Peace of Mind Organizing

Some fun items for pets and their people

15 October 2012

I spent the weekend at the H.H. Backer Pet-Industry Trade Show, where I saw booth after booth of products for pets and their owners. I thought I’d share some of the items I brought home for my own animals.

First, though, I must tell you about Roll Over Rover Threads the apparel and housewares company I was there to represent. My wonderful friend, Sally, is the creative genius behind (and owner of) this company and her stuff is to die for. I own a whole wardrobe of ROR t-shirts and sweatshirts and am dying to get my hands on her new dog dishes.

Here’s one of her popular designs, which graces a hoodie and a t-shirt:

We were next door to Paw Paws as I think we’ve been every show (and this was our fifth show). Paw Paws sells beautiful leashes, collars and harnesses. The ribbons are designed by the talented and lovely CEO, Anne Nutter. I already have a bunch of these gorgeous collars, but couldn’t resist bringing home a new collar for my standard poodle, Kirby. (I got him a red chevron collar, a pattern so new it’s not even on the website yet. But below is a photo of another one of my favorite Paw Paws collars.)

Kirby is what you might call energetic on a walk, which can lead to a sore leash hand. I was thrilled to learn about Spindrift Safety Leashes, which have a neoprene-lined handle, which is so soft on the skin. It also has an extra handle right down near the clip, a terrific feature for when I need extra control with Kirby.

When I was helping Sally at the Backer show last year, we were placed across the aisle from Hugglehounds, designers of cute and durable dog toys. I brought one home for Kirby last year, and he took painstaking pleasure in tearing it apart over time. So I couldn’t resist bringing another home for him.

Here’s a photo of the toy Kirby loves, from the Lola and Penelopes site where you can buy this toy.

I didn’t forget about Joe, my orange tabby cat, when I was at Backer. I brought him home a Aikiou Stimulo Interactive Cat Feeding Station and Activity Center . I don’t know if Joe will love or hate the way this makes mealtime more interesting, but I was intrigued, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I love my pets and I know you love yours. Fifteen to 20 years ago, I shopped a whole lot more for them than I do now (probably the effect of my becoming a professional organizer). But it was a lot of fun to come home with some goodies for my babies. (I also brought a fancy chocolate bar for my husband, Barry.)

Traveling light

12 October 2012

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how iPhone simplifies my life. Today I leave for Chicago for the weekend to help my friend, Sally, of Roll Over Rover Threads at a pet-industry trade show. (Check out Sally’s website for fun and sophisticated pet-related apparel and home goods!)

I made the decision to leave my computer and my iPad at home. I’m traveling light, baby. The iPhone will keep me connected enough to get by and leaving home the bigger electronics may mean I actually read a book and knit. (I know I’d be traveling even lighter if I read that book on my iPhone or brought along my husband’s Kindle, but it’s an old-fashioned paper library book.)

Another reason I love my iPhone 4S!

Next week: I'm giving a talk on clutter

10 October 2012

If you live in the St. Louis area, I’d love to see you at a talk I’m giving next week called Get Rid of Clutter. It’ll be on October 19 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the Thomas Dunn Memorials Adult Education Program in south St. Louis city. The fee is just $10.

The talk will cover the decluttering process, organizing principles, creating new habits and routines, and the top mistakes people make when they try to get organized. There will be lots of time for questions and answers.

The class is only $10, and registration via mail is required. To register, go to Thomas Dunn’s website to download a registration form. Fill it out and mail it in with a check. If you have questions about the registration procedure call Thomas Dunn Memorials at 314-353-3050.

Check out their website for lots of other free and low-cost classes! Thomas Dunn’s tagline is “helping people improve themselves since 1962.” They’re a wonderful community resource and I’m delighted to have a relationship with them.

Juggling task-management systems

8 October 2012

I know that somewhere around here I have a list—actually I think it’s more than one list—of potential blog post subjects. The idea is that if I sit down to blog without knowing what I want to blog about, I consult the list, where I capture ideas as they come to me, and voila a blog post presents itself.

