Peace of Mind Organizing

Some great tools for new organizers

2 November 2011

Part of me is jealous of people who are starting their organizing businesses now. Of course, the economy isn’t the greatest. But compared to 2005 when I started my business, there are so many resources available, at a reasonable rate, to help people get started.

Case in point: my friend Geralin Thomas, CPO-CD® of Metropolitan Organizing offers a variety of downloadable forms and information that I would have given my eye teeth for when I was starting out.

She offers the New Organizer Essentials forms a packet of customizable forms that take a lot of the mystery out of getting started. The thirteen-page document comes in three parts: The phone consult, the in-person assessment, and activity/homework log. Geralin also sells a client agreement form and a client invoice form. The whole bundle is $100.

What I like about the NOE forms is that they provide a guideline, but if there are items on the forms not relevant to your region or clientele, you can simply delete them. You can add your logo, add your own questions, do whatever you want to make them your own.

To make them even more valuable, Geralin is offering a group teleclass on getting the most out of the forms. Geralin teaches the Starting An Organizing Business class for NAPO (as well as Introduction to Professional Organizng). She knows how to teach. Geralin’s also available for one-on-one coaching with new organizers.

Geralin recently started offering a group of checklists that beginning and veteran organizers alike will find useful. The Professional Organizers Toolkit offers seven lists of essential supplies to use during your organizing sessions. Going to work in a hoarding situation? The hoarding list will tell you what supplies you need to bring. Organizing an office? There’s a list for that. Again, Geralin’s all about taking the mystery out of doing a great job. At only $10 the Professional Organizers Toolkit is a steal.

There are so many great tools and educational opportunities out there for new organizers to get started so they can figure how to create a wonderful business. I love when veteran organizers like Geralin are willing to give them that jump start.

The holiday season is almost upon us!

31 October 2011

If you’re on the east coast, it probably felt more like Christmas than Halloween with the blanket of snow that fell.

The holidays are just around the corner. (Less than four weeks until Thanksgiving!) I urge you to do as much, but no more, than you want to do in terms of holiday prep and decorating. If you do like to decorate, give gifts and entertain at holiday time, now’s the time to start getting ready.

My friend and superstar organizer, Aby Garvey of Simplify 101 has a 28-day Get Your Home Ready for the Holidays Challenge going on on her blog. Today is just Day 5, so if you’ve been thinking it’s time to get started and you’d like a step-by-step approach, I urge you to check it out.

Aby does an amazing job of making things fun and beautiful while urging you to be kind to yourself. So if you’re a holiday type of person (and, in truth, I’m not, so I won’t be taking part), you might find the challenge really beneficial!

Inspiration from the Cardinals

28 October 2011

I’m not necessarily a big baseball fan. But when my hometown team, the St. Louis Cardinals, is playing post-season, I watch. And boy has it been thrilling.

Last night’s Cardinals 10-9 victory over the Texas Rangers in Game 6 of the World Series (which tied the series 3-3) was a heck of a game, a real roller coaster ride. And the Cardinals offered up all sorts of inspiration in that game:

• Never give up. The Cardinals were within one strike of losing the game — and the World Series — not once but twice in this game. Each time, they rallied back with tremendous hits (in the 9th inning by David Freese, in the 10th by Lance Berkman) that brought in tying runs and kept them in the game. Then there was that last, beautiful home run from David Freese in the 11th inning that brought down the house (even my house).

• Don’t let mistakes get you down. There were some outrageous errors early in this game (on the part of both teams, but particularly the Cards). Freese, one of the heroes of the game, actually had the ball fall out of his mitt trying to catch a routine pop fly in the 5th inning. The errors resulted in runs. I can only imagine how demoralizing that must feel when the stakes are high and the whole world is watching. But these players were able to put those mistakes behind them and play great ball.

• Take each moment as it comes. In baseball, as in so many other aspects of life, you just need to focus on the current moment. Take each ball as it comes. That’s how the Cards dug themselves out, twice, when they were so close to defeat.

• Believe in yourself against the odds. The Cardinals shouldn’t have even been in this World Series. They didn’t win their division. Two months ago, they were 10.5 games behind the leader and being in the play offs seemed unlikely. Yet now they’re one incredible game away from winning the World Series. This team believes they can do it. And, I hope, tomorrow night they’ll show us they can.

• Focus on past success. The Cardinals have more Game 7 World Series wins than any other team. That’s not necessarily relevant to these players, but if I were them, I’d be focusing on that statistic.

Next time you wobble a bit as you try to stay the course, remember the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals. When you stay focused, don’t give up, and just keep doing your best despite the odds, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Taking a big-picture day for my business

26 October 2011

I’ve blogged before about Maryann Devine’s Society of the Secret Play Date. Maryann, owner of Smarts & Culture is a friend and a fun, creative person who loves helping others tap into their own creativity. I’m a member of the Society of the Secret Play Date, because I just love the concept: you set aside time to focus on a project, and do something creative to jumpstart or facilitate the whole process.

