Category: Gift-wrapping Room

December 7, 2016

6 Tips for Organizing Holiday Re-Gifting
As Santa flies his sleigh past Los Angeles Downtown City Hall, he wants to give you permission to re-gift!

At one time or another we’ve all received holiday gifts given to us with good intentions yet didn’t really work for our taste. Unwanted gifts clutter up the house or office while we figure out what to do with the gift. Guilt and fear paralyze us into keeping gifts we don’t want or need.

Re-gifting is becoming a perfectly acceptable social practice. In a recent survey, when asked if it is okay to receive a re-gifted item, 83% of survey respondents said yes. In our professional organization business, we give our beloved clients permission to reconsider keeping brand new gifts they'll never use.

So if you're considering re-gifting this holiday season, use these 6 tips as guidelines when re-gifting:
1. Gift packaging and contents must be in excellent condition;
2. Remove old tape remnants and re-wrap the gift in new wrapping paper;
3. Only give the gift to someone who will appreciate and use it;
4. Make sure all the pieces (puzzles, toys) are intact and unbroken;
5. Never re-gift unsold garage sale merchandise; fruit cakes, gift cards with partially used balances and nothing monogrammed;
6. Keep track of who gave you the gift; don’t mistake giving it back to them!
Re-gifting is a great way to declutter your space and get organized, to be environmentally conscious by recycling and reusing and helps to keep your budget down. So go ahead and celebrate this season and re-gift, re-gift, re-gift! Santa approves.

Mary Pickford is seen here on Hollywood Boulevard "decorating" for Christmas

Questions or Comments?

What are your thoughts about gift-giving this holiday season? Let us know here in the comment section or you can tweet us @johntrosko on Twitter. You can also check John out on Instagram (@johntrosko).

This original piece was published on FitPerez, Perez Hilton's site featuring celebrity fitness and personal trainer expertise, diet, nutrition and advice from lifestyle experts including John and OrganizingLA. Click here to read our original piece on Perez Hilton's FitPerez.

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December 7, 2016

FitPerez, Gift-wrapping Room
December 22, 2010

John Shares Professional Gift Wrapping Room Secrets With The Wall Street Journal

John is featured in today's (Thursday, December 23rd) Wall Street Journal in a Life & Culture piece on gift wrapping rooms.

We are deeply honored and excited! The article has made the WSJ home page as an "Editor's Pick" AND we're quoted twice in the photo slideshow. The article begins:

"Anyone wanting to buy all the gifts in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" should prepare to do a lot of wrapping—364 presents if all items mentioned in the entire song are wrapped."

—-> Beyond Gifts, More Homes Make Room for Wrapping

—-> Make Room For Wrapping – Photo Slideshow

Two Organizing Clients Featured in the Piece:

Two of our Los Angeles professional organizing clients are featured in the WSJ piece: Linda Howard and Sally Horchow. Each have extraordinary skills at entertaining, performing charity work, planning parties with a purpose and a dedication to the well-being of their friends and families. Much of their passion for life is portrayed through gift-giving.

Our mentions:

"Through his business, OrganizingLA, John Trosko has helped more than 100 clients set up, remodel or better organize wrapping rooms or wrapping closets. "It's kind of like a man cave" for women, he says."

"Mr. Trosko says a well-organized wrapping room needs either a basket or rollers for dispensing paper, a drawer where tissue can lay flat, a drawer for tools like scissors, glue and tape and space to organize spools of ribbon and other decorative items. Shelves for gifts awaiting wrapping are also helpful, as is a calendar listing upcoming birthdays and social engagements."

Also Featured:

The article also features Candy Spelling, Kate's Paperie in New York, California Closets, consumer Agatha Wallen of Redlands, California, Homebuilder KB Home, Martha Stewart and Dean Jones, owner of Realogics Sotheby's International Realty in Seattle.

Send an email to John Trosko, author of this post to john@organizingla.com

Image above courtesy California Closets

Read More:

Beyond Gifts, More Homes Make Room for Wrapping

Make Room For Wrapping (Photo Slideshow)

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December 22, 2010

Gift-wrapping Room, Home & Home Office Tips, Interviews & TV Spots
December 1, 2009

Simple Succcessful Strategies for Holiday Organizing

If you're anything like us, you have vowed each year after Thanksgiving that this year, this holiday season, you are going to plan the holidays right.

You're going to get totally, absolutely organized. Your cards will be in the mail early, gifts purchased and wrapped on time, decorations will be adorning your fireplace and your guest rooms will be ready and willing to take on your beloved relatives.

Ah, yes, in a perfect world.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday may have come and gone, but we have to remind you (as much as we remind ourselves) that getting organized for the holidays does not have to be a daunting task. To help this, we've asked our friends on Facebook and Twitter to send us their holiday organizing tips. We received so many tips and tricks we couldn't fit them all in one post, so look for more tips in the upcoming weeks.

