furniture might be an excellent choice for your limited square footage. Opting for pieces designed to fit into tight quarters can free up valuable floor space and make your house feel more open.
Small space solutions come in all shapes and sizes. From compact sofas and chairs to clever storage solutions that utilize every inch of space, plenty of options are available to help you make the most of your living area.
One of the key benefits of small furniture is that it allows you to create more functional spaces. Instead of cramming an oversized sectional couch into a tiny living room, you could opt for a cozy loveseat and a couple of armchairs. It would create a more intimate seating area perfect for entertaining guests or relax with a good book.
One often overlooked area that can provide a lot of extra space is corners. You can turn these small spaces into functional and stylish places in your house.
One of the best small space solutions for corners is to install shelves. By adding shelving units, you can create a storage space for books, knick-knacks, and other items that would otherwise clutter up your living area. You can also use the shelves to display art or decorative items, giving your room a unique and personalized touch.
Another way to make the most of corners is to add a corner desk. It is an excellent solution if you work from home or need a dedicated space for your computer. Utilizing the corner allows you to create a functional workspace without taking up too much floor space.
A cluttered kitchen can be overwhelming, mainly if you have limited counter and storage space. Fortunately, plenty of small space solutions can help you make the most out of your kitchen storage. The kitchen trends for 2023 are all about creating innovative storage solutions.
Maximizing small spaces by utilizing the walls inside your kitchen might be the way to go. Installing shelves or hanging baskets can provide additional storage while saving valuable counter space. Consider using a pegboard to hang your pots and pans or a magnetic strip to keep your knives within reach.
Another great way to make the most of your kitchen storage is by using containers and organizers. Group similar items together in clear containers to save space and make it easier to find what you need. Use drawer dividers to keep utensils and cutlery organized, and install pill-out organizers in your cabinets to make the most of every inch.
A small bedroom means limited storage, cramped quarters, and a lack of room for your belongings. But fear not! You can transform your bedroom into a cozy, relaxing space with creativity and small space solutions.
Maximizing small spaces by investing in multi-functional furniture might be a wise investment. Opt for a bed with built-in storage, such as drawers underneath or shelves above the headboard. Consider a desk that can double as a nightstand.
Another great way to maximize space in a small bedroom is by using the space under your bed. Invest in under-bed storage containers or bags for linens or off-season clothes. It will free up valuable closet and dresser space.
When it comes to small bedrooms, less is often more. Avoid clutter and opt for a minimalist approach to decor. Stick to a neutral color palette and limit the number of decorative items in the room. It will create a clean, uncluttered look and make your small space feel larger.
Maximizing natural light in a small bedroom can make it feel more open and spacious. Keep window treatments minimal to allow for as much light as possible. If you don’t have access to natural light, consider investing in quality lighting fixtures to brighten up the room.
Living in a small space can significantly impact our mental well-being. The limited square footage can make us feel cramped and restricted, whether it’s a studio apartment or a tiny house. However, there are ways to combat these adverse effects by maximizing small spaces and finding small space solutions.
One of the psychological effects of living in a small space is feeling claustrophobic. The lack of space can make us feel like we have no room to breathe or move around. It can lead to increased stress and anxiety levels. However, we can make our small space more open and spacious by using creative storage solutions and minimizing clutter.
Another effect of small spaces is the feeling of being confined. We may feel like we have no privacy or personal space, leading to a sense of unease.
Nevertheless, we can make the most of our limited space while maintaining a sense of personal privacy by using furniture that doubles as storage, such as a bed with built-in drawers or a coffee table with hidden compartments.
Maximizing small spaces can also have positive effects on our mental health. When forced to live in a small space, we must be more intentional with our belongings and lifestyle choices. It can lead to a sense of simplicity and minimalism, generating increased feelings of contentment and satisfaction.
In conclusion, maximizing small spaces has never been more critical in our fast-paced and urbanized world. Whether living in a tiny apartment, a cozy house, or just trying to make the most of a small room, there are many innovative and stylish ways to optimize your surroundings.
From multifunctional furniture to clever storage solutions, the key to maximizing small spaces is to be creative, practical, and efficient.
The post Maximizing small spaces: Tips and tricks for making the most of limited square footage appeared first on Real Estate Agent Blog.
]]>Editors note: Some comments were edited for length and clarity.
When the Writers Guild of America went on strike on Tuesday, May 2nd, authors were right there with them. Some joined the picket lines as card-carrying Guild members; some put projects they’d had in development with major studios on indefinite hold; some jumped into their group chat to make sure they were doing all they could to hold the line. Some, even, turned to their own organizing spaces to consider how to be in deeper solidarity with their fellow workers.
Because that’s the thing: writers are workers, whether they’re collaborating on a TV show in a writers room, trucking away at a novel alone in their home office, or hopping on a Google Doc (hi!) to report on both. So if anyone outside the WGA is going to understand why it matters to stand in solidarity with screenwriters as they strike not just for better working conditions, but for the very existence of writing as a real career, it’s other writers.
“I’ve seen a lot of solidarity from fiction writers, prose writers, with the WGA,” says author Steph Cha, who’s been a Guild member since 2019 (the same year her most recent novel, Your House Will Pay, came out). “And I think part of that is it feels like the same battle—where the work that we do, because it is also an art form and it is also personally satisfying, gets treated like it’s not work. I love writing TV, but it’s very much a job. Yes, it’s a craft. Yes, it’s a passion. But it is also work, and I think it’s valuable to have that work protected.”
“I’ve always been really interested in how people not get screwed while trying to write,” says Maureen Johnson, an author (most recently of Nine Liars fame) who’s not in the WGA but was in the middle of talks on a new Hollywood project when the strike hit. “It’s a business in which it’s very easy to just be crushed. You’re always one week away from disaster. I have some projects that are in development, and I have asked that everything stop until the strike is over. Unions work best when everyone chips in—you know, the power of collective action. We’re all writers. It’s not a deep read.”
Writers are workers, whether they’re collaborating on a TV show in a writers room, trucking away at a novel alone in their home office, or hopping on a Google Doc.Ilana Masad, whose debut novel, All My Mother’s Lovers, came out in 2020, and who’s a member-organizer with the Freelance Solidarity Project (the digital media division of the National Writers Union—where, full disclosure, I’m also an organizer), is on the same page. “As someone who is organizing and working with FSP, I’m just pleased to see that writers’ work is being discussed as something of value in the WGA strike, and that it’s something people are getting behind,” she says. “In terms of how it’s affecting me? You know, I didn’t get my John Oliver this week or last week because of the writers strike. But that is a very small price to pay for helping to be in solidarity with [other] writers.”
