Reflecting Back on 31 Days and a Big Thank You :)

I can't believe the 31 Days of Organizing Tips series is over. What a month! When I decided to do this series, I knew I was taking on a real challenge to write 31 posts in 31 days. I mean I had only written just over that many posts in my first 4 months combined!

Subconsciously, I think part of why I did this series was to see if I really was committed to blogging or not. Now I know. I love blogging about organizing! And more than that, I have a passion for sharing tips and ideas with you to make it easier for you to organize too.

It was a great month! Beyond my expectations. In addition to what I discovered about myself, I also really enjoyed hearing how you're using the tips to organize your homes. Many of you also shared your own organizing tips which was fantastic.

I'm proud of the quality of the posts I wrote this month and I'm proud of myself for completing this challenge. So, now that the month is over, I wanted to take a few minutes to stop and reflect on it.

Here are some of the positive things that came out of this series:

The satisfaction of knowing I DID IT!
Nearly double the number of comments than in previous months.
So many new blog friends :)
The chance to feature some of my favourite bloggers' ideas so you could see how great those bloggers are too.
A HUGE increase in traffic to my blog! Thank you so much!

I learned a lot during this series (more positive things!). Here are a few of my lessons:

I should have started Pinterest much sooner so I wouldn't have had to spend as much time finding the pictures and posts that I knew I had seen before and wanted to include in the series. {I'll have lots of time to build up my boards before next year!}
I need to decide earlier that I'm going to do the series so I can plan posts further ahead.
Next time I should have a button that I can update with each day's topic so that when people pin the post they can see the title (rather than just one button for the whole series).
I should have my Day 1 post ready to go when The Nester starts her party so I can link that up instead of an introductory post. I know a lot of people were looking for the list of posts on Day 1 instead of my initial post that was written in September.
For better Search Engine Optimization I should use a shorter series title (so I can fit more of the topic for the day into the title).

It's a lot of work writing every single day! Here are a few ways I can make things a bit easier next time:

Set up a template with the basic things I say each day (I sort of did this part way through the month but you would think I would have been organized enough to figure that out right away!)
Write less! I know I wrote too much and that it became overwhelming for some people to keep up with reading the posts, let alone trying out some of the tips. I'm chalking this up to the fact that I hadn't posted previously on most of the topics I was writing about so I had a lot to say. That and the fact that there are just SO many great ideas out there!
Start writing some posts in advance. I decided to do the series too late for this and while I had expected to write several posts at a time so I could get ahead, I was usually writing each day's post (or most of it) on the day it was being posted.

There really weren't any negative outcomes of this challenge. Well, except maybe a bit messier house and a little less sleep. But those things happen a lot of times anyway :)

If you missed any of the posts during the series or if you want to refer back to them later when you're working on a particular organizing project, I've put a tab at the top of the blog that has links to all the posts.

Even after writing for 31 days straight, I still have SO many organizing ideas and tips I want to share with you. I'll continue to incorporate organizing tips into my posts and I will also share them on Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest. I'll particularly focus on great ideas that I find online in the "Organizing Ideas for the Weekend" series on Fridays (which will resume next Friday).

For the next little while I plan to share more of my organizing projects with you. If you just started following me through this series, feel free to look back at some of my other posts to see some of the organizing I've done around my house. And I hope you will stick around!

Once again, I want to thank you for reading this series! Your encouraging comments kept me going. Really :)

Have a great day and happy organizing!