Peace of Mind Organizing

It's Elfa sale time again!

8 February 2013

I love Elfa, the shelving/drawer system from The Container Store. I use it in my own home, in a closet in my office and to store my yarn stash. (I used an Office in a Closet kit for the office closet and a bank of mesh drawers for the yarn and knitting supplies.)

Every year, the Container Store has a sale on Elfa from just before Christmas to about Valentine’s Day. That means there’s just four days left to get 30 percent off on Elfa and on installation.

If you’ve been pondering some Elfa, now’s the time to act!!

Rededicating myself to the clean desk

5 February 2013

On January 5, 2008, I cleared off my desk. And I kept it cleared off, on a daily basis, for about four years. I’ve blogged about the effort and the rewards of maintaining a clean desk. I’m a huge advocate.

Then something happened in 2012. Disorder started to creep in on my desk. I allowed myself to use the lower left corner to store current papers, which just turned into an ugly pile. My pen collection outgrew my pen holder and random pens would lie around on the desk, but I still considered it cleared off. This unruly “clear” desk didn’t give me the productivity boost in the morning that the truly clear desk had. So then I stopped even trying and I’d come downstairs to my office in the morning to an unsightly desk.

After four years of success, I backslid in a big way. That made my mornings more difficult. It actually made making time for family history research more difficult.

So this past weekend, I decided to do something about it. I went through that unruly pile on my desk. And I went through the file sorter on the radiator next to my desk, a logical place for me to store the papers that formerly resided on the lower left corner of my desk. Once the file sorter was emptied (some of those papers, which had languished there for about a year, went into my file cart, but most were tossed), I put the active papers, like tomorrow’s to-do list and social-media checklist I’d created for myself, right in front of the file sorter.

Here’s a photo of the file sorter with my to-do notebook and my clipboard with social media checklist and my daily task list forms right in the front of the file sorter. I also decided to add my To-Do List Bingo board next to it. I think it looks nice and it’s very handy, since the radiator is within arm’s reach of my desk.

So each night as I clear my desk, I put those papers away in the file sorter. I know they’re there. They’re in sight. Nothing’s getting lost. And everything looks nice.

It’s feeling good. Yesterday, I had a very busy day and I needed to go upstairs for dinner. But I took two minutes to clear off my desk. It was so easy to put everything away. And it was so wonderful to be greeted by a clean desk this morning.

Clearing off your desk at the end of each work day is one of those daily habits (like running and emptying the dishwasher daily, in my world) that reaps huge dividends. It’s interesting to me that I’d let it slide. But the reward is so instant that I’m going to consciously make the effort—just like I did back in 2008—to keep it going.

If your work gets off to a slow start in the morning because your desk is a mess, I encourage you to try implementing this habit! It also makes work throughout the day easier, because you only have a day’s worth of stuff, at maximum, to negotiate around.

Worth repeating: Handy tool for organizing your taxes

30 January 2013

I originally posted this endorsement of Smead’s Tax Organizer almost a year ago. I was back helping the same client with her taxes this week, and we used the tax organizer again. We actually bought a new one and she stored her supporting documents in the old one. Consulting last year’s organizer made this year’s taxes even easier. If you’re compiling documents for your tax preparer, you might find this product handy.

The good folks at Smead sent me their Tax Organizer a six-pock letter’-sized file that helps you assemble your tax information.

I didn’t have a use for it myself, since I use Freedom Filer odd year/even year tax files to gather my taxes year-round and then I do my own taxes with Turbo Tax.

But yesterday I helped a client assemble her tax documentation for her accountant. I’d set her up with a Freedom Filer system, so her documents were all in one place (hooray!), but I brought along Smead’s Tax Organizer in case it might be helpful.

As we went through the workbook her accountant provided and gathered documents into the categories he designated, we used the Tax Organizer to hold everything. It comes with pre-printed labels (which I supplemented with hand-written removable labels as necessary) and we were able to compile a very organized, portable packet of information.

My client was pleased and she’s sure her tax preparer will be pleased as well. When she gets the organizer back, she’ll store it for the same use next year (because the Freedom Filer hanging file folders are working so well for her for year-round filing of tax documents and receipts).

If your taxes are simple, you could use the Tax Organizer go gather your documents as they come in throughout the year. Even if they’re more complex the Tax Organizer might help you, like it helped my client and me, in terms of creating portable document storage to hand off to your accountant.

Tackling large projects

28 January 2013

In yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the cover article for the Sunday Home & Away section was entitled, Conquering the clutter: Tips on how to tackle a big organization project.

I had the pleasure of visiting the home of the writer, Aisha Sultan, and seeing her cluttered basement storage area, which stood in stark contrast to the rest of her lovely minimalist home. I gave her advice on tackling the overwhelming project, as did (in a separate interview) my colleague Shannon Tamme.

The result was an article that I think will be really helpful to folks with large, overwhelming organizing projects. I hope you’ll give it a read.

Floating with my thoughts

25 January 2013

I had the opportunity on a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, to visit a flotation tank and experience the sensory isolation of a 90-minute float.

I didn’t really know what I was in for, but my friend Shannon Wilkinson told me it was great. Shannon and I have been friends for a dozen or so years and I’ve learned to listen when Shannon says something is great. (Within reason. She thinks climbing Mount Hood is great. And I know that’s not for me.)