This isn’t to say that it’s emotionally easy—or even logistically straightforward—for an author to be in solidarity with their fellow writers. Because while the Guild’s Strike Rules are crystal clear about not just what it means to cross the picket line during the strike (i.e., writing, selling or developing literary material for, taking meetings with, or applying to internships or fellowships at any struck studios), but also what the consequences are for any writer found to have done so (eternal banishment from Guild membership), the writing industry itself is full of gray areas.
“I was in a lot of text groups with, like, Sam Irby and Carmen Machado [both Guild members] just trying to ask each other what we thought was right,” says author Sarah Rose Etter, whose debut novel, Ripe, is due to hit shelves on July 11th. “I have not spoken to one writer who is not in full support. One novelist, one person, no one.”
The challenge, then, has been understanding the rules around how to be in support. “Suddenly it became if I take this phone call, is it crossing a picket line? If I respond to this email, is it crossing the picket line? So for like three days, it was a wild ride of non-stop texting, reaching out to the WGA trying to figure out what am I allowed to do. And it finally got to a point where I saw a tweet that was like, instead of looking for loopholes, why don’t you just… not? And it was such a relief to just be like, you know what? Cancel the meetings! I support what they’re doing.”
One person who both Cha and Etter turned to when the strike started was Amelia Gray, a novelist and WGA member who both writers named as a particularly inspiring colleague and union member to lean on these past few weeks. (And whose ability to down the writer-on-strike power meal of two hard boiled eggs and a cup of coffee immediately before our call was inspiring to me personally.) Gray, who’s not a strike captain this time around but has been in negotiation years past when strikes were narrowly averted, is particularly good at bridging the gap between the rules and the spirit of the strike.
“The goal is to make the strike quick, and the best way to do that is to limit the availability of materials,” she says. “And so to me, the difficult question that I think writers on the other side of the WGA are facing is, okay, I have a piece of IP, I’ve been working on it for years, I am motivated to sell it, [but] that runs counter to what the strike is about. The big idea is that nobody is offering up material to be sold, and nobody is taking those meetings, and that’s where the collective [power] comes in.”
That said, Gray stresses that writing at home, for yourself, isn’t crossing the picket line—a sentiment that’s reflected in the official Strike FAQ (and by fellow Guild members). “I don’t think that anybody can stop you, or should stop you, from writing alone in your room,” she says. “That’s the beautiful thing about writing: you can continue to generate and create ideas and thoughts and to work because your work is your own. I think that’s actually the backbone of the action, is that your work is valuable, and it’s yours.”
If this all feels more than a bit existential, that’s because it is: in its official strike announcement, the WGA underscored that between the increasing gigification of screenwriting and the looming labor threat posed by advancements in generative AI technology, this is a fight for the very existence of screenwriting as a viable, stable career. The potential outcome of which is harrowing.
“One of the reasons I do screenwriting, and that I think a lot of fiction writers turn to screenwriting, is that it’s one of the only forms of writing that is a steady living,” explains Cha, whose first big TV project, a spy drama called Butterfly, was officially ordered to series by Amazon Prime Video on May 23rd, and is now on hold until the strike is over. “It feels destabilizing to me, both as a TV writer [and] also as a novelist, to have that under threat. It feels very existentially threatening to every form of writing to have the most lucrative and most widely recognized form of it become so tenuous.”
That said, when there are already so few paths to having a stable career as a writer, the prospect of losing this one has also proved to be galvanizing.
“It’s funny,” says Gray, “I was picketing with a friend of mine, and she said, If you’re not having an existential crisis right now, you’re doing it wrong. And there is some of that! But I simultaneously feel the most solidarity I’ve ever felt with my fellow WGA writers and workers. It’s so refreshing to come together and pick our heads up and realize that we all have a lot of the same worries and concerns and fears and thoughts about the future. The antidote to that kind of existential fear is pretty well cured when I go on a walk with a thousand people who feel the same way.”
Novelist Emily St. John Mandel agrees. “I’ve been going to the picket lines as often as I can,” she tells me by email, “and I’ve been struck by the camaraderie and resolve I’ve seen there. None of this is easy. Like everyone, I want the strike to end tomorrow so I can go back to doing the work I love. At the same time, my experience of the picket lines has been that it’s actually inspiring to be surrounded by so many people who care so deeply. These are not people who are going to give up.”
That inspiration extends to the potential knock-on effects this strike might have on other sectors of creative labor. Every author I spoke with is optimistic about what other unions might feel inspired to take on in the wake of the WGA strike, from developing better defenses against the encroachment of generative AI to potentially joining strike forces with SAG-AFTRA later this summer to, even, organizing writers and other non-unionized creative workers beyond the WGA.
When there are already so few paths to having a stable career as a writer, the prospect of losing this one has also proved to be galvanizing.“I feel like we have so forgotten the power of organized labor,” says Johnson. “You know, when I was a kid, like around my neighborhood, it was considered sort of a dirty thing. And then my mother got into a union—she was a school nurse—and she was like, Oh, it’s an amazing experience. But I never grew up in a place where we were educated about the power of unions.”
“My first job ever was a union job,” says Cha. “It was at a public library. And I was only vaguely aware of what that meant. But I do know I worked there for a year when I was in high school, and I got like three raises without doing anything, so it was like, Oh, this is cool! I’m not an organizer, but I do think a lot of unions exist to take an atomized population and give them a shape, and I could see that being very useful for novelists. I don’t know that we have the bargaining power that screenwriters do, but then again, we face a lot of the same problems. I would vote to unionize, if that were a thing we could do.”
Masad, who’s already organizing writers beyond the WGA, agrees. “I think we’re in a time where unions are becoming a goal for people, which is very encouraging to me,” she says. “The fact that there was so much author support for the HarperCollins union strike, and all of those meme accounts [XOXOpublishinggg, Publishers Brunch] that started as literary memes are now pro-union memes. There’s just more of a public sense of solidarity these days.”
In the end, it was this bubbling sense of solidarity that each author kept coming back to.
“I do think there’s something much bigger at stake for anything that involves the written word,” says Etter, explaining why it needs to be solidarity all the way down. “And it sucks in some ways: I’ve been waiting my whole life to sell movie rights for a novel, and I finally got to the point of like, I have the agent, and I have the material. We put it out on submission the week before the strike, I suddenly started getting interest, and then it stopped cold. And so both things are true: it breaks your heart, but you know you’re doing the right thing. I can be a baby for two days about the fact that I have to put my plans on hold, but the big picture is this is the right thing to do long term.”
