Peace of Mind Organizing

Clos-ette Too Travel Jewelry Case: Review & Giveaway!

23 May 2012

Up until a few years ago, traveling with jewelry wasn’t much of an issue for me. I had a few pairs of earrings and a tiny (2” by 3”) little oriental cloth zipper case I put them in when I traveled. Then I met Geralin Thomas who, among her many talents, is a wardrobe consultant. She’s helped me up my game in terms of clothing and especially in terms of accessories.

So now when I travel, particularly when I travel somewhere where I’ll see Geralin (like the NAPO or ICD conferences), I bring loads of jewelry. When I saw Geralin in March, she frowned at the tangled mess of necklaces I pulled out of a jewelry roll. I don’t think she felt I was respecting them properly—and she was right.

So I was really pleased when the folks at Clos-ett Too reached out to me asking if I’d like to review one of their products and do a giveaway. I perused their website and their Travel Jewelry Case jumped right out at me.

When closed, it resembles a zippered binder. In fact, it has about the same dimensions as a standard 1” three-ring binder. But it’s soft—It appears to be made of a vinyl-covered linen. Inside are two-sided “pages” lined in faux suede and covered in zippered vinyl to create compartments. (The exceptions: the ring holder isn’t covered in vinyl and the necklace has a zip-open vinyl cover.) You can travel light with just one page or bring a few. When inside the binder, they snap together.

There are storage areas for necklaces, earrings, rings, and multipurpose 4 × 4” compartments. You can buy additional pages equipped with the compartments you need, making it very versatile.

I haven’t traveled since receiving the case, but I loaded it up with the usual jewelry I travel with. I can see it has several advantages over the jewelry roll I was using:

• Necklaces won’t become tangled (which has been a huge problem for me)
• I can keep the jewelry in the case in the hotel room and easily access it
• I can see what I have!
• The open binder serves as a tray, allowing me to see two pages at a time if I’m putting on jewelry in front of a mirror
• It doesn’t look like a jewelry case, which feels good from a security standpoint
• While its footprint is a little large, it’s low profile and compact

This case is so convenient that I could see permanently storing the jewelry in pages and storing the pages in a drawer, if I had a drawer to spare. (As it is, I’ll continue using the dresser-top storage solutions I’ve worked out.)

The photos I took of my jewelry in the case look pretty unprofessional. (I need to get some sort of lighting set up to elevate the quality of my blog photos.) So I’m going to ask you to be satisfied with the above photo and the ones on their website.

Here’s the exciting part: Clos-ette Too is giving away a pink Travel Jewelry Case to one lucky blog reader! To enter, simply make a comment on this blog post. You can receive an additional entry by tweeting about the giveaway. (Be sure and use @janinea in the tweet, so that I will see it.) You can receive another giveaway entry by writing on the wall or commenting at the Peace of Mind Organizing Facebook page. The contest ends at noon, central time, on Wednesday, May 30. The winner will be notified on Thursday, May 31 and I’ll announce the winner here on the blog that day as well.

Clutter support group in St. Louis

22 May 2012

I was recently contacted by Catherine, a member of a small clutter support group that meets in person on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 at Hartford Coffee, near Tower Grove Park, in the city of St. Louis. She wanted me to know about the existence of the group. I was delighted to hear from her, since I’m occasionally asked about local clutter support groups and didn’t know of any.

I asked Catherine for permission to visit her group, so that I could get a feel for it before recommending it to others. The group graciously permitted me to attend the beginning of the meeting and the members eloquently expressed how the peer support of the group (there is no moderator) is helpful to them. After my visit, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to folks who have issues surrounding clutter.

If you live in the St. Louis area, struggle with clutter and think you’d benefit from the no-cost, non-judgmental support and accountability this group might bring you, I encourage you to email Catherine [bransted at gmail dot com] for more information. The group welcomes newcomers. They might be switching their meeting space, so do contact Catherine before dropping in.

