Peace of Mind Organizing

A couple more free services for your cell phone

6 June 2008

I love David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times. Sometimes what he writes is over my head, but often I get great nuggets of information. I share his love of the MacBook, so I feel warm and fuzzy toward him.

When I read his article in Wednesday’s paper, I started to feel a little superior. He was writing about free easy-to-use services for your cell phone. When I saw the first was GOOG-411, I thought to myself, “I blogged about that months ago!” He also mentioned Jott.com, which I’ve written about here several times.

But there were two services that were new to me, so I thought I’d pass them on to you. One is ChaCha, where you can ask a question—any question—and get an answer sent via text message to your phone. You can call in your question by calling 1-800-2CHA-CHA from a cell phone or texting to CHACHA (242242). Your question is sent to an actual human, who researches the answer and sends it to you via text message.

You can ask anything, from trivia (my first question, just because I wanted a verifiable answer, was “Who was the 17th president of the United States? It’s Andrew Johnson, btw) to the weather forecast to television scheduling to definitions. What a great way to settle a bet!

The other service mentioned in Pogue’s article is ReQall. Like Jott, ReQall transcribes your voice message and emails it to you. It’s all about reminders and it calls itself a “memory tool”. I haven’t had a chance to check out its various functions, but it purports to understand simple English, so that you when you, for example, say “Buy milk,” it automatically puts that item on your shopping list. Worth checking out. Once I test it, I’ll report back here if I like it.

The best part of all these services is that they’re free. In my view, they boost the value of my (admittedly underutilized) cell phone. They save me time and perhaps even my sanity. My aging brain does not remember like it used to. Thanks to some of these services, the consequences of my failing memory aren’t so dire.

Organizing LA: Blog of the Week

4 June 2008

As promised, on Wednesdays I’ll be presenting a Blog of the Week, to share with you my favorite organizing blogs. (Or at least I assume they’ll all be organizing blogs.)

This week’s blog is Los Angeles-based organizer John Trosko’s Organizing LA Blog. One of the things I love about John’s blog is that he shoots videos and includes them right on his blog. I just finished watching his interview with Donna Smallin about the M By Staples product line I wrote about last week. If you click on this entry, you can see a video tour and description of the products.

Being in LA, John’s blog sometimes has celebrity organizing news, which is always fun. He also has great giveaway contests. (I’m mad that I’ve been lax in checking it so I missed out on the Hecht of an Organizer giveaway — what a cool product!)

So drop by Organizing LA Blog often and you’ll find something to make you smile. And you won’t be alone. In this post, John mentions that his blog has had a quarter-million visits. Don’t even think about asking how my readership compares to that.

John has my undying love for being a great guy and for co-organizing the wonderful organizer-blogger gathering at April’s NAPO conference.

Just fifteen minutes

3 June 2008

I’m constantly amazed at what can be accomplished in just 15 minutes. I often advise my clients (and I do this myself) to set a timer for 15 minutes and focus on one task: decluttering, filing, sorting, etc. As long as they keep going until that timer dings, they’ll get a good amount done. It’s astounding what can get done in such a small amount of time. (As an aside, that’s one of the ways I use my beloved Time Timer.)

The point was brought home to me this morning when I went to the salon. I had about a 15-minute gap between services and I brought along my planner and my file on business planning.

In 15 minutes, in the tranquility of the “relaxation room” of the salon and spa I frequent, I went through my business-planning file, scheduled tasks and even did some big-picture thinking.

Sometimes I try to schedule this type of planning, but when I see an item in my task list like “create quarterly business goals,” I find it daunting and I put it off. But when I have a free 15 minutes to actually brainstorm with myself, it’s not only productive but fun.

Later in the week I’ll blog about some techniques I learned from Mark Forster’s book Do It Tomorrow (link at right) to trick my mind into letting me get started on tasks and other techniques for keeping going.

But for now I’ll leave you with Flylady’s words of wisdom: “You can do anything for 15 minutes.” Set your timer and get going!

Weekend update

2 June 2008

On Friday I blogged about how I hoped to focus on decluttering in the coming weekend and that I was experiencing the rare and delightful confluence of having time for this kind of work and feeling motivated to do it.

I have to say, it went well. In Friday’s post, I listed the projects I hoped to accomplish:

• Move my yarn and knitting supplies from an upstairs room to a downstairs room

• Create room in an adjunct closet for overflow clothes

• Move a category of clothes to the adjunct closet

• Move some out-of-season clothes to a spare downstairs closet

• Reorganize my lingerie drawer (perhaps the most exciting project!)

• Sort, weed and reorganize my jewelry

• Clean up the floor of my office

The only one I didn’t fully accomplish was the first, and that was a conscious decision to wait until I’d purchased the new storage solutions for the yarn, which I’m going to wait to do after I paint the downstairs room. (I’m going to buy Elfa drawers.)

It did take me until this morning to finish clearing the floor of my office, but otherwise everything was done this weekend. In addition, I created new action file cart for under my desk. I’d been using the same one for literally 15 years. I bought a shiny new white Elfa file cart like this one:

The one I bought is letter, not legal size.

I bought it at the Container Store on Friday (I’m taking full advantage of the discount they’re now offering NAPO members!) and put it together Saturday. My old one had rather ugly mismatched files. For my new cart I’m using fancy white files from “MO by Smead and some pretty Russell+Hazel Kit interior folders. (I can’t seem to find an image of those online, but they were half price at Office Max!) The new file drawer is much deeper, so my client files and Quickbooks files came out of file boxes under the other part of my desk and are now in my file drawer. It’s wonderful!

