Peace of Mind Organizing

Video: Jia Jiang's talk from the World Domination Summit

26 July 2013

On July 8, I blogged about one of my favorite speakers from the World Domination Summit. Jia Jiang spoke about his experience with trying to get over the fear of rejection by asking for ridiculous things and trying to be rejected. He found rejection is less likely than you might think when you ask for something.

The message of his talk was powerful. But it was also his humble-humorous manner of presenting that made the talk so memorable.

I’m delighted that the powers that be at the World Domination Summit have chosen Jia’s talk as the first they’ve posted to be freely viewed and shared. Here it is.

Jia Jiang from Chris Guillebeau on Vimeo.

If you have a spare 25 minutes or so, sit back and enjoy. I bet it will change the way you think about rejection.

Dresser transformation

24 July 2013

One of the habits I’ve tried to create over the years is to put away my clothes properly at night (either in the closet/drawer or down the laundry chute), rather than piling them on the top of my dresser, as I’m inclined to do.

I’ve had various levels of success with this. I started to realize that part of the problem is that even when I clear off the dresser, it’s not particularly clear. In other words, I store too much stuff on it. So even when it’s supposedly cleared off, it feels clutter. And as you probably know, clutter attracts clutter.

So last week, I decided to take a hard look at what I store on the top of the dresser. And I was a little surprised at what I saw lurking there. Here’s a before picture.

If you look closely, you can see there’s an overabundance of (mostly failed) storage solutions for jewelry. There’s also my basket of tights. There are a couple of shawls. And, the day the picture was taken, a couple of t-shirts I’d been given on a recent trip that hadn’t found a home.

So I focused on clearing off that dresser. It may have taken me as much as an hour. I donated a quart-size bag full of jewelry I haven’t worn in years. I removed two of the jewelry boxes. I found new homes for the shawls and for the new shirts. Since it’s summer, I removed the tights basket to the downstairs closet where I store some out-of-season clothes. (I’ll bring it back to the bureau top in the winter.) I put the stray buttons I’d found into my button jar. And I found and discarded old tags cut off of clothes.

Here’s the after picture:

It’s been a solid week and I’ve had no trouble keeping it clear. Because there’s so much clear surface, I have no interest in adding anything!

This is inspiring all sorts of decluttering projects around the house. We just had the sliding doors removed from our clothes closet and replaced with curtains. Today’s project: decluttering and organizing that closet. I’ll report back here on the blog!

I heart The Container Store

19 July 2013

I spent two hours today at The Container Store here in St. Louis working with an Elfa designer named Meg. I was getting a design for a client project (organizing systems for two garages). I walked in there with a general idea of what I needed. Meg asked me questions that helped bring things into focus. Then she set to work creating the designs (five in all) and we spent a good amount of time tweaking them.

Talk about organizer heaven! I had a great time and am really happy with what we’re presenting the client. I’m thrilled that I can pass on to my client the 20 percent Elfa discount the Container Store offers members of the National Association of Professional Organizers.

I often wish we had an IKEA here in St. Louis. But if I had to choose between the Container Store and IKEA, the Container Store would win hands down. Their customer service is unparalleled, in my opinion.

Big thank yous to Meg and to the Container Store!

Worth repeating: Good intentions

17 July 2013

On Wednesdays this summer, I’m dipping into my archives to highlight articles written in the past with messages that bear repeating. Here’s the latest, originally posted on October 14, 2010.

The other day I cleaned out my t-shirt drawer. One of the benefits of having a friend who runs a t-shirt company and creates fabulous new t-shirts designs on a regular basis is that I’m frequently given new t-shirts. I don’t want to say no to them, because they’re wonderful. But I wasn’t employing any kind of “one in/one out” policy.

So it had become difficult to put away my t-shirts because the drawer was so full.

Weeding out the drawer was actually more challenging than I expected, because some of the shirts had some sort of sentimental value. (Commemorative t-shirts from family reunions or half marathons I’d walked, for instance.) So to make it easier on myself, I decided that rather than donate the shirts, I’d cut them into tubes, loops the tubes together and knit with them.

I created quite a large stack of shirts that I was going to turn into a big craft project. I put them in a large shopping bag from the Container Store and left them on the bedroom floor. I thought about the next steps to transform these shirts into something functional (I thought I’d make a bathmat):

1. Buy a rotary cutter to cut the shirts into tubes (which meant I’d want to find a coupon first for the fabric store, to get a good deal on the rotary cutter).
2. Loop all the tubes together into a giant ball of “yarn”
3. Find a pattern or just decide how big I wanted the bathmat and how many stitches to cast on.
4. Take the project I currently have on giant needles off, so I could use those needles, or buy a set of US#35 circular needles.
5. Knit the thing. I knew from past experience that knitting with giant needles is actually kind of painful. (I once knit a really ugly rug out of potholder loops.)

