Peace of Mind Organizing

Guest posts!

1 June 2011

My friend, Geralin Thomas of Metropolitan Organizing has a great blog that covers a variety of issues surrounding disorganization. Geralin is one of the featured organizers on the A&E Hoarders TV show and does such wonderful, compassionate work with her clients. She’s also a dear friend and loads of fun.

I was thrilled when she asked me to write a guest post for her blog. It appears today. The post, called The Unforeseen Effects of Getting Organized, is about how becoming a professional organizer has changed my life, especially since I came to the profession as a messy person (and I’m still pretty messy). Please check it out (and leave a comment if you feel like it!).

I was also honored just a few days ago to have a guest blog post appear on the blog, Kids and Mental Health blog. I’d been invited by blog owner Lisa Tabachnick Hotta, a professional writing colleague. My post is on hoarding in children appeared on Saturday, May 28. It was inspired by the great ICD teleclass I took on that topic.

Thank you, Geralin and Lisa, for these great opportunities!

Good neighbors make good fences

30 May 2011

We all know the proverb that “Good fences make good neighbors.” In my life, I can switch that proverb around. It’s my great neighbor who’s making a fantastic fence.

When our old shared fence started to come down, our next-door-neighbor, Rick, offered to build a new one. He’s building a lovely cedar fence, a huge step up from the ancient stockade fence that came with our house when we bought it in 1992. The fence has no wrong side, so everybody wins.

Rick and his partner Mark have a lovely Dalmatian, Linus, who’s always had a cordial relationship with our standard poodle. Kirby. They would “talk” through a hole in the fence. But when we’d bring them together in one of our yards, Kirby didn’t usually want to play.

But here’s the thing that makes me so happy about our new fence (besides that it’s beautiful). Rick built a dog gate into it. It’s a section of the fence with wide panes in it for the dogs to interact with one another when it’s closed. (The panes are too small for them to go through.) When a human opens the gate, the dogs have easy access to one another’s yards. They’ve started running around and playing—and hanging out in one another’s houses.

Kirby's looking for his friend Linus.

Kirby’s been a bit lonely, I think, since his sister, Pip, died in October and now he has a new canine companion to hang with. It’s a wonderful thing.

I feel like this is some sort of psychic reward for the poop-scooping habit that I’ve cultivated in 2011. In the past, I’d have worried that the dogs would step in poo. It’s a non-issue now.

I never would have thought a fence and gate could bring me such joy and contentment. Thank you, Rick!

My latest diversion: Who Do You Think You Are?

27 May 2011

I love genealogy research. I think it’s fascinating and am trying to create more time to pursue it. (I dug into a few years back but haven’t taken much time with it in recent years.)

When I heard about Who Do You Think You Are? the NBC version of a popular British TV series in which celebrities explore their ancestral roots, I knew I had to check it out.

In each episode, a celebrity is given assistance by professional genealogists and historians and travels to various locales to learn more about his or her ancestors. (That seems like a dream come true to me.)

Season Two finished last month, but full episodes are available for viewing on NBC’s website. The first one I happened to watch was Ashley Judd’s episode. Amazingly enough, one of the ancestors she discovered and explored is also one of mine. (It was William Brewster, who came over on the Mayflower…I imagine he has many descendants in the U.S.) Here’s a little clip from that episode:

Getting to learn more about my own ancestor really brought the show to life for me. I’m hooked. I’ve rented DVDs of Season One through Netflix and it’s spurring on my interest in genealogy.

If you’re interested in family history research, you might want to check it out. In addition to Ashley Judd, Season Two celebrities included:

• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Steve Buscemi
• Lionel Ritchie
• Kim Cattrall
• Rosie O’Donnell
• Tim McGraw
• Vanessa Williams

Season One shows included:

• Sarah Jessica Parker
• Emmitt Smith
• Lisa Kudrow (one of the show’s producers)
• Matthew Broderick
• Brooke Shields

Now that the regular season of television is over, it’s nice to have a fun diversion that is helping reignite one of my passions!

A great resource for organizers

25 May 2011

Last night, the teleclass from the Institute for Challenging Disorganization was on children who hoard. Kim Anker-Paddon and Leslie Josel, who taught the class, gave us some great case studies as well as a review of the (limited) research on the topic. Fascinating stuff.

I am so grateful the consistently excellent education offered by ICD. I’ve been a member for six years and they’re still offering classes I’m dying to take. That amazes me. (Much credit goes to Kim Anker-Paddon, ICD’s teleclass director, and her volunteers.)

If you’re a professional organizer or related professional, and you haven’t joined ICD yet, take a look at this quarter’s teleclasses. You might find them seriously tempting.

Another great learning opportunity comes in September in the form of ICD’s annual conference. This year, the conference will be held September 15-17 in Raleigh, N.C. The tantalizing theme is Acquiring Minds: How We Think, Act and Feel About Possessions The lineup of speakers is tremendous.

Following the conference is a one-day workshop on Motivational Interviewing. At only $125, I think this workshop is a steal. I signed up for it. It’s limited to 30 participants (and at least 15 spots are already taken), so if you’re tempted to go, you’d be wise to sign up.

If you’re not a professional organizer or related professional but are interested in learning more about challenging disorganization (and you’re in the Raleigh area), for the first time ICD will be offering a program for the public the evening before the conference starts. It will be at the conference hotel (the Hilton Raleigh Midtown) on Wednesday, September 14. Complete details will be posted to the ICD website soon and I’ll also blog about it.

