Zen had come easily to him—sparse interior, shaved head, “rug-garden.” It was motorcycle maintenance he was having problems with.
-Sebastian Biot

To see the typical Dwell interior shot that inspired this ingenious blurb, click here. I promise it’s worth it. Warning: If you haven’t been keeping up with Unhappy Hipsters, be prepared to sacrifice at least twenty minutes of your time as you catch up. You won’t be able to stop.

from here.

So, Organization Point #1: A Gorgeous & Neat Work Environment. This is a beautifully organized workspace. I am not quite sure what’s going on in that bottom shelf on the right, but I like that there is one little messy element. That magazine file on the desktop can hide a multitude of sins and serve as an inbox without messing things up. I can’t quite tell what is in the Catherine Holm casserole dish, but it sure looks neat and organized. I would not have thought to use a casserole dish that way. I’m sure it would get a lot more use on my desk than in my kitchen. The drawers in the vintage desk provide plenty of space for everything to be tucked away. Also, check out how organized the art arrangement is. With everything lined up neatly like this in a similar color palette, you could hang pages from a lovely glossy and it would look fantastic!

Organization Point #2: Using tumblr. Does anyone out there use tumblr? What do you use it for? For those of you who don’t know or don’t care to blog, you may find you really enjoy tumblr. It’s kind of like tweeting but with photos, at least for me. It is also a very simple way to dip your toes into blogging, as it certainly isn’t all about photos. That’s just what I use it for. Anyway, you can peruse everyone’s blogs right on the site in one easy feed, and mark your favorite posts. You can also re-post those that you like.

So, how does this help you get organized? The result is that you can create style files of your favorite images. You can also tag them. For example, when I want to look at inspiring black and white designs I’ve been collecting, I can go into my own tumblr blog and search “black and white” and they’ll all come up in a wonderful stream (here is mine if you want to see what I mean). The catch is that you have to be an obsessive compulsive tagger to make this work. Overall, it’s the perfect spot to store all kinds of inspiration and ideas. If you do post to tumblr, please remember to give credit to publications/websites/blogs/photographers if you are using their images.

Here are just a few of my favorite design people to follow on tumblr (tumblr has even informed me that they are among my “tumblr crushes” because I mark their images as favorites the most often!):

The Brick House

Yvestown

Design Evolution (this post Michelle wrote is how I found out just what the heck tumblr was in the first place – seriously, how does everyone keep up with the latest and greatest web tool? It’s ridiculously overwhelming!)

The Beautiful Soup

My Farmhouse

P.S. Doesn’t this office fit the color palette from yesterday? It does a much better job than I did, and it wasn’t even trying!

-Becky

If you are anything like me, you are constantly searching for inspiration for new blog posts, whether it’s from a newspaper or magazine, an online store, or a beautiful pillow you saw while window-shopping – the list can go on and on. Since starting my blog last year, I have been jotting down notes and ideas for blog posts on scattered pieces of paper, which usually end up anywhere from my day-planner, my desk at work, the coffee table in my living room, or the bottom of my purse. And my massive collection of dog-eared and ripped-out magazine pages is no different. As one could guess, this method of brainstorming is not the most effective when you are staring at the computer screen thinking about what your next blog post will be!

In need of a solution, I implemented and personalized a system originally suggested by Holly Becker of the Blogging Your Way e-course: the style files. In doing so, I re-purposed a file storage box that I already owned into a simple, yet effective system to store and organize all of my ideas in one place.

The key is to figure out the right categories for your inspirational images and notes. As I write about interior design, my file is loosely organized with folders for designers and stylists; products and stores; inspiring rooms; as well as a folder for mood board inspirations, which could be anything from artwork to a nice outfit. I can then file all my scribbled notes and ripped or printed out source pages into the relative category. I have left some room for the magazines that I can’t bear to damage, with the pages of interest flagged so I can easily locate the items that sparked an idea or thought.

This method has been extremely effective for me to organize my thoughts, overcome writer’s block, and has saved me a great deal of time as I no longer have to search and dig for my notes. Once I write about an item, I either throw the notes out, or file them in one of my decorating files that are organized by room and style. To implement this system, you could easily use an accordion file, or a simple box with dividers or file folders. I highly recommend it!

Flavia Heupel is a PR Manager and author of Estilo Home, a blog which follows a design-obsessed woman pursuing her love for Interior Design while balancing a full-time job, a happy marriage, and a condo to decorate.

Ah, Organization Week has come to an end! Thanks so much to everyone who participated in Organization Week. I’m feeling motivated and hopeful, and you have all provided me with some clear and easy ways to get a jump-start on getting organized.

