46. Get Organized on Daylight Savings day

Daylight Savings constitutes a changing of our clocks twice per year. With this change, you can set an organizing schedule to follow that would be easy to remember. Simple...twice per year you should:

-check your carbon dioxide and smoke detector batteries

-replace batteries in your flashlights

-clean out the refrigerator of expired items

-clear out expired medicine

-pull out the fridge and clean behind it

-re-evaluate your emergency exit strategies

-replace food/water in your emergency kits

-update emergency phone numbers

-replace missing items from your first aid kit

-get the guest room ready for holiday out-of-town guest

-change all your passwords

-have your heating/air-conditioning unit tuned for the upcoming season

most important....change your clocks.

29. Organize Your Past Tax Returns

The IRS will challenge you up to 6 years on any past tax returns, so keep these returns and supporting documents on hand. Anything beyond that can be shredded and discarded. Free up your filing cabinets from unnecessary paper work.

You can learn more on IRS.gov.

23. What To Do With Your Hotel Toiletries

If you're like me, you will take home every hotel toiletry provided prior to checkout. You paid for them, right? Once you get them home, what do you do with it so they don't clutter your house?

- I like to keep them all contained in my guest bathroom so my overnight guest can use them. Comes in handy if they forget to pack to something.

- With new TSA restrictions, they are the perfect size to pack for your next vacation.

- Let your children use them in the shower. Little kids love to play in the shower and bathtub and giving them a little bottle of bath gel or mini soap makes it just a little more fun.

- Donate them to a local charity. Lifeworks Austin is a local charity that gives the toiletries to homeless street youth.

- They make great stocking stuffers.

- Buy a cute bag and give them to friends/teachers/boss/dog sitter as thank you gifts.

13. Organize Your Home Movies

Gather all of you home movie and separate into two piles. Keep and Discard. From the Keep pile, sort them into media types (VHS tapes, 16mm, 8mm, MiniDV, BetaMax, slides etc.) Once separated you can label them by date and store in acid free cardboard boxes. These boxes can be found at local chains like Target, Wal-Mart, IKEA and Container Store. Make sure you label the outside of the box with the contents including dates. Keep the boxes out of light, humidity, and heat. These harsh elements can cause permanent damage to your home movies.

Another option is to have your tapes, slides etc. converted into DVD's. This will make watching home movies much easier than having to pull out your old equipment. There are several companies available that do this type of service. I use Scan Digital, http://scandigital.com/ They are fantastic! I've had several tapes converted to DVD without any problems. The DVD's come back with photo images from the video printed on the DVD case. I love this feature since many home videos contain several events on one tape. I can just glance at the DVD cover to see what is contained on the DVD instead of trying to remember dates.

ScanDigital has offered a 5% discount for my readers. Use coupon code 1826131046 when placing your order online. From the Discard pile you have the option to give to friends/family, donate to your local film school, library or charity or recycle to keep them out of the landfills. Following is a list of recycling options: GreenDisk Freecycle

12. Check The Expiration Date On Your Salad Dressings

Check the expiration date on all the salad dressings in your fridge. Discard expired dressings. Before you trash the bottles, check to see if they can be recycled.

11. Collect Your Change

Instead of emptying your pockets or purse just anywhere in the house, pick a location and stick with it. Place a jar or piggy bank in this spot. When you clean out your pockets, drop your loose change into your jar. Once your jar is full, take it to a local coin counting machine and cash it in for cash. Some banks may even convert your change into cash for free. Deposit this cash into your saving account or spend it on something fun. You would be surprised at how little it takes to get a lot of money. According to CoinStar.com, a 1 gallon container could result in $228.34 in cash. Not bad for a simple task of emptying your pockets in the same spot every time. You will gain some fun money and have a house free of loose change.

4. Organize The Clothes In Your Closet

Begin by dividing clothes into categories.

Style: Group pants with pants, shirts with shirts, dresses with dresses and so on. Once you have separated styles, you can take it a step further and group by color.

Color: Start with white and work your way to black. Lighter colors progressing to dark.

Season: If space is limited, you can separate by season. Place the current season in the front of your closet and then out of season in the back of the closet, in a spare closet, or a storage box under your bed.

Pick a way that is easy for you to follow. If you feel comfortable with a system you are more likely to keep it up.

2. Create Bags

Create Bags For Your Various Activities.

Think about the activities you and your family are involved in outside of the house and create a bag for each event. For example, the gym, dance class, soccer, swimming, sports, art class, music lessons.

Each bag will contain everything needed for that event.

Dance Bag: tap shoes, ballet shoes, etc.

Soccer Bag: Soccer shoes, shin guards, water bottle, soccer ball, etc.

Swimming: sunscreen, water toys, swim cap, fins, towel, card to access the pool, etc.

Gym bag: work out towel, lock for your locker, gym card, toiletries for the shower, etc.

The night before your activity, hang your bag on the hooks by the door and grab and go in the morning. No more scrambling to find your soccer ball.....it is in the bag.

I even have a bag for drying cleaning. Instead of putting our dirty dry cleaning clothes in the hamper, I put them in the dry cleaning bag. I also put wire hangers into my bag. Your dry cleaner may accept these hangers to recycle. This is a great way to keep them out of your closet and landfill. Once the bag is full, I take it to the dry cleaners.

Need a bag? I have an extra bag to mail to the first person who emails me at stephanie@curlygirlorganizing.com.

1. Wall Hooks

Hang hooks on the wall by your door.

Stop wasting time in the morning trying to get out the door on time. Hanging hooks by your door will give you a place to hang items that are needed to get you out the door quickly and on time. You can hang backpacks, keys, your purse, jackets, umbrellas, sports bags onto these hooks. Anything that you need for the following day. I use my hooks for everything. I even have a bag hanging that I use to store all the plastic bags to be recycled at the grocery store. When I'm headed out the door to go food shopping, I grab my bag of plastic and go.

Put a system into place that is easy for you and your family to follow.

- When you walk in the door, hang your things on the hooks. This way items are guaranteed to be there when you need them. If you walk in and drop your items anywhere, who knows where they will be in the morning.

- The night before, place items on the hook that need to leave the house with you (coats for cold days, place notes for teachers in your kids backpacks, your gym bag, etc.)