Now she’s offering a Day of Secret Play this Saturday, October 29. I’m really excited to participate.

I’ve been feeling the need to step back from the day-to-day operations of my business and do some big-picture thinking. As the weather gets colder, I get into planning mode. So this Saturday I’m setting the whole day aside to participate in the Day of Secret Play and do thinking and creating around the direction I want my business to go in 2012.

If this appeals to you, it’s not too late to sign up. Just go to the Day of Secret Play page and sign up by midnight on the 28th. The cost is $92 for the day and it comes with three free months of the Society of the Secret Play Date. Or you can just sign up for the Society of the Secret Play Date for $36 a month and get the Day of Secret Play free. Your choice.

Filing those paid bills

24 October 2011

Do you hang on to the paper bills that your creditors send you after you pay them? (Do you even receive your bills in the mail anymore?) A certain percentage of my clients have either gone paperless or automatically shred the bills after paying.

But a larger number of clients (and my family as well) receive most of their bills in the mail and hang on to the paid bills for at least awhile. Most of those clients, at the time I meet them, are doing what I used to do: they’re filing the paid bills by payee. (All the electric bills together, all the credit-card bills together, etc.) Or, more accurately, they’re letting the paid bills pile up because it’s such a pain to file them by payee. (I used to do that, too!)

What I recommend — and I got this idea from Freedom Filer — is instead of filing paid bills by payee, file them by month paid. Freedom Filer has labels for odd year and even year months, which allows you to keep a two-year backlog. (That’s what I do.) But a one-year backlog for non-tax-related documents is almost certainly sufficient.

Here’s what you do:

1. Label a dozen hanging file folders, one for each month of the year.
2. Create another hanging file folder (or folders) for tax-related documents.
3. When you pay bills, separate out any that can serve as documentation for a tax deduction. (This is particularly important for those of us who write off home offices.) Put those in the tax file.
4. Drop the rest of the papers in the file corresponding to the month in which you’re paying them.
5. After you’ve done this for a year, you’ll find the monthly file full of last year’s bills when you go to file. Simply pull out the contents and shred them. Drop the current month’s bills into the file, where they’ll stay for a year.

It’s that simple! I also put my receipts (again, non-tax-related) in the monthly files, as well as bank statements from my husband’s and my joint checking account. I’ve been doing this four about four years now and have yet to have it cause any problems. I so very rarely need to find anything in the files, but when I do it’s not difficult to find.

One note about tax-related documents: If you don’t keep track of your expenses electronically, you might want to create a series of category-related tax files to make it easier at tax time. Or just do a big sort at tax time.

This method of filing paid bills is so much less time consuming than filing by payee that the “To File” pile becomes a thing of the past. If you’re hanging on to your paid bills, I urge you to give it a try.

The hotel room theory of decluttering

21 October 2011

I’m writing this from my room at a Comfort Suites. It’s not exactly a luxurious room. But as I was sitting here on the little couch that makes this room a “suite” (that and the half wall that separates the couch from the bed), I started thinking about why I love hotel rooms.

I think it’s because in a hotel room, I have everything I need and nothing more. I packed only the clothes I needed for this two-night trip. I packed my toiletries. I packed my computer and my iPad and even a snack or two. And that’s it. If I wanted to, I could put everything away (more or less).

The room itself comes with amenities. There’s a TV and a desk. And a little microwave and fridge. There’s plenty of lighting. I can control the heat. What more could I ask for? I know! Someone to come in each day and make the bed, vacuum, and clean the bathroom.

The downside, of course, is that it’s not particularly homey. And living in a hotel isn’t particularly financially sustainable. So unless I win the lottery and move into the Ritz, I’ll probably live in a house or an apartment.

But maybe I can apply my love of hotel rooms to my home. If my home contained just the things I need and use, along with some decorative items that made me really happy, it might be more pleasing to me. As it is, in addition to the items I need and use, I have stuff I might need, as well as (truth be told) stuff I haven’t gotten around to throwing away.

If my home were more like the nice aspects of a hotel room, I’d probably be more comfortable. There’d be less to clean and care for. Everything could be easily put away. There’d be no daily maid, but maybe I could get a regular housekeeper.

So next time I turn my eye to decluttering, I’m going to think about how to make it more like a hotel room. But it won’t be a Comfort Suites room. I’ll make it a Four Seasons.

Lessons from Steve Jobs' life

19 October 2011

I happened to be at the Apple Store when I learned that Steve Jobs had passed away. It made me very sad; I was actually a little surprised by the depth of my emotions.

Like virtually every other Apple user, I love my Apple products. And I appreciate that Steve Jobs had a direct, positive impact on my life. But as I read some of the many articles about him, I took inspiration from contemplating the larger implications of his contributions.

I’ve been wanting to write about that here, but haven’t taken the time to craft something. And now I don’t need to, because the wonderful organizer and blogger, Jeri Dansky, already did it. She created a wonderful blog post about Steve Jobs that adds her insights to snippets from some of the stories she read about him shortly after his death. It’s well worth a read.

Thank you, Jeri!!