Peace of Mind Organizing

Getting back on track

30 January 2023

I always love getting to work at the beginning of January. The year feels like a blank slate, my goals are set and I’m ready to establish new routines and take on new projects.

January 2023 started off well and then went off the rails. Mid-month I traveled to Walla Walla to settle my father’s estate and help my brother with some financial concerns stemming from his inheritance. That turned out to be about as fun as it sounds. I managed to pick up some sort of virus so didn’t feel or sleep well while I was there. By the time I flew home, I was feeling really lousy and my flight from Denver to St. Louis was plagued by mechanical difficulties. I finally walked in my door at 4 am.

I spent the rest of the week feeling physically and mentally exhausted. I did go to urgent care and I tested negative for COVID and the flu. I just had some sort of upper respiratory virus, I think.

Today is Monday and I feel human again. But I also feel like my glorious January, which started off so well, ended in a shambles.

But I’m ready to bounce back. Here’s how I think I’m going to approach it:

• Start right where I left off with yoga. I was enjoying Yoga with Adriene’s 30-day journey but my head got so stuffed up that the idea of doing a downward-facing dog felt like torture. The last day I was able to do yoga was Day 22. So today I’ll try Day 23 and I’ll keep going each day until Day 30. (Then I’ll figure out another 30-day journey to try.)

• Get right back to daily genealogy research. I have a 30 × 30 genealogy challenge going on at my genealogy blog, Organize Your Family History. I was going great guns with doing 30 minutes of daily research until I left for my trip. Then everything fell by the wayside. Instead of just calling it a bust, I’m going to try for daily research for the next 12 days, so I can reap the benefits of daily effort.

• Let my bullet journal be my guide. Yesterday, I combed through all 115 pages I’ve written in so far this year in my bullet journal and plucked out the outstanding tasks, many of which I’d forgotten about. (Thank you, brain fog.) I put them in a list that I will work from the rest of this week. I took note of the absolute must-dos. Having my tasks in one place should help keep me focused.

• Give myself grace. Guess what? There’s a wildcard this week that will have a great effect on my ability to feel back on track. It’s jury duty. I’ve never been selected for a jury and I don’t know what kind of time this year’s obligation will entail. But I’m going to cut myself a lot of slack. I’m going to try not to let having so much out of my control make me feel out of control. I’ll get the must-dos done and keep the other tasks close at hand for when I have snippets of time.

After feeling off the rails for a couple of weeks, I crave getting back on track. Getting back to daily routines and keeping a solid task list will be a huge help, I know. Wish me luck!

Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash

My Word of the Year for 2023: SPACE

12 January 2023

Ten years ago, I selected my first word of the year. In 2013, that word was Growth. (You can see a list of my words of the year over the last decade in this post from last year, What’s your Word of the Year?.)

This year, my word is Space. I wanted added space in my physical surroundings, my brain and my schedule. I think this will translate in to committing to less, buying less and letting go of more. It feels right for me this year.

For me, selecting a word of the year helps me, first of all, focus on my goals for the year and then it keeps me focused on them. It provides a sort of guiding star for the year. As I frequently do, I used Christine Kane’s Word-of-the-Year Discovery Tool to help me decide on a word. And this year I also used the 2023 Artist of Life Workbook from Lavendaire. It has a nice Word of the Year exercise.

I also like to come up with something to remind me of my Word of the Year. This year, I bought a Word of the Year mug from Susan Case Designs on Etsy. That’s a picture of it with this post. I love its simplicity.

Do you have a Word of the Year? If so, I’d love to hear what it is! Let me know in the comments.

Worth repeating: The freedom of Inbox Zero

9 January 2023

After ten months of a non-empty email inbox, I finally achieved Inbox Zero last week and I’ve managed to clear my inbox every day since. (Because once you get there, it’s easy to clear it, as long as you remain committed.) It seemed like a good day to repeat this blog post I wrote more than five years ago about achieving and maintaining Inbox Zero.

I’ve posted here before about how I achieve Inbox Zero. For years, I had an Inbox Zero habit, so that at the end of the workday, there would be no emails in my inbox. I have to admit that this year I let it slide. In recent months, my goal was 20 emails in my inbox at the end of the day, rather than zero. That proved to be an unsatisfactory goal—it deprived me of the thrill of an empty inbox. Until recently.

Two weeks ago, I emptied my inbox. I made the decisions necessary to move or delete messages. I forwarded some emails to Evernote so I could create reminders and then archived the emails.

Almost without exception, at the end of each day since, I’ve had an empty inbox. (A couple of days I left one or two messages in there to act on in the morning.) This makes the beginning of the day so much easier, since most of the emails that come in before I get up are spam (many them in Italian, weirdly) or news sources I read with my coffee. It’s easy to delete the spam and read, then delete or archive, the news.

I’ve had people scoff when I mention Inbox Zero and how much I enjoy it. I’ve seen organizing experts I respect writing that it’s not an achievable or worthy goal. But I’m here to tell you, my life is so much easier when I maintain my Inbox Zero habit.

Here is why I love emptying my inbox at the end of the day:

• It forces me to make decisions about the emails I receive: I either respond, archive, delete, or file each one. (I file very few emails; I archive most of those I want to keep and find them with a search.)
• It prompts me to get rid of junk and unsubscribe from emails that don’t serve me.
• It means that nothing gets lost in my email inbox.
• It discourages procrastination—if I want to get the email out of my inbox, I need to act on it. So I’m a prompt responder to people who reach out to me. That’s good for business (and personal relationships).
• It gives me visual peace and a feeling of accomplishment. Every day.

