Peace of Mind Organizing

I'm digging the desktop writeboard

3 March 2010

At the Container Store the other day, I discovered the Cocoa Desktop Writeboard a rewritable surface that sits on your desk, allowing you to jot notes. I was intrigued. I balked at the $24.99 price tag, but went ahead and purchased it. (It helped that I used the 10 percent discount I’m offered as a NAPO member.) I’ve since discovered it’s available via Amazon for $17.99.

The writeboard has a clear plastic top beneath which is a paper template. You write on the clear plastic with a dry erase marker (included), using the lines of the template beneath.

Here’s a little diagram of how it works with the templates.

It comes with three pre-printed templates and two blank ones, as well as a CD with over 500 templates (most of which are geared to educational games for children—I imagine it would be great for keeping them busy). There are a dozen or productivity-related templates. You can print out one of these templates and insert it under the clear plastic, or you can create your own.

I keep my to-do list in my Quo Vadis Notor, a page-per-day diary in the form of a little book. I usually create a daily to-do list after perusing my master list. This writeboard is perfect for creating that list. (I use the template that has sections for each day of the week and lots of lines for notes.) Here are a few of the things I love about it:

• It stands up a little from the desk, so I don’t lose it.
• I can erase things when I finish them.
• I’m not wasting paper.
• It’s easy to update and carry over from day to day, if need be.

One thing that initially bugged me is that the top comes off the base when you try to move it. That seemed like a flaw to me. But then I read that that’s actually a design feature—it allows you to take the top with you and use as a hand-held whiteboard. I don’t see myself doing that (and in fact, Cocoa now makes a truly portable whiteboard, which they call Slate) but it makes me feel better about the designers.

Since I purchased it several weeks ago, I’ve used the writeboard on a daily basis. So I’d say it was a good investment!

Laundry as a time-management tool

2 March 2010

I admit it. I’ve let the laundry pile up over the last week to ten days. (We have a laundry chute, so the dirty laundry accumulates in a big laundry bin in the basement. Out of sight, out of mind.)

So today, when I had the day free to work at my desk, I knew I had to do laundry. And I was kind of dragging my feet about it, because I didn’t want be distracted by this task.

Then I realized I could use the laundry as a tool to help me stay focused. My time-management guru, Mark Forster talks about the concept of “timed bursts” in his excellent book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management. With timed bursts, I use a timer and focus on my work until the timer goes off. At that very instant, I stop what I’m doing and take a break. By interrupting myself it’s easier to get back to work because my brain craves completion.

The break also gives me a chance to refocus on what I’m supposed to be doing. Today is a writing day and I find that in doing research for what I’m writing, I sometimes go off track. Or I get fidgety and check Twitter or something. But by physically getting up to deal with the laundry, I’m able to focus again when I sit back down.

Mark says that focusing this way allows you to get more done. “If you work on something for three bursts of 20 minutes,” he writes in Do It Tomorrow, “you are likely to get more done than if you do an hour’s untimed work on it.”

So I decided to make the intervals where the laundry was washing and drying my timed burst. When it’s done, I stop what I’m doing, transfer the wet laundry and fold and put the dry clothes away. That’s about a five to ten minute break. When I’m finished, I head right back to work.

It’s working very nicely — I think that when the fifth and last load is finished, I’ll give myself an extra long break (maybe do some knitting and watch last night’s Big Bang Theory…man, I love that show) as a reward.

Get Rid of Clutter talk

26 February 2010

I’ll be giving a free talk called Get Rid of Clutter on April 6 from ten to noon at the Thomas Dunn Memorials Adult Education Program in south St. Louis city.

The talk will cover the decluttering process, organizing principles, creating new habits and routines, and the top mistakes people make when they try to get organized. There will be lots of time for questions and answers.

If you’d like to attend, give the Thomas Dunn Memorials a call at 314-353-3050. The talk is free, but space is limited.

Check out their website for lots of other free and low-cost classes!

StickKing to your goals

24 February 2010

I recently learned about stickK.com. (In fact, I learned about it on the CBS Sunday Morning episode I blogged about on Monday.)

StickK helps you achieve your goals by having you put your money where your mouth is. They have you state your goal, back it up with a dollar figure you’ll pay every time you miss your goal, then select a charity to send the penalty money to. Here’s the genius part: you have the option of picking what they call an “anti-charity” to receive your money. This would be an organization that you really don’t to support. A staunch liberal, for example, might select the George W. Bush Presidential Library. That provides extra incentive to stick to your goal.

The website takes a credit card number from you and every interval that you either don’t meet your goal or don’t report in they send the agreed-upon sum to the charity or anti-charity.

I signed up on Monday. I decided to commit to exercising four times a week for 12 weeks. I’ve been doing this pretty faithfully this year (my form of exercise is Wii Fit Plus), but I was slacking off on days I worked late. I figured stickK would help me exercise at least four times a week.

I pledged $5 a week for 12 weeks and selected an anti-charity that the money would go to.

StickK allows you to involve a referee who verifies you stuck to your commitment, or be on your honor. (I went with the honor system.) It also allows you to add friends to support you, who will be notified about your progress. Pretty cool.

It’s only been a couple of days, but I’ll admit that the anti-charity concept has been pretty powerful. There’s no way that charity is going to get my money. So I had no hesitation about exercising Monday and Tuesday.

Generally speaking, I prefer rewards over penalties. But this idea is intriguing to me, and so far it’s effective.

Procrastination versus tardiness

22 February 2010

Yesterday, I happened to catch a story on CBS Sunday Morning about procrastination, titled, The Whys and Why-Nows of Procrastination. I watched it because my DVR said that they were running a story on why people aren’t on time. (You can read the content of the segment in the above link.)