For the authors out on the picket line, that solidarity is everything.
“I can’t go up against Ted Sarandos [alone],” says Gray. “But when I’m out [picketing] in front of Netflix, I feel like I have a louder voice, because there’s a thousand people out there. I’ve been really heartened this [contract] cycle to feel the solidarity. It just feels very good.”
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Picket schedules and locations can be found here, and the social media toolkit is here. To support non-Guild workers impacted by the strike, donate to the Entertainment Community Fund here.
]]>The specialty coffee market in the U.S. is growing at a rate of 9.2% annually, according to a report by the National Coffee Association. Meanwhile, tea sales have grown about 150% since 1990 to become a $4.8 billion industry, with ready-to-drink teas making up the largest segment.
Considering the popularity of both drinks, it’s no wonder people have made a hobby of it. But whether you’re an experienced enthusiast or a complete beginner, here are some tips and suggestions to make your space the best it can be for brewing.
Ready to join the ranks of the world’s coffee and tea lovers? There are a variety of ways to set up your coffee or tea-making area. The method you choose will depend on how much space and gear you have. Some enthusiasts may have a dedicated coffee bar or station in their kitchen, while others may only need a small amount of storage space for the basics. Here are some tips for getting everything you need and where to put it.
A popular place for a coffee or tea station is the kitchen counter. However, keep in mind that if you’re also a baker or cook, your counter space will shrink significantly if it houses a coffee maker, grinder, decanter, electric kettle, or anything else you might want. Don’t forget to make room in your cabinets or drawers for mugs, canisters, scoops, and other gear!
“While some people store coffee and tea in the refrigerator to preserve freshness, it can cause the beans and leaves to absorb moisture and odors from other foods in the fridge.”
Another option is to set up a separate coffee/tea station using a freestanding table, bar, or custom-made hutch. Either way, make sure that there is access to an electrical outlet and drinking water nearby. If you have an espresso machine, you’ll need to choose a spot with ample room for a knock box, preferably with a backdrop that is easy to clean if there’s splatter.
If space is really a concern, you could try to have a few items that you use the most or are aesthetically pleasing on display, while you keep the rest stored away elsewhere.
Enjoy brewing coffee more? Here are some essentials you should consider adding to your collection.
Coffee maker
A basic coffee maker will allow you to brew drip coffee quickly and easily. Many are programmable, so they can be set up to brew a pot of coffee at a specific time, be it for your morning pick-me-up or after dinner with dessert.
French press or Aeropress
These devices use plungers to increase the extraction of oils and flavor from the grounds. This allows for greater control over the brewing process and can produce a rich, full-bodied cup of coffee.
Espresso machine
If you like to make a latte espresso-based drinks, you may consider investing in an espresso machine. They tend to be expensive, so make sure you’re getting enough mileage out of them to make the spend worth it.
A burr grinder allows you to grind coffee beans fresh just before brewing, which leads to a better taste and aroma. They come in two types: electric and manual. Electric grinders are more convenient, can handle large amounts of beans at once, and have settings from coarse to fine grounds. Manual grinders are for smaller batches, create more uniform grounds, and are easier to clean.
Digital scale and timer
For a consistent and precise cup of coffee, a scale and timer help to accurately measure and time the brewing process.
Milk frother
You can go minimal with a handheld, battery-powered mixer and stainless steel milk frothing pitcher will help you create foam to top off your coffee creations.
Coffee mugs and cups
Coffee drinkers tend to have a large and assorted collection of mugs and cups for drinking different amounts and styles of coffee.
Beans storage
To keep coffee fresh and prolong the life of the beans, some people will use airtight containers, vacuum-sealed bags, or special storage canisters.
Water heater
A traditional kettle works just fine, though you may want to have an electric one that allows you to quickly heat water precisely to the correct temperature for brewing coffee.
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For the serious tea enthusiast, there are a number of things you should have in your arsenal.
Teapot or electric kettle
Again, an electric kettle is your best bet for heating water to the proper temperature, as different types of tea require different temperatures for brewing. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to use a thermometer along with your teapot to ensure the correct temp.
Infuser/strainer
These are used to steep loose-leaf teas, and can be metal or mesh strainers, balls, or special teapots with built-in infusers.
This method of brewing loose-leaf tea allows for greater control over the steeping time and strength of the tea compared to using tea bags.
Teacups and saucers
Some tea enthusiasts may prefer traditional ceramic or glass cups, while others may prefer insulated or double-walled cups to keep their tea warm.
This small, thin, pointed tool is used to break off small pieces of a tea cake and pick them up for steeping. It is typically made of metal or bamboo.
Teaspoon or scoop
This is useful for measuring the right amount of loose-leaf tea.
If you’re into drinking matcha, you may want to invest in a specific matcha bowl, scoop, and whisk. The process for making this tea is different than typical loose-leaf, so you need the right tools for the right flavor.
Organic silk tea bags
These have enough space for whole-leaf teas to open and don’t leak any microplastics into the brew since they’re organic.
Container for used tea leaves
This keeps your counter clean and makes it easy to dispose of used tea leaves. It can also be used for some types of teas to be brewed multiple times.
“So where are the country’s biggest coffee lovers? Berkeley, California has the most coffee shops, with one for every 2,073 people.”
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list. And a large amount of equipment isn’t necessary to enjoy a good cup of coffee or tea. But these items can help make the process more convenient and enjoyable. The exact setup you choose will depend on personal preference, budget, and the type of coffee or tea you intend to use.
There’s a lot of hobby-related equipment and supplies that would be easier to find and organize if not simply tossed in a drawer. Here are some ideas if you want to elevate the look of your station:
Even the most professional-looking coffee or tea station is of no use if your ingredients are stale. Storing coffee beans and tea leaves properly is key to preserving their flavor and freshness. Here are a few tips for proper storage:
If you want to make sure your setup looks less like a cold, minimalist space and more like someone’s Pinterest board inspiration, consider choosing storage containers and brewing accessories that can also serve as decor. You can also repurpose household items for a fun vintage, farmhouse, bohemian, or shabby chic look. Try incorporating some of the following:
If you’re a coffee and/or tea connoisseur and you’re thinking about moving soon, one of your considerations for where to settle might involve the amenities and vibe of the city you’re looking at.