Don't forget labels

21 May 2012

Labels are really important. When I work with clients to set up organizing systems, I suggest labeling as much as humanly possible. This helps the client—and the client’s family—not only find things, but them away in the proper place. That really helps in forming the habit of putting things away in a new place.

I love my Brother P-Touch labeler. (I’ve had a few…my current one is the semi-fancy PT-2030 which is right now on sale for only $20 at Staples!)

Don’t feel like you can’t make labels just because you don’t have a fancy label maker. Post-It® Notes make great temporary labels. (And they now full adhesive notes, rather than just a strip across the top.) Simple address labels, printed on your computer or by hand, can make terrific, inexpensive labels. Martha Stewart has created a line of lovely labels and tags, available from Staples. On the other end of the spectrum, masking tape and a Sharpie will work great as well!

It doesn’t matter how you label, just that you do it. And you should also pay attention to the labels. A few years back, I was waiting in my veterinarian’s exam room and my brain scrambled as I looked at these canisters.

What the?

One thing to think about is that a label isn’t just a physical thing. An oral label can be very powerful as well. If you have a cluttered catch-all room that you’d like to turn back into a guest room, stop calling it the “junk room” and start calling it the “guest room.” That can be a powerful shift.

The label is the cherry on top of the organizing sundae. Don’t forget it—it might play a powerful role in helping you maintain your newly established systems.

App of the week: Siri

18 May 2012

I love Siri, the intelligent voice-recognition software on my iPhone 4S, but I understand that not everyone does. It gets frustrating when Siri doesn’t understand you and you to repeat yourself. Luckily for me, I don’t often have that problem. Siri understands me better than most people do.

In my weekly (for now) App of the Week blog post, I want to highlight some of the things that Siri allows me to do with my phone hands-free. This is especially great when I’m driving. And it feels so futuristic.

To activate Siri, I simply press the home button lightly to turn on the phone, then pick it up and hold it to my ear. (Alternatively, I can hold the home button down for a couple of seconds.) From there, I can just talk to Siri. Here are some examples of things I can do—I put the actual request in quotation marks, though variations work too; there isn’t a formula:

• Dictate an email or text message (“Send a text Aby to have a good day”)
• Play a specific song, a playlist or all songs by an artist from the music collection on my phone (“Play all Simon & Garfunkel songs”)
• Call someone in my contact list (“Call my husband, mobile”)
• Call a business, even it’s not in my contact list (“Call Niche Restaurant, St. Louis”)
• Find out the temperature and hourly forecast (“How warm is it outside?”)
• Send myself reminders (“In three hours, remind me to do ankle exercises”)

Requests require a confirmation, which I can do orally.

That’s just the hands-free stuff. And I expect it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The other great thing about Siri is that whenever the touch-screen keyboard comes up, I can press the microphone icon and dictate, rather than type. And it’s remarkably accurate (and easy to correct when there are mistakes).

I’ve had my phone two months (well, two months and four days, but who’s counting?). I still marvel whenever I use Siri handsfree to get stuff done.

If you have an iPhone 4S and never quite became enamored of Siri, I’d recommend trying some of these functions. Perhaps you’ll come to love her as much as I do.

Getting back on track with the clean desk

17 May 2012

In January of 2008, I created a habit of clearing off my desk at end of every work day. I blogged about it relentlessly, since it was one of the first daily habits I really managed to create and it had such an impact on my productivity.

But you know what’s weird? Sometime at the beginning of 2012 (and intermittently in 2011), that habit fell by the wayside. I think it might have started with my allowing one pile to remain on the corner of the desk (the pile was related to immediate tasks and task lists). And then I stopped putting away little stuff and before I knew it, I just stopped worrying about clearing my desk at all.

It never got to a ridiculous level and I was functioning fine. But the habit I was so proud of had vanished.

So last weekend, I decided to take it back. I cleared off my desk entirely. I dusted it. I admired the expanse of wood. And then I started working on family history research and, when I was through, I put everything away.

I’m happy to say that every day since, I’ve cleared off my desk. And, I observed, as I discovered before, it’s very easy to clear off the desk when there’s just one day’s worth of stuff out.