I serve on the board of the ICD as its Marketing Director, so it’s my (unpaid) job to be publicly enthusiastic about ICD. But I’ve been benefitting from (and singing the praises of) ICD long before I was on the board, back when it was called the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. I’m really proud to be associated with such a stellar group.

Just do something

23 May 2011

Some effort is better than no effort. That’s the philosophy I’m embracing at the moment when it comes to exercise. For some reason, I’ve fallen off the exercise bandwagon, despite the fact that I’ve put on a few pounds and so am reminded of the need to exercise on a very regular basis.

I think the monster known as perfectionism has reared its head in this instance. I was sort of getting tired of my Wii Fit Plus exercises and I purchased Just Dance 2. I enjoy Just Dance 2, but didn’t feel like it was giving me much of a workout.

So then I started thinking about joining a gym and started doing a little research on that. No problem there, except that I had stopped exercising as I sought just the right exercise for me. Part of that was because I’ve been so busy. But mostly I was being lazy. And I fell out of my routine, so I would actually forget.

Yesterday I decided to embrace the “Just do something” philosophy. I don’t have to have a perfectly amazing workout. I just have to do something. Because moving my body a little is better than not moving it at all.

This applies to other aspects of life, of course. I’m going to embrace the “do something” philosophy when it comes to my genealogy research, which had gone dormant for way too long. But I’ve gotten started again and want to try to do just a little on a regular basis (several times a week) rather than wait until that block of time that never comes.

Yesterday after my “just do something” epiphany, I advised a client who is trying to work through a paper backlog to set a goal of working on the backlog 30 minutes a day. Then I interjected my new philosophy by suggesting that even if he doesn’t have 30 minutes to work on it he should do it for 10, or even five. Keeping that momentum of daily activity going will help him create the habit and get past the barrier to getting started.

Last night was the moment of truth when it came to my exercising. While I was waiting for dinner to finish cooking, I remembered to exercise. (Remembering was an achievement unto itself.) I decided to ease my way in. I did just two dances on Just Dance 2 and nothing else. (In case you’re wondering, the two dances were to Crazy in Love and Proud Mary. Love those.) Tonight, maybe I’ll do something more strenuous. Or maybe not. It’s okay as long as I do something.

Inbox zero: My email sanity saver

20 May 2011

On January 2, I cleared my inbox down to zero email messages. And since then i’ve done it every work day except two, when I was out of town without my computer. That’s nearly five months of inbox zero at least five days a week. (I usually do it on the weekends as well.)

I know that even six months ago I’d have scoffed at the idea that inbox zero was attainable or (perhaps) even desirable. But I’ve found that achieving inbox zero once makes it easy to maintain. Here’s why:

• When I end the day with zero messages in my inbox, I don’t wake up to many
• Since I’m dealing with only one day’s worth of email, it feels much less overwhelming
• It forces action and decisions. No longer do I let an email languish in my inbox while I figure out how to reply.
• Items no longer get lost (or forgotten) in my inbox. It used to be that potentially important emails would scroll out of sight. I look at every email message every day now. And I do something with each.
• I no longer have annoying “I’ve got to respond to that email” reminders floating around in my head. By the day’s end, I respond. It’s fabulous.

I think a big part of my ability to do this is that it’s become an established habit. And I have an email accountability partner, Aby Garvey, so I have the thrill every day of reporting that I’ve achieved inbox zero. I have a certain sense of pride in the accomplishment and I don’t want to break my inbox zero winning streak. I blogged about how having this streak going makes breaking it hard (though I try to let go of it when I travel).

Another unbroken chain that I have going is regular blogging (as I mentioned in the blog post referenced above). Since December 27, I’ve posted on my blog each and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, even when traveling. I’m writing this on Friday at 6 pm, having just returned from an overnight trip without my computer. I’d meant to write a Friday blog post before I left, but ran out of time. So I decided to cut myself some slack about and skip this Friday.

But when I sat down at my computer upon my return to get my email inbox back down to zero, I realized I couldn’t bear to break my M/W/F chain, so here I am blogging.

Behold the power of the chain.

The family meeting

18 May 2011

I’ve been thinking about mail a lot, because of the Make Peace with Your Mail contest, which ended last week. As I read the entries in order to determine the winners (whose entries you can read here), a theme emerged.

One of the challenges that many of the entrants expressed is that it’s hard to keep track of the mail when it needs to be discussed with other people in the household (or when family members mess with it). It’s a challenge I see in my clients as well.

So I’d like to propose a solution that has worked for some of my clients. It’s the weekly family meeting. Establish a regularly scheduled meeting with folks in the household (like a spouse) for whom mail sparks discussion. Sunday evenings are often good for this. Then, when that mail comes in, put it in a file labeled “Family Meeting,” rather than putting that mail aside to show the other person (or people) right away. Then when it’s time for the weekly family meeting, all your documents will be in the file, ready for you to discuss.

I advocate having an Action Box, a desktop file box to temporarily store the mail that requires action. (The concept is explained fully in my organizing guide, How to Fall in Love with the Mail Carrier All Over Again, available for purchase.) Adding a Family Meeting file to your Action Box, and an actual family meeting to your calendar, can help you with some of your more challenging mail.