The most exciting organizing project was indeed reorganizing my lingerie drawer. It took no more than 10 minutes, but it was an amazing transformation. I’d post pictures, but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to show the blogosphere my underwear drawer. I will say that these are the drawer organizers I bought from the Container Store. Love ‘em!

These silk drawer organizers whipped my underwear drawer into shape!

Overall, I wasn’t quite as focused this weekend as I’d hoped, but I did enjoy the work. I allowed myself to be inefficient and messy as I did it, which was kind of freeing. When I’m working with clients I try hard to be efficient, since they’re paying for my time. In my home this weekend, I took a lot of breaks and really allowed stuff to sprawl for awhile.

I’m by no means finished with the organizing in my home (my bathroom closets are calling to me, among other things), and I’m heartened that I made the progress I did while having fun and not stressing out.

Focus

30 May 2008

If you’ve ever worked with a professional organizer, you know that one of the things we bring to the table is focus. When you make the financial and time commitment to have a professional help you get organized, you tend to stay focused on the job during your session. And if your attention strays, the organizer draws it back to the project at hand.

I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to focus on my own organizing projects. I love organizing. But when it comes to doing my own projects, my attention strays. There are things to do that seem more urgent. Or I’m just plain tired from helping others.

Earlier this month I whined blogged about how disarray seems to be taking over my home and how I was having trouble dealing with it. In that post, I vowed to spend 15 minutes a day working on it. I probably have spent 15 minutes a day, but I’m still just scratching the surface. (My desktop has been clean at the end of every day, though!)

I have a glorious weekend coming up with no outside commitments. Last weekend, I started doing some shifting of closet contents in order to help alleviate some clothes storage problems. Later today and on into this weekend I’m itching to keep going on these projects. At long last, I have not only the time but the desire and energy to create order and do some real organizing in my home. It’s a wonderful confluence of circumstances.

In the interest of accountability, I’ll state right here the projects I’m looking to accomplish:

• Move my yarn and knitting supplies from an upstairs room to a downstairs room

• Create room in an adjunct closet for overflow clothes

• Move a category of clothes to the adjunct closet

• Move some out-of-season clothes to a spare downstairs closet

• Reorganize my lingerie drawer (perhaps the most exciting project!)

• Sort, weed and reorganize my jewelry

• Clean up the floor of my office

If one of my clients were saying she wanted to do all that in a weekend, I’d warn her not to bite off more than she could chew. I’d caution her against getting started and not finishing a project and therefore ending up even more disorder. So I’ll heed my own advice and take on small, discrete task after another.

Here’s hoping for a great report on Monday!

Some stylin' new office products

29 May 2008

The office superstore Staples has developed a new line of office supplies for people who appreciate “creativity and style in the workplace.” They commissioned a survey that revealed that more than half of workers reported that having stylish office supplies gets them noticed in the workplace. This statistic from the survey results made me smile:

When asked what is noticed first in business meetings, 82 percent of respondents first notice an office supply item such as a stylish journal chic notebook, file folders and pens, versus someone’s shoes.

I know that’s true for me. I’m always on the lookout for attractive office products. They’re more fun to use.

The survey was conducted in association with the launch of Staples new product line, M by Staples.

I was sent a few of the products and attended a tele-press conference for journalists and organizing bloggers, hosted by organizer and author Donna Smallin.

I tell you what: these are some good-looking products. Check out the line.

These are some pretty and fun office products!

There are journals and file folders, naturally. But it goes beyond that. I particularly like this binder clip:

That's the best looking binder clip I've ever seen.

And I love these magnets:

Such lovely magnets!

Alas, St. Louis doesn’t have a Staples store. Some of the products are available online, but more are available in the brick-and-mortar Staples. I’m told that they’ll be introducing new M by Staples patterns each fall and spring. You can bet that next time I’m in a city with a Staples (which shouldn’t be long—even my little home town of Walla Walla, Washington has a Staples), I’ll be going in to check it out.

Creative Organizing: My first Blog of the Week

28 May 2008

As I mentioned in a post earlier this month, some of the bloggers at the writers’ community, Freelance Success are blogging every day in the month of May. There’s some great stuff on those blogs so if you have some surfing time, I suggest you go to that post and sample some of the blogs.

One of the bloggers, Elizabeth Kricfalusi, has a great blog called Embrace Adventure. As part of her May blogging, she’s been featuring a Blog of the Day. I’ve decided to take her idea and tweak it a little for my purposes. Starting today, my plan is to feature a Blog of the Week on Wednesdays. This way, I’ll get to highlight the many wonderful organizing blogs that are out there.

So let’s get started. My very first Blog of the Week is Creative Organizing the wonderfully creative and personal blog from my friend, Aby Garvey, the high priestess of organizing scrapbookers.

I don’t share Aby’s passion for scrapbooking (my craft projects involve pointy needles and yarn), but I do share her passion for organizing. And I love reading her blog. She has all sorts of great ideas for creative home projects and home organizing. (I have two of these hanging on my walls, though I have to admit that my wonderful friend, Sally, made them for me as a gift.)

In today’s blog entry, Aby shows how she uses wicker baskets in her own space. Me, I don’t use wicker baskets a whole lot (I’m too bad a housekeeper and they collect dust and cat hair). Yet I’m completely entranced by this entry. I love all the photos.

Aby’s blog is now a part of her newly revamped website for her organizing business. If you haven’t checked out simplify101.com lately, click on over there. It’s new and improved, with exciting new offerings, including organizing workshops!