Simplifying Small Businesses: Time Is Money!

To date,  Simplify Your Space's services have included  simplifying any and all residential spaces.  I am happy to announce that  Simplify Your Space  has expanded its services to not only include residential  simplifying, but small business space  simplifying, too!

This is the story of how the expansion of services came about....

One of my new 2012 clients is an owner of several small businesses.  She manages operations and processes both at home and at a retail commercial space.  When she originally contacted me in January, she expressed her desire to get all spaces in her home  simplified.  She, like so many of my clients, was overwhelmed with her space and had finally had enough...she was fired up to make a change! 

As I tell all of my clients who are interested in  simplifying  more than one area or room of their home, "let's start with the spot that pains you most." 

In this particular client's case, as a business owner of several different companies, the area that "pained" her most was her home office...followed closely by a couple of storage closets containing inventory for one of her businesses.

Home Office Before....

Home Office AFTER!

Home Office Before...

Home Office AFTER!

After working through my new client's home office space, we moved onto her storage closets, which contain inventory for one of her businesses.

 Inventory Storage Closet Before...

 Inventory Storage Closet AFTER!

Inventory Storage Closet Before...

Inventory Storage Closet AFTER!

Customized Labels & Signs as seen in the next three photos were created by 

Graphic Designer, Francesca Papini 

(contact me here for her information)

Additional Storage Area Before...

 Additional Storage Area AFTER!

As most business owners are well aware, time is money...time lost is money lost.  Working in a  simplified space where items have homes that make sense increases productivity.  Conversely, working in a chaotic space where items are hidden under piles or shoved inside drawers hinders productivity, which costs time & money.

This client of mine is not alone in her space!  In fact, according to OnlineOrganizing.com, "the average person loses an HOUR a day to disorganization -- more than two weeks each year!"  

Time is money right?  

To demonstrate, let's use this handy calculating tool from OnlineOrganizing.com.  Our example will be a person earning a gross annual income of $40,000 who works an average of 8 hours a day & estimates that he/she loses an hour each day to disorganization.  

You ready for this?!....one hour of this person's time is worth $20.49 and his/her disorganization costs him/her $5,000.00 a year!  Wow!  I wonder what he/she would do with all that time gained & money saved if he/she lived and/or worked in a  simplified space where everything had a home that made sense?


After my client and I worked together over several sessions to  simplify her home office and inventory storage closets, we moved onto her laundry room.  

Laundry Room Before...

 Laundry Room AFTER!

Laundry Room Before....

Laundry Room AFTER!

Customized Bi-Lingual (Spanish/English) Labels pictured below by

Graphic Designer, Francesca Papini

 (contact me here for her information)

After the laundry room, we  simplified  her home kitchen space.  When I left the session that day, she was all excited to cook.  In fact, the week immediately following our  simplification of her kitchen, my client cooked six out of the seven nights...something she assured me had not been done in quite some time!  

A few days after my client and I  simplified her home kitchen space, she called me to say that she had a proposition for me.  

She said, "Nikki, we all know how much I love you and how much you've changed my life.  Would you be willing to come help us at the Bakery?  I worked up there this weekend and I couldn't stand it now that you've got me all organized at home.  I had an employee call me to tell me that she searched an hour for a shamrock cookie cutter...help?!"  

Again with our theme here...Time is Money!

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area Before...

 Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area AFTER!

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area Before...

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area AFTER!

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area Before...

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area AFTER!

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area Before...

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area AFTER!

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area Before...

Bakery Back-Office & Storage Area AFTER!

 I am so thankful to this client for contacting me in January...and grateful to her for providing me this opportunity to help in her retail commercial space.  This client's relief and peace felt in her residential space resulted in her desire to feel the same at work.  

Thanks to this client's opportunity given to me, Simplify Your Space now offers  simplifying services for small business spaces.  It was exciting & rewarding to work with her wonderful employees & to see the relief on their faces when they knew right where to go to find what they needed.   Productivity (and morale, too!) immediately went up!

One final thought...one of the most rewarding parts of my job is to experience my clients learning how to  simplify  by themselves, making decisions on their own regarding how and where items should go...I truly enjoy teaching and coaching them on how to walk through a decision so that they may feel confident maintaining their space when I am not there.  I am particularly proud of the subject client of this blog post.  Way to go, girl!

Here's to living a more  simplified  life at home AND at work!  

Pinterest: Implementing Shared Simple Ideas

For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest, it is basically a large online bulletin board where people can "pin" pictures that inspire them...pictures of anything from organizing tips and home decor to recipes and fashion. 


People are SO creative & Pinterest is such a fun fantastic way to share, organize and categorize all of the inspiration from these creative folks!  

Pinterest has also been an incredibly valuable tool for helping my clients visualize organized,  simplified spaces....like this gorgeous office space below found here on Pinterest.

In addition, Pinterest is a helpful way to become paperless...no more tearing out pages of magazines and then trying to figure out the best method for organizing them...simply "pin" the ideas to your online Pinterest pinboards.  

For example, when I was designing our kids' playroom/gameroom, I loved looking through Pottery Barn Kids catalogs (I still do!).  I loved this space below in particular:

Rather than tearing out this page from the catalog, I  simply went to Pottery Barn Kids' website, searched for this particular inspirational space, and "pinned" it to my Pinterest "Gameroom/Playroom Inspiration" pinboard.

