Peace of Mind Organizing

Don't miss Explore & Play free coaching calls

8 July 2011

Shannon Wilkinson of Perception Studios now offers free monthly coaching calls. This is an amazing opportunity to benefit from a really talented life coach who uses NLP and hypnosis techniques.

I admit I’m biased, but I think Shannon’s work is nothing short of magical. Shannon and I have been friends for more than ten years. We met back in the early days of this millennium on an online forum for owners of dogs with Addison’s Disease. We hit it off immediately and our friendship has outlasted marriages, careers, different pets, the whole gamut.

When Shannon decided to take coaching training back in 2003, I cheered her on. When she asked if she could practice with me on phone coaching, I jumped at the chance. She’s helped me in so many ways and gotten me past some really debilitating emotional hurdles. I don’t think I’d be as successful as I am without her. We’ve even worked together professionally. In 2009, we partnered to offer Declutter Happy Hour together.

Which brings us back to this great opportunity. Free coaching with Shannon. The Explore and Play group coaching calls happen on the second Tuesday of every month (unless she’s traveling). That’s this coming Tuesday. Go to her website to sign up. This month’s theme is Calming the chatter. Last month it was Moving through Inertia. On that call, I volunteered to be the person she coached. It was really effective and got me past some inertia.

If that topic interests you (she also had a call on dealing with overwhelm), you can purchase recordings of past Explore and Play group coaching calls for $18.

Once you get a taste of Shannon’s special magical coaching, you might want to sign up for her amazing You Creating You one-on-one coaching program, which can help your biggest dream become a reality. If you have the budget for it (and how can you put a price tag of living your dream?), it’s surely a powerful experience.

The first step is signing up for the Explore and Play free group coaching call. I can’t be there this month, but I plan to attend each one I can.

Behold the power of the daily routine

6 July 2011

I think habits and routines are incredibly important for making life easier and achieving what you want. The routines I have created have helped me, a naturally messy person, maintain a semblance of order in my home.

Some habits are daily, like running and emptying the dishwasher, wiping down the bathroom fixtures and cleaning off my desk. Others are tied to circumstances, rather than day or time of day, like my scooping poop in the backyard immediately after I walk my dog.

Sporadic activities can be made into solid habits. But daily routines? Those are the ones that really have power.

This was brought home to me recently when I thought about the two daily routines I’ve been absolutely passionate about: getting my inbox down to zero messages every day, and exercising every morning. (I actually sometimes let myself off the email hook on the weekends, but I usually regret it on Monday morning.)

I’ve been exercising daily since June 13. This feels absolutely miraculous to me. I was having the hardest time getting myself to exercise at my usual time, which is after work. I was just too busy and tired. So I decided to try doing it first thing in the morning. It’s worked out so well that even on a day where I overslept a little, I managed to squeeze it in.

There are two factors at play here that make daily routines so powerful:

• It’s easy to build a chain. If you’re doing something every single day, it feels like a bigger deal to miss a day.

• The benefits are so apparent. When you do something daily, you don’t let a backlog build up. And when there’s no backlog, it’s easier to do. This works beautifully for email (and is one of the reasons I love my inbox zero policy). But it even applies to exercise—if I keep up with it, I stay in shape and exercising doesn’t become difficult.

Of course the difficulty comes when your routine is completely broken, like mine will be next week when I spend a week visiting my parents. Perhaps I’ll squeeze some early-morning exercise in (though I’m not traveling with my Wii Fit, my preferred way of exercising). But if I can’t, the key will be in jumping right back into the routine when I return home.

Knowing how great it’s been to get my exercise finished before the day even begins, I have high hope I’ll get right back in the saddle. I’ll post here and let you know (accountability is powerful too!).

The freedom organizing can bring

4 July 2011

Today is the Fourth of July where in the U.S. we celebrate the signing of our nation’s Declaration of Independence from England. I’m currently reading An Echo in the Bone, the seventh in Diana Galbadon’s wonderful Outlander series, which is set during the Revolutionary War. Maybe that’s why this year Independence Day really has me thinking about independence, and freedom, and what it means to me and my clients.

In my work, I frequently work with people whose stuff has a stranglehold on them. That’s what happens when you have more stuff than you can comfortably store or keep track of.

So this Independence Day, I’m thinking about the ways decluttering and organizing can bring freedom and independence to those of you who are dealing with lots of clutter and disorder. For example:

• Freedom to invite people in on a moment’s notice
• Independence from late fees on bills
• Freedom to move house if a great opportunity presents itself
• Independence from dust and allergens
• Freedom to use the services of professional housecleaners
• Independence from having to stay home and “get organized” rather than going out and having fun
• Freedom to use the rooms in your house in the way they were intended
• Independence from the guilt and shame that comes from years of struggling with clutter
• Freedom to amend your taxes if you think of something you left out
• Independence from the mad search for your keys when it’s time to leave the house
• Freedom to travel — because you can have a house sitter or pet sitter come stay
• Independence from feeling inauthentic because no one would suspect what the inside of your house looks like
• Freedom to craft if you like to do that sort of thing, because you can find your craft supplies and have a space to work
• Independence from worry over the house’s state of disrepair, because you can have workers in without worrying about clutter in their way
• Freedom to sit and enjoy a clean, orderly space with an uncluttered mind

What have I left off?

