Peace of Mind Organizing

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.

The clean slate

17 January 2011

So far this year I’ve established a couple of new habits that benefited greatly by starting with a clean slate.

One is the backyard poop scooping that I blogged about last week. Starting by cleaning the entire yard and then establishing a daily routine of scooping has made that activity practically painless.

The other is Inbox Zero. On January 2, I got my email inbox down to zero messages, not by declaring email bankruptcy, but by actually dealing with each email, so that there were none left in my box.

Since January 2, I’ve reached Inbox Zero every day. The reward of an empty inbox is so enticing that I’m taking action on emails I would ordinarily have let languish for at least a day (or month). That’s improving my productivity and it also has an extra bonus: the peace of mind of knowing that no emails have slipped through the cracks or scrolled out of sight. My email inbox doesn’t nag at me. It’s wonderful.

This principle of clearing the backlog and creating a daily habit can be applied to many things, like filing (I still have a “to file” pile that needs to be cleared and then I’ll try to follow my own advice and file immediately), shredding, and cleaning the bathroom or kitchen.

I’m thisclose to having cleared another giant backlog. Yesterday I completed inputting my Quickbooks data for my business for 2010. Back on December 21, 2009, I blogged that I was going to try to create the habit of entering Quickbooks data as each transaction came in and I failed miserably. On Sunday of last week I started entering my backlog, which went all the way back to February.

But now I’m caught up with 2010. All I have to do is enter the receipts and deposits that have come in in the last two weeks and my backlog will be cleared. And then I’ll really try to create the habit of very frequent data entry — at least weekly.

Part of me says that if I can enter a whole month’s receipts in an hour or two at the end of the year, why bother keeping up? I find that this year I crave the knowledge and control of staying on top of my finances. I think paying attention to my books on daily or weekly basis will help me get past some of my weird money issues and will reap great rewards.

I hope a year from now to have a much better report about staying abreast of my finances than I did for 2010!

Help for that scary pile on your desk

14 January 2011

I go on and on here about the value of clearing off your desktop at the end of the work day. I’ve been doing it daily for three years and it’s really enhanced my productivity. It’s now such a habit that I’d kind of forgotten about the scary, teetering pile of paper that can pollute your desktop. (Though I do sometimes let the paper in my inbox — which is not on my desk — pile up.)

If you have a big pile of paper on your desk, I’d like to share with you a terrific blog post, Purge that Pile: 10 Steps to a Clean Desk from Jennifer Hull’s MidAge Mom blog. Jennifer is a writer I know through an online writing community I’ve belonged to for years, Freelance Success.

I love Jennifer’s fresh take on the process of getting your desktop cleared off. My favorite nuggets:

I wanted to feel lighter, not heavier. So … I cleaned out the big pile on my desk.

My first realization: it wasn’t a pile of papers. It was a pile of decisions.

It’s one thing to purge the playroom. But when you clean your desk, you give a gift to yourself. Since eliminating the pile, I feel squeaky clean, like I’d taken a ritual bath. I still have a lot to do. But now I know what it is.

Go read it for yourself. I bet you’ll be inspired to clear off your desk and feel liberated!

Help for catching up on your shredding

12 January 2011

One of the things I did during that glorious week between Christmas and New Year’s was clean out my files. My recycling box is full but I also have a large pile on top of my shredder.

I find shredding sort of unpleasant. It’s loud. And it’s messy when I empty the shredder. So, like many people, I tend to let it pile up. I really need to create a habit of regularly emptying the shredder to eliminate the barrier to shredding at the time I come across a document that needs to be shredded.

So I have this backlog of shredding. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to start a new habit is to clear the slates and start from zero. When I decided to start the clean desk habit on January 5, 2008, I totally cleared off my desk, decluttered it, and replaced it with only those items that needed to be there. Then, every day, I cleared it off when I finished work. Easy.

Thanks to the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, of which I’m a proud board member, I’ll have an opportunity to clear my shredding slates at little or no cost.

NAPO St. Louis and Shred and Protect Document Services are pairing up to sponsor a Shred Event on Saturday, February 19 from 9 to 1. If you live in St. Louis, you can bring a banker’s box full of documents that need to be shredded (about 25 pounds) to Shred and Protect, which is located in Hanley Industrial Court in Brentwood and get it securely shredded free of charge. Additional boxes are $5 each. Such a deal. (I’m basing the pricing on last year’s event; keep your eye on my blog as we get closer to the event, in case the pricing’s changed. Or feel free to shoot me an email.) Shred and Protect is located in Hanley Industrial Court.

Of course, you don’t have to wait until February 19 to let Shred and Protect help you catch up with your shredding. They’re happy to help you any time for a fee (call ahead for drop off) and they’ll even come pick it up for you, if you’d like. I’ve been using them all year for my clients and am a very satisfied customer.

Maybe the Shred Event can motivate you to clean out your files. You have a month and a week. See if you can fill up a box and bring it in. There are so many benefits: Your file cabinet will be less full, your documents will be securely destroyed, the shreds will be recycled, and you don’t have to do the shredding yourself.

If you don’t live in St. Louis, Google around and see if you can find a similar event in your community. If you don’t find one, perhaps there’s a service you can pay. I think it’s well worth the small fee most commercial shredders charge to get all your shredding done in one fell swoop.

How are those resolutions coming along?

10 January 2011

It’s funny how the turn of the calendar page to a new year makes people want to change their ways and resolve to behave differently. It’s certainly true of me. While I haven’t set any resolutions, per se, I do set goals and I do try to create new habits.

So far, I’ve been very successful in putting away my clothes properly at night and at scooping the yard, which I wrote about just this past Friday. (Still going strong…today is Day 10.)

I’m a little shakier on one other resolution, to exercise daily. I missed a day on Thursday, when I felt a little under the weather. I had said to my husband, “I don’t feel like exercising today.” His response, “Then don’t” was all I needed to slack off. But I did jump back on the horse (or in this case, the Wii Fit Balance Board) on Friday. With this daily exercise goal, I’m trying to start small and tell myself that any exercise counts toward my goal. It doesn’t have to be a full 30 minutes; 15 (or even 5) is better than nothing. The idea is to engrain the habit. (Toward that end, I’ve purchased the Just Dance 2 Wii game, which is loads of fun and gets my heart pounding.)

This is a technique we discuss in the Why Resolutions Don’t Work—And How to Get What You Want Anyway teleclass recording + workbook that life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I created last year and updated this year. It goes over several reasons that resolutions tend to fail and offers solutions for overcoming each of those challenges.

It’s January 10, not too late to start a resolution (it’s never too late, of course) and also a little too early to give up any new ones. I’m going to persevere with the exercise goal. If you have a resolution that’s not working out so well, don’t give up. Hop right back on the horse. Our resolutions class might give you just the support you need.