The best part is that when I have only one day’s email accumulation, it takes me less than five minutes to empty my inbox on a typical day.

I encourage you to give it a try. If you have a lot of emails in your inbox, here are some ideas for getting down to zero without too much angst.

1. Sort your emails by sender and delete or file as many as you can.
2. If emails remain in your inbox because they require action, consider putting those actions on your task list, rather than using your inbox as a task list.
3. Use the tools at your disposal, like flags in your email client, or forwarding emails to Evernote and set a reminder or try Boomerang, if you use gmail, to help you keep track of emails without having to keep them in your inbox.
4. Act on emails as you read them, rather than letting them languish and clutter up your inbox.
5. Make ample use of the Archive feature of your email client to get emails that you want to keep but don’t require a reply or action out of your inbox.

Trust me, dealing with email is easier with a streamlined inbox. Inbox Zero is not only achievable, it can be easy to maintain when you commit to it. I’m so glad I’m back on track with it.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Creating a vision board

5 January 2023

I love the concept of vision boards, where you create a physical or digital collage that represents your hopes and dreams. I’ve made them in the past (and blogged about using the Comic Lite program to create them ). But it’s been a good long while since I created a vision board.

But that changed this year! My podcast co-host, Shannon Wilkinson and I did an episode of our podcast, Getting to Good Enough, about creating vision boards (and letting go of perfectionism around doing it perfectly). Here’s the episode, if you want to give it a listen: Episode 230: Creating a Vision Board.

Last month, we hopped on Zoom and created our vision boards together, which was really fun. It took only an hour, thanks to this terrific video that I found on YouTube about using Canvas and Pinterest to make it to create a vision board.

Here’s the video:

A couple of my photos in my vision board came from Pinterest, but others came from my computer or phone. I really let the process be easy (yay!) and I’m thrilled with the result.

My vision board is on display as the wallpaper for my laptop. In my setup, my laptop is hooked up to a larger monitor at my desk, so the laptop screen is unused. That means the wallpaper is on full display and I’m looking at my vision board many times a day. I also printed out a small version, pasted it in my Bullet Journal and annotated it with explanations of what each of the elements represents.

In case you’re curious, here’s the result, as displayed on my computer.

If you have a little time, I encourage you to give it a try!

Don't miss the annual Elfa sale!

2 January 2023

I love The Container Store’s Elfa system of closet solutions and drawers. I use lots of Elfa in my home and recommend to clients all the time. The extra-narrow cabinet-depth drawer drawer systems, for example, are game changers for under the bathroom sink! (That’s a picture of one with this post.)

If you’re interested in Elfa, now’s a great time to buy. Between now and February 12, all Elfa is 30 percent off.

I use Elfa in my own home, in a closet in my office and to store my yarn stash. I also use three different Elfa file carts in my office, one for my business archives, one for my genealogy papers and one for the files that I want close at hand. That one lives under my desk.

I’ve been using and recommending Elfa for fifteen years and the quality has remained consistent, I’m happy to say!

December 2022 tiny projects challenge: Day 5

20 December 2022

I went to New York City early Friday morning for a fun weekend with my college besties, which is why I didn’t post my final tiny projects challenge post on Friday. But the trip itself inspired the tiny project, which I did after I got back. I decluttered my travel toiletries bag.

Like many people, I keep a bunch of travel-sized toiletries assembled so I don’t have to pack a lot of them when I travel. On travel day, I add a few things I use daily. Everything fits in my toiletries bag. But it’s all pretty much a jumbled mess.

So while I was unpacking last night, I decided to declutter my toiletries bag.

Here’s how it looked before I started:

I pulled everything out and gave it a quick sort on the dining room table:

There were many things I didn’t know were in there that I’m sure I put in thinking I’d feel like a genius if I needed them. But if I don’t even realize I have them, they’re not much help.

So I edited out a few items, like duplicate shampoos and creams, a sewing kit, and makeup remover, since I really don’t use makeup any more. I stashed my lipstick in my desk drawer. Then I put back the keepers and called it a day.

Here’s the after photo. (Total time: 10 minutes, tops.)

Everything will be much easier to access, which will be wonderful.

It got me thinking about the things that I add at the last minute to that bag when I travel. I think it might be worthwhile to buy an extra set of those things (toothpaste, deodorant, and vitamin C serum fall into that category), so I don’t have to do much of anything to pack. I use an electric toothbrush and I don’t want to invest in a duplicate, but I do keep a duplicate charger for the toothbrush in my suitcase. (I learned that the hard way.)

This is the end of my tiny projects series for this year. I’ll almost certainly do more next year. I love tackling these little decluttering and organizing projects!

December 2022 tiny projects challenge: Day 4

15 December 2022

Today’s tiny project is a high-impact five-minute fix. I dealt with my snack chips.

I love chips. My favorites are Wavy Lay’s Hickory Barbecue and Simply Cheetos Crunchy. I also like tortilla chips and pretzel chips. (Please don’t judge.)

When I decided how to store my chips in my new kitchen back in 2016, I underestimated the number of different chips I’d like to have on hand. So, of course, it got very unruly up in there.

Here’s a photo of the ridiculousness I was tolerating:

It took me five minutes to bring the chips out and toss the expired ones as well as the bags with measly crumbs. That left me with just four bags to store. I might have squeezed them into the exixting container, but I knew I needed more room. So I grabbed the white bin I formerly used for my bulk spices and put the chips in there.

Here’s the after photo:

Ahhh, so much better. I’ll pull out the bin to access the chips, which will probably keep them more orderly. And now I won’t have to cram in chips and shut the cupboard door quickly. That was a high-impact five minutes!