Peace of Mind Organizing

Join me for Mom's Blast Off

15 December 2011

If you’re in St. Louis, I hope you’ll consider attending the Mom’s Blast Off workshop on Wednesday, January 11 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.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

During the workshop you’ll learn about:

• clearing clutter to make room for the possibilities in the new year
• time management to make time in your life to do what you love
• updates on the latest in social media to make your life easier and help you make money
• guidance to help you figure out your next personal and professional moves

After three group sessions, you’ll choose one of the three experts to join in a roundtable discussion.

All that for only $49. Space is limited. I urge you to register now and get ready to launch your best year ever!

Top-notch classes on disorganization now available to all

12 December 2011

I’ve been a member of the Institute for Challenging Disorganization for more than six years. I joined within a month of becoming a professional organizer. Back then, it was called the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization.

One of the reasons I’ve maintained my membership over the years is the incredible education ICD provides. In addition to the educational opportunities afforded by ICD’s certification program and its annual conference, ICD offers a teleclass program that is unparalleled. Almost every week of the year, a class is offered for subscribers to listen to over the phone. Starting about a year ago, these classes have been made available to listen to on ICD’s website as well. If you’re a professional organizer and not yet an ICD subscriber, I urge you to check out the subscriber benefits. It’s one of the best values out there.

Until now, ICD did not offer classes to people who don’t belong to the group. In keeping with its vision of being the “premier resource in chronic disorganization,” ICD is now offering four recorded teleclasses that anyone can take.

Designed for the public, the four courses are:

• Understanding Chronic Disorganization, presented by Lynne Johnson, CPO-CD®
• Introduction to ADD, presented by Denslow Brown, CPO-CD®
• Introduction to ADHD and Procrastination, presented by Tiffany deSilva, CPO-CD®
• Introduction to Hoarding, presented by Geralin Thomas, CPO-CD®

I believe that each course is an hour long, though I’m not 100 percent sure. One thing to note: you listen to the class on your computer. (It’s not downloadable.) The fee is only $10.

To learn more visit the Public Teleclasses page of the ICD website.

My Life Matters planner: now available as a download

9 December 2011

Back in March, I did a review and giveaway for the My Life Matters planner for women. I think it’s a terrific planner for those looking for once planner for personal and professional items. It emphasizes self care and balance.

Today, Bobette Kyle, the co-owner of My Life Matters, just posted a comment on that blog post stating that next year the planner will not be available in a printed version but, rather, will be available as a pdf download.

Assuming the format is the same, this actually might be great news. It’ll be very affordable ($12.95) and you’ll be able to print and carry just the pages you need, rather than the spiral-bound printed planner, which was so thick that it was split into two six-month volumes. To learn more, go the My Life Matters website.

If you’re interested in being notified when it’s available (they’re promising it by Christmas), just fill out this form.

Easy (and clutter-free) gift giving

6 December 2011

I shot a segment this morning on Great Day St. Louis about clutter-free gift giving, one of my favorite holiday topics.

If you saw the segment, thanks for stopping by my blog. I wanted to elaborate on a couple of the points I made in the segment.

• I was really hoping to be able to recommend an Amazon Prime membership as a great clutter-free gift. (With Amazon Prime, you get free two-day shipping, you can borrow Kindle books, and you can instantly watch TV shows and movies free.) However, I just learned from Amazon that you cannot give a Prime membership as a gift. (You can, however, share your own membership with a household member, by inviting them.) Not only can you not give it as a gift, one can’t apply a gift card toward an Amazon Prime membership.

• I do know that you can give a Netflix subscription as a gift. Netflix offers both instant viewing over the Internet and DVDs. (They’re now separate subscriptions.) You can watch movies and TV shows via Netflix Watch Instantly on your computer or on your TV through various devices, like Tivo, Roku, and some game consoles, Blu-ray players or HDTVs.

• You can also purchase a Hulu Plus gift subscription. The free version of Hulu allows you to watch a variety of TV shows and movies on your computer, free of charge. With Hulu Plus, which costs $7.99 a month, you can watch full seasons of some TV shows (rather than just five episodes) and, most importantly as far as I’m concerned, you can watch Hulu Plus on your TV (via Roku or other devices) and on your mobile devices. I watched several episodes of Parenthood (love that show!) on my iPad while visiting my parents last week.

