Peace of Mind Organizing

Don't give your mom clutter

3 May 2012

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. Since moms tend to want to hang on to gifts their children give them, I urge you to consider giving her something that won’t become clutter.

Way back in 2007, in the very first edition of my monthly newsletter, I wrote about clutter-free gifts. I think the info bears repeating!

Clutter-Free Gift Giving

So many of my clients develop attachments to inanimate objects. Those attachments make it really hard for the client to part with the objects. And what happens? Clutter happens. I’ve found that clients who tend to get sentimental about stuff find it particularly difficult to part with gifts that have been given them.

This has certainly changed the way I think about gift giving. I personally believe that once I’ve given a gift, the recipient is free to do whatever he or she wants with it. My feelings won’t be hurt if the gift is given away or even thrown away. But I don’t want to clutter up anybody’s life. So I try to give gifts that won’t add to clutter. And I encourage you to think in the same way about gift giving, particularly if anyone on your gift list has a problem with clutter.

Here are some of my favorite ideas for clutter-free giving:

Fresh flowers. A beautiful arrangement of cut flowers livens up any room. After the flowers have died, they can be tossed guilt-free. I try to avoid including a vase with the gift—I’ve seen many a home cluttered by florists’ vases! An easy website for ordering flowers is 1-800-flowers. I’ve also used Proflowers with success. Sometimes I’ll call a local florist in the recipient’s town, if I know of a good one.

Pampering. If you have a friend who would enjoy a little pampering, consider a gift certificate for spa services. Many cities and even towns have day spas. A massage or facial (even for men!) might be something your gift recipient wouldn’t do for him or herself. To find a spa in your gift recipient’s community, try Spafinder.

Services. Give someone the gift of time by offering to perform some needed services for him or her. You could offer a few hours of babysitting, offer to shovel snow, rake leaves, walk dogs or even clean house. If you’re a gardener, offer to do some landscaping. If you’re good with computers, offer to set up a wireless network or make their computer more secure. These gifts are clutter-free and really very special. You can also give a gift certificate for organizing services if you’re sure that the recipient would love to work with a professional organizer.

Clutter-free subscriptions. Giving a magazine subscription is a nice year-long gift, but many people let magazines pile up. Instead, consider giving a subscription to a services like Netflix or Blockbuster Total Access, which send rental DVDs right to your recipient’s home. If your gift recipient likes to listen to the spoken word, a subscription to Audible might be just right.

Edibles. Give something perishable to eat and you know it won’t linger in your gift recipient’s home. You can make homemade goodies, or send a gift package from a place like Wolferman’s, which sells English muffins and specialty breads, or Harry & David for fruit or other editbles. In 2006 Food and Wine published a terrific article on giving edible gifts.

A side benefit to giving an intangible gift is that you don’t have to go out shopping! Let your fingers do the shopping online. And give yourself (and your gift recipient) the peace of mind of not adding clutter to a cluttered world.

Going with the flow

2 May 2012

Today was the one day this week I had to work at my desk. Desk days are really important for me as a small-business owner. I have to spend a certain amount of time at my desk, taking care of business, working on volunteer tasks and so forth.

While I was walking my dog this morning, I was going through my to-do list in my head, planning what I was going to get accomplished today. I was absorbed in thought and somehow walked on the edge of the sidewalk, where it meets the grass of the parking strip (or tree lawn or whatever they call it where you live). Down i went, rolling my ankle while I was at it. Ouch! Luckily, I was a half block from the home of my friend, John, so I limped there and he put ice on it, then drove Kirby and me home.

The swelling was pretty swift and enormous, so it seemed like an x-ray was in order. Thankfully, it’s sprained, not broken.

No great big deal, but man, it’s thrown a wrench in the works! First off, that list of things that was going to get done today? Only the essentials were actually accomplished.

Next, crutches for the next few days? It’s times like this that I wish I had a phone coaching practice. I go into people’s homes to help them organize and crutches really don’t fit into that picture. So I had to reschedule my appointments for the next three days.

Here’s the silver lining: I get to spend more time at my desk this week. I should be able to get a lot done! Logistics aren’t the greatest, since my office is on the first floor of our house and the kitchen is on the second floor, and I’m on crutches. But it’s all good.

Experiences like this are great lessons in taking what comes and not trying to control everything. And there’s much to be thankful for. I’m grateful that my ankle wasn’t broken, that I have health insurance, that my husband took me to the ER, and that my friend who’s an ER doctor greased the wheels at the hospital for me.

The lesson here: Just go with the flow. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the week brings.

