Peace of Mind Organizing

Off to Baltimore!

16 May 2008

I’m catching a 6:25 a.m. flight to Baltimore this morning to attend the HH Backer 20th Annual Pet Industry Spring Trade Show and Educational Conference. It’s funny: for ten years I was a pet writer and always wanted to attend this show, which is not open to the public. But I never found a magazine to send me.

This year, I’m a professional organizer, doing nothing professionally with pets and I’m going. Go figure. I’ll be helping my fabulous friend, Sally Brown, owner of Roll Over Rover a t-shirt company that features her wonderful dog illustrations with cute sayings. She’s an exhibitor at the show, which makes me an exhibitor at the show.

I’ll help her in any way I can while trying to sell as many t-shirts as possible to retail shop buyers. And I’m sure I’ll have time to look at the 553 other exhibitors at the show. Since I’m a true pet lover, I’m really excited to see the latest and greatest pet products. And I’m delighted that I don’t have to write about them for a magazine.

Mostly I’m excited to help my talented friend sell her really high-quality, top-notch product. She does sell direct to the public through her website, so feel free to take a gander and buy a t-shirt or hoodie!

Back on Monday!

Don't forget -- postage rates go up today

12 May 2008

It’s come: The day for which I’ve been stockpiling Forever stamps. First-class postage goes up to 42 cents today. The rate for an additional ounce stays the same at 17 cents, so a two-ounce letter will cost 59 cents to mail. In addition, the rate for a postcard goes up by a penny, to 27 cents.

Forever stamps are valued as of the day they’re sent. So if you purchased a Forever stamp at 41 cents, it’s worth 42 cents starting today. And it’s supposed to remain the first-class rate as postage increases.

Other changes in the postage rates are that Express Mail and Priroity Mail (except for Flat Rate) are now priced by distance as well as weight. That means the closer the destination, the less it costs to send.

In addition, the post office is offering some discounts for Priority Mail and Express Mail when process the mailing online, via their Click ‘N Ship program. So it’s not more only convenient, but less expensive to do it yourself at home. (Hint: A digital kitchen scale, like mine, makes a great postage scale.)

Yesterday, the postal service had a very user-friendly page explaining the changes in the rates. Today, it doesn’t seem t be there. But here’s a link to their Household Services page, which is pretty helpful.

How do you eat an elephant?

7 May 2008

I’m going through one of those periods again where I completely empathize with my clients. I had a very busy March and April (I was out of town half the month of April) and now that I have a little time to breathe, I look around my house and think, “I need a professional organizer!” There are no shortage of wonderful organizers here in St. Louis I could hire for help, but I’m going to try to economize and do the work myself.

I got so overwhelmed the other day, looking at all the organizing projects opportunities around my house that I actually did an assessment on myself, filling out the action plan form I do for my clients.

So I now have a plan of action, but have I actually done anything? No. I’ve got a long list of business-related tasks as well that I haven’t completed.

This morning, as I was walking my dog, Kirby, I thought about how I can get past this approach avoidance. And I realized I need to do exactly what I advise my clients to do. Break the jobs down into small bites. And eat one bite at a time.

I think my timer’s going to come in handy here. I’m going to try to spend at least 15 minutes per day on one organizing project. That’s nothing. And I know that once I get the ball rolling, I’ll probably be spending larger chunks of time. But I also know that even if I spend only 15 minutes a day, the jobs will eventually get done.

Or maybe I’ll hire a professional organizer! Then I’ll have made a time and financial commitment to organizing and the job will get done more quickly.

Have you tried a coach?

6 May 2008

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.)

But I am fortunate enough to have worked with a life coach for, gosh, four years now, perhaps longer. I just had a fantastic session with her today. My coach is Shannon Wilkinson, who uses a combination of Neuro-lingistic Programming (NLP) techniques along with hypnosis and her incredible innate coaching skills. She’s helped me in many ways, and I owe much of my success to her.

I’ve taken coaching training and I know that it’s a challenge to be a great coach. I offer coaching specifically about organizing. Shannon offers coaching about anything and everything. Her niche is working with women, like me, who own businesses or work for themselves and are trying to balance the challenges of having a great business and a great personal life.

If you haven’t tried using a coach, but if it piques your interest, please check out Shannon’s website. If you want to look at other coaches, one way to find a coach is through good old Google. (“Life coach” is a great term to search on.) Another is by checking out the site of the major coaching professional association, the International Coach Federation.

And just FYI, most coaches work over the phone (Shannon’s in Oregon, I’m in Missouri), so you needn’t find a coach in your geographic area.

Life is what you make it

5 May 2008

On my way to a client’s house this morning, listening to NPR, I heard a story that made the hairs stand up on my neck. It was a story on Morning Edition about Larry Woodard, a Dallas, Texas, man who was falsely convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend. He languished in prison for 27 years, all the while writing letters asserting his innocence and requesting re-investigation of the case. He refused to apologize for a crime he didn’t commit, even after being told if he did, he’d get parole.

Last week, Woodard was released from jail after DNA evidence proved he did not commit the rape. Current Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins is re-investigating many convictions, using the DNA evidence that Dallas has saved. Woodard is the 17th exoneration out of 40 re-examined cases.

Aside from the obvious travesty of justice (these stories are so heartbreaking), what gave me goosebumps was Mr. Woodard’s attitude about his situation.

No one would blame him for being angry or bitter. But he isn’t. Here’s what I heard on NPR (the text of the whole story is available here, including pdfs of his heart-rending letters from prison):

But for one innocent man, life is beginning anew after 27 years of waiting.

“Like an adventure,” Woodard says. “I mean, there’s so many different things to see, and I like people, and I like seeing different things and new things.”

