Read on for washi tape ideas for everything from getting organized to decorating your space.

For those not in the know, washi tape is printed, colorful and patterned Japanese tape. It has the stickiness of a painters’ tape, or a less sticky masking tape, which makes it great for removing and relocating without leaving a lot of sticky mess. It also comes in an almost infinite assortment of colors and patterns making it not only easy on the eye, but also quite practical.

Washi tape ideas and uses run the gamut from color-coding file folders to adding pattern and color to DIY decor.

If you haven’t yet delved into the world of washi tape, prepare to have your mind blown. The possibilities for using the variety of color and patterns offered up by this useful office/craft supply, combined with a little inspiration and creativity, are almost endless.

10 Clever Washi Tape Ideas to Organize and Decorate Your Space

1. Washi Tape Pallet Coasters – Use wooden Popsicle sticks, balsa wood and washi tape to create coasters to protect your surfaces.
2. Cord Labels – Have a jumbled mess of cords needing organizing? Use washi tape to label those cords.
3. Washi Tape Monogram Art – Create custom monogram art pieces for your family or as gifts for family members and friends.
4. Washi Tape Vases – Repurpose glass bottles as decorative vases with a little washi tape.
5. Cupcake Toppers – Use toothpicks and washi tape to make festive cupcake toppers.
6. Picture Frames – Living in a dorm or an apartment? You can display wall art without hanging a frame. Simply affix your flat art pieces with washi tape.
7. Washi Tape Toy Car Track – Make your own toy car track by affixing washi tape to a non-carpeted floor.
8. Washi Tape Wall Calendar – Use washi tape and sticky numbers to create your own wall calendar to keep you organized.
9. DIY Tealight Wedding or Shower Favors – Simply add washi tape to tea lights for some diy wedding or shower decorations or favors.
10. Washi Tape Ceiling Fan – Add color and pattern to a white ceiling fan.
11. Washi Tape and Chalkboard Clipboard – Use washi tape and chalkboard paint to decorate a practical clipboard.

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Top Image: Loollipop

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It’s one thing to get organized – it’s completely another to stay that way.

My goal to get organized and keep it that way has become an ongoing, evolving hobby of sorts. My biggest challenge is always the details: Getting the most important tasks done, while making sure the little things don’t pile to a point where hyperventilating is inevitable. Leaving yourself reminders for the little things will help declutter your mind in a big way.

Here are 10 ways to get organized and remember to stop forgetting:

1. Make a note immediately.
You have your trusty to-do list to get you through the day – but what about things that happen during the day you now need to account for? Get into the habit of making a note about it immediately: Whether you need to get in touch with a client, grab something for your daughter after work, or set up an appointment, making a note right away will help you keep up with those little surprises.

2. Setup triggers.
One of the biggest lifesavers for me has been setting up triggers: Completing one action that triggers me to complete the next one, etc. It’s a great way to build habits, get organized, and stop forgetting what you want to accomplish that day. For example, waking up could be your trigger to wash your face, which could become a trigger to brush your teeth. Changing out of your pajamas could become your trigger to change into your yoga gear (and you know, yoga it up). Connect each action to another, and you’ll be less likely to forget what you hope to achieve.

3. Utilize your phone’s lock screen.
How often do you check your phone to see what time it is? Use your phone’s lock screen as a place to stash reminders. For example, if you keep forgetting something your son’s nagging you for, take a picture of his “I wish I was adopted” face and make it your lock screen. (I do this, except with my cat. If animals could win Oscars…)

4. Distribute wipe-off markers.
Keep a wipe-off marker in your bathroom, kitchen – anywhere you wouldn’t normally find paper but might need to write something down. I actually use Crayola markers to satisfy my inner six-year-old.

5. Set an alarm.
If you need to leave your home or office at a certain time, return a phone call or attempt to beat traffic, setting an alarm is one of the best ways to remain on task and punctual.