Here’s a roundup of our guest bloggers’ websites and blogs:

Penelope Loves Lists

Unclutterer / Unclutter Your Life in One Week (mine is on its way from Amazon)

The Kitchen Designer / Susan Serra Associates Inc.

Turquoise L.A. Blog / Vanessa de Vargas’s Design Site for Turquoise L.A.

The Office Stylist / Sorting with Style

The City Sage

Here are a few more sites I check on for Organizational Inspiration. Please add your favorites in the comments section so I can add them and have a more comprehensive list. I need all the organizing help I can get.

Chez Larsson’s Organization Page

Flylady

February’s Lonnymag is chock full of  FABULOUS jewelry storage ideas.

The Ten Habits of Highly Organized People over at Oprah.com. Oprah’s putting her closet cleanout stuff up on eBay. I spied a pair of Prada Venice Print pumps, size 40 on the cover of the magazine…

Flickr Group Pretty Organized

I’m going to be following Paola as she tackles her home office for the next three weeks.

A great round-up of Storage and Cabinets in this Canadian House & Home (LOVE that magazine) Photo Gallery

I am pretty new to digital magazines. While I love my glossies, so many of them have disappeared lately that I am turning to the internet. Online magazines are only getting better and better lately – they have such a professional look, they feature people that we won’t see in the big magazines like Elle Decor and House Beautiful, at least not yet, they have much shorter load times than they used to and they have become really easy to “flip through”. To me they are the media that exists between blogs and print magazines. I’m digging them, and who can resist that orange, black and white cover? I LOVE IT!  I had not heard of Nesting Newbies until I saw a link to it in an email I received from one of our soon-to-be-featured guest bloggers. They are now on issue 2 (yup, that sounds about right for how long it takes me to hear about something new and exciting), and I LOVE their philosophy. I think they said it best themselves, so I am going to quote:

NestingNewbies.com is a cross platform experience featuring a quarterly digital shelter magazine, online cooking segments, and informational blogs aimed at showing those who are new to nesting how to cook, entertain, and decorate.

NestingNewbies.com combines a traditional magazine format with the new social media trend of original online videos and blogs to present a cross-platform experience for “nesting newbies,” the site’s target audience of those who are new to nesting and have no clue when it comes to cooking, entertaining, and decorating. Cooking and decorating enthusiasts will also enjoy the original ideas being presented.

It sounds like just what  a lot of us need these days! To peruse the winter issue, click here.

Cover via NestingNewbies.com, photographed by Michael Soo, showroom by Maloos Anvarian.

Chest of drawers, early 1920s

These remind me of those awesome new Claude modular dressers that Jonathan Adler just designed. I feel like he must have been inspired by Eileen when he sat down to sketch.

Bedroom from the Rue Bonaparte apartment. How sexy is this?

Transat chairs, circa 1925-1930

I love seeing original sketches like these! These are part of the collection at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

All images via Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture by Phillipe Garner and published by TASCHEN. I highly recommend adding it to your design library. It’s available used at Amazon for about $10!

This one made me laugh the hardest!

so, images originally came from Dwell, witticisms from Unhappy Hipsters. I’ve got to keep reading and see if they have any hipster mustache mocking in there.

The February issue absolutely rocked. After many years of suzani fever in the design world (I mean, my god, I think PB has some sort of faux Suzani thing going on right now, that completely defeats the purpose, esp. after you read what it means. It’s like calling the brand new piece of junk McMansion next door to me a “Craftsman”), I learned that “suzani” means “needle” in Persian. I learned about super cool places to travel to in Georgia (I mean, besides the ATL, where I live, we have beaches and mountains and old towns, YO!), I saw an article about Alabama Channin, a label that I love, and articles about interiors that I admired. Consider my opinion of Southern Living completely turned around!

The best thing I found out about was the Postcards on the Beach Inn, on St. Pete’s Beach in Florida. Before this, my knowledge of St. Pete’s consisted of the HILARIOUSLY decorated condo we rented for a wedding, and the HoJo’s Tiki Bar (which still rocks; we had many cheap frozen drinks, and we had a former American Idol contestant tell us all about how she got kicked off the show for smoking weed while we were there, then she rocked out a great song. Priceless.). Anyway, the Postcards on the Beach Inn seems like the coolest spot I’ve seen since The Surf Lodge, and it’s a LOT less expensive. I’m loving the current combination of surfboards, retro paneling, groovy Greg Brady beads with a wink towards Americana Route 66 motor lodges and a nod towards no-tell motels  beachy response to boutique hotels. Sorry for the bad sentence structure on that one. Anyway, the Inn’s website is really cool too, hence the taped-up, postcard-esque, crooked images below.

http://www.postcardinn.com/