Peace of Mind Organizing

Getting past internal barriers

2 February 2011

This the year that I’m all about creating new habits and routines. (At least so far.) In the past two months I’ve created strong habits surrounding cleaning up my yard and keeping the bedroom bureau top clear of clothing. I’ve also whittled my email inbox down to zero every day since January 2. (I’ll blog more about that another day.)

There’s one habit I’ve been meaning to cultivate for years. (Literally, years.) And that’s entering my financial data for my business into Quickbooks on a very regular basis. In December 2009, I blogged that I wanted to adopt that habit for 2010. Did I succeed? Ha! I found myself entering data for most of 2010 in January of 2011, all the while saying to myself, like I do every year, “This year will be different.”

I realize it’s only February 2 (happy Groundhog Day for those in the US!), but I’m excited to report that I’m caught up on Quickbooks and I’m indeed entering data as I earn and spend money. How have I been able to do this after years of failure?

I turned to my secret weapon, Shannon Wilkinson. Shannon is an amazing life coach, hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner. (She’s also my partner in Declutter Happy Hour and Why Resolutions Don’t Work.) For years, she’s been helping me get past my emotional barriers to action.

When I realized that I had some sort of barrier preventing me from facing my finances on a regular basis, I pulled out Boring Change: No Augers Required, Shannon’s amazing (and amazingly affordable) audio and e-book product that puts her brand of magic in your hands. I blogged all about it last March, when it first came out.

I spent just about 10 minutes with Boring Change and when I was through I was ready and raring to start entering data. And I continue to be excited. In fact, the other day when I looked over my to-do list, entering data into Quickbooks felt like a treat! When I realized that, I almost fell off my chair.

If you feel like something is stopping you from doing what you want or from achieving you know is desirable (or simply creating a new beneficial habit), I urge you to give Boring Change a try. It’s only $47 and it can make a huge difference in your life.

Are you prepared?

31 January 2011

So here in St. Louis, an ice storm is on its way. It will be followed by a snow storm. Everybody’s talking about it.

Since I’m such a nervous bad-weather driver, I am delighted that my one in-person meeting today, at ICD headquarters was changed to a phone meeting, so I won’t have to go outside today. And if the weather is as bad tomorrow as anticipated, the talk I’m slated to give will be canceled.

So I’m hunkering in. And that’s good. But this ice storm has the National Weather Service warning that there may be downed power lines and resulting power outages. If there’s no electricity, hunkering in won’t be nearly as pleasant.

That got me thinking about how prepared we are (or aren’t) for a power outage. I have to admit, that I’m not as prepared as a smart person should be. My colleague, Margaret Lukens is all about being prepared. She’s started a business, Preparation Nation, to help clients get prepared for disaster. If you live in the San Francisco area and you’re concerned about disaster preparedness, you’ll want to check her services, which I think are really reasonably priced for the value.

If you’re not in the San Francisco area but, like me, have disaster prep on your mind, Margaret’s Preparation Nation blog has some great info.

I’m off to get my candles out and make my flashlights handy in case the power goes out after dark.

Creative disposal

28 January 2011

A lot of my clients are perfectionists, and one of the things that keeps them from parting with an unwanted item is that they want to identify the perfect person or charity to receive it. They don’t want to clutter the landfill, so they let items clutter their homes instead.

I encourage them to let go of the notion of a perfect recipient for their stuff. It’s a lot easier to make a general hodgepodge of a donation to a place like Goodwill.

That said, sometimes there are items that are particularly tough to just trash. Your kid’s Little League trophies, for example. You child doesn’t want them. They’re cluttering up your mantle (or your basement). But you don’t want to just throw them away. The trophy company Lamb Awards will take your old trophies and either donate them to charities or break them down for parts to be made into other trophies. (Back in June 2009, I blogged about Awardex which at the time, anyway, was also recycling trophies.)

But this isn’t a blog post about trophies. I wanted to let you know about a terrific new blog, Think Outside the Bin which every day posts about a place that will take donations of specific household items. Other items covered so far have been batteries, bibles, Christmas lights, and flags.

So far, it’s proven to be a terrific resource and definitely one to keep on your radar. I subscribe to it, so that today’s topic lands in my email inbox where I won’t miss it.

Taking the easy route

26 January 2011

It snowed much of the day this past Sunday, one top of the half-foot or so we already had, and then on Sunday night there was freezing drizzle. So Monday, I awoke to slippery sidewalks and roads.