6. Set a reminder.
Setup reminders on your cell phone for ongoing things you either want to make a habit of, or are constantly forgetting – especially if there’s a deadline attached (like garbage day).

7. Do it now.
If it’s something that takes ten minutes or less and is appropriate to do right away, get it off your mind immediately so you can get back to your day.

8. Automate it.
Automate your bill payments. Make your next eye appointment while you’re still at the doctor’s office. For pesky-yet-ongoing home maintenance, beauty or food purchases, have an online store like Amazon automatically ship your items when you’d normally run out. My mind feels so empty now that I barely have any shopping to keep track of (wait, that came out wrong).

9. Use Memstash.
What if you’re at work and need to make a personal note? Say hello to Memstash. Simply highlight a block of text in your browser, and Memstash will send you an e-mail or SMS several times throughout the week, helping you commit it to memory.

10. Download your mind.
While you’ve been focusing on the larger, more important tasks, your mind eventually swarms with the little details of your life you’ve been having to put off: Getting that stain off your fave sweater, replacing the coffee mug your cat broke, grabbing a coffee with your BFF. Take ten to get organized and write down every “little thing” that’s been stressing you out – you’ll finally be able to put them on the books and breathe out.

What are your favorite ways to get organized (and stay organized)?

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Image: Amy

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I’m always tempted by those clever hooks for purses to keep better track of our keys. They’re usually hidden in my bag under a bushel of important papers, hair ties, various wallets and glasses. Digging for keys is adding years to my life. It’s that stressful because disorder complicates my life.

There are people out there called professional organizers who charge hourly rates to box and label the accumulation in our homes. And everywhere you look, there are attractive storage boxes and baskets for sale to keep things in their proper places in our offices and homes. What I wouldn’t do to keep my family’s things in their proper places. I would glue them down if that worked.

The middle class is begging for these gadgets and services. We are not only being buried alive by constant connection and information, our accumulation, too, is taking over and greatly complicating our lives.

It doesn’t matter that I’m attempting to go paperless by saying no to receipts at the register or reading my news and paying  bills online. It doesn’t matter that I spent last weekend eliminating clothes from my daughters’ closets and retiring enough garments to fill five supersize garbage compactor bags. Today, my husband is hauling them to his mother’s so that her nurse can ship the items to her poor family in the Philippines.

As I strive to reduce excess and clutter to make my home the simplified, functional haven I envision, I continue to do battle with the nagging phenomenon of  losing shit. Shit! I’m sick of it.

“Where’s the English paper I printed out?”

“Who moved my tax documents? They were on kitchen table!”

“Have you seen my new skinny jeans? I’ve looked in the hampers and in everyone’s rooms and I can’t find them.”

Yes, playing the surprisingly unrewarding game of lost and found remains the most aggravating symptom of the consumption syndrome known as affluenza, aptly defined by Wikipedia as “the portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza and a socially transmitted condition of overload resulting form the dogged pursuit of more. ”

First, allow me to point out that the mother is the sole proprietor of the house capable of locating lost articles. And once the lost treasure surfaces, I rarely see the results I would expect, i.e. a big hug and overwhelming expression of joy on their faces. “Goodness, Mother, how can I ever thank you?”

Take my husband, an intelligent eco man who acquires the least, loses the most, and can’t find objects that are literally under his nose. One daughter has inherited this same bizarre gene. The other daughter was once a registered bloodhound like her mama, but is now losing her shit, and has succumbed to the same bad habits as her influential sister such as getting undressed and leaving belongings strewn on the floor of various rooms. (They also both bite their fingers and devour chocolate like wild beasts, habits I link to the bizarre genes inherited from their mother.)

Every so often, like last weekend, I get on a roll and rifle through closets, sort my kitchen desk nook, organize the kids’ bins of art supplies, and perform the most dreaded and vapid chore of all – filing. Man oh man, does anyone loathe filing as much as I do?

