Category: Sentimental

Create a Forever Keepsake with 4everBound Books

7/9/2024

Here’s the problem: Your kid is a prolific artist. The artist part is great, but the volume is an issue. How many crayon drawings of your family, poster-paint apple trees, and construction-paper collages are you supposed to be able to manage?

If you’ve been following my advice, you’ve Set Up a System to Deal with School Papers: A temporary display space to show off this week’s latest greatest creations and a bin or portfolio for long-term storage.

But you’ll notice a secondary problem. You’ve saved all of your child’s wonderful creations, but they’re stored away where no one looks at them.

Why keep a precious memento stored in a bin,
never to be seen and enjoyed?

The typical options for putting children’s art into a usable keepsake each have their own problems.

School years scrapbooks work well as your storage system, but we tend to jam too many pages into the scrapbook’s pockets, making it a fight to get the papers out for viewing. The book becomes heavy and cumbersome and won’t lay flat.

Printed photo books are space-savers, but if you can’t bring yourself to throw away the original art (I couldn’t!), then you have to keep storing the artwork.

A binder with plastic sleeves is OK, but it’s a pain to put together and its utilitarian plainness doesn’t do justice to your child’s marvelous creations.

SOLUTION: 4everBound*

Owned and operated by Robyn and Peter Pomonis, 4everBound takes your precious paper mementos and hand-binds them into a beautiful keepsake book. Your child’s actual art pieces become the book’s pages. If a piece is too small, they mount it onto a larger page. If a piece is too large, they carefully fold it so it becomes a pop-out page.

Last year, I made a 4everBound book for my oldest daughter who’s now a young adult. It was fun to reminisce through her life from toddler to teenager. Although I had already pared down her work at the end of every school year, I still had too much even for the largest 90-page 4everBound book.

How do you go about paring down all these precious memories? Make it a game.

SORTING: THE YES/NO GAME

Gather all of your child’s artwork into one place and separate it by year. Don’t get hung up on perfectionism or you’ll get stuck on putting it in chronological order — just do the best you can.

Now play the Yes/No Game. Pick a year — I like to work backward starting with the most recent — and sort the papers into two piles: Yes and No.

By forcing yourself to make a binary decision, you’ll get through it much faster than if you have to rank the pieces. Don’t overthink your answers. If it’s a maybe, put it into the Yes pile at this stage.

Now for the hard part: Immediately throw away the No pile! Don’t give yourself time to think about it or you’ll start fishing things out of the trash.

Repeat this for every year’s worth of papers. Set a goal to sort one year’s worth every day or five years’ worth each week.

After you’ve gone through it once, count how many pages you have to see how much you still need to reduce. Play the Yes/No game again until you have the number of pages needed. 4everBound books are available in 30, 60, or 90 pages. Just go for the 90-page kit!

Professional Organizer pro tip for paring down artwork

THE 4EVERBOUND EXPERIENCE

Once you’ve begun the sorting process, you’re ready to order your 4everBound kit. You’ll receive a sturdy shipping box with a prepaid label, a thick plastic envelope, and instructions. All you have to do is put your pages in the envelope — in the order you want them to be in the book — seal it, put it into the box, and mail it back to 4everBound. At their shop, Robyn will hand trim, mount, and fold your pages then give them to Peter who binds them. Soon, you’ll receive a beautiful, one-of-a-kind keepsake that your family will treasure forever.

Just think what fun you’ll have snuggling on the sofa and leafing through the memories with your family!

Not just kids' art — 4everBound preserves all kinds of memories

Do you have paper or paper-like mementos that you want to bind that’s not children’s artwork? 4everBound can handle that too! Preserve family history by having them make a book of letters or documents. Memorialize your achievements by binding a book of awards or racing bibs. If it’s paper or paper-like, 4everBound can make it into a book!

Watch my interview with Robyn and Peter Pomonis, founders of 4everBound, and learn about some of the most interesting books they've made.

* I receive a small commission when you buy through my affiliate link.

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Why It’s Hard to Let Go of Stuff: The 3 Sticking Points

1/9/2024

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Home Organizer shares why it's hard to let go

This September, I realized it was time. Past time, really.

I eyed the three long shelves stretching across the back wall of my craft room, piled with over 60 hat blocks I had collected in my previous profession as a milliner.

These blocks had been the tools of my trade. Hand-stretching a felt or straw over each wooden form makes a unique hat. Some blocks were antiques I’d scored on eBay or thrift shops and others I’d watched being hand-carved by an artisan in Florence.

“I’m a professional organizer now,” I told myself. I make myself a hat every now and then, but I have no desire to be a professional milliner again.

So why was I having such a hard time letting go of these hat blocks?

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Core Values Organizing

5/16/2023

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As a Certified Professional Organizer, I connect with my clients, unleashing creative solutions to help develop competence and confidence in the way they organize so they can find contentment in their homes.

Each of the five C-words in this sentence—Connection, Creativity, Competence, Confidence, and Contentment—impacts my organizing work and together they represent my core values.

We hold many shared values—for example truth and integrity—but your core values are the unique combination of motivating beliefs that drive you to do what you do. Core values are the WHY behind your WHAT.

Let’s explore how my 5 C core values impact my organizing work with clients. Read on...

Be sure to watch my episode of the This Organized Life podcast or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Host Laurie Palau and I explore the impact of knowing your core values.