Below is a picture of our actual kids' playroom/gameroom and how I ended up incorporating the map and clocks idea from my inspirational Pottery Barn Kids catalog picture I pinned on my Pinterest pinboard:

I thought I'd share some other ideas that I have actually implemented from inspiration gathered on Pinterest.  Let's face it, it is super duper easy to spend countless hours on Pinterest browsing...but what about actually trying some of these fun inspiring ideas?!


My first example of how I put into action inspiring ideas gathered from Pinterest involves a Christmas gift this year for my Dad a.k.a. Pop.  

Pop is a really hard person to buy gifts for...however, he LOVES his grandkids....and furthermore, he LOVES to look at pictures of his grandkids, particularly when working in his home office space.


So, for my Dad's Christmas gift this year, I decided that I would put together a wall collage full of family photos.


Here is where fabulous Pinterest came in!


I searched on Pinterest for creative ways to display family photos and "pinned" all of the ideas I came across onto a pinboard named "P's Wall."


The picture below was my main inspiration I found on Pinterest for the center piece of Pop's family photo wall:

...and here is the main centerpiece of what I created for Pop's actual family photo wall:

Instead of using a backless frame like the inspirational photo from Pinterest, I used an old window that I found at a fabulous antique shop here in Fort Worth on Vickery called CC's Antiques. 


Other  simple ideas I have implemented from inspirational photos on Pinterest are as follows:

• Fabric-covered shoe box lids instead of canvases...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...combined with a picture Mod Podged to a tile...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented both the fabric-covered shoe box lid & Mod Podged picture to tile ideas: as a substitute for a picture frame:

This fabric-covered shoe box lid with Mod Podged photo above is on the wall as you walk up the staircase in our home.  

I also included one fabric-covered shoe box lid with a 5x7 photo of each grandchild on Pop's collage wall.  Here is an example below of one of the grandchildren photos Mod Podged on a fabric-covered shoe box lid for Pop's wall:

As a side note, I have had several folks ask me who took our photos this year that were on our Christmas card.  The Christmas card photos as well as the photos of our family above were taken by Kortney Scott of Timeless Treasure Photography.  She is fantastic!

• Towel bar with shower curtain hooks as vertical storage for items other than towels...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented it: as a "coat" rack under our organizer in our entry area:

• Upside down command hook as hidden over-the-door hanger...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented it: as a way to hang our son's new Texas Rangers 2012 calendar from his closet door without damaging the actual closet door with a nail or tack:

• Oven mit hung on inside of kitchen cabinet door to clear up drawer space...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented it: exactly like that...oven mit hung on inside of cabinet door to clear up drawer space:


(Quick Tip: For easy access when needing to remove hot items from the oven, I placed the hook on the inside of a cabinet door near the oven.)

•  Unique, inexpensive, multiple picture display...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented it: with a grapevine wreath instead of a wire wreath like the inspirational picture:

• Chalkboard list of "House Rules"....Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented it: smaller chalkboard, which hangs in the kids' playroom/gameroom:

•  Whimsy hanging letters...Pinterest inspiration picture:

 ...how I implemented it: as "labels" for the kids' Reading Nooks in their playroom, which you can see more of in the "Our Home" section of this blog:

Speaking of Reading Nooks...that idea also came from Pinterest and was the creation of one of my absolute favorite bloggers, Thrifty Decor Chick!

• Children's Reading Nook...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how I implemented the idea, which can also be viewed in the "Our Home" section of this blog:

...the next idea was born from the combination of two inspirational Pinterest pictures....

• Using paper as "wallpaper"... Pinterest inspiration picture:

...combined with...

• Tree branch wall decals...Pinterest inspiration picture:

....how I combined & implemented both ideas:  To implement the paper "wallpaper" idea, I tore out pages from a book on birds that I purchased at Half Price Books and spray glued the pages to the wall behind the kids' teepee in their playroom (see picture below).  Looking at the colorful bird pages is fun and educational for them, too! 


To incorporate the tree branch idea by bringing nature inside, I suspended an actual tree branch (it was free!) from the ceiling above the teepee so that the kids can feel like they are actually "camping out." I then suspended tin bird houses from the ceiling to make them look as if they are suspended from the tree branch (see picture below).

 ...and then there was how we decided to display our Christmas cards this year that I talked about in this post here....

• Christmas card display...Pinterest inspiration picture:

...how we implemented the Christmas card display idea...the first picture below was right after Thanksgiving....

...and this picture below was right after Christmas!  I actually ended up adding another ribbon to a different kitchen cabinet to accommodate all of the cards.  The kids really enjoyed looking at all of the cards during the month of December.

Wow!  Thanks, Pinterest!


In order to join Pinterest, you do have to be "invited."  You can go to their website and request an invitation or please feel free to contact me and I would be glad to send you an invitation.  

In addition, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions on how to navigate your way through Pinterest or how to best organize and/or  simplify your "pins."  

If you would like to follow my Simplify Your Space boards on Pinterest, simply click here (or you can click on the red button on the left side tool bar of this blog that says "Follow me on Pinterest").


Here's to implementing shared  simple ideas!