Do You have Organizing on the Brain?

Resources-to-start-your-own-organizing-biz-001.jpg

Do you love conquering the mystery of the junk drawer? Do you have dreams about labeling your kitchen cabinets? If you’ve ever thought of taking your organizing talents pro, then this post is for you!

I am so so excited to share with you the site, Profitable Organizer, which provides step by step instructions to start your own organizing business. I have been a member for over a year now and have used their many of their easy to follow tutorials to tweak all aspects of my business.

Resources to start your own organizing biz

 

Today, Lisa Woodruff is dropping by Space for Living to share more about her own experiences with Profitable Organizer. You may remember Lisa as the inspiration behind our Organizing your Paper Series based on her ebook, 10 Steps to Organized Paper.

The following post contains affiliate links which means if you click over to Profitable Organizer and decide to join because it is a good fit for you I receive a small referral commission. I only promote products and services that I feel are useful to Space for Living’s readers.

 

The first question I’m often asked is: Can you really earn $50 as a professional organizer?

Well, yes and no.

I have been a professional organizer, earning money while I organize others for over a decade. I started at $25 an hour and worked my way up to $40. My clients were happy with the service I provided and generally hired me to do about 3 hours of work at a time.

My business was very spotty. I would go months without anyone hiring me. I did get referrals from word of mouth, but I could not “count” on any income from my passion of organizing others.

All that changed 12 months ago. My life was spinning out of control and I left the workforce to come home and restore order in my own home. My family benefited greatly from my reclaimed stay at home mom status, but the bills quickly began piling up. I had to do something, but what?

I found a perfect opportunity for me in a new organization direct sales business called Clever Container. And quickly rose to be the top seller in the company my first 4 out of 6 months in the company.

But I wanted to be organizing. At my shows people were even talking about hiring me and a few did… but I couldn’t close the deal. Something was missing…

Around April I found the missing link. Profitable Organizer provided a 7 page predesigned website I could buy and set up.

In addition Profitable Organizer offered 52 weeks of emails already completed to use to start an email database. I knew having an email database was a key to my future success, but didn’t know how to set one up, or have the time to write down all my ideas.

Profitable Organizer also had Google ads that had been tested ready for me to use. Within 1 week I had 2 leads for jobs. The Google team called me as a new customer to “optimize” my ads. They were shocked at how little they could add to what I already had!

I became a Profitable Organizer member on Friday and had my site up and running on Monday. The step by step videos walked me through everything I needed.

The following week I booked 3 organization jobs. I know I could have never done that before I had the Profitable Organizer professional website.

In April I earned $1330 doing what I love – organizing others. Last month I made almost $3000.

But I didn’t stop my Clever Container business either. I have been selling organizational products to my clients and earning a commission on those sales too! Last month I added $700 to that $3000 by being a Clever Container Consultant.

So if 2013 is the year you finally start your professional organizing business, I highly recommend getting your web presence through Profitable Organizer and your products and networking with Clever Container.

 

Lisa WoodruffLisa shares her organizational tips, her entrepreneurial spirit and humor to encourage other moms on her blog www.Organize365.net, “Helping busy moms…Manage All Mama’s Assets”. She has published multiple books including 10 Steps to Organized Paper and Organizing the Business of Direct Sales.

 

 

If you would like anymore information about Profitable Organizer or becoming a professional organizer in general, please feel free to contact me directly. No question is too small!

The Best of Christmas

Holiday-Organizer.jpg

Has it happened? Full blown Christmas mode complete with carols on repeat and children on a constant sugar high? My girls started the Christmas countdown before the Thanksgiving leftovers were even done!

IMG_3323

Holidays can be an opportunity for fun activities and creating wonderful memories. We also know that holidays can bring stress and frantic days too. Fortunately a little time spent planning can help keep things manageable and less stressful so your focus can stay on the moments that matter most. Here are my favorite resources to keep Christmas organizedGet your printer warmed up because there are a bunch of free downloads for Christmas Organizing!

 

Planning

Do you make a notebook or binder to keep all your holiday ideas and to-do lists under control? The following sites share their own printables and planning strategies. And before you hit those stores don’t forget to print out your Space for Living Christmas Budget Printable to help kick off your planning.

Although the printables from this next site means we are a little late (by about 2 months), I still love this little flipchart printout from Giver’s Log for some REAL holiday planning. It’s super detailed and way more planning than I have ever done for my own holiday prepping, but you are sure to have all your bases covered.