Making things easy

1 May 2012

I often write about my mantra, Let it be easy. When I get all wound up about something, I’ll take a deep breath and repeat my mantra and things usually get better. Like many people, I have a tendency to make things more complex than necessary and my “Let it be easy” focus has been really helpful.

That’s wonderful. And it’s also pretty passive.

Sometimes you have to make things be easy. That is, sometimes it’s great to take action to change things that are difficult or annoying.

Case in point: my aging eyes have made computer use more difficult. I have progressive-lens glasses, but they don’t work well at the distance my computer monitor is from my face. So when I use my computer, it’s best if I take my glasses off.

But I’ve noticed that with my glasses off, the screen is blurrier than I’d like. I got new glasses in February and insurance won’t cover a new pair until next February. (Then I’ll talk to the doctor about changing the prescription to address this issue.)

Recently, rather than squint, strain my eyes or just tolerate annoyance, I took action. I bought a larger monitor so that the writing on my screen would be bigger.

The hardest part was deciding which one. (I blogged about how hard it can be to decide on things when there are too many choices recently.) As I tried to weigh all the options, I whispered to myself, “Let it be easy.” And I chose one that seemed good, with good user reviews, even though I didn’t know that it was absolutely the best one.

A couple of clicks later all that was left was to wait for the monitor to arrive from Amazon. It arrived the next day (thank you, Amazon Prime!) and it took me all of 15 minutes to set up. Now I can easily see the text on the monitor. Ahhhh.

Are there things in your life that are difficult or annoying that a small action could remedy? Why not make things a little easier for yourself?

Mark Forster's latest task-management system

30 April 2012

If you’ve been reading my blog awhile, you know that I’m a big fan of Mark Forster, one of the most creative time-management gurus out there.

From his book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, to all four of his versions of Autofocus, to his DWM task-management system then Superfocus, I’ve followed him and tried all the things he suggests.

Most recently, I’d gone back to Autofocus’s first rendition.

But then, after months of teasing, he came out with what he says is his ultimate task-management system, which he’s calling Final Version. That’s how confident he is that this thing is great—he says it’s his last one. (Time will tell…I find that a little hard to believe.)

I’ve been trying out Final Version. I’m intrigued, but the jury is still out for me. That’s partly because I haven’t had a lot of time at my desk these days. I do like it, though. For the first time I’m trying to use electronic task management, rather than paper. FV lends itself to that. Thanks to the FV forums at Mark’s website, I was turned onto Wunderlist, which syncs nicely with my iPhone, so it’s been very portable and handy.

If you’re curious about Final Version, go to Mark’s website and sign up to receive the (free) instructions.

I’ll write more about it after I’ve drawn some conclusions. I just didn’t want to go any longer without letting you know that it exists!

Fun product: The Magnetic Glass Dry Erase Weekly Planner

27 April 2012

I love functional organizing products. To me, function trumps beauty. But if you can make a product both functional and beautiful, that’s fantastic. Throw in fun on top of functional and beautiful and you have a glorious hat trick!

The products from the company Three by Three earn that hat trick. They make a variety of products that help people organize their lives beautifully. I’ve long loved their little Mighties, outrageously strong little magnets. (I use them on my Bingo board.) Three by Three created the first magnetic strip bulletin board. They offer a variety of magnetic strips and boards.

Their dry-erase products are terrific, too. They have an attractive desktop dry-erase board intended for to-dos. They have bamboo dry erase boards, which I think is a cool concept. They have these great new stick-it! silicone weekly planners (great for refrigerators that aren’t magnetic). And they have beautiful magnetic glass dry-erase boards.

Three by Three was kind enough to send me a Magnetic Glass Dry Erase Weekly Planner to try out. It’s a vertical board, divided into seven sections, one for each day of the week:

What I love about this planner is that, like other Three by Three products, it’s not only functional, but pretty and fun (I have the spring green). The smooth, tempered-glass surface is really a pleasure to write on. And the fact that it’s magnetic (which feels sort of impossible, since it’s glass) is a great bonus. The sections are large enough to actually use, though it means that it takes up a bit of wall space.

I love the planner for planning my week. I think I’m going to start using it to plan my daily blog posts during my current 30-day blogging challenge. I could also see using it in the kitchen (though it currently resides in my office) to help keep my husband abreast of my activities.

For me, the only down side to this board is that it needs to be wall mounted and I have 100-year-old plaster walls. Despite the fact that it comes with mounting hardware, mounting anything is always a little scary (but worth it!). If you have that same problem, the identical silicone weekly planner might be a better bet, though you’d miss out on the magnetic part.

I always enjoy looking at Three by Three’s products at The Container Store. But until I saw their website, I didn’t realize how many I hadn’t seen. It’s worth checking out!

