Before – Laura Ray Organizing

The Situation
This professional client recently moved into a magnificent high-rise condominium, and discovered the existing closets were not up to the task of storing her clothing and accessories adequately. Both her master and guest closets had a single rod and one shelf around the perimeter, which meant a lot of wasted space in closets with 10-foot ceilings.

After – Laura Ray Organizing

The Solution
We custom designed the master closet to maximize the use of all available wall space. Clothing was organized onto single and double hanging rods. Purses can be clearly seen, displayed within reach on higher shelves. Scarves, hats and workout gear were sorted into matching labeled baskets.  Read more...

Before – Laura Ray Organizing

The Situation 

This family’s large basement store-room had become a catchall for camping gear, entertaining items, unopened boxes from previous moves, inherited art work, mementos, photos, toys, crafts, and gift wrap.

       The family was  frustrated and overwhelmed, because they wanted access to many of these items. They also wanted to solve the mystery of what was in the unopened boxes.

 

After – Laura Ray Organizing

 

The Solution

We attacked the clutter with a divide and conquer strategy. Using three other basement rooms — since we couldn’t move in the cluttered room — we brought out items and divided everything into the categories mentioned above.

       Once the items were sorted, we conquered each category and pulled out volumes of items to donate, sell or toss.

       When every category was sorted, Laura created a storage plan for the room consisting of heavy duty metal shelving. Every category had a home and each shelf unit was labeled. One side of the room (not pictured) was just for crafting and gift wrap.

       The family was happy to know that the unopened boxes were children’s toys and books long outgrown. Most of it went to a foster care charity. They are also thrilled to now be able to find anything in their basement in 15 seconds or less!

The Situation
The client moved and now it was time to set up her beautiful new closet.

The Solution
Laura created a plan to make the clothes, accessories and shoes easy to access, and still have clearly defined categories: casual, business, sportswear and formal.

The plan was based on the volume of each clothing category. The clothing and shoes were grouped by type, style, and then color. The purses were grouped by size, color and frequency of use.

In addition, making everything easy to access meant setting the correct heights for all movable rods and shelves.  Read more...

As an Organizer, the most common question I hear is “how long should I keep documents?” Here’s a guideline on residential record keeping.

Save for 1 month:

• Credit-card receipts
• Sales receipts for minor purchases
• Withdrawal and deposit slips.  (Shred after checking against your monthly bank statement.)

Save for 1 year:

• Paycheck stubs (Shred after your W-2 arrives.)
• Monthly bank, credit-card, brokerage, mutual-fund, and retirement-account statements
• Utility bills

Save for 7 years:  Read more...

• W-2s, 1099s, and the other “guts” of your tax returns

Before

After – Laura Ray Organizing

The Situation: This catering company grew fast, adding equipment and decor, but ran out of proper storage. Equipment was difficult to locate, because like items were stored in multiple locations. The layout slowed the staff down.

How solved:  Read more...

1. Purged outdated and less used items.
2. Grouped like items.
3. Created zones for different types of equipment and put the most used within arm’s reach.

Before – Laura Ray Organizing

After – Laura Ray Organizing

Client:  Saleswoman for a service company in Georgia.

Here’s the situation: Like many people, the client had converted a room of her home into an office. In this case, it was the dining room, which had no storage. Then, the client’s aging mother needed to move in for a few months and the only place to put a bed on the first floor was the home office. 

Solving the problem:

 Read more...

• We purged a lot. There were outdated sales and seminar materials. There were products from a former business, and household items that just landed in the space. She needed to make decisions about what items to purge.