Woodard doesn’t know how a cell phone works and has no inkling of Macintosh versus PC. He’s neither bitter nor angry, and he will not agree that those years in prison were for naught.

“Time is what you make of it,” he says. “You’re living no matter where you are. I think I came out pretty good. I think I won. I think I’m a winner.”

I so admire his amazing viewpoint. Our lives are our own to make what we will of them. Mr. Woodard is most definitely a winner, in that he actually was (finally) acquitted of a heinous crime.

He’s now 55 years old and his life is just beginning. With his incredible outlook on life, it certainly will only get better.

Next time I feel that something hasn’t gone my way, I’ll remember Mr. Woodard. If I can model my outlook on him, life will always be sweet.

Packing for the plane

1 May 2008

I’m flying home from Hawaii late this afternoon. It’s an overnight flight and I arrive in St. Louis at 8 in the morning. That’s an eleven hour journey, not counting the time I spend waiting for my flight at the Honolulu airport.

When I flew here last week, I packed my carry-on as though I were traveling with a toddler I feared would get bored and start screaming (in this analogy, I’m the toddler). I hauled more stuff on board than I even looked at. I spent most of my time watching a DVD on my computer and the plane’s fairly wretched movie (National Treasure).

So as I contemplate packing for my ride home, I realize I need to lighten the load. Part of me wants to take advantage of all that free airplane time and concentrate on my business and do some all-important planning. I’ve been so focused on my client this past week that I can’t even remember what’s going on with my real life. I know I still have follow-up to do from the NAPO national conference.

I want to re-read Do It Tomorrow since I’ve fallen a little off the wagon with that system. And I need to re-visit my to-do list.

But the other part of me wants to take a novel and call it a day (and night). I’ll have my computer, so I can watch the last episode on Season 4, Disk 1 of The Wire, an amazing HBO series. Between that, my knitting (I’m making a burgundy cabled wrap), and my iPod with all its podcasts, I really don’t need anything else.

So I think the conclusion I’m coming to is that less is more. I don’t want schlep a heavy bag around the Honolulu and Chicago airports (my 13” MacBook is heavy enough on its own). I’m going to take to my computer, my knitting, my iPod, and the novel I have from the library (Linda Fairstein’s Bad Blood). And I’ll throw in a notepad to write down some to-dos.

That still seems like quite a lot of stuff, doesn’t it? I’m actually hoping that I sleep so much I don’t need most of it!

When good things happen to great clients

29 April 2008

I mentioned last week that I was leaving for Hawaii to help a client get settled in there. We’re working hard, having some fun, and accomplishing a lot.

I’ve been working with this client since September 2006 and she serves as a fabulous example of the benefits of getting organized.

She called me in originally when she decided to focus her attention on getting her life in order. She wasn’t a hoarder, or even very cluttered, but as a working mother of three active kids (and active wife to an active husband) her attention had been focused squarely on family. As a result, some parts of her life had gotten a little out of control—things I see all the time with my clients (and sometimes myself). There were stacks of papers and other stuff here and there, aging bags of paper that had been stashed when company was coming, an unruly basement that hadn’t been cleaned out in quite some time. You get the picture. Nowhere near horrifying, but not exactly tranquil.

This dream of a client decided to retire from her job and focus on getting her life in order. She sought my help. And she made the time and financial commitment to have me in twice a week. Over the next twelve or fifteen months we cleared the piles, set up systems, plowed through hundreds and hundreds of photos of her kids, and got her life humming along. She became a pro at making really sensible decisions about what to keep and what to part with.

It looked like we were finished—and in fact we’d checked off everything on the list we’d created at our very first meeting (an Eyes of a Stranger needs assessment). I was getting sad thinking that our time together was coming to a close.

Once she started lightening up her life and letting go of possessions (stuff that had been accumulating through the years just because she hadn’t made a decision about it), great things started to happen.

High up on the list of great news was that her husband was being transferred to Hawaii. He was offered a nice promotion and they were moving to a tropical paradise. Two years before, that news might have sent her into a tailspin. Moving down the street—let alone part way across an ocean—would have felt like an impossible challenge.

But she’d decluttered. Her life was in order. She knew how to manage her time. She had support. This big move was definitely doable. A bit of a pain, yes. (Another round of decluttering was in order!) But doable—and worth it.

It was fairly easy for her to whip her house into marketable shape. She and her husband followed the real-estate agent’s instructions to stage the home (which required minimal effort, since she was so organized). They priced it fairly. And the house sold within 36 hours, at full asking price. In 2008.

They easily found a home of comparable size (if not price) near her husband’s work on the island of Oahu. Financing was a piece of cake. The move couldn’t have gone more smoothly.

When it came time to think about unpacking all the boxes once they arrived in a big container on a giant boat, she had the good sense to know she didn’t need to tackle it alone. Her husband was travelling at the time the container arrived. So she called in the one person outside her family who really knew how she lived. And I was happy to come here and help. (A real hardship, I realize.)

What I love about this client is that she really lives the principles I try to instill in all my clients. She takes care of herself. She understands the value of the stuff she wants to keep and doesn’t keep the stuff she doesn’t value. She stays on top of her paper and her life and if it veers a little out of control (like it did in the last month, quite understandably), she knows she can whip things right back into shape.

She also understands how getting organized helped lead her to where she is now. “If you get your act together,” she’s told me, “being organized doesn’t have to be a pipe dream anymore and you set the stage for other choices and decisions to happen.”

In other words if you actually take steps toward getting organized—rather than just dreaming about it—you open yourself up to all sorts of possibilities. I’m so glad it worked out this way for this wonderful client. She’s a shining example.