Ready to make a change?
I’m been fortunate to have a good deal of success in my life. Here’s one reason: I have a secret weapon, is my friend and life coach (and Declutter Happy Hour partner), Shannon Wilkinson.
Filed under: Ranting-and-Raving Living || Tagged with: change agent, empowerment, products, shannon wilkinson
Follow up Friday
I wanted to update you on a few recent blog posts:
- There’s still time to enter to win The Other Side of Organized: Finding Balance Between Chaos and Perfection, the fabulous new book by my friend Linda Samuels, CPO-CD®. You can read the review on Wednesday’s blog post. To enter, either comment on that post or this one, and/or tweet about it on Twitter (being sure to put @janinea in the tweet so I’ll see it).
Filed under: Organizing Sharing || Tagged with: aby garvey, container store, declutter happy hour, elfa, linda samuels, napo la, napo st. louis, shannon wilkinson, shred and protect
How's 2010 looking for you?
January is almost over (already). As I’ve blogged about before, for the last couple of years I’ve been trying to add one big habit per year that will help me be happier and more productive. In 2008, it was clearing my desk at the end of the workday. In 2009 it was whittling my email inbox down to 15 or fewer messages every day. I’m going gangbusters on both of those.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, empowerment, goals, habits, routines, shannon wilkinson, teleclasses, telephone coaching
Why resolutions don't work (and how to get what you want anyway)
Where are you on the New Year’s Resolution Continuum?
Filed under: Organizing Resources || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, empowerment, goals, shannon wilkinson, teleclasses, telephone coaching
Help for the holidays
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really lucky because we never host Thanksgiving dinner, so Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday I have to get ready for. My husband even does the cooking for our contribution to dinner. But I know I’m unusual. Many people are looking around their houses this week, thinking of what they have to do to whip it into shape for guests.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, decluttering, holidays, quick clutter fix, shannon wilkinson
Quick update on my novel
I’m happy to report that I’ve written every day this month on the 50,000-word novel I’m writing for National Novel Writing Month. I’m well on track to accomplish my goal of the completion of a short novel during the month of November.
Filed under: Sharing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: deadlines, nanowrimo, shannon wilkinson, writing
Why I love Twitter
November 12 was the one-year anniversary of my signing up for Twitter. I have to admit that it took a little persuading on the part of my friend Shannon Wilkinson to get me to sign up. I didn’t get the concept and I thought it would be a mindless time suck. I had the rationale that I’ve heard time and time again from people who don’t understand Twitter that I didn’t care to read about the minutiae of other people’s lives, nor was I interested in writing about my own.
Filed under: Ranting-and-Raving Organizing || Tagged with: shannon wilkinson, twitter
The novel writing proceeds...
…which explains why the blog writing has dropped off a little. I’m very excited that I’ve been able to work on my novel-in-a-month piece of fiction each day since November 1.
Filed under: Organizing Living || Tagged with: deadlines, declutter happy hour, decluttering, goals, nanowrimo, shannon wilkinson, writing
Declutter Happy Hour Thanksgiving special!
I can’t believe Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I love Thanksgiving. And I’m really lucky because Thanksgiving doesn’t mean work for me. We’ve had turkey on the fourth Thursday of November every year since 1988 at the home of dear friends. My husband cooks our contribution. All I have to do is show up and eat. (And contribute to conversation.)
Filed under: Organizing || Tagged with: clutter, company, declutter happy hour, decluttering, holidays, shannon wilkinson
Stop the stashing
If clutter is an issue in your life, the prospect of having a dinner guest or houseguest can be panic-inducing. (Flylady calls it living in CHAOS, or Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome.)
Filed under: Organizing Resources || Tagged with: clutter, company, declutter happy hour, decluttering, quick clutter fix, shannon wilkinson
If you're into Internet marketing, here's a gold mine
I love exploring the possibilities of the Internet. It opens up so many possibilities, in terms of working with clients all over the world (the topic of the presentation I gave at the Australasian Association of Professional Organisers conference last month), working with organizers anywhere, finding great deals, and basically broadening my horizons. If you’re reading this, you’re probably into the Internet too.
Filed under: Ranting-and-Raving Resources || Tagged with: shannon wilkinson, technology
Facing down the fears lurking in the clutter
As Shannon and I discuss in Declutter Happy Hour, sometimes people don’t want to work on clutter because it’s just plain scary.
Filed under: Organizing Sharing || Tagged with: clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, emotions, empowerment, fear, procrastination, shannon wilkinson
We all have fear
Recently my husband and I went to a family reunion held at a ski resort in Pennsylvania (it was the end of June and there was no snow). He and I rode a chair lift up to the top of the mountain to enjoy the view. I don’t ski and I’ve only been on a ski lift a handful of times. Neither of us heard the mumbling attendant’s instructions to pull the restraining bar over our heads and lock it in place in front of us. So we were riding up the mountain with nothing preventing us from falling out of the moving chair.