“…[T]ea sales have grown about 150% since 1990 [in the US] to become a $4.8 billion industry, with ready-to-drink teas making up the largest segment.”
There’s some disagreement about where the “capital” of coffee or tea might be, but there are undoubtedly certain cities that have a higher concentration of coffee/tea shops, roasters, festivals, and culture surrounding the drinks.
So where are the country’s biggest coffee lovers? Berkeley, California has the most coffee shops, with one for every 2,073 people. However, the top 10 cities for overall coffee drinker friendliness are as follows, according to a WalletHub study:
As far as tea drinkers go, there aren’t quite as many in the U.S. as coffee drinkers. But globally, tea is a big deal! Cities with the most tea enthusiasts include:
Whether you’re a fledgling or frequent flier when it comes to coffee and tea, there’s plenty out there that can help you learn a little more about the craft, or just make your daily indulgence that much better.
The post Love Caffeine? Here’s How To Set Up Your Kitchen as a Coffee and Tea Enthusiast appeared first on Moving Advice from HireAHelper.
]]>Stories about resistance movements are often organized around the thing that must be resisted. That thing, whatever oppressive form it takes, tends to hold the narrative center, while the story of its resistance—what it looks and sounds and feels like to build enough power to resist—fills the space around the system or figure that forced it into being.
This is true, in part, because resistance is a counter-force by definition. But I think there is another reason, too: resistance movements are often primarily organized to dismantle something or redistribute power from one figure to another (or a group). In the labor movement, for example, we often talk about taking power away from the boss so that workers have more power, as if power is a finite sum and organizing is akin to more evenly cleaving an orange. Our organizing, in turn, tends to focus on “the boss,” the power that corporations have, and our anger at their greed and their disregard for the workers whose labor creates their wealth.
In my experience as a union organizer, though, “taking power away from the boss” is not a good description of what actually happens on a campaign, where people are often so transformed by witnessing their own ability and capacity to fight for change that, in turn, they and their families and workplaces and sometimes entire communities are changed. My book, On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union is, in part, the story of a group of workers who decided to unionize despite threats and intimidation from their employer. Together, they built enough power to eventually win their years-long fight. The source of their power was not their boss, and they did not come by collective power by “taking” it from the company that employed them. Their power was made of a new substance entirely, generated and fueled by their solidarity and collective will to fight.
As a reader, I tend to crave stories like this, that focus less on what we dismantle when we fight for change and more on what we create over the course of the fight. This is a list of books that illuminate the lives and communities and worlds that are built inside movements of resistance, books that center on what it is possible to build, even as we act to dismantle. Many of them trace the resistances of communities of women, queer people, and people of color—no coincidence, as people in these groups build resistance on foundations of mutual aid and radical care out of necessity, contending with the fact that oftentimes, their very existence is an act of resistance.
Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America
(Plume Books)
“They did something few of us ever attempt. They named what a better society might look like,” Martin Duberman writes of the Gay Liberation Front, one of the organizations built in the wake of the Stonewall rebellion. This landmark book follows the intertwined lives of six people as they help to build the movement for gay and lesbian rights that was sparked, in part, by the June 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn. In vivid, urgent detail, activist and historian Martin Duberman reconstructs the sweltering nights of the spontaneous protest at Stonewall and the often-violent repression of the cultural moment that surrounded and led to it. More importantly, the book vibrantly illustrates what happened after the rebellion ended; the piece-by-piece process by which a movement was formed that, only a year later in 1970, demonstrated its newly built strength and numbers in the first Gay Rights March.
Barbara Kingsolver, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
(Cornell University Press)
“Nothing can ever be the same as it was before,” said Diane McCormick of the Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary. “Look at us. At the beginning of this strike, we were just a bunch of ladies.” In her first nonfiction book, Kingsolver paints a crystalline portrait of a group of women whose lives are transformed when an injunction bars their husbands and fathers from continuing to picket during a strike at the mine where they work. The women—some of whom, Kingsolver notes, previously had to ask permission from their husbands to leave the house—took over the picket line instead.
With chains and baseball bats they defended the mine from nonunion workers—scabs—to force the company that owned the mine to concede to the workers’ demands. By relying on lengthy quotes from her interviews with the women, Kingsolver allows them to speak loudly in the book and take up space on the page, a reflection of their growing boldness as the strike wears on. The book describes not only the fight itself but the process of empowerment that happened along with it; the community that was built anew among the women as they constructed mutual aid systems for cooking and childcare alongside strategies for the militant defense of the mine.
Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
(Verso Books)
The 2016 protest to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline began as a small encampment of Water Protectors, but through good organizing, it grew to become the largest movement of Indigenous resistance in recent history. This moving manifesto serves as a kind of map, not only of the histories of indigenous resistance, but of a possible future, one that stands in contrast to the violence of corporate greed and environmental destruction. With care, reverence, and an urgent voice, Estes brings to life the fabric of solidarity on which the Standing Rock camp was built and the community of cooperation and generosity that lived there.
Jennifer Worley, Neon Girls: A Stripper’s Education in Protest and Power
(Harper Perennial)
In one of my favorite scenes in this book, one of its main characters, Velvette, is being forcibly removed from a strip club by its owner who had just fired her, and Tori, another stripper, runs offstage in her G-string and jumps on the owner’s back to defend her. The live-wire energy of this scene runs through every page of Neon Girls, which is the story of the formation of the first strippers’ union. The brave women at the story’s center militantly resist their treatment as disposable labor and succeed—first in unionizing, and then in taking over the club as a worker-owned co-operative. The community of trust and care they build changes them and stands to change the entirety of the industry in which they work. Worley’s sharp character sketches and fast-paced account of the organizing drive make this book a hard one to put down.
Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War
(Harvard University Press)
In this scholarly book full of anecdote and drama, Tera Hunter illuminates the lives of newly emancipated Black women workers in postbellum Atlanta. As washerwomen and domestic workers, Black women organized networks of resistance to their white employers’ low wage offers, inhumane treatment, and absurd demands as well as to systems put in place to keep them impoverished and medically victimized. The women she follows center their newly constructed communities not only on work and the necessity of their resistance, but also on joy, care, play, and community. The social fabric that unfolds from their leisure time, the mere existence of which was subversive, manifested in clubs and markets, dance halls, and community kitchens. This book is the story of a new world, built by Black women, with and for each other.
__________________________________
On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union by Daisy Pitkin is available via Algonquin Books.
]]>“How did we build our houses?
When you’re standing under winter skies,
and the heavens turn and sail away,
you know you’ve got to live somewhere you aren’t afraid to die.”
