Kits keep you organized

If you use them together, keep them together

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that if you often use a set of
items together, keep them together. These kits can help you

(00:26):
feel more organized and ready to go on any given project.
Today's tip comes from a listener named Carolyn, who heard
my recent advice that it makes sense to prepare a
check for mailing right after writing it so things don't
linger in limbo. Carolyn wrote me that she keeps her

(00:47):
check book in a little tub with stamps, envelopes, an
address book, and address labels. She called this her bill
paying kit. Carolyn also has a makeup kit, a cross
stitching supplies kit, a kit for her dog's pills that
also contains a soft treat to hide them in, and

(01:07):
even a kit to hold the three cereals she combines
each morning for her breakfast. I love this idea of
creating kits for things you use together. Some things in
life serve multiple purposes, but some really don't. And chances
are if you are putting on concealer, you are also

(01:29):
putting on your mascara, so it makes sense to store
them together. And if you ever move to a different
place to put on your makeup, You'll want to keep
those things together in the process of moving them. A
makeup kit serves that purpose. Likewise, if you cross stitch

(01:50):
like Carolyn, you're always going to use the same supplies
to gather. But you might want to cross ditch in
the living room or in your bedroom, or maybe on
the porch if weather is nice. So it makes sense
to keep everything together in one movable container. Maybe you
can think of other kits that would help keep you organized.

(02:12):
Before I hired a cleaning service, I had a little
caddy for a toilet brush, cleaning spray, and paper towels
that I carried around to my various bathrooms. Our dog
has a little overnight bag with a particular leash and
his special food that goes with him to the dog
sitters when he stays there. After a few unfortunate times

(02:35):
of dashing around the house to find athletic equipment, we
almost universally store the kid's stuff for each sport in
its own bag. If something leaves the bag to go
get washed, it must go back in immediately afterwards. Now
I am not saying that a bathroom cleaning kit makes

(02:56):
cleaning the bathrooms any more fun, but it does lower
the transaction costs of starting the project. That is particularly
helpful for fun projects that are less likely to happen
if you do have to do a lot of hunting.
If working on your cross stitch project involves finding the
floss in one drawer, a scissors somewhere else, and then

(03:19):
finding the pattern where you left it upstairs and hauling
all of this down to the first floor where the
light is better, you might give up or get distracted
somewhere in the middle. If everything is all together, the
fun is much more likely to happen. One last thing
you might have noticed. I mentioned scissors in that last kit,

(03:40):
and scissors have plenty of uses, so buy a few pairs,
keep one somewhere you can grab for lots of things.
But if you use scissors a lot for a specific project,
you might want to put it in its own kit.
The time and frustration you save in hunting will likely
pay for the extra expense. So what kind of kits

(04:04):
will you create? I'd love to hear about them. You
can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for

(04:28):
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

(04:51):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.