The key to having a clean desk is to have a place for everything, so that you can actually put stuff away. It’s that simple, really. I allowed one pile to grow because I hadn’t created a space for that stuff. And that one made it easy for disorder to creep back. That pile is gone, permanently.

Seeing the clean desk first thing in the morning is a great reward. And it makes it easy for me to get right to work without distractions.

I’m back on track, baby.

Worth repeating: my role model in persistence

16 May 2012

I just came across this blog post, which I originally wrote in August of 2009, and it tickled me. I think it’s as true today as it was then, so I offer it up again today for those of you who haven’t read it.

I adore my orange tabby cat, Joe, of course. But he does a great job of annoying me on a regular basis. But when I pause to reflect on it, he’s also teaching me stuff.

As I posted about over a year ago, Joe regularly hampers my productivity by loving on me while I’m trying to work. He plants his furry self between me and my monitor, sometimes rubbing his face against mine, even getting a little drool on me. And sometimes he just lies on the keyboard, like he did the other day:

It's hard to type when Joe does this.

So as I’m getting annoyed (and sneezy because of the fur in my face) sometimes I can’t help but admire him. Why? Because in doing this, Joe is gratifying himself. And he’s figured out how to turn the situation around to work in his favor.

Scenario A: He gets to keep loving on me and I give in and pet him. Or invite him on my lap. He gets what he wants: my attention and love.

Scenario B: I push his butt out of the way and he lies down on my desk and stares at me. He’s comfy and in my presence. He leaves when he’s ready and not a moment before.

Scenario C: I pick him up and place him on the comfy upholstered chair behind me. He immediately jumps back up and starts rubbing my face again. I relocate him again. He does it again. I throw my hands in the air and leave the room. He runs out of the room ahead of me and jumps on the guest bed where he’s often given treats. And because I admire his cunning, I usually give it to him.

See? Joe always wins. And so what is Joe teaching me?

• Know what you want
• Keep trying to get it
• Shift the goal line so you still win if things don’t work out exactly as planned
• When efforts seem to fail, figure out a great consolation prize

Now I just need to figure out how to apply that lesson to my business!

Are you backing up your computer?

15 May 2012

We all know it’s smart to back up our computers. (We also know it’s smart to do lots of other stuff we might not be doing, like changing our oil religiously every 3,000 miles.) Sometimes actually backing up the computer feels like a big deal.

Sometimes it comes down to too many choices. Should I back up in the cloud? On an external hard drive? Some other way?

Several years ago I blogged about how hard it was for me to bite the bullet and use Time Machine to back up my hard drive. Once I did that, the whole process was automatic. So now I have the comfort of knowing that my computer is completely backed up onto a hard drive.

But what if there’s a fire? Or a break in and both my laptop and external hard drive, which sits next to it, are stolen? Then my Time Machine back up wouldn’t do me any good.

So I decided a year ago that I needed to have a secondary back up. It’s a belt and suspenders approach. I selected Carbonite as my back up service, because it’s highly regarded. That was fine, until I noticed that my MacBook Pro’s battery didn’t seem to be holding a charge very well, despite being quite new. I took it to the Apple store and learned that Carbonite was running all the time and chewing up my battery life. Unfortunately, Mac users can’t schedule back ups in Carbonite. The backup had to be either enabled or disabled. And I knew that if I had to remember to manually enable it, it wasn’t going to happen.

So there I was again, faced with more choices. There are lots of online back up systems. I started doing research. I asked around among colleagues. And then I decided that, in this case as in so many things, good enough was better than perfect. I just needed to make a decision, so that my computer wouldn’t be unprotected. I went with CrashPlan Pro , which allows me a variety of ways to work with my back ups and avoid draining my battery.

What about you? Are you backing up your computer regularly? Is it automatic, so that you don’t have to think about it? I have such peace of mind knowing that my data are backed up in two places. If this is on your should do list, I encourage you to bite the bullet and get it onto your done list!