*
Serhiy Zhadan is arguably the best-known contemporary Ukrainian-language poet and novelist. He is also the charismatic front-man and lyricist for the ska-punk band, Zhadan and the Dogs. He wrote these lines about the Crimean Tatars, who were deported en masse from Crimea under Stalin in 1944, and again displaced following the Russian annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
This week, the popular Ukrainian hip-hop group TNMK, together with the Tatar singer El’vira Sarikhalil, released a single, “Houses,” based on the poem, which they planned to release on February 26, the “Day of Crimean Resistance to the Occupation.” Linking the song to his social media feeds, Zhadan commented, “I wrote this text about Crimea, 2014, but today it isn’t just about Crimea.” Over the past week, as bombs have hit houses in Zhadan’s home city of Kharkiv, the writer has helped to coordinate volunteer opposition and relief efforts.
At 47, Zhadan has come to epitomize his intellectual and industrial city. He draws thousands of fans to his poetry readings and rock concerts alike. He has also influenced the politics and social discourse in Ukraine, as an activist and organizer since Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” During the 2013-14 “Revolution of Dignity,” Zhadan was active in the demonstrations in Kharkiv, and was hospitalized after being badly beaten by a violent counter-protester. He recovered, and following the outbreak of the Donbass war, he co-founded the Serhiy Zhadan Charitable Foundation. The organization has funded civilian relief and education efforts in the war torn Eastern regions of Donbass and his native Luhansk since war broke out against Russian-backed separatists.
Zhadan’s poetry and fiction is filled with gritty descriptions of an economically depressed, crime-filled post-Soviet industrial east. This territory inspires Zhadan: far from being a Soviet wasteland, it is a place of deep, complicated friendships, of creative potential. Since the outbreak of war in 2014, his poetry and fiction has turned to the more pressing questions of finding a purpose in a fragmented, war-torn reality. His 2015 poem, “Needle,” tells the story of a tattoo artist, who is shot at a checkpoint. The horror of war clarifies art’s potential to create meaning:
… carve out
angels’ wings on the submissive surface of the world.
Carve, carve, tattoo artist, for our calling
is to fill this world with meaning, to fill it
with colors.
(“Needle,” translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, in Words for War)
In Zhadan’s 2017 novel The Orphanage (recently translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler), Pasha, a Ukrainian teacher, descends into the foggy hell of the front line to retrieve his nephew from a children’s home. “The neighborhood ends. Then the road stretches along an empty field—concrete structures started in the eighties yet never finished, abandoned forevermore and now finished off by mortar fire.” As he navigates his war-torn hometown, Pasha must sort out his own relationship to the war. He must take sides.
Located 25 miles from the Russian border, Kharkiv has long been a city of industry, science and literary culture. It was the first capital of Soviet Ukraine, relinquishing this role to Kyiv in 1934. Contemporary Kharkiv is a vibrant, creative city. When I was last there in September of 2019, I met with the late poet Ilya Rissenberg, who wove Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Hebrew into his complex Russian-language poetry. Corner cafes are tucked throughout the city’s mid-century and modern architecture. The Kharkiv biennale was going, and the work of young artists was on display in several buildings downtown. I visited the “Tiny Garage,” a makers center for young children to learn woodworking, founded by the designer and musician, Yury Yakubov.
Over the past few months, as Russian tanks massed on the border, many outside Ukraine presumed that Kharkiv, with its large Russian-speaking population, would be an easy target for occupation, and perhaps annexation. And yet volunteer troops have, thus far, managed to keep the city in Ukrainian control. Far from being an island of Soviet nostalgia, Kharkiv is a center of new forms of activism and art in both Ukrainian and Russian.
Zhadan’s poetry has been collected in English translation by Virlana Tkazc, Wanda Phipps, Ostap Kin and John Hennessy, among others. We offer a small sample of some of his most recent work. The following poems, written in the fall and winter of 2021, are more meditative than Zhadan’s poems of the Donbass war. As in his literature of war, Zhadan’s poetic voice seeks truths about the human condition, but here these truths are embedded in the basic human impulse to speak, the changing seasons, the passage of time. Perhaps it’s possible, these lines suggest, to rebuild a world. (This is part two in a series on contemporary Ukrainian poetry; read part one, here.)
–Amelia Glaser, Cambridge, MA
*
Everything will change. Even this perpetual warmth
will change. The fog’s settled steadiness will shift.
The wet orthography of the grass will lose its inherently
clean line along with its stem’s expressive calligraphy.
The measure of things, which you accept so easily, will change,
the voice, which grew thicker in the dark, will get hoarse,
October, which you know by its broken light
and oversaturated space, will change too.
It will go like this: a bird’s lightness and rage
people, who forestall the evening chill by singing,
will start to remember winter like a forgotten language,
they’ll read it, re-read it, recognize it.
And everything will change for you, too, you
won’t escape this warning, this fear
of the blackbird in the morning circling the sharp,
warm trees, beating its wings against the blind gleam.
Lands that freeze to the core.
Sunny days for the brave and the luckless.
Your breath will change, in the end, when you recite
a memorized list of apologies, dogmas, and faults.
Dryness will change, and the wetness from the lowlands
will change, the field’s winter cold will change,
the stubborn October grasses and women’s inflections
will change. Like in fall, like in fall.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
*
…let him speak now, or forever hold
his silence, let him explain obvious things—
how flames descend on lovers’ shoulders,
how despair, like a butcher, is scooping the world’s entrails
onto the morning cobblestones of a September city,
let him speak now, while it’s still possible
to at least save somebody, to at least help somebody,
Let him tell us how another descent into
the deep current will end, how immersion in the deep brown mixture of hash,
in the depths of darkness, when water, like silence,
lasts longer than any language, is more meaningful
than words uttered passionately, stronger than the declarations
between two people struck by the dance of love.
Let him warn this lighthearted pair, who are carried,
like a fish by the rhythm of groundwater,
by the change in wind, by the early October sun, let him warn them,
that everyone will be cast ashore, everyone torn from within
by the cold of shattered glass,
no one will manage to stop the flow,
no one will read the heavenly book,
written in the dead language of autumn.
Rather let him speak now, while they, enchanted,
count birds like the letters of a name scrawled by a child’s
hand, let him speak, let him try to break
this joy of grown-ups,
who stand facing one another,
as if to guard their loneliness.
The birds’ agile dance,
the logic of warm gestures,
bodies, like letters forming
joyful sentences.
