Peace of Mind Organizing

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.

My new love: the Kindle Paperwhite

10 January 2013

I read a lot. I probably read several books a month, most of them fiction, but some non-fiction. I almost always get my books from the St. Louis Public Library, so I don’t have a lot of book clutter, which is nice.

Recently, I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader. I bought it as a little end-of-the-year present to myself. It arrived on December 31, which means that I’ve been using it for 11 days. And I’m besotted.

Before I list the reasons I love it so, I want to mention that I’d long resisted the Kindle. My husband has one and when it arrived, it felt so flimsy and unsubstantial and, well, plastic compared with my iPad. But then I borrowed it when I took a couple of trips last year and the concept started to grow on me. I appreciated how light weight it was. I loved how I could slip it into my purse and not even notice it was there. I liked that I could carry multiple books with virtually no additional weight.

The Kindle Paperwhite is an improvement over my husband’s older Kindle in that it has a light source. And it’s a nice, even light source with adjustable brightness. Also, the screen is as big as the older one, but the device itself is smaller, thanks to the touch screen.

I’m in love with it. And here are some of the reasons.

• I can make the type big, so I don’t have to use my reading glasses.
• I don’t have to hold the book open.
• I don’t have to fiddle with a bookmark.
• It fits in my bathrobe pocket.
• I can have reading with me when I’m out and about. (I don’t even notice it when it’s in my purse.)
• I can read large books, like the biography of Steve Jobs I’m currently reading, in bed. I couldn’t do that with the hardcover library version I was reading.
• I can look up the definition of words with a touch of the screen
• My library has books available for the Kindle (though admittedly not a huge number of titles).
• Since I have Amazon Prime, I can use the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to get free books
• I can fall asleep reading and not worry about losing my place.
• The battery charge lasts a long, long time.

Several friends have asked why I’d buy a Kindle when I have an iPad. The relative lightness of the Kindle is the big difference. I found my iPad too heavy to read in bed. And since I got my iPhone, I’ve stopped carrying my iPad around with me and I don’t travel with it. (In fact, I’ve pretty much stopped using it.)

Another friend wanted to know whether I miss the experience of reading a traditional paper book. Surprisingly, the answer is no, for all the reasons listed above.

I am so tickled by this purchase I can barely stand it.

Storage solutions from my recycle bin

8 January 2013

My underwear drawer was out of control. The problem was all my tights, which had crowded out my bras. It made it hard to put away my bras and result was there were tights and bras on top of my dresser too often. (I hope that’s not TMI!)

This weekend, I decided to do something about it. I gave it some thought and decided that a basket on top of my dresser that could hold at least some of might tights (or my bras) would be the answer. I happened to find a nice-looking basket at the grocery store, of all places.

After I brought it home, I started thinking about how I could store the tights within the basket. I wanted to make them easy to access and I wanted to avoid their becoming a jumbled mess (which is so easy for tights to do). I also didn’t want them snagging on the wicker of the basket.

As I was thinking about it, a glance into the recycling bin produced a revelation. Yogurt containers! My husband and I enjoy Chobani Greek yogurt and there were a number of empty container nestled in the recycling bin.

I pulled them out, set them the basket and realized they were a great size for both the tights and the basket. I can fit nine in this particular basket.

So I washed them and arranged them in the basket. I selected the tights to store within the basket (the ones I wear most). And voila! A storage solution:

Now I have plenty of room for bras. (I don’t have many.) And the tights are easy to access. It feels great.

Worth repeating: The magic of linking new routines to old

4 January 2013

Two years ago, I created a life-enhancing habit. At the time, I wrote a blog post about how I went about doing it. I’m happy to say that my poop-scooping routine is going strong, so I thought (especially at this time of year), it was worth repeating that post. The magic of linking new routines to old works on any habit, not just poop scooping. I invite you to give a thought to how you might apply it in your life!

On New Year’s Eve day, the weather was unseasonably warm here in St. Louis (so warm we had a tornado!). At the risk of being indelicate, I’ll share that I spent some pre-storm time picking up the dog poop in our back yard. The snow had melted, revealing many piles.

As I performed this unsavory task, I vowed not to let so much time elapse between clean-up sessions. This is truly the kind of task made worse by volume. My problem was that I would be reminded to do it when I was walking to the garage to get in the car. I never seemed to think of doing it when I actually had time for the task.

But then inspiration hit. I thought about the other tasks I do daily that have made my life easier. I empty the dishwasher each morning as I’m making coffee. I wipe down the fixtures in the bathroom after I finish flossing daily. Maybe I could link poop scooping with another daily task. Then I wouldn’t forget to do it.

I came up with a brilliant plan (if I do say so myself). I walk my dog, Kirby, every morning. And I take poop bags with me. So I decided to link the daily walk with the yard clean up. Now, we come home from a walk and while I still have my coat on, I go right to the back yard and scoop. It’s just one days worth of waste so it takes almost no time. I go out the back gate to the dumpster in the alley, throw away the bag, and I’m done.

I upped the ante a little by adding scooping the litter box to the mix. On my way through the house to the back yard, I stop at the Joe’s litter box and empty the compartment into a poop bag (we have a Littermaid litter box that automatically rakes itself into a compartment that should be emptied daily). I proceed with the cat waste to the back yard, add dog waste and throw it away.

It takes less than five minutes. Today is Day Six and I haven’t forgotten yet. If I keep it up I’ll never have to face the nasty task I faced on December 31.

I think this technique of linking a new routine to something you’re already doing daily can be really effective. Add accountability (I created a habitforge chain for this task, for extra satisfaction), and it can be very powerful.

If you have a New Year’s Resolution that involves daily activity, perhaps you can see if you can link it something you do every day anyway. Let me know if it works!

On my reading list

2 January 2013

I’ve accumulated a few books I keep meaning to read and write about here. But even though I had loads of indoor time over the holidays, I still haven’t cracked them. It’s not for lack of interest, I promise.

I thought if I listed them here it might provide some accountability while letting you know what’s on the horizon.

There’s Not Enough Time . . . and other lies we tell ourselves, by Jill Farmer. Jill is a life coach who lives in St. Louis and I’ve had the pleasure of giving talks with her on several occasions. I’ve heard her message about time management and it’s a good one. I can’t wait to read how she expands on the message in this book. I purchased a copy and Jill was kind enough to give me one as well, so I’ll be doing a giveaway. In the next couple of weeks, I’ll post a review and a chance to win a free copy.

Still Procrastinating: The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, by Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D. I heard Dr. Ferrari speak at this fall’s Institute for Challenging Disorganization conference. His talk made me want to buy the book, but I’ve procrastinated when it comes to reading it. But that will happen soon and I promise there will be great insights to share.

Life at Home in the Twenty-first Century: 32 Families Open their Doors. Based on a nine-year UCLA project, this is a relatively academic book in a coffee-table-book format. I’m looking forward to peeking into these homes and reading the scholarly comments!

How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia and Genealogy Records, by Denise May Levenick, of the Family Curator blog. I’m anxious to review this book for both this blog and for my genealogy blog, Organize Your Family History. It gives step-by-step guidance on preserving inherited items and on organizing genealogy files and paperwork.

The new year is here and it’s time for me to keep reading. Keep an eye out for reviews of these books (and perhaps others) in the coming weeks!