Anyway, I was a little trepidatious, but I went for it. And I’m so glad I did.

It’s a little hard to describe the experience, but I’ll try. Each flotation tank had its own dressing/showering room. In utter privacy, I undressed and showered, then entered the tank. Once I sat down in the heavily salted water, I started floating. Effortlessly. The temperature was the same as my skin and once I turned off the subtle blue light and got myself situated on a floating neck pillow, I felt amazingly comfortable. It was like being in the most comfortable bed imaginable. I felt completely supported and safe.

The space was utter blackness. There was no difference when my eyes were closed or open. A few sounds did leak in, so I didn’t feel completely alone. But it was a very enjoyable, solitary experience. All the sounds my body made were heightened. (At one point, I coughed, and it sounded like an explosion.)

While I floated, I just let my mind wander. I went in with the intention of doing some thinking about my business. And that’s how it worked out. In fact, I had some revelations around a topic that I’d be chewing on for years. It was the perfect precursor to further thought and action. (For example, in the days after the float, I added a service offering called The Heirloom Explorer.)

When the end of the 90-minute session arrived, music was piped into the tank. I got out, showered all the salt off, got dressed, and enjoyed the mellow feeling of complete relaxation.

As soon as I was finished, I was ready to do it again. Curious? You can check out this list of flotation tanks around the world to see if there’s one near you.

Less really is more

23 January 2013

I just spent some time as a houseguest of my friend, Shannon Wilkinson, who moved into her lovely home in Portland just six months ago.

Her two-bedroom townhouse is not as big as my house—in fact it’s less than half the size. Yet as I relaxed and worked in her house I kept thinking about how much more spacious it felt than mine.

And then I realized why: She has less stuff. She moved here from a substantially smaller house that she shared. She unpacked the essentials, put up some lovely decorative items and swiftly made it home. Then she stopped adding stuff. She doesn’t see an empty space and want to fill it. She enjoys clean surfaces. Her home is peaceful and lovely. And because there’s so little stuff, it’s easy for her to keep clean.

I'm inspired by Shannon's desk.

Now I’m heading home to the larger, 100-year-old home that my husband and I have lived in for years. I’m itching to declutter. I could probably get rid of half the stuff in the house in very short order, if I didn’t have my husband’s feelings to take into account.

As I look around Shannon’s house, appreciating the airiness and the clear surfaces, I can think of several spots in my home that are begging for a little attention. Do I really need all the things I keep on my desk? Doubtless not. I think I’ll let her space inspire me to remove and store (or donate) some of the items in my home office and see what, if any, of the items I store within arms reach I really miss.

This visit has given me the motivation I need to embrace the “less is more” philosophy in my home. I’m going to start in the areas I control (where my husband has no voice) and see if it can spread to the whole house.

I’ll try to remember to take before-and-after photos and chronicle this journey here in the coming weeks and months. Thanks, Shannon!

Why I'm a professional organizer

21 January 2013

Often when I meet folks who learn what I do for a living, they’re keen on learning how I became a professional organizer. I explain the training I took and how I went about starting my business. (That’s all detailed in my blog post, Are you interested in becoming a professional organizer?.)

But seldom am I asked why I became a PO, rather than how. I thought I’d spend a little time today exploring that question.

In my observation, there are two sorts of folks who become professional organizers:

• Those who do it because organizing comes so naturally to them. Being organized is like breathing. It’s their passion. So why not make a living doing it?

• Those who enter the field because of their own struggles in getting and staying organized. They’ve spent a lifetime seeking solutions for themselves and want to share those solutions with others.

I fall into that second camp. As I’ve mentioned over and over, I’m a naturally messy person. I’m pretty organized in my space and I’m definitely organized inside my head, but I’m a bit messy and unruly. I sought solutions for my time management and clutter issues throughout my life and I learned a lot. I felt it was time to start sharing.

When I first contemplated starting my business, I was a freelance writer. I’d been writing about pets for ten years and had written hundreds of articles on various aspects of pet care. I’d had seven books published (a couple of which are no longer available) and contributed to several others. I was working on my last book, an ill-fated venture called Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe co-written with the famed primatologist. The process of that book about killed me (and was never published) and I knew that in order to get through writing that manuscript I had to know it was going to be my last book. So I started looking for other things to do.

As I considered becoming a PO, I thought of several very important things that being a professional organizer would offer that being a freelance writer was not delivering:

• The ability to help people directly and tangibly
• Respect for my expertise (I was being very disrespected during the whole Goodall book experience)
• Payment at the time of service

That was very appealing and a big part of why I became a PO. But why do I keep doing it, now that I’m in my eighth year of business?

Those initial three reasons did prove to be powerful. In addition, here are some other things I’ve found to so rewarding:

• I get to help people transform their lives.
• I help people feel better about themselves as I normalize (and empathize with) their messy behaviors.
• I can help my clients go from striving (and failing) to be perfectly organized to reveling in being organized enough.
• I get to effect vast, fast change by bringing in a team of organizers to help my clients.

Being a professional organizer is life-changing work for me. And its results can be life changing for my clients. It is easily the most rewarding work I’ve done in a career that’s spanned almost three decades. And as long as it continues to be this rewarding, I’ll keep doing it.