If you didn’t see the segment, here it is. Since I’m the first guest on the show, the video starts with the hosts’ show-opening banter. My segment starts at 2 minutes, 55 seconds into the clip:

Giving clutter-free gifts can be really easy. Often you can do it right from your computer!

Facing down my to-do list

5 December 2011

I’m just returning from a five-day trip to visit my parents. (I’m blogging from 30,000 feet in the air!) I realized as I was getting into the mindset of getting back to real life that I was afraid to look at (or even open) my to-do list.

That, my friends, is a very bad thing. If you’re afraid to look at your to-do list than you’re not going to be very productive. I actually thought about abandoning it and starting a new one.

But I faced down my fear. I realize it was a pretty mild fear, as these things go. But it reminded me of an adage that I have to tell myself on occasion, which is that the truth is the truth whether or not you know about it. It doesn’t do you any good to not look at your financial data for fear of what you’ll find, or not ask somebody an important question, for fear of what they’ll tell you. The truth is the truth.

The same goes for my to-do list. I know that I was afraid that there were going to be things on it that I had completely forgotten to do. And there was one thing. But mostly I found I was able to cross a lot of stuff off, because I had accomplished it.

Right now, I’m in a bit of a quandary about how to keep track of my tasks. I’d been using Mark Forster’s various methods. But he’s in the process of developing a new one and somehow the knowledge of that made me feel disenchanted with my current use of his Autofocus system. I’m a bit fickle that way.

So as I explore new options (the latest one is Kanbanery), I’ll post here what I find. Thankfully, December should be a little less hectic than October and November were, so I feel I’ll have time to do a little more than keep my head above water.

And the first step was facing down my to-do list a couple of hours ago.

Keeping it simple this holiday season

29 November 2011

As I’ve mentioned here before, ease is my driving force. I have this question, from Supercoach Michael Neill posted on my bulletin board:

Why is it so hard to let it be easy?

This holiday season, I’m reframing that question and what I keep asking myself is,

Is there a simpler way to do this?

Humans in general (and organizers in particular) have a natural tendency to make things complicated. But I’m convinced that simpler is better. I believe that the easy way out is superior to the complex way.

Case in point, my holiday cards.

In years past, the process of sending out holiday cards was, particularly for my business, complex. When I think about it, it makes me yearn for the days when I had that kind of time. Back in the day, I’d personalize my holiday cards for my business by printing on vellum, cutting the vellum and using glue dots to paste the vellum inside each card. Yeah, that’s not happening any more.

This year, in the spirit of keeping it simple, I’m using leftover cards from years past. (I’m not sure why I have so many cards left over.) I’m counting on people not remembering a card from a previous year. I’m going to pare down my list so that I don’t have to buy any more cards. And I’m probably only going to send business-related cards, rather than personal.

Once I made that decision, I felt free. Suddenly, I have just a few steps left (including buying stamps, which took about 30 seconds at the Postal Service website).

Yep, simple is the ticket this year. I don’t want things to be any more complex than they need to be. That feels good.

The things I learn from Twitter

21 November 2011

My three-year anniversary was on November 12. Two years ago I blogged about why I love Twitter and those reasons still stand.

One of the main things I love about Twitter, besides it being an easy way to communicate with others using @ replies, is that I learn things via Twitter that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned.

Take for example, this fun, instructional video on 25 ways to tie a scarf, which I learned about via Brandie Kajino (@bkajino), a wonderful professional organizer, one of many I follow on Twitter.

How fabulous is that? I favorited her tweet on Twitter so I’ll be able to find it next time I want some scarf tying inspiration.

I sometimes learn about breaking news on Twitter. Sometimes I read funny things from celebrities. Sometimes I just see what my friends are up to (or ranting about).

I know some people consider Twitter a time suck, but it doesn’t work that way for me. I dip in, learn what I can, laugh a little, try to share a little, and dip back out.

If you’re on Twitter and not already following me, please consider it! You can find me at www.twitter.com/janinea.