I’ll admit that I’m a white-knuckle driver when it comes to winter weather. I did go out on Sunday during the snow in my Honda Civic, because we needed dog food and human food (in that order). I was miserable driving and did get around safely, though I had a couple of turns that were supposed to be 90 degrees that were actually 45.

Monday afternoon I had two appointments. One for a brow shaping and one for an annual checkup with my doctor. Seeing the road conditions on TV, I worried for a couple of hours about how the roads would be and tried to reassure myself they’d be fine. But my stomach was in knots.

Then I looked up at my bulletin board and saw the saying I keep posted there (it comes from life coach Michael Neill). That saying is:

Why is it so hard to let it be easy?

I realized that I didn’t have to work myself in a lather over the potential dangers of driving to these two appointments. I could just reschedule them. Neither were urgent (well, my eyebrows looked pretty bad). I could be open and honest with the receptionists and explain why I wanted to reschedule. If there were some sort of penalty, so be it.

Guess what? Despite the fact that the receptionists had managed to get to work that morning, both were very kind. There were no charges imposed. And I began to breathe more easily.

As it turned out, by the time those appointments rolled around the roads were fine. But I’m still glad I relieved myself of the stress of anticipating the trips.

Monday morning, I took the easy way out by rescheduling those appointments. And you know what? The easy way out can be great.

Sale on Elfa!

24 January 2011

From approximately Christmas to Valentine’s Day each year, the Container Store holds its annual Elfa sale. Elfa’s their terrific modular shelf and drawer system to help you create custom closets or other storage areas. Now through February 14, 2010, you receive 30 percent off all Elfa products and installation.

I’m a big fan of love Elfa. I wish I had more of it in my home. I do house my yarn stash in a trio of Elfa 10-runner drawer sets. I bought them more than three years ago and found them to be fantastic (and durable!). I never miss an opportunity to show off a picture of how I store my yarn collection. So here it is:

All my yarn and supplies are in one place!

I also have an Elfa file cart under my desk, where I store my project files and current client files—the stuff I want really close at hand. I love the Elfa file cart and recommend it to my clients all the time. Right now, it’s just $69.30. Here’s a picture of it, from the Container Store’s website:

The one I bought is letter, not legal size.

I don’t have an Elfa closet system, but I’m cleaning out the storage closet in my office this week and I’m going to give some thought to installing one (once I see what I really need to store).

If you’ve been thinking about Elfa, now’s the time to act. Remember, the sale ends on Valentine’s Day!

The promise of a snow day

21 January 2011

Like much of the country this winter, St. Louis experienced a big snow storm. Over a 24-hour period, it snowed nine inches, which is a lot for us. St. Louis sort of grinds to a halt when snow is falling, and all my obligations for were canceled.

I was giddy. I was facing a completely open day, full of promise, and I had to decide what to do with it. I wasn’t going to go outside, mind you (except to walk my dog), so my choices were somewhat limited. But I narrowed it down to this:

• Take the day off and just relax. I had DVDs I could watch, a bunch of shows on the DVR, and some mindless (or trickier) knitting projects I could work on.

• Get caught up around the house. There are always decluttering projects waiting for the weekend and my office was pretty messy (and in fact I was planning to work on that this weekend).

• Treat it like any other admin day and plow through my to-do list

• Make it a special-project day and address some projects I hadn’t really had a chance to get started on.

I’m telling you, this free day felt like a gift. Any of the above activities would have been perfectly legitimate. But I went for the last option. I made a short list of some projects to at least get started on and I actually worked on cleaning up my office.

The best part was that I finished the list, I gave myself permission to close shop early and just relax. So I got a good chunk of knitting and TV watching in.

Despite the change in routine, I did stick to some of the habits I’m trying to cultivate this year, like getting my inbox down to zero, scooping the yard and putting my clothes away properly.

I usually hate snow. But yesterday it was my friend.

Stressed out by meals? SimpliFried can help

19 January 2011

I love the blog Unclutterer. It is full of sound advice about getting rid of clutter and living simply, written by and for intelligent people.

If you’re not familiar with it and would like a taste, check out this Unclutterer: Best of 2010 roundup.

The folks who brought us Unclutterer have started a sister blog called SimpliFried that is about ending mealtime stress. They write on Unclutterer that they started SimpliFried “as a way to help readers relieve stress surrounding mealtimes (because this is the area of life we struggle with the most).”

If you get stressed about preparing meals for yourself or your family, you’ll want to check it out. It’s just two weeks old, so there’s not a ton there of information there yet (though what’s there is great), but it’s bound to be a great resource.