I wish I could get that organizer lady back here to help me make new files and sort all the junk. She made professional labels on her label maker. She was great. I wanted to marry her. I want her to move in and take over and take me away. She’s Calgon to me, minus the harsh chemicals. But wouldn’t you know it, I don’t know where I put her number.

I try not to beat myself up about all of this – to follow the advice of modern clergy and therapists and be compassionate with myself. Sure, I’m a bonehead about keeping order, a little better than some of my most eccentric working friends, and not half as good as most stay-at-home moms.

It’s really a matter of overcoming the selfishness which leads to the over-consumption of material possessions, according to the author of the website My Super- Charged Life. As he sees it, the disease of deriving happiness from the next new toy “is a fruitless pursuit that will quickly leave a person depressed, disillusioned and broke.”

I feel depressed when I drop my girls off at their private school and pass the lost and found corner which is so generously stocked, it resembles a second hand store. Piles of forgotten lunch boxes with rotting contents, abandoned warm winter jackets, essential classroom binders and adorable stylish tee shirts: They all abound in the unsightly lost and found – glaring symbols of affluenza.

At the end of each month, a volunteer parent named Tila from Colombia ships the unclaimed items to the poor in her homeland. The children there are appreciative. Children who barely have enough food to eat don’t snub their cheese sandwiches and abandon lunch boxes on the black top. When you own just one winter jacket, you don’t leave it behind when you board the bus for home.

True, kids will always be forgetful. I was once a forgetful child. But unlike my daughters, I had less and kept track of it. My walk-in-closet contained about five pair of shoes and two toy boxes, one with Barbies, one with stuffed animals. It was easy to clean up after play. It was freeing.

Guess it all adds up to wanting to be free, again, free from the clutter and feeling that fleeting high from getting something new, a wired emotion we don’t feel by accident.

In the ’30s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (known as the father of public relations) figured out how to mold public opinion via third party propaganda campaigns for selling everything from bacon and eggs promoted by the nation’s doctors to cigarettes, soap and books. This marketing strategy dictated to the receptive nation eventually became a familiar meme: Linking the accumulation of goods with feelings of happiness and success.

Ironically, I’m now finding happiness is attainable not by adding but subtracting. If anything should get lost, it is the brainwashing (and sometimes greenwashing) that the more we amass, the better we feel.

I strive to find the simplicity of less. Even more than ignorance, I suspect it is the route to bliss. In other words, it is time to bench Team Edward.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: Evelyn is Here

Images: Jeffrey Beall, It’s a Purse Thing, Squidoo, Wikipedia

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I don’t have the nerve to hire an organizer to sort my attic. It’s far too daunting for any professional. It requires a crazy person and a very strong pot of coffee. Luggage clutters the walking path and nothing is boxed as it should be or plainly labeled according to Thanksgiving holiday decor or ski paraphernalia. I strive to follow the example of Confessions of a Shopaholic and purge it all. Is there a high-end thrift shop that wants my treasured junk?

I have learned of one in Phoenix Called My Sister’s Attic, which consigns high quality furniture in an atmosphere that defies the Salvation Army feel, opting for more of the chic Palm Springs collective appeal.

“We dedicated ourselves to turning the ‘three D’s’ – dark, dirty and dingy – into the ‘three C’s’ – cute, clean and current,” explains owner Ann Siner, who also runs several other secondhand shops in Scottsdale: My Sister’s Closet (you’ll find St. John, Louis Vuitton and Coach); Well Suited (for trading used menswear) and Small Change (kids clothes and items).

The attic peddles brands like Pottery Barn, Kreiss, Thomasville and Robb & Stucky, as well as Mid-Century classics like vintage Eames chairs and iron patio sets. The business receives almost 300 pieces of high-end furniture and accessories every day.

You can browse the inventory online and even consign your furniture for 55% of the selling price to you in store credit or 45% of the selling price in cash. Go to the site to send inquiries and photos.

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