Only I’m not sure where the list is. For the past month or so, I’ve been exploring different types of planners and list-making tools, in an effort to find something that helps me, but also to weigh different options to share with my clients.

The result of that is that I my tasks are spread out all over the place. It’s time to carve out a little time on my schedule to give serious consideration to various systems and then pick one to use for myself, so I don’t lose track of everything.

Once I do that, I’ll blog about the various options, so I can share info with you and also point clients to a pertinent blog posts.

Here are the various systems I’ve been playing around with:

Electronic

Workflowy. My friend and collaborator Shannon Wilkinson is crazy about Workflowy, so that’s enough to get me to try it. It’s basically a place to capture tasks in outline form, with the ability to expand or collapse the various subcomponents of the list. I love the easy interface and ease of adding to the list, but am struggling with how to use it when it’s time to sit down and work.

Simpleology. This website asks you to create short-, medium- and long-term goals and refer to those goals every day as you plan your day. I love the idea of it, though so far am finding it all a little too complex. Plus I haven’t figured out how to add tasks as they come up during the day (if I want to do them that day). At the library, I checked out creator Mark Joyner’s book, Simpleology: The Simple Science of Getting What You Want so once I’ve read that perhaps I’ll feel more comfortable with the web interface.

Wunderlist. I’ve been using this online list-making tool and app since I got my iPhone in March. It interfaces well with Mark Forster’s Final Version task management system, but I’ve yet to fully embrace that system and I keep moving to shinier objects.

Paper

Balanced Life Planner from Julie Morgenstern. I just took time-management guru Julie Morgenstern’s time-management class for professional organizers, which prompted me to want to try out the Circa planner she created for Levenger. I love my electronic calendar, however, so I don’t think I’ll be switching to full use of the planner. But I do want to see how it works for task management and be able to recommend it for appropriate paper-based clients.

Productive Flourishing Planners from Charlie Gilkey. This is a bit of an electronic/paper hybrid, since the planners are downloadable, fillable pdfs that you can then print out. Gilkey suggests you print out only as much as you need at a time. They’re designed for creative types who don’t work a typical 9 to 5 job, and I’m anxious to try them out. I tend to like to keep tasks on paper (though my calendar is electronic), so it’s attractive to me. I bought the whole set (Project Planner, Action Planner and Blog Post Planner).

Eight Days a Week Planner Pad from Bob’s Your Uncle. This 11” x 17” paper pad has columns for each day of the week (plus one). I’m going to try it out as a beginning-of-the-week planning tool for getting stuff done. And if it doesn’t work for me, I’ll use the back of the sheets for larger-scale brainstorming.

So that’s what I’m juggling at the moment. I’m still successfully using my To Do List Bingo board for non-urgent tasks I’d like to do daily. I’ll try to post a review of each of these tools after I’ve explored them more.

App of the week: Flashlight

5 October 2012

I think the first app I downloaded onto my first iPod Touch four years ago was Flashlight. And you know what? I used it the very first night I had that iPod.

It occurred to me that I haven’t included one of my favorite apps in my App of the Week series.
A flashlight doesn’t have to be fancy (those this app does have special effects like a strobe). I just want it to provide light when I need it.

That first version I downloaded for my iPod Touch simply created a backlit white screen. That provided more light than just turning on device to try to see something in the dark. But the version I have now uses the LED light on the back of the phone to create a beam of bright light. It’s a terrific flashlight for finding things in a dark bedroom, a movie theater (briefly), when I’m a passenger in a dark car, you name it.

Now that I’ve dropped my landline, my iPhone is with me almost all the time. That means I have a handy flashlight with me all the time.

Have I mentioned that I love my iPhone 4S?