Filed under: Living Sharing || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, decluttering, emotions, fear, self-care, shannon wilkinson, silvercreek glider club
Have a Declutter Happy Hour any time you want
At the end of March, life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I started offering a four-week telecourse called Declutter Happy Hour.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, emotions, empowerment, encouragement, shannon wilkinson, telephone coaching
It should be easy
In working with my life coach, Shannon Wilkinson, I’ve discovered that my driving force is ease. I like things to be easy. That’s why I love living in St. Louis, where the living is easy (recent highway closures notwithstanding) and didn’t like living in New York City, where the hassle factor is high. Ease trumps excitement in my book.
Filed under: Organizing Living || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, michael neill, productivity, shannon wilkinson
It's amazing what you can do in a half hour (or less)
As part of the preparations for Declutter Happy Hour, the four-week teleclass I started offering with Shannon Wilkinson last month, I’ve been doing a lot of small decluttering projects around the house.
Filed under: Organizing Sharing || Tagged with: 15 minutes, clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, shannon wilkinson
Why not lighten the load?
Over at the wonderful blog, Unclutterer last week, guest blogger Gregory Go offered up a guest post on the Seven Benefits of Decluttering. If you had any doubt of the benefits of lightening the load and letting go of excess (and they include financial benefits!), hurry on over there and check it out.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, decluttering, shannon wilkinson, unclutterer, zen habits
The vanishing day
I’m writing this at 6 p.m. Six flippin’ p.m! I usually blog in the morning and when I mess up my routine, things tend to fall through the cracks.
Filed under: Living Sharing || Tagged with: declutter happy hour, exercise, productivity, shannon wilkinson
Declutter Happy Hour starts tomorrow!
Our first “Declutter Happy Hour” session begins tomorrow, March 31, at 2 p.m. central. If you haven’t signed up yet but are intrigued, head on over to the Declutter Happy Hour website and check it out.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, emotions, empowerment, encouragement, shannon wilkinson
The power of 15 minutes
A decade ago, Flylady told me to set my timer for 15 minutes and declutter. She told all of her followers, “You can do anything for 15 minutes.” I’ve put that into use over and over again through the years. And I blog about it a lot because it’s so true.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: 15 minutes, clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, flylady, shannon wilkinson, time timer
Announcing Declutter Happy Hour!
Recently, I’ve been blogging quite a bit about how hard it can be to get rid of clutter, not just because it’s hard work that’s difficult to find the time to do, but because of emotional barriers to the work, or unhelpful beliefs that get in the way.
Filed under: Organizing Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, emotions, empowerment, shannon wilkinson, telephone coaching
It's tax time!
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.
Filed under: Organizing Living || Tagged with: control, freedom filer, shannon wilkinson, taxes
Atwitter over Twitter
My friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson convinced me a couple of weeks ago to give Twitter a try. Until I spoke with her, I didn’t get it. Why would I want to post short little messages to a social networking site? And why would I want to read what others were posting? Sounded like kind of a time suck to me. Somehow I felt a little too old for it (which turned out to be ridiculous).
Filed under: Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: allison carter, brandie kajino, erin doland, geralin thomas, john trosko, krista colvin, lori marrero, scott roewer, shannon wilkinson, social networking, twitter
Networking in PDX
As I mentioned last week, I’m in Portland for the Garden Writers Association’s annual symposium. On Friday morning, I met with two Portland-area organizers and bloggers (both of whom have blogs that have been my blog of the week), Krista Colvin of Organize in Style and Brandie Kajino, The Home Office Organizer. Here’s a picture of Krista, Brandie, and me, taken by my fabulous friend and life coach, Shannon Wilkinson, who joined us.
Filed under: Organizing Sharing || Tagged with: blog of the week, brandie kajino, garden writers association, krista colvin, shannon wilkinson
Self-care
I’m always struck how clutter gets in the way of life. I have many clients who constantly feel an obligation to deal with their clutter. They plan to devote a weekend to decluttering, then they start to feel overwhelmed, so they don’t actually deal with it. (Until they call me.)
Filed under: Organizing Living || Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, empowerment, self-care, shannon wilkinson
Have you tried a coach?
I was never one for organized athletics as a young person. I was on the sixth-grade girls’ basketball team at Green Park Elementary, but that was the only time I ever was under the tutelage of an athletic coach. (I know, very impressive.)
Filed under: Living Ranting-and-Raving || Tagged with: balance, coaching, shannon wilkinson
