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Peace of Mind Organizing

Make space. Find peace. Feel joy.

Articles tagged with control

Creating a buffer

13 April 2015 | Comments [4] »

I just spent a week with my 20-year-old niece and 17-year-old nephew, which was a rare treat. They live in Australia, so I don’t see them often. In fact, the last time was when I visited them in Australia in 2009. They’ve grown up a lot since then.

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Worth repeating: What is Organized?

14 November 2013 | Comments [1] »

This week marks the 7th anniversary of my blog. I posted my very first post on November 10, 2006. Since then, I’ve posted 906 more. I thought it would be fun to re-post that first post. I’m happy to note that the first post isn’t an embarrassment and that I would write the same thing (perhaps phrased differently) today. Enjoy!

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Yet another new task-management system from Mark Forster

10 February 2010 | Comments [0] »

Mark Forster is my time management guru. As I’ve blogged about before, I loved his book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management. I used his DIT system for managing tasks for a year or so, and then he introduced Autofocus in January 2009. I was a little reluctant to switch at first, because DIT was working for me, but I decided to try it. I was over the moon. (I’ve blogged about Autofocus many times.)

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Great advice on having it all

10 July 2009 | Comments [0] »

This fabulous blog post from Unclutterer really resonated with me. Its writer, Unclutterer Editor-in-Chief Erin Doland, is one of those folks who really seems to have it together. It shines through in her writing. And it feels very apparent when you spend time with her in person.

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Autofocus 2 to the rescue

30 June 2009 | Comments [0] »

I’m back from my husband’s family reunion at a lovely mountain resort in Pennsylvania. We had such a nice time. There were over 100 people at the reunion, all of them lovely. We drove the 700 miles to the reunion site, spending a night on the road each direction. It was so nice to get away. I barely thought about work.

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Update on my punctuality pledge

20 May 2009 | Comments [0] »

A week ago, I blogged about how my aversion to being early (and tendency to be late) almost cost me my life when I started driving down the wrong side of a downtown St. Louis road, thinking I’d turned onto a one-way street.

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On being early

13 May 2009 | Comments [6] »

I’m punctuality challenged, as I’ve blogged about in the past. This is not a desirable quality in a professional organizer. Or anybody, really. I always try to do too much before getting myself out the door to the appointment.

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Scrambling

2 April 2009 | Comments [0] »

It’s so interesting to me how in control I feel when I have (and take) the time to keep my systems going, and to maintain order. And it’s also interesting how quickly those systems can break down.

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It's tax time!

23 January 2009 | Comments [0] »

I can’t believe I’m thinking it’s tax time and it’s only January. I literally can’t remember the last time I filed taxes before April 15. I think it was in the 80s, when I filed Form 1040-EZ. The truth of the matter is that I’ve been self-employed since 1995 and in that time I’ve probably have filed an extension more often than I haven’t.

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Great advice in tense times

16 October 2008 | Comments [0] »

I’m still playing catch up and haven’t been coming up with inspiring ideas for blog posts. So instead of coming up with my own thoughts on the role of organizing in these worrisome times (though I did write a little about that in the latest issue of my newsletter, which went out yesterday), I want to share with you a fabulous blog post from my friend and fellow organizer, Aby Garvey, of simplify 101 and the Creative Organizing blog. Here’s the post, entitled, Empowered by Organizing.

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My punctuality solution

11 July 2008 | Comments [0] »

Being on time to client appointments has been a challenge for me. I blogged about this three months ago, at which time I vowed to make some changes to my morning routine, including implementing some checklists, so that I’d be on time instead of rushing like a mad woman in the morning.

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The morning rush

2 April 2008 | Comments [0] »

I’m a punctuality-challenged person. That’s not a great trait for a professional organizer. My clients have a reasonable expectation that I’ll arrive on time. And besides, it’s just good business to be respectful of your clients’ time.

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Perils of a new alarm clock

1 April 2008 | Comments [0] »

I got a new alarm clock recently, and I really like it. It allows me to wake up to a CD (right now, Lyle Lovett) and its snooze interval is six minutes rather than ten.

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Do It Tomorrow really works

22 February 2008 | Comments [3] »

As I’ve written here before, I decided on January 1 that 2008 would be the year that I take control of my time-management issues. That day, I selected probably a half dozen time management books from my shelf, each one espousing a different philosophy. I thought I’d make a commitment to a single system and really try to adhere to it for a month or so.

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A peek inside the client's mind

18 February 2008 | Comments [0] »

When I visit the home of a client for the first time, I’m often struck by the trust that’s been placed in me. For some of my clients, I’m the first visitor they’ve welcomed into their homes in some time.

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What is Organized?

10 November 2006 | Comments [0] »

How many times have you heard people say, “I need to get organized”? But what do they mean by that? How do they measure, “organized?” As a professional organizer, I think about this a lot.

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