Anyway, everything was clear from the start. And whom did it stop?
Whom did it scare?
The eternal sound of a river.
Eternal warnings and eternal courage.
They are so strong as they migrate South.
So touching when they return home.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
*
Don’t say it aloud,
don’t let the coastal span of another utterance
roll off your tongue.
It’s a subtle, innate, human skill
of non-articulation, omission, awkwardness,
concealing something light behind your heart,
something so light, so sweet, so unshareable,
this wild generosity of not burdening anyone
with things that might make their face twitch.
And then speech starts, like the start of a cold,
it warms your lungs, and the fever sets in,
and since early August anxious people have been wandering around
glowing from within with this mysterious light.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
*
A brief history of snow,
as told by eyewitnesses
mimicked by a chorus
collected from passers-by:
give me a chronology of the snowfall,
let me hold the thread that leads
to the borders of winter,
to a blizzard’s blue outskirts.
A brief description of what fills
the space between eastern dunes
and western lowlands,
a brief stop in winter’s long expedition.
All those who defended this city
will come out to its walls
and call after the bad weather
that fell on the shoulders of their dead:
You go first, snow, go,
once you’ve stepped forward, we’ll follow,
as you go out to the field
our singing will follow you.
After all, we’re the ones singing on a quiet night
when it’s silent downtown,
we plant the seeds of a sigh
in the black soil of breath.
Snow, fall on our childhood—
the safe haven of loyalty and noise,
here we were friendly
with the dark side of language,
with the deepening tenderness,
here we learned to collect voices
like coins,
you go first, snow, go first,
fill up the deep sadness of the well
that opened for you,
like a metaphor.
Past the last gasps of childhood behind the station wall
and the amateur blueprint of a Sunday school,
past the houses on a hill, where boys’
fragile voices break at the stem,
go ahead of us, snow, mark us present
in the book of comings and goings,
in the nighttime registry of love,
you go first, don’t be afraid of getting lost in the field
because we know you won’t get beyond the boundaries of sound,
beyond the boundaries of our names,
the world is like a dictionary, it preserves its own depths,
shares it with school teachers
and their students.
Your night is like prison bread, hidden in a pocket,
like the oblique silhouette of someone walking, the wax that’s shaped into the moon,
your path is a reinvented chronicle of cities,
the slope leading to the square,
the deep tracks left by hunters,
where fear meets courage.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.
*
Serhiy Zhadan is the author of five novels, over a dozen books of poetry, as well as many short stories and political essays. He has released five albums with “Zhadan and the Dogs.” Among his many awards are the BBC book award of the year, and of the decade. He co-founded the Serhiy Zhadan Charitable Foundation.
Amelia Glaser is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at U.C. San Diego. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands (2012) and Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine (2020). She is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Yuliya Ilchuk is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. She is the author of Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity (2021).
]]>For this installment in a series of interviews with contemporary poets, contributing editor Peter Mishler corresponded with Tongo Eisen-Martin. Eisen-Martin is the Poet Laureate of San Francisco, California. He is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, received the California Book Award for Poetry, an American Book Award, and a PEN Oakland Book Award. He is also the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015). Blood on the Fog, his newest collection of poems, was published as volume 62 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series in September 2021.
*
Peter Mishler: Is there an anecdote, story, or fleeting image from childhood or youth that you think in some way indicates, foreshadows, or presages that you would have an artistic life and write poetry as an adult?
Tongo Eisen-Martin: Afflicted from day one. Especially, growing up in the time of Hip Hop’s young adulthood. I literally could not listen to anything without my mind creating lines in response. What might be helpful to others though was that the foreshadowing was a collective product. My institutional life as a child was generated by beautiful, revolutionary, counter-hegemony people who submerged me in a reality we were all collectively producing. And so, platform, as it extends from the consciousness and imagination of the people, was just another time of the day. Whether playing African drums in the morning every day at school or writing my mother essays on everything that was racist in the latest mainstream movie, at least a confident imagination (whether it would find a reception or not) was guaranteed.
PM: Did you have any other family members who were specifically working as artists?
TE-M: My brother is genius actor, painter, and writer. It was really his leadership that got us through these decades of the corporatocracy’s ascension. Without his talent and fearlessness, I would have most likely folded my psyche into a surrender a long time ago. He kept our revolutionary integrity intact in the most graceful and soulful ways through craft and his general approach to living.
In some sense, the San Francisco moves are not from the thesis-making part of the mind; but rather a brainstorm of what I associate with social contradiction and revolutionary potentialsPM: One of the things that I’m curious about when listening to you read your work is that you seemed genuinely surprised, amused, affected, or pleased by your reading of certain lines as if you’re hearing them anew in that room, in the context in which you’re reading. Does this sound accurate to you?
TE-M: I think that comes from the general posture I put my mind in when reciting a poem. On one end of extreme internal engineering, in order to do right by each line, you can treat a line as if you have just woken up to it. It creates a persona for itself to deliver it. As a biproduct, you experience the line as new. On another end of just trying to keep your mind spacious, it’s like your relaxed mind seeing your funny friend for the thousandth time. You are going to chuckle when you see them regardless.
PM: I’ve also seen you perform your poems from memory. Do you think there is some new insight or door that opens your understanding of your poems by performing them this way?
TE-M: Yes, memorization is the best path towards really inhabiting the poem. While at a glance, it looks like reciting a poem from memory is the more performative move, but the worst obstacle to a liberatory experience at a reading, is to perform the situation. To perform poet-ing. Without the paper in my hand, I have the best shot at dissolving the current situation of myself reciting poems to others into the contents, energies, and landscapes of the poem.
We internalize a trajectory towards wide-readership, but the best narrator to fasten a line of poetry is the nobodyPM: I want to ask about how you address, critique, or describe San Francisco in your poems. Do you have a particular approach or thoughts about what it means to write about or address a place, a city?
TE-M: I believe that there is no phenomenon in the universe that you cannot use your immediate reality to at least improvise an insight into said phenomena. And so I use San Francisco to give insight into late-stage imperialism. If I was from a different city, I’d use that city to give insight into late-stage imperialism. Or potentials of resistance. Or the interplay of social-municipal aggregate and gallows humor. In some sense, the San Francisco moves are not from the thesis-making part of the mind; but rather a brainstorm of what I associate with social contradiction and revolutionary potentials.
PM: Could you talk about the experience of how you developed the lineation of your poems?
