Our 1st Lake team is committed to helping our Greater New Orleans community by working with and donating to local non-profits. Over the past few weeks, we’ve continued to serve alongside Second Harvest Food Bank, Jefferson Chamber, and Pigeon Caterers to provide food for families and frontline workers in our community.
Since January, we’ve also had the privilege of working with local groups like Wounded Warriors and ARNO. Our teams raised $4,417.42 for our veterans and we raised $5,433.16 for the animals of ARNO.
This week, we participated in Bites for Knights by donating $1,000 to provide meals to the frontline workers at Ochsner Hospital! In 2020, we’ve provided over 20,000 meals through Second Harvest and we’ve donated over $5,123.42 to help feed those in need! Each dollar donated provides four meals!
Frontline workers receiving their meals from Bites for Knights Photo Credit: Jefferson Chamber
We’re looking forward to continued partnerships with these organizations, so we can keep strengthening our community from Jefferson Parish and beyond.
Looking to donate clothes and purge your closet to free up space in your apartment? Every so often, it becomes time to get rid of the old to make room for the new. This applies to household items as well.
If your closet has become too cluttered lately, you might want to consider donating clothing that you no longer wear. There are plenty of ways to dispense of your retired outfits and make some space for your new ones.
Take an inventory of your possessions and look for items that you don’t really use anymore that you can pass on to others in need. After you’ve gone through your drawers and closets and sorted your discarded items in a donation section, there are a few ways to get them off your hands.
Listed below are a few different ways to have a get-together, turn a profit, or make a charitable donation with your unused clothes and household items.
Community shelters in your area are a great option for donating your clothes and household items. Shelters can always use donations, and there will always be people who are in need of clothing and other items.
Below are some shelters in the New Orleans area:
We live in a digital era where most things are done online. Freecycle, Craigslist, and eBay are free and easy online tools you can use to give away your old clothes or appliances. You can manage the entire process by listing the items you want to give away for free or sell, and coordinate your own shipping or delivery.
Another great way to pass on your unwanted items to someone who might be happy to take them, plus discover some new treasures of your own, is to participate in a clothing swap. A clothing swap is a gathering of people who contribute clothing that doesn’t fit or that they don’t need anymore, and anyone can take someone else’s clothing if they choose. Host your own and invite family and friends!
The Salvation Army, located at 4526 S Claiborne Ave, is always a great option. They are a social services organization that accepts all types of donations to sell for a discounted price.
Looking for a great New Orleans area apartment? Check out what’s available at our Metairie, Kenner and River Ridge locations!
We are all guilty of letting things get a little cluttered at home sometimes. A kitchen counter stacked high with unopened mail… Clean clothes piled up on a bedroom chair… A bathroom cabinet filled with dated toiletries and barely-used beauty products…
You are not alone. The clutter can become a problem if you continue to let it happen, though. Guests might feel uncomfortable sitting in a living room area with a shoe collection a Kardashian would be jealous of. A dining room lined with reusable shopping bags isn’t a great place to host friends for game night. Visitors might not enjoy sharing a bedroom with exposed stacks of old papers and file folders you were “getting around to clearing.” Before it gets too bad, it can get a lot better! Not only will your loved ones feel more welcome in your tidy space, you’ll feel more confident in hosting them in your spacious and neat 1st Lake home!
It would be pretty stressful and exhausting to try and organize everything at once! According to Zen Habits, “When your home is filled with clutter, trying to tackle a mountain of stuff can be quite overwhelming. So here’s my advice: start with just five minutes. Baby steps are important. Sure, five minutes will barely make a dent in your mountain, but it’s a start. Celebrate when you’ve made that start!”
Zen Habits then suggests starting with your paper possessions like mail, magazines, and important documents. First, sort through and designate a home for that disheveled mail pile. If you have a console in your entryway, consider adding a small tray with tall sides to the table. If you really want to organize your mail, add a few trays to the table – one for important mail and bills, one for junk mail or magazines, and one for outgoing mail. No room for a table or console? There are plenty of wall-based organization products you can hang up in your entryway to hold your keys, bags, sunglasses, and yes, your mail!
If five minutes isn’t enough, Apartment Therapy guest-professional organizer, Nicole Anzia says, “It’s much better to spend a few hours — 2 or 3 — on one project or space. This way you’ll feel motivated to do more, not be burned out by the process.”
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If you have de-cluttering goals for every room in your house, it’s best to go one room at a time. That way you can focus entirely on that room’s purpose and specific de-cluttering needs instead of half-starting your work then bouncing around to other rooms.
Use this room-by-room guide by The Spruce to hit the ground running on your de-cluttering efforts!