Holiday-Organizer

 

Eighteen 25 turns a regular composition notebook into an adorable planner and generously gives us all the printables to do the same.  (Click the link for the 2012 version right after Step 1.)

eighteen 25 Christmas planner

 

Christ Centered Christmas created planner tabs to turn any ole notebook into a Christmas planner. I love ideas that utilize what we already have on hand!

Christ Centered Traditions

 

 

Christmas Printables

Are you looking for printables to slip into your own binder? Lovely Little Snippets has some adorable printables to share.

lovely Little Snippets

 

Christmas Your Way doesn’t disappoint with the plethora of printables to create your own binder.

SONY DSC

 

Sweet Baking

On Sweetopia, Marian shares her 10 tips for staying organized while decorating cookies. Just by looking at her pictures, you can tell she is a pro! I am heading back over to read her cookie decorating tutorial. I am in awe of these beautiful and delicious looking treats!

I love this baking printable from Botanical Paperwork, to keep all the extra baking goodies organized .

Botanical paperworks-BakingList

 

Christmas Cards

DaNita from Delightful Order has a great system to keep and update all her Christmas card address lists. A little planning goes a long way when sending out Christmas cards.

To make your Christmas card send out even easier, Organized Homelife has made some cute pintables to help you stay on top of those greetings.

 

Wrapping

This really doesn’t have anything to do with organizing but I had to share these adorable, festive gift tags from Sharon Rowan. She has brand new ones for 2012 too.

Sharon rowan photo design

Need a little box to wrap up that treasure? Make your own with a little help from Daily Suze. I can’t wait to use these for little treats.

daily suze

 

Clean-up

Don’t forget about prepping for the day of. Wrapping an extra box with cute paper is a great solution to keeping a trash bag out of all those Christmas morning pictures. Tip from Chica and Joe.

christmas_gift_wrap_box_

For Christmas Clean-up, repurposed plastic cups to keep decorations protected and orderly found on Tip Junkie.

organized-christmas-storage-diy-christmas

All–in-One

At the risk of overdoing it, my need to make a comprehensive resource list forces me to share the all-in-one series by The Organised Housewife.  This 25 day series to get organized for the holidays includes loads of tips including ideas for the sneaky holiday Elf on a Shelf. Since we’re only two weeks away from Christmas, it’s a little late to follow along day by day but she has so many great ideas to share! It’s definitely worthy of a click!

The-Organised-Housewife-Organise-yourself-a-merry-little-Christmas

What are your best Christmas planning tricks? Do you keep it simple? Or go all out and start planning months ahead of time?

Christmas Planning Printable

Christmas-Budget-Printable-2.jpg

We don’t post about organizing finances very often, but it is something I whole heartedly believe in! Ever since my family started living off of a monthly budget two years ago (thanks to Dave Ramsey), it always feels like there is a bit more money to work with when we need it and a whole lot less stress! That was far from the case at the beginning of the process, but eventually we found more and more ways to cut back to get our finances in order and working for us.

When you don’t know where your money is going it is easy for a paycheck to quickly slip away. Especially now when the Christmas buying frenzy begins. You wouldn’t be the first or last who woke up in January with a spending hangover, unaware of the actual spending damage until the bills start to arrive.

Thankfully, much of this overspending can be avoided with a little pre-Christmas budget planning. Here is what I use to plan my Christmas shopping and help me stay on budget. Of course I made this version a lot prettier to share with you!

The 1st page allows you to plan for all your Christmas spending including the miscellaneous we often forget to including like wrapping paper and holiday travel. There are a few blank rows for you to plan for your own special traditions.

Christmas Budget Printable

 

 

The 2nd page helps you divide and conquer your Christmas shopping with room to plan gifts and set a budget for each person.

Christmas Budget Printable 2

 

I have used this same Word doc table for the past 4 years. I keep the previous years table in the same document and it has been so useful to refer back to. I can see what gifts I previously had in mind and what I actually gave which always fuels ideas for this year.

As a little pre-holiday gift to you, I’m including downloadable versions of both pages right here for free! Give them a try and take some of the stress out of the holiday shopping frenzy.

Click here to download the Christmas Budget Table as a-

PDF

Word Doc

It takes only a few minutes to plan your holiday spending and get you on track to making your holiday season a joyful one!

Do you plan your Christmas budget? Are you one of the brave souls going out on Black Friday? Or are you just focused on those leftovers, like me? Are you already finished with your Christmas shopping (if so, teach me that trick!)? Let us know in the comments how the printables work for you!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...