The gist of the story was that people are late because they procrastinate. This doesn’t make sense to me. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a bit punctuality challenged. But I don’t think it’s because I procrastinate about leaving. Or because I’ve put off everything I need to do before leaving the house. It’s because I’m always trying to get a whole lot done and use every minute I have before it’s time to leave the house. (And isn’t that the opposite of procrastination?)

I suppose it could be argued that procrastination can lead to chronic lateness if you’re putting off until the very last second the things you need to do before each appointment. I’d be willing to bet, though, that that’s not the case for everyone, or even the majority of people.

The Sunday Morning segment then morphed into a discussion of achieving goals. And in that part of the story I learned about stickK.com, a website that has you put up money to back up your commitment to achieving a goal. I signed up for stickK this morning to help keep me on track with exercise. I’ll tell you more about it on Wednesday.

I’m interested in what other people think about this procrastination and punctuality thing. Do you think that a chronic tardiness is the result of procrastination? I’d love it if you’d leave a comment below.

My secret to saving money on knitting

19 February 2010

When I started knitting five years ago, I tentatively started projects and slowly learned new techniques while gradually buying nicer and nicer yarns. I kept all my yarn in one bag.

About a year into it, I was all about the shopping. Going into a yarn store is a wonderful thing for a yarn-o-phile. The yarn is lovely to look at and even better to touch. Though I think of myself as someone who doesn’t buy yarn without knowing what I’m going to do with it, I quickly amassed a sizable yarn stash.

I spend some money on yarn, people. I don’t really want to go into Quicken and see how much. But luxury yarn can be expensive, which is why it costs so much to purchase a hand-knit sweater and why knitting garments for yourself is rarely a decision based on saving money.

For several years, I struggled with the best way to organize my yarn. I had yarn that I’d purchased for projects, some yarn that I bought on impulse without a project in mind, and then yarn leftover from projects. I used pop-up bins and knitting bags quite ineffectively.

Then in 2008 I bought my Elfa drawer system and organized my yarn stash in it. It’s bliss.

So what’s my secret to saving money on knitting? It’s the combination of an organized yarn stash and the amazing social networking site for knitters, Ravelry.

Thanks to this secret weapon, I purchased very little yarn in 2009. Every time I wanted to start a project, I’d think about what I was in the mood to knit (or come up with something that I needed, like a hat). Then I’d log into Ravelry to find a pattern. I’d look at the recommended yarn for the pattern and go to my yarn stash to see if I could find anything similar. Thanks to Ravelry, which has a database of yarns, I can easily compare the yarn in my stash to the recommended yarn. I can see if other people have used that yarn for that project. Ravelry even has yarn suggestions for each project, based on what other people have used.

Once or twice, I’ve gone to my yarn stash, identified a ball or two of a yarn that I felt like knitting with, then used Ravelry to find something to make with it. I can see the projects that other Ravelry users have knit with that yarn. Or I can click on “Pattern ideas” for each yarn. It’s amazing.

If you’re a knitter and you’re not already shopping from your yarn stash (assuming you’re looking to save some money on yarn), I encourage you to figure out a system of organizing your yarn so that you can find yarn easily. There’s no right or wrong way to do it—just think about your stash like it’s your favorite yarn store and organize it like they do (or like you wish that they did). I organize mine primarily by yarn weight, but sometimes by fiber. For example, I like having all my cotton yarns together without regard to weight. Don’t ask me why.

Once your yarn is organized, you an use Ravelry to give you great ideas on how to use it. If you don’t already belong to Ravelry, stop what your doing and go there right now to sign up to join the 644,000 knitters and crocheters who are already using it. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread as far as I’m concerned. Once you’re there, please friend me. I’m kramerscout.

I need to do some photographing of finished projects and then I’ll do a knitting post with some photos!

Peter Walsh's "It's All Too Much" DVD: A review and giveaway

17 February 2010

I really like Peter Walsh. I love that he provides straight-forward, common-sense advice on decluttering and organizing. I also like his innovative storage solutions. You’ve had the opportunity to see him on Clean Sweep, and Oprah. You may have read his books, including It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. And now you can watch him demonstrate the principles in that book with this terrific new DVD, It’s All Too Much with Peter Walsh.

Peter starts by concisely talking about his organizing philosophies. He explains that before you start organizing you should create a vision for your space, figure out the function of the room you’re organizing, divide it into activity zones, and recognize the limits that the physical space places on you and what it will hold.

Then he takes you room by room (inside a lovely, uncluttered home or set), giving you instruction and inspiration on organizing the living room, the entertainment area, the kitchen, the closet, the kids’ rooms, the home office and more.

The production values of the DVD are excellent. Peter has a great way of being directive without seeming dictatorial. I’ve seen him on TV so much that it feels very comfortable to learn from him in this format. I think the DVD is great—and fast—way to motivate and jump start the organizing progress.

My copy of the DVD was kindly supplied by its publisher and I’m delighted to give it away to one lucky blog reader. If you’d like to win it, just leave a comment below and/or tweet about it. (Be sure to include my Twitter name, @janinea, in the tweet so that I see it.) You’ll get one entry for the comment and an additional entry for each tweet. I’ll even throw in a copy of Peter’s book for teenagers, It’s All Too Much, So Get It Together, also supplied by the publisher. The drawing will take place on Saturday, February 20, in the afternoon.

One little caveat: The DVD case arrived a little smashed and then I stepped on it, breaking the spine of the case. But I promise to wrap it carefully for shipping so that the DVD isn’t damaged.