Whether it’s the 5-minute task of organizing your mail pile or the 3-hour task of cleaning out your closet, you’ve got to finish what you’ve started. Sure, it might make you anxious. It might feel too overwhelming. It might keep you from doing something social. But the feeling of accomplishment and achievement well surpasses any feelings of stress!
You’ll be proud you put away your living room line-up of shoes. You’ll be proud you organized that tangled mess of electronics cords and earphones. You’ll be proud you donated your clothes and shoes to people in need. Once you start adjusting to these new habits and routines, you’ll never look back! Starting small will open the door to more efficient habits, so don’t be afraid to tidy up, organize, and de-clutter! You’ll love the space you created yourself!
Can you believe January is almost over? It’s amazing how fast this month has flown by! If you’re like us, you’ve been rocking your new year’s resolutions (Our’s was launching the beautifully built Clearwater Creek Premier community) and things are going well! Keep up the great work! If you’re looking to add more purposeful initiatives to your daily routine, or need some inspiration for organizing your 1st Lake space, use this list to guide you toward achieving even MORE goals in 2018!
1. “Eat the frog.” According to Insider’s Lucy Yang, completing your hardest task first is the best way to overcome procrastination. Do you have an assignment at work you’re avoiding? Is there a closet full of clothes you’ve been meaning to organize but dread the task? Yang refers to Reddit as her source for this daunting, yet rewarding idea. “That thing you feel crummy about? That thing you’re dreading? That is exactly the thing you need to do […] You know you’re going to end up feeling bad if you procrastinate anyway […] [so] you might as well take the action that will improve your life.” – Reddit user, ParallaxBrew
2. If it only takes one minute? Do it right then! Think about how many times you’ve left dishes in the sink or tossed your jacket over your sofa or chair instead of hanging it up properly? If you’re avoiding a task that only takes a little time to accomplish, they’ll eventually pile up and come back to haunt you.
Rinse that cup out and put it in the dishwasher immediately! Done! Grab a hanger and put your coat neatly back in your closet! Done! You’ll keep your space tidy and feel significantly less stressed knowing there isn’t a pile of shoes accumulating outside of your closet door and a pile of dishes smelling up your beautiful kitchen.
3. Get an “anti-workout” workout in. If you’re not a fan of going to a gym or fitness class, that’s okay! There are dozens of other ways to improve your physical and mental health without leaving your 1st Lake home. Many of our apartment communities feature landscaped nature trails and walking paths you can use to get healthy.
According to Prevention.com, walking just 30 minutes a day can improve your mental well-being, your creativity, and help reduce your waistline. If that’s still too much, start small with 15 push-ups or crunches in your bedroom or living room. It’ll be 15 more than you did the day before!
4. Meditate. According to Insider, “It sounds too good to be true, but research has shown that meditation can help reduce stress and negative emotions, improve your memory and emotional control, and literally change your brain for the better.”
1. Evaluate and donate unworn wardrobe items. Remember that “Eat the frog” tip from above? This is how you apply it. Stop putting this off and take some time on the weekend to really dig through your wardrobe. Not only will you free up space in your overcrowded closet and drawers, you could potentially make a little cash on the items you decide to sell to consignment stores. And in the long run, you’ll feel good about accomplishing this goal, making some money, and donating to people in need.
2. Store plastic grocery bags in a tissue container. This hack is pretty simple, but it can solve a very annoying problem. It’s great to repurpose grocery bags for trash bins and pet needs, but your collection might outweigh your frequency of use and that pantry looks like a plastic warzone! Head to your local home accessories store and pick up a few cute tissue holders. That way, they’re stylishly hidden, yet easy to access.
3. Donate towels and bedding to shelters. Refinery29 says, “…the best place to give them a second life is an animal shelter or vet’s office. “Animals often need to be bathed in these facilities — they’ll need tons of towels and blankets to find comfort in.” Here’s a list of Greater New Orleans area animal shelters.
4. Store owner manuals & toss cardboard packages. The first step in this home hack is to head to your local office supply store and buy an accordion-style file holder. Then, find all of the empty appliance and electronics boxes you’ve kept over the years, collect the owner’s manuals from the depths of those dusty cardboard containers and file them neatly in your new accordion filer! After you’ve assembled and organized every manual you have, pitch those space-sucking boxes. Not only will you have much more room for other items, you’ll be ridding your home of a dangerous fire hazard!
This is a lot of information to absorb, and it may seem overwhelming. The best way to really start hacking is to single out one or two of the tips above to start with! Over time, you’ll be able to chip away at this list and accomplish more than you thought possible at the start of the new year! Which tips caught your eye first? Tell us on social media and share your progress with our 1st Lake community!
1st Lake Properties | P. O. Box 73709 | Metairie, LA 70033 | info@1stlake.com
