Peace of Mind Organizing

Exercising your [decluttering] muscles

13 May 2013

Since October, I’ve been trying to go to the fitness studio that I belong to, Take Action three times a week. Due to some circumstances I won’t go into here, I hadn’t been able to go for almost two weeks. But I managed to get there yesterday.

My workouts had been getting progressively easy over the last six months. But yesterday, I found my workout challenging. And tiring.

As I was using the elliptical machine, I thought about how, once again, exercising can be compared with the process of decluttering and organizing.

In the process of decluttering and organizing, you make decision after decision. At the beginning, that can be really tough, particularly since decision-making tends to be tough for people with a lot of clutter (otherwise they wouldn’t have a lot of clutter). It can be hard to get started and painful once you do. But once you’ve been at it awhile, it gets easier. You have less resistance. And you get faster. Just like exercising.

I have a wonderful client who once referred to exercising her decision-making muscle. Before working with me, even small decisions were sometimes challenging. But after our work together, daily decisions became easy and clutter never reappeared.

The key is regular exercise. And regular decision making. That’s how you keep from getting overwhelmed in these arenas. Doing something—anything—toward reaching your (exercise or organizing) goals is so much better than doing nothing, because it keeps the momentum going.

I’m happy to say that I’ll be at the gym again this morning and am back on the path to thrice-weekly workouts. I anticipate it getting easy again and know it will stay that way as long as I keep going there regularly!

Congratulations to Rubbermaid!

6 May 2013

At the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers a couple of weeks ago, Rubbermaid was awarded the prestigious Corporate Associate Member of the Year Award. That award is presented to “a corporate associate member who has made a significant contribution to NAPO and the profession of organizing.”

A big reason that Rubbermaid was recognized was because of its Professional Organizer Squad, which is comprised of five NAPO members who blog for Rubbermaid and answer reader questions. I am so proud to be one of those five squad members, along with Allison Carter, Krista Colvin, Deb Lee and Beth Ziegler.

When the award was announced at the annual awards luncheon, I cheered for Rubbermaid and felt a certain sense of pride in taking a small part in their achievement.

If you haven’t checked out the Rubbermaid blog, I urge you to do so. I think my colleagues and I provide some great information there.

Check out these beautiful, organized spaces

1 May 2013

Last week, iVillage.com had an article, Clutter-Free and Awesome: 12 Pretty Organized Spaces, in which the writer solicited photos of favorite spaces in the homes of organizing professionals. I found it highly enjoyable to gaze at the photos and read the explanations.

I was delighted to be included in the article and even more delighted that the photo of my office-supply closet didn’t stick out like a sore thumb!

Here’s the photo of my office closet that appears in the story. Please go check out the article and see some more beautiful, organized spaces.

Wrangling business cards

30 April 2013

I wish I had the answer to the age-old question of how to organize business cards. I manage my contacts electronically. I keep my contacts on my Mac in the Address Book program, which syncs to the Contacts app on my iPhone. Yet those little business cards still hang around and make me nuts.

I very rarely look at my large collection of business cards.I know I don’t want to enter all those people into my contact-management system, because I don’t want to clutter up my Contacts list. Plus, I don’t want to go to the effort.

Here’s a picture of my collection. I bought that box many years ago (in the 90s, I think) and formerly organized the cards alphabetically by last name. Of course, that was before electronic contact management systems.

My overflowing collection of business cards

Five years ago, I remember talking with my friend and organizer extraordinaire Aby Garvey about wrangling business cards and was inspired by her blog post about organizing her collection of business cards. I went so far as to weed mine out and put them into groups, but I never made the index dividers. (I sound like some of my clients!) Of course, I’ve added more in the last five years.

I could just ignore them. Heck, I could probably just toss them in the recycling bin with little fallout. But that collection of business cards feels like unfinished business to me. It also feels like a problem that, as an organizer, I ought to be able to solve.