TE-M: I try to use line placement in ways that will show the reader a potential way of reading the ideas; even give the poem an auditory animation on the page. At times it is an attempt to place voices around a stage. At other times, I am just trying to show where an idea truly begins and ends—and is resurrected later. You can also attempt to induce a tempo of reading, encouraging the reader to loosen or tighten their mind around a line. It’s almost improvisational though. Once the poem is done, I go through it and move the lines around. It’s a sweeping edit though. I almost arrange the lines at the speed I am reading the poem in one move.
PM: I wonder what you see as a particular distinction between your first and second collections with City Lights, now that you have seen both works “completed.”
TE-M: My first City Lights book really existed in a dyad with the first book I ever published on Bootstrap Press called someone’s dead already. They were dispatches from this period of several transitions: my life from educator to organizer, and eventually publicly-asserted poet. Transition of significant people in my life passing away. Transition of craft itself in that my writing (especially in my approach to it) changed greatly. Poems even written on the road moving from city to city. Once Heaven Is All Goodbyes was done, I didn’t feel like I could do much more with this planet I was lucky enough to stumble into. Most of what I was writing felt stale. And felt like an imitation of past work. But I got lucky again, and wandered into a new set of material conditions, strategies, and objectives (very, very much internal) to synthesize poems from; from which Blood on The Fog emerges.
PM: I think I hear you about these internal conditions, strategies, and objectives. Could you say more?
TE-M: I started to apply meditation techniques to writing, which seems counterintuitive to be less welcoming or obedient to any voice that wants to come along and be productive. Luckily, I stumbled onto the possibility when I was full of a lot of energy. And so the scraps of poetry that made their way to the surface while I kept my attention on the second for second simple realities of what I was feeling did not come straggling up. They came through sharp and came through heralding a new possibility. The possibility that actually you can lay down your defense mechanisms no matter how much music they have made for you in the past. Now, have I arrived at new purity of line creation? Absolutely not. It is still all very messy in my mind; but I have gotten a lot of ground out of just moving with the intention or aspiration of short circuiting the more conspiratorial part of my mind while writing.
PM: What is the strangest thing you know to be true about the art of poetry?
TE-M: The strangest thing that I have a feeling is true about the art of poetry is that it is littered with paradoxes or near paradoxes. You can write something brilliant approaching the page like a rocket scientist of language. You can also write something brilliant by throwing a two-year-old’s tantrum on the page. Disagree with yourself on the page in order to arrive at a unified insight. If you want to make a line more musical, make the cold analysis more specific or expansive. Disappear your persona in order to reappear with the persona most appropriate to the specific energy and idea. Report on 100,000 dualities to make the point that everything is one. What is useful for another poet, can be a bear trap for you. We internalize a trajectory towards wide-readership, but the best narrator to fasten a line of poetry is the nobody.
___________________________________________
Blood on the Fog is available with via City Lights Books.
]]>So how can you actually declutter all that paper in order to only keep things you actually need?
It takes some effort and commitment on your part, but it can be done. These 14 ways to organize paper clutter can help you declutter instantly!
Did you know you can unsubscribe from junk mailers??
When it comes to stopping the piles of paper, going to the email link on the back of the mailer is going to help stop the clutter. Most junk mailers have a website or phone number you can call that is located on the back of the mailer. Go to that website and click “unsubscribe”. Then you don’t have to worry about those mailers again!
Want more organizing hacks? Try this blog post: 10 Paper Organizing Hacks You Need To Know
The first step towards dealing with old papers is to stop new papers from coming into your house. Now why would that matter? Because when new papers come in, your “new” papers become old.
In order to stop more paper from coming into your home, you need a game plan.
Switch bills to electronic. This will stop the paper bills from piling up, and you missing a payment because you can’t find that bill!
Also, deal with mail daily. Don’t let things pile up. Instead come up with a system for stopping the clutter.
I break down that system in this blog post: What To Do With Old Papers
Sometimes all you need is a plan to deal with paper clutter. Something that has been tested out by countless individuals who can ensure that this plan works for dealing with the paper clutter.
Now this magical plan is called the Foolproof Plan To Dealing With Paper Clutter.
Inside this plan, you get a list of all the documents you have to keep…because that is one of the most asked questions around paper clutter.
Checklists are included to help keep you organized while dealing with paper clutter.
And, best of all, it is all DIGITAL! Meaning you don’t have to print out a thing. So there is no extra paper clutter because you can open this document in your eReader and use without a paper trail!
Did you know The National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals reports the average American receives almost 15,000 pieces of junk mail in their lifetime. How much of that is on your kitchen counter right now? Harris Interactive reports 23 percent of adults say they pay bills late (and incur fees) because they lose them. Agency Sales Magazine reports that we never use or look at 80% of the papers and information we keep.
So how can we stop the paper madness and start getting organized? These blog posts can help:
Organizing Paper Like a Professional
Kids coming home with all the school papers can feel overwhelming. So you need Easy Systems For Organizing School Papers. These are things that you need to tackle throughout the entire school year.
Plus you also need a strategy for What To Do With All The End Of School Papers. These are papers that are from the entire school year, that your kiddos’ teachers send on like the last week of school. That is when those piles come in and you need to sort and declutter and put away as you get those papers. So plan time to tackle that at the end of the school year.
How many paper categories do you have in your filing cabinet right now?
I have my tips for how to categorize all those papers in this blog post: How To Quickly Organize Papers
The easiest way to weed out the junk is to keep a recycling can and shredder next to your “drop zone”. That way you can get rid of the trash before it even hits the table/desk/etc.
Make sure you get all your bank and credit documents emailed to you. Then create folders in your email for all the documents you receive. More Effective Paper Clutter Solutions here.
While products aren’t always necessary, they can be helpful when maintaining paper clutter. I have a few favorites that I have included below. I use magazine holders as desktop paper holders. Trays can act as holders for papers coming in from the kids’ backpacks and work. And filing cabinets can help keep your space tidy!
Filing cabinets can be great if set up to meet your needs. I have some of my favorite ways to set up home filing systems below:
6 Effortless Ways To Use Magazine Holders For Anything But Magazines
Tax documents are another big way that paper can pile up. When you have paper documents for your taxes, you need a systematic way to keep them organized.
I am breaking down those strategies in this blog post with a free checklist:
How To File Your Taxes Like A Pro + Tax Documents Checklist
Kids’ artwork needs a designed spot in your home to be collected. I like using command centers or trays.
Then I recommend the kids sort through their items on their own. This way the clutter doesn’t always all on me.
