Peace of Mind Organizing

Guest posts galore!

11 January 2012

This is a big week for me for guest posts!

I took part in a blog post for the terrific mathophilic blog, Math for Grown Ups on how I use math in my work. The blog’s owner, Laura Laing, has a Monday series where she interviews various folks about how they use math in their professions.

Incidentally, Math for Grownups is all about organizing this week. Check out this great post Laura wrote today on Getting organized bit by bit. It explains mathematically how much you can get done in 15 minutes of regular effort. I love it!

I also wrote a blog post for Suddenly Frugal the popular money-saving blog written by my friend Leah Ingram. (I did a Q&A with Leah on this blog back in February, when her book, Keep, Toss, Sell: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Cleaning Out the Clutter and Cashing In was published.) My post on Suddenly Frugal today is on 5 tips to get organized on a budget.

I appreciate the regular readers of my blog so much, but it’s fun to get exposed to some new folks. If you’ve hopped over here from either of those blogs, I do hope you find it interesting and come back often!

Mom's Blast Off!

9 January 2012

This Wednesday is the half-day Mom’s Blast Off workshop from 9 to noon at The Heights in Richmond Heights. I’m joining life coach Jill Farmer and social media expert Allison Collinger to help empower women to make changes that get them moving toward a more fulfilling life.

I think it’s going to be a great event—just what you need to kick the year off right.

During the workshop:

• I’ll be talking about clearing clutter to make room for the possibilities in the new year
• Jill will cover time management to make time in your life to do what you love
• Allison will provide updates on the latest in social media to make your life easier and help you make money
• You’ll receive guidance to help you figure out your next personal and professional moves and actually take action

Here’s the part that I think is really cool. After the three of us have spoken, you’ll pick one expert you’d like to learn more from. Then you and the other participants who are interested in that topic will join together in a roundtable discussion with that expert.

I’m really excited and would love to see you there. The fee is $49. You can register online or even register at the door.

Inbox Zero - how I do it

6 January 2012

It’s been over a year since I started my Inbox Zero habit. On January 2, 2011 I cleared out my email inbox. And, for the most part, it’s been empty at the end of each workday since.

In May of last year, I blogged about why I love clearing out my inbox every day. You can read more detail in the post, but the bottom line is that clearing out my email inbox every day is easier than not clearing it out. Each day my inbox has only new messages in it. Nothing lingering. No time bombs. It’s fantastic.

Moreover, having an Inbox Zero habit prompts me to respond to messages that, in the past, I would have let linger in my inbox. It forces me to make decisions today, not tomorrow or next week. That not only enhances my productivity; it frees up my brain!

Today I thought I’d share the nuts and bolts of how I do it, since it seems to be the kind of thing that many consider difficult. In reality, I find it very easy.

Here’s an important note: When I talk about Inbox Zero, I’m not talking about deleting all my emails. I keep thousands of emails. But they’re filed away from my inbox, waiting for me to refer to them. They’re not mixed in with new emails.

I use my MacBook’s Mail program as an email client. All my emails are downloaded to my computer, which is how I like it. I see no reason, though, that these principles wouldn’t apply to cloud-based systems, like gmail.

1. I have many, many email folders. The one I use the most is called *Archive. (More on that below. The * ensures that the *Archive folder is at the top of my list of folders.) I also have folders for various volunteer activities, one called Clients, another for Prospective Clients, and folders for each email list I’m on.
2. I use rules to divert listserv emails to designated folders, so they never hit my inbox. Google groups, yahoo groups, any other group emails automatically go into their respective folders and I read them at my leisure. Same goes for messages from Twitter telling me I have new followers.
3. For those emails that do land in my inbox, I read and respond as necessary. Ideally, I respond immediately and then move that message out of my inbox. If the incoming message doesn’t apply to a volunteer activity or isn’t from a client or prospective client, I move it into the *Archive folder. If I don’t need to keep it, I delete it. If it doesn’t require a response, but I want to keep it, I just file it.
4. By far, most of my emails end up in the *Archive folder. Thanks to the robust search capabilities of my Mac, I can always find an old message; I don’t have to be more detailed in the filing.
5. If a message requires action after the response, I flag it, add it to my task list, then file it. In Mail, when I click on the word Flagged in the sidebar, all flagged messages are displayed. No need to move it into an action folder (which I always found scary to look in) and then refile it when the action is done.
6. At the end of each day, I go through any emails left in my inbox, respond as necessary, file and delete. It’s that simple.

The number of emails that land in my inbox each day isn’t huge—usually less than 100—and this system works very well for me. It’s very easy to maintain. I typically take a break on the weekends, which means that I have a backlog to deal with Monday morning. (That’s not ideal, but the break feels important.) During the week, I strive for—and unless I’m traveling, almost always achieve—inbox zero.

I have an iPad and I read my email on my iPad (using the Mail app) when I’m out in the world. I automatically blind copy myself on outgoing messages on my iPad, so those messages end up in my inbox on my computer. I just file them along with the rest, thus maintaining a correspondence record in my Mail program. But I don’t worry about Inbox Zero on my iPad. I left the device delete all messages at certain thresholds.

I have a secret weapon in my email success: an accountability buddy. At the end of every weekday my friend and colleague Aby Garvey and I send one another an email about the status of our inboxes. It’s highly motivating and, in the beginning, also helped me remember to clear out my inbox.

Inbox Zero may or may not be attractive for you. It’s certainly been helpful for me and if you’re tempted, I hope you find this post helpful!

Breathing space

3 January 2012

I’ve been given an amazing gift. The gift of time.

