Peace of Mind Organizing

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.

Get Organized St. Louis!

18 January 2013

I’m really excited to announce that the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers is sponsoring its first big public event, on Saturday, March 23, at St. Charles Community College.

I’m a founding member of NAPO-St. Louis and since 2006, our chapter has grown slowly but surely. We now have 39 members who are professional organizers and 12 associate members—local businesses that provide services or products that professional organizers use. This Get Organized St. Louis event, to me, represents our entry into the big leagues among NAPO chapters.

It’s going to be great. And you can be a part of it.

The expo will feature three one-hour presentations:

• Home office and paper management, presented by Julie Hough and Carolyn Conboy
• Time management, presented by Denise Lee, CPO® and Jennifer Stewart
• Basements and garages, presented by yours truly

In addition to the presentations, there will be a Vendor’s Row, featuring NAPO St. Louis’s associate members. (Check the NAPO-St. Louis website to see a list of our associate members.)

Registration is now open. Simply visit the St. Charles Community College event page to register. If you register before March 17, the registration fee is only $39. From March 18 to March 22, pre-registrants will pay $49. Tickets at the door, if available, will be $59.

Why wait? Go ahead and register for morning full of terrific organizing information and opportunities to learn about businesses and resources you may not have known about.

Developing a gratitude habit

16 January 2013

I’m a glass-half-full person. I tend to see the bright side of things. That sunny point of view has been enhanced and amplified by a gratitude habit I’ve had the privilege of developing over the past two years.

At the end of each weekday, my friend and colleague Aby Garvey and I email each other with the status of our email inboxes. (I always try to get mine down to zero and Aby, who is much more popular than I am and therefore gets tons of email, tries to get hers to 15 or below.) We also list at least five things we’re grateful for that day.

This practice allows me to turn any negative events of the day on their head while I look for the aspect of the event I can be grateful for. It also helps me notice and be grateful for the small pleasures in everyday life.

For me, an email exchange is ideal — and Aby’s the perfect partner. We’d been emailing one another for a year about our email before we added the gratitude portion. But there are many other ways to develop a gratitude habit.

• Keep a gratitude journal (something I started doing, with somewhat limited success, after reading Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy back in the ’90s.
• Create a gratitude jar in which you add a slip of paper each day with something you’re grateful for. At the end of the year, dump out the paper and enjoy reading a year’s worth of gratitude.
• Go around the dinner table each day and have each family member say aloud something they’re grateful for
• Post your gratitude on your Facebook page or tweet it

There is so much in my life to be grateful for and I am so happy to have a daily practice of noticing those things. I encourage you to give it a try!

What's aging in your medicine cabinet?

14 January 2013

I have a cold. I’m happy to say that I don’t succumb to colds often, but when I do, I seek relief from the over-the-counter medications. I store my supply in a bin labeled “cold/cough” in my bathroom closet.

When I came down with this cold, I pulled out that bin to see what symptoms could be relieved. I had a wide variety of remedies in there, addressing various symptoms in various forms. To my dismay, all but two of the OTC medications were expired.

That’s the problem with not getting sick very often! It’s cold out and I don’t feel like going to the store. I don’t know how truly relevant the expiration dates are and I’ve been known to down some expired cough syrup. But I would have been much happier to have found more current medications.

This experience leads me to suggest you take four steps to avoid this problem:

• Check the expiration dates of your over-the-counter (and prescription, for that matter) medications
• Dispose of those that are expired. (See this post for instructions on proper disposal of medications.)
• Replenish your stock with current medications.
• Repeat once or twice a year.

Do it now, while you feel healthy! Because I’m telling you, it’s a bummer to seek relief in your medicine cabinet and find out that everything’s expired.