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With four small children, I finally got tired of tripping over the toys and clutter that covers the floor every day. Even though the kids try to put things away, the house was still a mess. We only had sterilite containers from Walmart, and a laundry basket I had gotten at Giant a long time ago.

The biggest problems were the books and the Mega Block sets that we were given. My husband had also gotten the kids a set of soft balls like you see in play areas at fast food chains. My five year old was pretty good at separating the toys into different containers, but the three year old liked to dump them over again, and to use the books as shoes…

When I went to Pier One, I saw the tall Bookseller Bookcase, and bought two. They look great right next to each other- like something you would see in a magazine- and even better, they held all of the books, and the dvds! The slanted shelves are great for kids, as it is so easy for them to slide the books in, and they can move them around without the entire set moving or falling. The large, flat shelves fit some huge, coffee table style books on dinosaurs and animals very nicely.

With the books out of the way, I stacked all of the Mega Blocks into a nice tower, which is on top of the fireplace in the corner, and put the balls in a large japanese fish bowl style pot I had gotten at Sam’s Club.

Then I searched online for a toy bin that would have compartments, but not close up like a toy chest. Again, I wanted something that had a slanted front, but could also be used as a window seat. This was rather difficult. After much time spent on Google’s image search, I found the Land of Nod site.

The Storage Palooza storage bins are perfect! I did not think they would hold everything, but they do. I got one three bin unit and one two bin unit. The kids love them, and I finally have a normal, livable house! Even the one year old can’t do too much damage.

I wouldn’t class myself as a true hoarder, but in recent years I had found myself becoming increasingly short of space as I strove to keep just about every piece of paper that came into my life - work documents, phone bills, bank statements, credit card receipts, and so on. As little interest or value that a ten-year-old telephone bill might have to future generations, somehow I felt unable to actually throw these things away.

Keeping records is all well and good, but it can soon become a serious storage problem. Even if you have enough box files, filing cabinets and storage systems to keep all of this paper organised and neatly stored in one place (and I must admit that my own ’storage’ of all this paper was far less organised,) ultimately you can soon be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of space which a significant number of paper documents takes up.

In the end, my solution to the problem was to go digital - I purchased a Hewlett-Packard Scanjet 5590 scanner, with automatic doucment feeder, and spent a happy few months scanning any stray pieces of paper, phone bills, and the like, as I uncovered them during my rather wider trek though my somewhat disorderly house.

Armed with a digital PDF copy of my documents, I could easily shred and recycle the originals.

Nearly 25,000 pages later, not only did I save a huge amount of space, but now that all my paper is on my computer, it’s easy to find things. I can easily search for what I’m looking for, and find it in moments. And it’s easy to make a backup copy as well.

There’s nothing not to like about improving your filing system - and all the extra space I now have in my home is perhaps the greatest prize of all.

Cleaning up is something that I absolutely HATE doing. But what to do, some one has to do it.

This is how go about it: Start with the Kitchen: I use Pril liquid soap to clean up the dishes. Even If they are washed, I clean them up again. At night, who know what creepy-crawlies visited the kitchen?

Next,I scrub the sink and the slab with Scotchbrite. I use a little Surf excel, diluted in water for this.

Then the floors are cleaned using Surfactant’s floor cleaning solution.

Now it is the Living Room’s Turn: Living room is generally clean. I use Amway’s cleaning solution for the glass cupboards. There is dust under the settee, so I have to vacuum with my Eurekafobe’s vacuum cleaner.

Finally I clean the bathroom: I use Harpick for the toilet and Dettol for the rest of the bathroom. I clean the wash basin with surf excel or Ariel.

Phew! After this I can finally relax!