The whole project didn’t sound like a ton of fun, but I was game.

Then, a day later, I came home to find the bag moved from the bedroom to the hall. My husband told me that the American Kidney Fund had called and asked if we had anything to donate. He remembered the bag of shirts (but forgot I was planning to knit with them) and scheduled a pick up. He apologized when I reminded him of my plans for that shirt.

I thought about finding other things to donate so I could keep the shirts to knit with. Then I thought about all the steps to getting my shirts ready to turn into a bathmat. Then I thought about whether I needed a bathmat made of t-shirts. Or whether I really wanted to knit one.

Then I decided to give away the shirts. I put that bag on the porch. And I felt liberated.

With my clients, I often see that they’d rather do something complicated with an item they’re ready to let go of. They strive for the perfect way to discard. Instead of just donating it to Goodwill, they’re going to take it to their kids’ school. Or mail it to a charity that has a special need for it. Or send it to a relative. And often that unwanted item sits in limbo—still clutter— because they don’t get around to doing that action.

That’s probably what would have happened with my t-shirts. They’d have sat in that bag on my bedroom floor, or perhaps moved to the room where I store my knitting supplies. After awhile they’d become invisible. Or I would have actually started cutting them into tubes and maybe even knit with them, but they’d have taken a bunch of time that I could have spent knitting something beautiful.

So once again I learned to take the easy road.Do the thing that takes fewer steps. It was very easy for me to just let the charity pick up that bag. And I can assure you that I don’t miss those shirts one bit. Nor am I itching to make a bathmat.

Project clean computer desktop complete!

15 July 2013

On Friday, I blogged about my desire to clear off my computer desktop every day so that it would be as clean as my physical desk top.

I thought I’d do it a little at a time. But instead, while I was flying between Las Vegas and St. Louis on Saturday, I did it in one fell swoop. It took about 50 minutes. I thought it would take longer.

Here’s a screenshot of my newly cleared off desktop:

Check out Friday’s blog post to see how bad it looked before.

The process was actually pretty painless. I deleted a bunch of stuff. And I filed a bunch of stuff. Most of the saved files went into my Documents folder. But I did discover some genealogy-related documents I had forgotten about (they’d gotten lost there on that messy desktop). So I filed those in the appropriate genealogy folders, creating new ones as needed.

My intention is to use my computer desktop as a temporary holding place only. At the end of each day, any documents put there will be filed or deleted, just like physical desktop.

I love the visual peace this is giving me. It was a joy to boot up my computer and see my lovely clear desktop!

The clean computer desktop

12 July 2013

I write all the time (most recently, here) about how important it is for me to clear off the top of my desk each evening. That habit, which takes just a few minutes at the end of the day, makes it so much easier for me to function in the morning.

But I never think about my computer desktop. Mine is cluttered, and that hasn’t bothered me. In fact, I’ve barely given it a thought.

I just read this excellent article on Lifehacker called, How clutter affects your brain and what you can do about it. There’s lots of great stuff in there. You really should read it.

The item that really captured my imagination was the very last in the article’s list of four things you can do to master clutter: Remove all files from your desktop daily.

It’s the same habit I’ve created for my physical desk, only it’s for the computer desktop. The article’s writer, Mikael Cho, showed a screenshot of his desktop, which contains just one folder he calls Home. Here it is:

By contrast, here’s a screenshot of my desktop:

As I said, my messy desktop hasn’t bothered me before. I use my Mac’s Finder to find everything and don’t really even know what’s kept on the desktop. But I’m so enamored of Mikael Cho’s desktop that I think I’ll give it a try. My plan is to work on it a little at a time (I love the little and often approach) and report back here in two or three weeks with the results.

I’m curious: Is your computer desktop neat and tidy or is it a jumbled mess like my current desktop?

Worth repeating: Finding the best place to donate

10 July 2013

I see so many clients get caught up in finding the perfect places to donate their items. I think this post, which I originally published in April 2012, bears repeating.

It can be easier to let go of items if you think they’re going to just the right charity. If you feel like the item wlll used, even loved, you can release it with fewer twinges of regret.

I get that. I’ve experienced it in my own decluttering and I see it in my clients all the time.

But I think looking for the best charity is actually a bad idea. That search can keep you from actually getting the stuff out of your house. You hang on to it while you do your research. That research can take awhile, since you’re looking for the very best place. Soon, the boxes or bags become part of the landscape and the urgency to make the donation recedes.

You know what’s better? Getting the stuff out of your house in one fell swoop. Preferably the day you make the decision to let it go. Call a charity to pick it all up. Or take it all to a place like Goodwill that will make sure that nothing ends up in the landfill. If you hire me to bring in an organizing team, the team members will take away your donations.

The best charity for your donations is the one that makes it easy to donate. Once you’ve made the decision, the best thing you can do for yourself is to act on your decision to let something go and actually make the donation.