Great (knitting) discoveries while decluttering

3 October 2012

One of the most fun parts of helping clients declutter is finding great stuff. My favorite thing to hear is, “I’ve been looking for that!” I also love finding money, which happens with surprising frequency.

When I worked with Aby last week on one of my home offices, I didn’t find any cash. But I did uncover some knitting projects that I had completely forgotten about. That’s almost like finding gold.

There were a couple of little felted bags, one finished down to the button, the other waiting to be felted. Who knew?

There was a nearly finished scarf, made from a fun thick-and-thin super bulky yarn that my friend Sally had given me years ago. I finished that one right up within a day or two of finding it. (It was knit on US17 needles. If you’re a knitter, you know that sucker knit up quickly.)

There were a couple of projects I’d abandoned because they were miserable to knit. With Aby’s encouragement, I just ripped them out, right then and there and put the yarn back into circulation.

And there was an almost-finished baby afghan that’s to die for pretty. (It’s a mitered-square blanket similar to this one only slightly brighter.) I just have two long seams to do and it will be finished. And, guess what? A friend is having a baby, so now I’m motivated to get seaming. I promise to post a photo before I give it away because, if you ask me, it’s pretty spectacular.

I’d run out of knitting projects (or at least I thought I had) and was just about to buy some yarn to start a new one. Instead, I finished the bulky scarf and now I’m working on the second of a pair of arm warmers, made out leftover silk-and-baby-llama yarn. I’d knit one and even started the second (the starting is the hard part when you’re using double-pointed needles for small-circumference items). I don’t know why I started that project, or why I stopped, but winter’s coming and my arms get cold, so I’m glad to start knitting it again.

Just exploring my yarn stash has reinvigorated my yen for knitting. (Cooler temperatures have a hand in that too.) I store my yarn in a bank of Elfa drawers and I’m really delighted that the organizational system I set up for my yarn stash and knitting needles has held up over the last four years.

One of my favorite drawers of the dozen or so in my yarn unit is the one that’s full of nothing but yarn ball bands (which provide information about the yarn), with a few swatches thrown in:

It may look a little messy, but it makes me very happy just to paw through the contents of that drawer.

How working with an organizer jump starts things

1 October 2012

As I’ve written here before, I love swapping services with professional organizers. In theory, I shouldn’t need organizing help in my home, since I know what I’m doing. But in fact, bringing in a PO yields amazing results. And it’s loads of fun!

On Thursday last week, I had the distinct pleasure of having Aby Garvey, organizer extraordinaire, help me in my home. Aby had helped me organize my pantry back in 2009 and then since then has helped me in my bathroom closet. This time, she helped me declutter and organize one of my home offices.

I have two home offices. There’s the one I use to run the administrative side of my business. (I’m in it now, writing this blog post.) The other, in an adjacent room, is where I store items that go out of the house, into clients’ homes.

I first established it in 2008. (I blogged about it then.) I had a decent organizational infrastructure, but things had gotten out of control, as can happen over the course of a few years. I store more and more plastic bins, now that I’m doing more team jobs, for instance. And I just sort of dropped them in the room, rather than figuring out a better way to store them. So they just sat around looking ugly.

Here’s a before photo:

When Aby came, we started the decluttering process, which was fun and easy. Here’s the remarkable thing. Simply by her presence—without her really even saying anything—I started letting go of things that I’d been reluctant to let go of on my own. I see this with my own clients and it was really great to experience it first hand.

Aby never really had to challenge me on any of the things I wanted to keep, because there I was, willy nilly letting go of the stuff that wasn’t contributing to my life or business. With her helping me focus on this process, magical things happened.

Once the decluttering was finished, Aby helped me reorganize what was left. Aby, of course, made everything look better (Aby does everything beautifully), which I appreciate. But also I love that she really fine tuned the organizing and got me back to my organizational infrastructure.

Here’s the after photo:

I’m proud to tell clients that I use the services of professional organizers. I really think POs provide an amazing, life changing service.