From January 2010 to December 2011, I worked 20 hours a week (two 10-hour days) at the International Institute of St. Louis. I had a great administrative job, one that allowed me to pay off all my business debt. At the same time, I was running my business full time and serving on two boards of directors of professional groups. I felt like I was on a treadmill, under constant time pressure.

Last week, my job at the Institute came to an end. I will miss the people with whom I worked and the vibrant, international nature of the workplace. I’ll miss being involved with an organization that serves a vital role in the community and tangibly helps people in need. (But I’ll volunteer at the Institute’s annual Festival of Nations! If you’re in St. Louis, I encourage you join me.)

But oh my goodness, am I glad to reclaim those twenty hours a week! I feel like I now have a little breathing space in which I can not only see more clients but can work on the non-urgent but oh-so-important areas of business, like marketing and social media. The treadmill is slowing down and might even be turned off on the weekends.

Behind the thrill, though, I find myself feeling strangely untethered without all the time pressure and without the structure of those days away from my desk. Part of that is that the end of the year was so (mercifully) quiet. But now that things are starting to get more busy, I can work on creating the structure that I need in my day to make sure that things get done.

I’m sure I’ll chronicle that journey here!

Goals, not resolutions

30 December 2011

I’m not so keen on New Year’s Resolutions. I think we tend to make them when we get caught up in the hopeful feelings that a fresh, new year brings. But I think they’re frequently not realistic. And we don’t give them enough time. And when one goes by the wayside, we give up hope on all of them.

Instead, I love setting goals. And, for me, often those goals are my hopes for new routines and habits to keep my life running more smoothly. 2011 was a big year for habits and routines in my life. I successfully created one rather life-changing habit: I clear my email inbox every work day. (Next week, I’m going to blog about how I do that.) I also created and backslid on some new ones, like daily exercise and clearing off my bureau every night. An important, ingrained habit, my clean desk temporarily fell by the wayside in 2011. Since life has slowed down a bit over the holidays, I’m actually back on the clean desk bandwagon.

So now I turn my attention to 2012. For me, I don’t so much want to create new habits as I want to reinstate and reinforce the excellent habits I created in the last year. Those include:

• Putting away my clothes properly every night
• Exercising every morning
• Clearing my email inbox every workday
• Telling my gratitude buddy, Aby Garvey what I’m grateful for each day
• Taking multivitamins, calcium supplements, and fish oil capsules every morning

Speaking of Aby, she wrote a terrific newsletter article today on Simple ways to turn your resolutions into realities. She always has such sage advice.

If you’d like even more advice on getting what you want in the new year, I have something else for you. A couple of years ago, my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I created a teleclass called Why Resolutions Don’t Work—and How to Get What You Want Anyway. Last year we added a workbook to it. So now, for $19, you can get an audio recording of the teleclass, plus a 24-page workbook based on the content of the audio. It might be just what you need to help you create realistic goals for the new year. Click here to download yours.

This is my last post of 2011. Thank you for reading my blog. I wish you peace and order in 2012!!

The annual Elfa sale is here!

28 December 2011

Every year just after Christmas, the Container Store has its annual Elfa sale. And every year I’m excited. It’s on now.

I recommend Elfa to lots of clients. Sure, Elfa is an easy-to-install closet shelving system, but it’s more than that. There are also great Elfa drawers, freestanding Elfa furniture that can certainly exist outside the closet, and Elfa systems for the garage. I have a client who transformed a wide hall into a fabulous home office with Elfa.

During the Elfa sale, which usually lasts until about Valentine’s Day, all Elfa products and (optional) Elfa installation are 30 percent off.

If you have a Container Store in your community, you can go in with the dimensions of the space you’re looking to outfit and they’ll design it for you. If you don’t have a Container Store handy, they offer the same service online (as well as an online design-it-yourself service). Or you can buy one of their kits. I did that with Office in a Closet earlier this year.

I blogged about my office closet makeover back in February when I did it, with the help of my friend Sally. That Elfa office in a closet is still making me very happy.

I’ve also blogged more than once about the fabulous bank of Elfa mesh drawers and how I organize them to store my somewhat sizable yarn collection. My love affair with those drawers continues.

If Elfa tickles your fancy, now’s a great time to give it a try!

My favorite blog posts of 2011

26 December 2011

I wrote 130 blog posts in 2011. I thought that today, in honor of the end of the year, I’d post links to my favorite half dozen.

Inspiration from the Cardinals. Game 6 of this year’s World Series was one of the best ever. Besides being very exciting to watch (particularly if you, like me, were rooting for the Cards), I thought there were some great lessons to be found.

Bingo! This summer I made a bingo board that has helped improve my productivity. It really jazzed me up. I’ve been on TV talking about it. I wrote an Organizing Guide about it. This is the blog post that started it.

Being happy with less than perfect. Harold Taylor’s insights on perfectionism (which he shared during a workshop sponsored by NAPO St. Louis in September 2011) really resonated with me. In this post, I share the highlights.

Are you interested in becoming a professional organizer? This post started out as a response to the frequent emails I receive from aspiring POs asking how I got started (and, by extension, how they can get started) as a PO. It became much more useful when my colleagues added great info to it in the comments.

Working with a professional organizer This post provides some general guidelines for people who are planning to work with a professional organizer. Like the “becoming a professional organizer” post, it was enhanced by comments from my colleagues.

The magic of linking new routines to old. In January 2010, I came up with a poop-scooping routine that changed my life. And I’m not even exaggerating.

Blogging is such a fun exercise and I’d so glad that I started this blog five years ago. It’s nice to look over the articles find the few that jump out at me. I hope you enjoy perusing them.