How far can you make it down the street before you notice someone with a phone to their ear, a laptop bag slung over their shoulder, those signature white ear buds blasting their favorite songs, or tiny Blackberry buttons being compulsively pressed by chronically cramped thumbs?  Likely, not very far at all.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), on average, each American household owns 25 consumer electronics products, many of which are portable electronic devices.  For example, CEA estimates there are 178.5 million cell phones in use daily and that 32% of Americans own an MP3 player.   Clearly, portable electronics are becoming an essential part of life.  In most cases, gadgets are essential for staying on top of the latest news, organizing the day, connecting with work and family, and keeping up with the latest music, all while staying on the go.

But what happens when all these essential technologies finally arrive to your  home for a night of re-charging before the start of another long day?  In most homes, the result is a tangled mass of the knotted and kinked cords that provide the juice to keep the gadgets going.  Is there a better way to bring a little order to your must have small electronic items?

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

• Invest in an electronics charging station.  Charging stations hide and tidy the many cords associated with charging your numerous gadgets, such as MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and PDAs.  Charging stations come in a variety of styles and can be made of leather, wood, plastic, or other synthetic materials.  Some have a built in power supply, while others provide a hidden compartment for a power strip to be placed.  Not only will a charging station provide a clean, organized look, but it will also wrangle all of your electronics into one place.
• Use cable ties to keep excess cords from becoming tangled.  A variety of products can be used to tackle this problem.  A low-cost, yet effective solution is to use simple twist ties to bundle the extra length of cord.
• Designate a specific area in your home as a workspace and keep your laptop there.  A small nook in your living room or kitchen area would work great!  Just think how convenient it will be to access your laptop to check email and surf the internet!
• Take advantage of decorative baskets to house extra remote controls, video game accessories, and DVDs around your entertainment center area.  This will add a stylish touch, conceal odds and ends, and still maintain easy access to the necessities.

(by Lisa Hartig)

When you are packing, be sure to label each box to correspond with a room of the house and the contents of the box.  Consider color-coding the labels of each box to help you find the most important items easily once you arrive at your new home.  Supplies you need when packing include: packing tape, markers, and color-coded stickers.

Maybe you’ve taken a quick peek into a friend’s medicine cabinet or glanced at papers or books on a coworker’s desk.  Is this a guilty act of pleasure, the irresistible tug of curiosity, or could this be legitimate psychological research?  According to a fascinating article on ABC.com, the technique of snooping around someone’s space can provide great insight into someone’s personality.  Sam Gosling, a distinguished psychologist, claims the snooping technique can be used to determine people’s social habits, whether they are the right fit for a job, or even how they are aligned politically.

So, what does your office, cubicle, living room, or bedroom say about you?  Whether your spaces are chaotic and cluttered or completely in order, do you think Gosling’s snooping assumptions are on the mark?  Personally, I found them to be fairly accurate.  If you want to find out more about how examining one’s belongings can give you insight into their personality, you can check out Sam Gosling’s new book, “Snoop.”

Happy snooping (or conducting psychological research)!  It’s all about perspective.

(by Lisa Hartig)

Do you ever have trouble letting go of clothing items from your closet because you don’t know the last time you wore an item or think you “might” want to wear it again?  If so, start using the “hanger trick” today and the next time it comes time to do a closet purge it’ll be much easier to let go. 

All you have to do is go into your closet and turn all your hangers around so they are on your closet rod backwards.  Then, once you have this starting point you will be able to use the “hanger trick” on a daily basis.

Each time you get dressed in the morning you choose an item of clothing from your closet leaving an empty hanger.  Then, this is where it gets fun.  Instead of now hanging that empty hanger back on the closet rod in the backwards position (like all your hangers should be now), this hanger should now be placed in the normal (forward) hanging position.  The next time you start clearing out your closet, you’ll have a clear view of items that you haven’t worn recently.  They will all still be hanging backwards on their hangers!  You will have a clear visual of which items are ready to be purged from your closet. 

You may just be amazed by how often you rewear the same clothing items over and over, while ignoring all the others taking up space in your closet!

When organizing a home office, use vertical space to your advantage. The best way to reduce clutter in an office and to get paper and items off the floor is to go up and use the walls! Hang paper sorters, hooks, and shelving from the walls and you’ll immediately have more space to store all of your office items.

Do you ever find that items are lost in the back of your kitchen or bathroom cabinets?  Do items disappear from sight and then you never think to use them again?  Well, today I want to tell you about one of my favorite products that will help you get to those hard to reach places (like the back of deep cabinets).

I have found that installing slide-out cabinet baskets turns ordinary, under-utilized shelves and cabinets into highly efficient storage spaces.  Store just about anything from pots and pans, casserole dishes, to detergent and soap easily and without having to stretch to the back of the cabinet to place and/or retrieve the item.

Slide-out cabinet baskets are easy to install, so take a peek inside your kitchen and bathroom cabinet today and see if the items that have been relegated to the back can be brought to the forefront by installing fun, stylish slide-out cabinets!

We’ve all heard the saying “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, yet today I read an interesting article that says watches are now taking the place of those precious jewels.

Not only is your watch ultra-stylish, disguised as a great piece of jewelry, but it is also one of the greatest time management tools you have.  Watches help us all maintain our daily schedules, arrive to appointments on-time (or notify us of when we’re running late).  Time is precious and valuable in our modern world.

How many times a day do you look at your watch?  If you are like me, your watch has become a permanent fixture on your wrist and you sometimes wonder how you’d survive a day without it.  Look around and you will notice busy professionals, moms, and workers everywhere bouncing from activity to activity throughout their days.  They all seem to be in a rush to get ahead and have more hours in their day.  One of the things the article I read said is: “the short cut to success is Time Management” and just about everyone has a need to keep track of time.

Next time you look down at your wrist today, remember that you have a spectacular Time Management tool with you!  Use it well!

Split large projects up into smaller parts - you can still get just as much done during the day when you do things in small increments.  If it helps keep you on track, set an alarm for 15 minutes and commit to performing a task until the alarm goes off before moving on to another project.

Thank you for visiting the iOrganized Blog.  Soon, we will be posting useful organizing tips, fun organizing articles and stories, as well as reviews of our favorite organizing products.  We can’t wait for the blog to get going and we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed designing it.  As the blog grows, we’d love to hear your feedback as well as your experiences and thoughts related to your organized (or disorganized!) world too.

The iOrganized Blog is brought to you by Innovatively Organized.  Elizabeth Bowman, President, is the main writer with Associate, Lisa Hartig, contributing as well.  In addition, we also hope to provide you with interesting design ideas from our favorite interior designer, Maria Dominicci.  With this combination the blog will certainly be fun!

ENJOY!