So I’m creating a plan of action to get this little monkey off my back. In the month of May, I will:

• Go through the cards and enter contact info for people I actually contact into my Address Book if they’re not already there
• Throw away business cards of people I know are no longer in business or that I wouldn’t do business with
• Winnow my collection of cards down to people I truly think I might want to consult or refer. My goal will be for them all to fit in my red business-card box.
• Group the cards by how I think of them
• Create labels for those groups
• Stop collecting so many business cards
• Set up a routine to either file the business cards I do collect or enter them into my Address Book right away

This is a project I could work on ten minutes a day. Or while I’m on hold (at least the weeding part). I vow here and now to report back at the end of the month. I hope I’ll have a photo of a nicely organized (and not full) box of business cards to show you.

My new tech toy: The Livescribe pen

25 April 2013

In anticipation of attending the national conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers last week, I indulged in the purchase of an item I’d been eyeing for a couple of years: the Livescribe smartpen. (That’s a referral link; I’ll get a small commission if you buy from it.)

How smart is this pen? As you take notes on its special paper, it records the audio of what you’re listening to and links it with your notes. So, in replay mode, when you touch the paper with the pen, you hear what was being said when you made that note.

You can also upload the recording and images of your notes to your computer (or the cloud, depending on which version of the pen you buy). When you click on your handwriting in the uploaded images, you hear what was being said as you were writing.

For a 50-year-old like me whose memory isn’t what it used to be? This is all sorts of awesome.

Here’s a video of how the Livescribe Echo, the version I have, works:

I’m a bit of a pen snob and the pen is a little clunky, but nevertheless I am in love. I found the pen very helpful at the conference. I’m finding the prospect of reporting on my favorite session at our next chapter meeting much less daunting because I know I’ll be able to figure out what my notes actually mean.

Its application for me isn’t limited to conferences. I’ve already taken it with me when visiting a client to do an estimate for a team organizing session. Again, I don’t have to rely on my memory to figure out what my notes mean when I look at them later.

I can’t wait to find other situations in which to use it!

I bought the Livescribe Echo, which is the older version of the pen. It requires plugging in a cable to get the data off the pen and onto the computer. The newer version, the Sky, has wifi and uploads directly to Evernote. I chose the Echo because I wanted to make a smaller investment and don’t mind plugging in the cable.

On the advice of a Livescribe-loving friend, I also purchased the 3D recording headset, which produced really clear recordings, even in a noisy conference setting.

With Livescribe, I feel like the future is here. I had a referral discount from my friend and there was a sale going on, so I paid about $100 for the pen and the headset. I already feel like it’s been a great investment!

Time to clean out the medicine cabinet!

23 April 2013

Getting rid of old medications isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be. Flushing them down the toilet (which is what my family did when I was a kid) isn’t environmentally sound. Throwing them in the trash, where others can get them and use or sell them, obviously isn’t a good idea either. And hanging on to them creates clutter and is potentially dangerous, since some drugs can become toxic with age.

From 10 am to 2 pm this Saturday, April 27, the US government will help you dispose of all those pill bottles collecting dust in your bathroom. Saturday is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s sixth National Drug Take-Back Day. (Over 2 million pounds—1018 tons—of pills were collected during the last five such events.)

Collection sites for unwanted or unused prescription drugs have been set up all around the country, in cooperation with local and state law enforcement agencies. Go the the National Take-Back Initiative’s website to search for a collection site near you. When I entered my zip code, 17 sites within 10 miles were listed. Couldn’t be easier.

You have four days to clean out your medicine cabinet, which will probably take just a few minutes. I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity!

New Orleans, here I come!

15 April 2013

I leave in the morning to fly to New Orleans to attend the annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers. This is the eighth year in a row I’ve attended this conference and it’s hard for me to imagine missing it.

Here’s why I go:

• The outstanding educational sessions, all aimed at professional organizers
• Seeing old friends
• Making new friends
• Learning about new organizing-related products and meet the people who market them
• The casual conversations in the hall or at the trade show—I learn so much from them
• Getting away from the pressures of everyday details and focusing on the big picture of my business

This conference is an investment of both time and money. I’m so glad I can afford to spend both on it!

I hope I’ll be able to blog while I’m there, but if I’m absent here, you’ll know why!