(more…)

December 1, 2009

Business Tips, Fabulous Finds, Garage, Gift-wrapping Room, Home & Home Office Tips, Storage – Misc.
September 19, 2008

Carolyne Roehm Sure Knows How To Organize An Office

One of the more notable contributors to our new book, The Experts' Guide to Doing Things Faster: 100 Ways to Make Life More Efficient, is Carolyne Roehm.

Carolyne Roehm is a celebrated American hostess, designer, and author of numerous books ranging from fashion to flowers. She is quite notable for her garden "notebooks." Answers.com has a wonderful bio you can read here. Her newest book, A Passion for Blue and White, will be in bookstores the same day the Experts' Guide comes out, October 28th.

Roehm has an unusual website where she not only shares her tips for better living, but offers wedding ideas, gifts, favors, beautiful papers, luxury ribbons and more– all for sale. Her CRStyle Magazine from this past summer offers a glimpse into her unique style. We discovered an office organizing piece she wrote in 2006. We feel like we're on organizing crack. Just beautiful. Take a look:

Carolyne calls this "order in the house." She's organizing her office here, including scrap-booking supplies, ribbons, wrapping paper and stationery. We call it incredible.

"Every office space should be good-looking and functional. You will be more likely to keep it orderly." What do you think of these red folders? Is this something you can do in your own home?

We adore these navy boxes (clients know we're suckers for anything nautical blue.) Not sure where the boxes are from. Do you know? They may be from the now defunt Hold Everything or West Elm. Notice how Carolyne balances beauty with functionality. This shot may be staged, but can't you picture yourself reaching for a photo box and getting the scent of those orchids?

You can check out these pictures, and about two dozen stylish workspace organizing tips on her site by clicking here. You can also sign up for her mailings, which reminded us to write this piece.

Carolyne will be providing her expertise to The Experts' Guide to Doing Things Faster with a chapter on making the process of writing thank you notes more efficient.

Buy:

A Passion for Blue and White, by Carolyne Roehm

Related Posts:

Contributing authors to our book

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September 19, 2008

Celebrity Organization, Closets – Utility, Crafts and Scrapbooking, Experts’ Guide Book, Gift-wrapping Room, Home & Home Office Tips, Interviews and Book Reviews, Storage – Misc.
July 2, 2007

O-Magazine Offers Organizing Tips and a Sweepstakes

If you’re feeling lucky, Los Angeles organizing expert Chris McKenry can help you.

Chris is part of an advertisement in O-Magazine this month for Microsoft’s HP Pavilion IQ 770 TouchSmart Computer. Our colleague offers great tips for organizing your kitchen, home office, wardrobe, mail and time– many of those tips includes ways you can incorporate technology into your daily life (like we continue to do) by using the TouchSmart.

The HP Pavilion IQ 770 TouchSmart Computer helps plan your family’s schedule, manage events and leave personal messages – all at your fingertips, on a touch screen.

Here’s a sample Conquer Your Clutter tip we love:

"Another key to staying organized is keeping items where they are used. You normally don’t leave the milk, fish, and eggs sitting on the dining room table when returning home from the grocery after a difficult day. Think of the mail as perishable and keep those surfaces uncluttered. No matter how tired you are, get in the habit of placing the mail on your desk.

Record events in your TouchSmart calendar and recycle the invitations."

To read more of Chris’ Get It Together LA! organizing tricks, check out this month’s O magazine on newsstands now. You can also read the online version and enter to win a variety of prizes (including a TouchSmart and a visit by a professional organizer), by clicking here.

July 2, 2007

Butler’s Pantry, Closets – Foyer & Coat, Closets – Utility, Crafts and Scrapbooking, Garage, Gift-wrapping Room, Home & Home Office Tips, Kitchen, Media Room and Home Theater, Offices, Popular Products, Storage – Misc., Sweepstakes, Techniques to Tackle, Technology, Walk-in Closets
May 2, 2007

How To Organize Your Gift Cards

If you’re like us, you have tons of gift cards and always forget you have them.

We do store them in a reusable (Velcro closure) envelope, but that doesn’t solve the problem of how much is on each card.

Parent Hacks has a great tip for organizing your gift cards. Use a sharpie.

"We sharpie the current amounts on each one so we don’t have to fish around for the latest receipt. Just don’t write $87.22 too big, because you’re likely to have to scratch it out and write $46.13 after your next mini shopping trip."

Maybe you can use the $10,000 Magic Marker to write on the backs?

If you have a tip for organizing gift cards, please dare to share! Our readers want to hear what you have to say.

May 2, 2007

Business Tips, Gift-wrapping Room, Home & Home Office Tips, Offices, Storage – Misc., Techniques to Tackle