Dispose of old medications this Saturday

26 April 2012

Getting rid of old medications isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be. Flushing them down the toilet (which is what my family did when I was a kid) isn’t environmentally sound. Throwing them in the trash, where others can get them and use or sell them, obviously isn’t a good idea either. And hanging on to them creates clutter and is potentially dangerous, since some drugs can become toxic with age.

From 10 am to 2 pm this Saturday, April 28, the US government will help you dispose of all those pill bottles collecting dust in your bathroom. Saturday is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s third National Drug Take-Back Day. Collection sites for unwanted or unused prescription drugs have been set up all around the country. Go the the National Take-Back Initiative’s website to search for a collection site near you. When I entered my zip code, 10 sites within 10 miles were listed. Couldn’t be easier.

Saturday morning sounds like a great time to clean out your medicine chest!

I'm in love with my iPhone 4S

25 April 2012

Seriously, what took me so long to buy an iPhone? I bought a MacBook in 2007. An iPod Touch in 2008. (It was my third iPod.) An iPad in 2010. I loved them all dearly. Why did it take me so long to buy an iPhone?

I don’t know, but all that matters is that I have one now. I’m paying $100 more per month than I did for my cheap plan on my uber-cheap Droid smartphone from T-Mobile. And you know what? I’m happy to pay that money.

That's my cat, Joe, on my opening screen.

As much as I love my second-generation iPod Touch and first-generation iPad (click the links to read my love letters to them), my iPhone 4S has two things that they don’t have. A camera and Siri, the intelligent voice recognition software that turns my phone into the closest thing I’ve had to an administrative assistant since I became an entrepreneur.

In the spirit of my prior techno love letters, here are nine of the reasons I love my iPhone. I bought it six weeks ago today. I’m sure there will be many more reasons as time goes on.

1. The reminders. Many times a day, I’ll use Siri to create a reminder for myself. It can be something as simple as calling someone at a certain time or even putting the laundry into the dryer. I just speak the request, “Remind me to switch the laundry in an hour” and an hour later a reminder pops up on my phone, my MacBook and my iPad.

2. Easy texting. On my last cell phone I hated texting. On this phone, I can press the little microphone icon and speak my message. The voice recognition is amazingly accurate. When I’m in a quiet place, I can text with my thumbs and the autocorrect is also amazingly accurate. (I haven’t had any embarrassing autocorrects yet.) So now, texting is a viable—and handy—communication tool for me. Here’s something cool: I can even ask Siri to send a text message to someone in my contacts without having to look at my phone.

3. The amazing camera. I used to carry a digital camera with me. No longer. The camera on the iPhone 4S is actually better than my point and shoot. And I can easily send the photos to my computer, or my friends, or my social networks.

4. The size. I do love my iPad for web surfing. But the phone is just so easy to carry around. It fits in my back pocket. And since I love it so much, I do carry it around.

5. The seamless way it has integrated into my life. Since I was accustomed to using an iPod Touch and an iPad, there was no learning curve whatsoever for me. All the apps I had on those devices were transferred to the phone. So I didn’t have to learn a bunch of new stuff or give up anything.

6. The Maps program. If I’m on my way somewhere, I can easily check the route (not while I’m driving, of course) and even choose which route to take based on current traffic conditions. If I’m going to the home or office of someone in my contacts, I just touch their address and a map appears. It’s tremendously convenient. I no longer use a GPS.

7. iCloud. I was a Mobile Me user, but not entirely satisfied. iCloud has replaced Mobile Me and it seems to be working perfectly. Plus, it’s free. Anything I add to my phone appears on my Mac and iPad, including photos I take and music I download. Any appointments I make are automatically synched to the other devices, as are new contacts. It’s fantastic.

8. The apps. Of course I loved the apps on the iPad and iPod Touch. But I was missing out on the apps that required a camera or microphone. So whole new worlds of apps are now open to me. I’ll do another blog post on my favorite apps. I’m just so happy that I have so many to choose from.

9. The speedy internet access. When Wifi is available, I use it on my phone. But when it isn’t, I use the speedy 4G cellular network. I was able to ditch the $25 a month 3G plan for my iPad, since I can use my phone as a wireless hotspot for both my iPad and MacBook. How cool is that? (It requires me to buy the 5 gigabyte data plan for an additional $20 a month.)

I used my old cell phone to place calls and that’s about it. I use my iPhone for calls, emailing, texting, reminders, calculating, listening to music, web surfing, checking my calendar, adding to my task list, reading books, waking myself up, taking credit card payments…the list goes on. (In fairness, I was going a lot of that with my iPad, but in general, my iPhone is more convenient.)

There’s some serious infatuation here. But I think this love is here to stay.