Thursday, March 25, 2010

Community Reuse and Recycle Event This Saturday!

I meant to post this info earlier, but it has been busy. A large Shred and Share event is planned for this Saturday, March 27th from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. It is a collaboration of the City of Alexandria, County of Fairfax, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Landmark Mall, ProShred and McEnerney Realtors. ProShred will have a shredding truck to shred and recycle your old personal documents and the ReStore in Alexandria will be accepting donations.

Shredding Details: Shred up to 5 medium-sized boxes of personal documents per vehicle. Only documents with personal information such as tax documents, medical or financial records will be shredded. Junk mail, newspapers, magazines and other forms of paper will not be accepted, but can be recycled through your normal recycling system. Please remove all paper from binders and remove all paper clips, binder clips and rubber bands. This event is for paper shredding only, and ProShred will not shred information stored on film or computer discs.

The Shredding locations are Landmark Mall (Duke Street entrance) the Sears Parking Lot and the South County Gov't Center, 8350 Richmond Hwy, Alexandria.

Share Details: Recycle your new and gently used building materials and household improvement items.

Share Locations are: Landmark Mall (Duke Street entrance), Sears Parking Lot, ReStore Alexandria, 7770 Richmond Hwy (behind Gold's Gym), and the ReStore Chantilly location - 4262G Entre Court, Chantilly.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Critical Hub of the Home

A client friend of mine sent me a link to some good products for organizing the kitchen. We have been working on her kitchen recently, and like most of us, her kitchen serves many purposes beyond cooking. We have been working on streamlining her desk that is in the kitchen, reworking her cabinets so that the shelves and cabinets that are most accessible hold items that she uses most frequently, and purging items that don't work for her any longer.

The kitchen is such a vital room for most families because it is the gathering room, entertaining room, homework room, and place for cooking and eating together. We redesigned our kitchen last year and it is so great to have a gathering place that now functions so well.

One common issue that I see a lot of people have is where to store paper that is needed regularly...such as school work, bills, etc. I always recommend to clients to carve out a cabinet or two to house all of the administrative files, paper, and accessories that can clutter a kitchen quickly. In our kitchen redesign, I had the electrician put an electrical outlet in my designated administrative cabinet so that we could hide the clutter when we are charging phones and also have a convenient place to plug in the electric pencil sharpener.

I love that my son can do his homework in the kitchen while I'm cooking. He knows where all of his homework supplies are kept and some of the hassle of getting started is removed because he has a set place to do it and the tools to get it done.

The kitchen is the hub of most homes and because it is such an important room, it is helpful to spend the time periodically going through systems to make sure they still work, and make adjustments if they don't so that this well used room functions well.

Here's to some spring organizing in your kitchen!