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3 Rules for Saving Sentimental Stuff

3/15/2022

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Professional Organizer's Guide to Saving Sentimental Stuff

In my craft studio, I keep a small box of sumptuous ribbons. It’s a jewel box full of lush velvets and shining satins. Gazing into it transports me back to the ancient, hole-in-the-wall shop in New York where I found many of these treasures.

While organizing my studio some years back, it was these same ribbons that stopped me in my tracks. Practical, unsentimental me didn’t know what to do with them. Too special to actually use in a project, they didn’t seem to serve a useful purpose. Why was I holding on to them? Where should I put them? What do I do with them?

The answers to those questions led me to give myself permission to keep them for purely aesthetic and sentimental reasons, just because I loved them. I arranged them in a pretty box that would keep them safe and put the box on a shelf near my cutting table. Now, anytime I need to look at something beautiful to inspire my creativity, I open the box and visit with my special ribbons.

What special ribbons do you have in your life? Maybe it’s the china that your grandmother passed down to you. Or maybe it’s the artwork that your children made. Perhaps, like my husband, you still have the train set that your parents gave to you for your first Christmas.

These things are not practical or especially useful. But they have meaning to you and you want to honor that meaning.

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Give Pride of Place to Your Prized Possessions

2/11/2020

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The middle of winter with the lousy weather and post-holiday lull is such a cozy, indoor time. Not surprisingly, this is why TV consumption peaks in the winter. So... what are you binge-watching this month?

Have you seen my new favorite Netflix find, the BBC’s The Repair Shop? It’s a sweet show that reminds me of if Antiques Roadshow met How It’s Made crossed with The Great British Baking Show. Its charming personalities, beautiful thatched-roof barn, fascinating antiques, and stories of family history make for a “can’t-stop-watching” program!

Let me tempt you with the show’s intro:

“Welcome to The Repair Shop, where much-loved but broken treasures are brought back to life. Furniture restorer, Jay Blades, and a dream team of some of the country's most skilled craftspeople bring their talents to bear on beloved pieces of family history. Utilizing expertise passed down the generations, transforming priceless pieces of family history, the Repair Shop team will resurrect the items, the memories, and the stories behind them.”

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Organizing From The Heart: How To Care For Your Keepsakes

3/11/2019

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Professional Organizer organizes from the heart

Mementos are among the most difficult things for us to organize. That’s not because it’s hard to figure out how to make a photo album, put things in a memory box, or save a precious heirloom. No, mementos trip us up because of their emotional significance in our lives. We agonize over decisions about which ones to keep, how to honor the items, the best ways to preserve them, and even whether or not to use them.

We worry that if we get rid of anything our children touch (much less make!), we’re heartless parents. We worry that if we don’t hold onto everything that belonged to our parents, we’re ungrateful children. We worry that if we use grandma’s china, we’ll break it. We worry that if we don’t sort through and organize every single photo, we might lose a moment that was captured on film.

This all-or-nothing, fear-based perspective puts so much pressure on us that we end up storing these emotionally-charged things away, never enjoying them for fear of doing the wrong thing with them.

Let’s set aside the worry and instead come up with creative ideas to get our precious mementos out of storage boxes and into regular circulation in our lives!

After all, the point of saving these items is to enjoy them with gratitude and appreciation for what they mean to us.

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Do you have a collection or a stockpile?

4/3/2017

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If you’re struggling with clutter, I recommend you read The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life by Dr. Robin Zasio. Don’t be scared off by the title, this book is not just for hoarders but for all clutterers great and small.

I just finished the audiobook version – a great way to learn while on the go! Because the author is a doctor of psychology, the book provides great insight into the motivations behind why we hold onto things and get into trouble with clutter.

One part that I found particularly helpful details the difference between a collection and a stockpile. As I see it, a collection is an intentionally curated (and routinely culled) group of like items of value to you. A stockpile, on the other hand, is an accumulated mass of vaguely similar items. The distinction lies both in motivation and in method.

Here’s my synthesis of Dr. Zasio’s distinctions:
with clutter I urge y

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Organizing Tips
to motivate and inspire you!

Create a Forever Keepsake with 4everBound Books

Why keep a precious memento stored in a bin,
never to be seen and enjoyed?

SOLUTION: 4everBound*

SORTING: THE YES/NO GAME

THE 4EVERBOUND EXPERIENCE

Not just kids' art — 4everBound preserves all kinds of memories

Watch my interview with Robyn and Peter Pomonis, founders of 4everBound, and learn about some of the most interesting books they've made.

Why It’s Hard to Let Go of Stuff: The 3 Sticking Points

Core Values Organizing

3 Rules for Saving Sentimental Stuff

Give Pride of Place to Your Prized Possessions

Organizing From The Heart: How To Care For Your Keepsakes

Do you have a collection or a stockpile?

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Organizing Tipsto motivate and ​​inspire you!

Why keep a precious memento stored in a bin,​never to be seen and enjoyed?

SOLUTION: 4everBound*

SORTING: THE YES/NO GAME

THE 4EVERBOUND EXPERIENCE

Not just kids' art — 4everBound preserves all kinds of memories

Watch my interview with Robyn and Peter Pomonis, founders of 4everBound, and learn about some of the most interesting books they've made.

Categories

Archives

Organizing Tips
to motivate and inspire you!

Why keep a precious memento stored in a bin,
never to be seen and enjoyed?