The articles below are great references for what to do with kids artwork:
How To Organize and Store Kids’ Artwork
Reader Request: Storing Children’s Artwork
Photos are another thing I find go hand-in-hand with paper. We always find random photos when going through old filing cabinets or paper piles. So keeping the pictures organized is going to come in handy.
Try these tricks for storing photos for the entire family: How To Organize And Store Photos For The Entire Family
Typically we have papers that are meaningful in our paper piles. So we have to treat those items with care. The Workbook For Decluttering Sentimental Items was developed to help you organize your sentimental items in a way that works for you. The process includes going through your stuff twice!
Yes, you go through your sentimental items twice so you don’t end up throwing away something of value to you.
I had a former client who worked with a women who claimed to be an organizer. She was all about the “touch it once” method. That method means you pick up an item and immediately make a decision about keeping or throwing away. But she didn’t have this couple do that with each item. Instead, she was having them do that method with boxes of stuff. The would pick up a box and decide right then and there if she could throw the entire box away!
They couldn’t do that so they decided to call me. And we spent the necessary time going through each box in a manner that worked for them.
Because sentimental items take time.
So instead of rushing, start with the Workbook For Decluttering Sentimental Items.
So many of my virtual organizing clients say the number one challenge they face when it comes to maintaining an organized home is paper clutter. What do you save and what do you recycle? How can you reduce the amount of clutter that can consume your home?
These 7 Ways To Reduce Paper Clutter can help you organize your paper clutter!
The post 14 Easy Ways To Instantly Organize Paper Clutter appeared first on The Organized Mama.
]]>Before you begin any bathroom organizing project, you have to declutter! In the video above, I walk you through how to declutter a bathroom so you can have ample storage space!
When it comes to bathroom storage ideas, you are going to need under sink storage. But how can you get that space tidy? By using expandable shelf organizers!
I have more tips for how you can do that in this post.
It is no secret that I love using drawer liners to keep things in place my cabinets and drawers. And it is no secret that I find ways to decorate with shelf liners as well. But did you know that shelf liners can actually protect your cabinets? Seriously!! Shelf liners have many purposes, and protecting under bathroom sinks is probably the main reason I use them so much around my home and my clients’ homes. Which is why lining your shelves and drawers with shelf liner like Clorox brand Easy Liner, you are going to keep things tidy in your bathroom! You can read more tips here on how to line bathrooms.
When it comes to beauty products, there are many different ways to store them. You can use drawer organizers to keep your beauty products tidy in your drawers. Group the items together in the drawer organizers. I love using the new drawer organizers from the Onyx collection, exclusively at Ulta Beauty! These organizers come together in a pack of 3. But they are 3 different sizes so you can really get those different sized beauty items organized in your drawers.
You can also store beauty items in turntables. The turntable from Ulta Beauty is perfect for all your beauty products. There are dividers inside the turntable, making it easy to store items inside cabinets. I have more tips for how to use the turntable for bathroom storage ideas here.
The MadeSmart Turn It Organizer from The Container Store is my favorite bathroom storage for your hair dryer, brushes, and curling irons! I use it in my bathroom along with all my clients!
When you are limited on drawer space in your bathroom, you are going to need products to create storage without taking up much space! Which is why I love using products with drawers to help you keep things organized, like make-up or beauty products. You can read more tips on how to do that here.
The back of the bathroom door makes for great storage in small bathrooms! Attach hooks or bars to hold towels if you are limited on wall space. I love these basket and towel holders to help with towel storage.
I love using trays on top of the counters. It is a rather easy fix to keep your counters looking tidy, while still keeping all the necessities out!
Figure out what products you need out and which can be stored in a drawer. Then find a tray that fits both the space and size of the products you need out. This way you are only buying something that is the perfect size for your space!
Sometimes the easiest way to organize is with smaller bins. Try using stackable bins to keep your stuff organized either out on the counter or under the sink like these.
These bathroom ideas with storage are sure to help you get things organized. Pick the ideas that will work for you in your bathroom. Test out and see how it works, then tweak what you need so that you are sure to have ample organization in your bathroom!
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The post 10 Insanely Easy Bathroom Storage Ideas appeared first on The Organized Mama.
]]>The first of the turntables is one with handles. I like this one for cabinets that are lower. It makes turning the tray easier with the handles and the lip keeps things from wobbling on the tray.
This Lazy Susan organizer is great for kids’ art supplies or your office desk supplies! I love keeping this on a counter to make getting your supplies easy.
The large Lazy Susan organizer is great for under sinks. Because they are divided, they work well for holding lots of different bathroom items that may need to be stored under the sink.
I use these under kitchen sinks all the time. Since they are so large, they hold a lot of cleaning supplies. Just make sure you can swivel the Lazy Susan with the pipes.
I love this decorative spin tray. Keep it on your counter to hold cooking oils!
Again great decorative spin tray. You can use this on the counter or on the table to hold items many family members may need to grab.
I love bamboo, so this turntable is amazing. It is great for being out on the counter or in a cabinet.
I use this small turntable inside our fridge for holding our condiments. Nothing gets lost in the back when you can spin to find the condiment you need.
If you have a cabinet that is L-shpaed, this turntable is perfect for giving you more space in the back without worrying things will get lost.
Another great option for a corner cabinet that is cut at a diagonal.
I love using non-skid turntables for holding cooking oils. You don’t have to worry about the glass bottles breaking when you turn.
This is a great turntable for displaying on your counter on in your cabinets.
I love this marble and wood Lazy Susan for display. You can add food to this tray or have it out on your counter to hold your everyday cooking items.
This turntable has 2 levels, making it perfect for holding spices or cooking oils in a tall cabinet.
This Lazy Susan organizer is also a great option for holding spices and cooking oils in a cabinet.
I love this tall turntable for storing hair dryers and curling irons under the bathroom sink.
Using Lazy Susans with sides helps keep the items on the turntable from sliding around. Which is why this is a great option to add to your cabinet to store things.
If you do use a turntable without sides, make sure that your items that spin are fine while spinning. I like these types of turntables for canned goods.
Another great option to use when storing canned goods or jars with these Lazy Susan organizers with low sides.
This is a great product to hold craft supplies in a cabinet.
As you can see, there are so many options for using turntables, Lazy Susans or spin trays! No matter what you call them, they are super handy to keeping your home organized! Want more tips and tricks to organize with Lazy Susan organizers? Check out the posts below:
How To Organize Your Entire House With Lazy Susan Turntables
35 Ways To Organize Your Home With Turntables
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