Best Organizing Tips for your Pets

Hello! Welcome to my blog where I will let you in on all of the best organizing tips for every area of your home! Organizing doesn't have to be hard. Attacking it just a little bit at a time is the best way to approach it. And, the dividends you will receive by having a neat and organized home (and life) will far outweigh the time you spent on these organizing tips. Ready - lets get started!

Today's topic: Organizing Your Pets

Pets, gotta love'em, but in all honesty, sometimes its like having a perpetual 3 year old in your home. And that's in addition to the other 3 year olds inhabiting your home.  As I write this my cat just knocked a stuffed bunny to the floor. Why? I have no idea, all I know is that I'm the one who's going to be putting it back. Add it to the list.

Anyway, pets give back lots of love, but they take a fair amount of work also. That's why it's important to streamline their "needs" as much as possible. The organizing tips:

1. Unless your vet says otherwise, stick to dry food. It's usually healthier. Not to mention cheaper. Now some of your may be saying, but my cat/dog won't eat dry food, so I need to buy wet! That would be true if your cat/dog was buying the food. But face it, sooner or later they would eat whatever you put out. It's time for tough love folks.
2. Store the dry food in a large decorative cubby near where they eat. When you bring the food home, just dump it into the cubby. Store the scoop in there also. Then, when it's time to eat, just scoop a portion out. And since it's right there, any family member can do it. Scooping is not a skill limited to you. Dogs may need some sort of fastener on top of the cubby so they don't open it themselves, cats usually won't put forth that much energy.
3. Water. If you aren't around during the day, get an automatic water dish. Available online or at any store, this ensures a fresh supply of water at all times.
4. Walking - give your dog some independence by installing a doggie door to the outside! What we did - our backdoor wasn't a good candidate for a doggy door since it didn't open up to the back yard. So, we installed the doggie door right into the side of the house! Inside it opened up to a closet. Outside it opened to a small flight of steps. We built the steps since the side of the house wasn't at ground level. This lead to a small part of the yard, fenced off from the rest of the yard. This system worked perfectly. Maggie, our dog, could go in and out as she wanted, we could close the closet door in case we wanted to keep her in, the backyard was still usable since she wasn't leaving "presents" all over the yard, just in her fenced off area, and we didn't need to get home to "walk the dog". Everyone is happy! We did need to do a bit of retrofitting to make the door fit into the wall, but not a big deal. Took a bit of planning, but the results far outweighed the effort.
5. Litter box - my favorite invention - sifting litter bags!  I get them at Walmart. This is how they work -when setting up the box, you put all the liners from the package in at once. The bottom liner is solid, all the others have a honeycomb of holes punched in. When it's time to change the litter box, instead of scooping it, you simply lift up the top liner. The clean litter sifts through the holes, the solids stay in the liner, and then you toss the liner and contents away. Simple, quick, fuss free and 100% accurate. Why these liners are not the norm is beyond me! Here's a link if you have no idea what I'm talking about. sifting cat liners . Like I said, I find them in my local Walmart - a different brand and cheaper, so you might want to check there first. Just be sure they say sifting!

These tips should make the daily day to day duties of pet ownership a bit easier. Now go tell your pet you love them!

If you would like more organizing tips, find more in my eBook, 30 Days to an Organized Home, by clicking on the title. Also available on Kindle.

be organized!.....evelyn