Great ideas for organizing kids' artwork

29 June 2011

I occasionally am asked by clients for ideas on what to do with their kids’ copious artistic masterpieces. I don’t have kids myself, so I typically answer pretty generally and without a whole lot of insight.

That’s going to change because my friend Aby Garvey has written a fantastic blog post on her blog, Creative Organizing. She’s got great ideas and beautiful pictures to go with them. Now I can refer to this post when people ask me questions about their kids’ art.

Ready to be inspired? By all means, check out Five Ways to Organize + Enjoy Your Kid’s Artwork!

Overcoming inertia

27 June 2011

On Friday, I blogged about how I was going to work hard on Saturday so that I could relax on Sunday. That was my plan, rather than relaxing first or trying and failing to work on Saturday and then never getting to relax.

I’m happy to report that it worked out pretty well. I didn’t get everything done on my Saturday list, but I got a lot done. What’s more I powered through some moments where I really just wanted to take a nap. I used my timer to retain my focus and did indeed reward myself with a mid-day nap.

This is in contrast to a Sunday a couple of weeks ago where I intended to get a lot done but couldn’t get past the inertia. Instead I whiled away the afternoon at my computer, randomly web surfing and doing little that would enhance my life.

That kind of inertia is all too common (though as my to-do list grows and available time shrinks, it’s becoming less common).

Inertia was the subject of the free Explore and Play group coaching call two weeks ago from my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson, of Perception Studios. Every month, Shannon offers a free group coaching call. In that call, I jumped at the chance to get some get some magical coaching help for overcoming my inertia. I think it really helped me on Saturday. (You can actually purchase a recording of that call, if you’d like to get some help with your own inertia.)

After getting a fair amount done on Saturday, I was all about the relaxation on Sunday. I did some tasks related to the trip I’m taking to visit my parents next month, but mostly I caught up on TV, made some progress on the skirt I’m knitting, and had a lovely, long phone conversation with my friend, Patti. (It had been way too long.) I ended the day working on a task that I promised my accountability partners I’d do this week.

For me, anyway, planning some relaxation is a great strategy. Dangling the carrot of a day where I get to do only as much (or as little) as I want made it easier for me to get work done on Saturday.

Planning to relax

24 June 2011

This weekend I have no client appointments. That’s pretty unusual these days, since I tend to have one client appointment each weekend. (I try not to have appointments both Saturday and Sunday.)

I also have a large amount of work to do for my volunteer board position for the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, as well as for my business. I don’t mind having this work in front of me, because I really need to do it and I actually enjoy it. But sometimes when I sit down to work on this stuff on the weekend I can feel uninspired and resentful, particularly if I’m tired.

But I’m really keen on relaxing this weekend. I’m tired and I plan on taking one full day completely off.

So do I relax on Saturday (since I’m tired) and plan to work on Sunday, or should I do the reverse? As much as I’d like to relax tomorrow, I think I’ll get the busy work day out of the way tomorrow and use the day off as a reward for my productivity.

What I want to avoid is trying to work tomorrow, being unproductive and gripped by inertia, then having to buckle down on Sunday out of desperation. (I’ve certainly done that in the past.) When that happens, I miss out on the glory of relaxing and instead spend one day feeling lousy about being unproductive.

So I’m planning to relax on Sunday. And I’m planning to be productive on Saturday. Check back on Monday to see if planning my relaxation helps me be more productive.

Unclutterer's "Keystone Demise"

22 June 2011

I love the blog Unclutterer. Erin Doland, who writes most of the posts, is so smart and such a great writer. I love her perspective on striving to live a clutter-free life.

Yesterday, Unclutterer published a post called The Keystone Dilemma that I found fascinating. Basically, it says that there’s usually one element to your organizing system/routine that’s the keystone to holding everything together. If it goes awry, it can lead to chaos. Erin says in her home that it’s receipts on the dresser. If pockets are emptied and receipts left on the dresser instead of being properly processed, within a week disorder will reign.

That got me thinking about the keystones in my home. Within our main living space, it’s the kitchen counter. When we make an effort to keep that clear, the whole house tends to stay clear. But once it’s cluttered…clutter starts creeping in everywhere.

In my home office, it’s definitely the floor. When I get busy, I’ll move stuff off my desk onto the floor. If one pile is started, more sprout up like mushrooms.

In the post, Erin offers three tips to identify when a keystone is out of place and fix the situation. Such smart stuff! I urge you to go read it.