Peace of Mind Organizing

Meet my latest employee!

10 June 2022

I had to say goodbye to Adrienne Pittson, who was a terrific employee, last month. She and her family are moving west. Happily for me, I was approached by an aspiring organizer, Lydia Boda, shortly after Adrienne gave notice.

After a series of interviews, I decided to hire Lydia. She started on May 27 and is already busy working in clients’ homes. The photo with this post was taken at my house on her hiring day. You can tell that Lydia doesn’t have a problem with friendly dogs! (Bix loves her.)

Lydia is a sculptor with a great spatial sense and great design sense (two things I lack!). She loves the visual peace that comes with an organized space. She’s compassionate and empathetic. I think she’ll be a great addition to the Peace of Mind Organizing team. She’ll work with Beth and with me and other team members (who are independent contractors), as well as on her own.

You can learn more about Lydia (and Beth) on the Meet the Team page!

Join me at The Omega Institute in July

2 June 2022

I am absolutely thrilled to be teaching a weekend workshop about decluttering at The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York, at the end of July.

The workshop called Decluttering for Good will be held July 29 to 31. It will be 10.5 hours of learning over three days and I think it’s going to be such a great opportunity for students to get in touch with what’s important to them and gain motivation and skills to go home and declutter. I’m planning to create an experience that will benefit students for many years. I feel so fortunate to have this much time to explore the nature of clutter, the limitations it puts on us and the benefits of decluttering.

The Omega Institute was founded in 1977 on a profound ideal: to awaken the best in the human spirit. I’ve admired its work (and aspired to taking a class there) for decades. I was honored and delighted to be invited out of blue to teach there. In an amazing moment of kismet, the invitation was for the weekend that ends a week I was already planning to spend in Rhinebeck with my college buddies. Mind blown.

Rhinebeck is a lovely small town 90 miles north of New York City in Dutchess County. My college roommate grew up there and I had my first legal drink there! The Omega Institute campus is a former summer camp (think Dirty Dancing) surrounded by nature. What an amazing getaway.

If your time and budget allow, I hope you’ll consider joining me for the workshop. I think the workshop itself will be a beneficial experience for all involved (including me!). And spending time on the Omega Institute campus is guaranteed to be memorable.

The power of knowing what's important to you

26 May 2022

My dad and me in his new apartment

In our podcast, Getting to Good Enough, my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I talk a lot about the importance of knowing what’s important to you in order to figure out when something is good enough.

I find the question of what’s important carries through to every aspect of my life. It’s become a touchstone of sorts for me.

Case in point: I was in Walla Walla, Washington, earlier this month helping my 91-year-old father move into assisted living. It was a happy move: he’d agreed to it (after encouragement from me) and he’s a very amiable guy. So compared to many, it was relatively stress-free. And I’m happy to report that he really likes it!

I was there for only nine days and during that time I also needed to get his condo ready to put on the market. Thankfully, he didn’t want to move too much stuff, which made the move much easier. But that meant I was faced with a whole lot of stuff that needed to be given or thrown away in a very short period of time.

I started to stress about not being able to get everything done. And then I got in touch with what was important to me: Spending time with my father and making sure he’s comfortable in his new digs. Once I acknowledged that, it helped me figure out ways to delegate some of the things that needed to happen at his condo. And I even allowed myself the possibility that I might not get everything done before I left town and so it might take longer than I’d like to get the condo on the market.

As it turned out, I got to have my cake and eat it too. I was able to get my completely settled in AND I was able to get the condo emptied out. It went on the market just four days after I left town. (Bonus! I got him to agree to stop driving and I sold his car.)

The moral of this story: When you are torn between priorities or you’re having trouble making a decision, think about what’s important to you and use that information to guide your decision. Sometimes it’s surprising how clear things become when you know your why!

Weed out your files!

23 May 2022

I’ve just been through the journey of moving my dear 91-year-old father into assisted living. It went well and he’s happy. I am so grateful. (Prepare yourself for multiple blog posts based on this journey!)

As part of the process, I went through everything in his condo that he didn’t take with him into assisted living. I also went through everything that we brought over from my aunt’s home when she moved into a care facility in February. I thought I’d be able to go through her stuff at my leisure, but instead I had to go through it in a compressed amount of time as I tried to empty the condo in just a few days.

My big takeaway? Weed out your files! I had years’ worth of bank statements and paid bills and EOBs to go through and ultimately. There were many boxes of shredding. Luckily one of our wonderful real estate agents, Megan Watts of Team Watts helped me by schlepping the bulk of it to Staples. But going through, and properly destroying, all those papers definitely added to the burden of an already overwhelming task.

My own file cabinet could use some weeding and I vow that by the end of the month I will do it. And I’m going to keep it lean because (a) I don’t need those papers and (b) no one wants to deal with them when I’m no longer able.

Do yourself (and your loved ones a favor). Weed out your files!

Limit your hangers

3 May 2022

I thought I’d pass along a little tip that helped me keep my closet from getting overcrowded. This is no longer an issue since I’ve minimized my wardrobe and cut back drastically on clothes shopping. But back in the days when I shopped for fun, I often faced an overcrowded closet when I came home with new purchases.

So I implemented this policy, and it worked like a charm.

If you thin your wardrobe down to a manageable level, so that you can easily access what you have and there’s plenty of ease getting your hanging clothes in and out, then stop buying hangers. If you set that restriction, you’ll be forced to let go of an item if you buy something new and you don’t have any empty hangers.

It’s simple and easy. And it works!

A little goes a long way

29 April 2022

I adore the Yoga With Adriene YouTube Channel and I’ve been trying to do yoga every day. (Here’s a blog post I wrote about why I love Yoga With Adriene.) But sometimes I have a hard time prioritizing it. I like to do yoga in the morning but when I have to be out of the house early I can have trouble making the time. On those days, I’ll do Adriene’s Five Minute Morning Yoga. Is it better than a longer practice? No. But it’s certainly better than no practice. And it really is a great way to start the day.

Adriene is fond of saying “A little goes a long way” when it comes to yoga. I got to thinking that that’s also true of decluttering and organizing. A lot of people (me included) tend to let clutter build up before they address it. Or they think they need a big chunk of time to do any organizing. But in fact, if you snatch five (or 15 or 30) minutes and focus on letting go of a few things or simply putting stuff away, you can create some order. Add those little sessions up and you can make true headway.

Next time you think, “I’ve got to get organized!” take a little action. Set your timer for five or ten minutes and remind yourself that a little goes a long way. I promise if you do that on a regular basis, you’ll feel more peace of mind.

Are your affairs in order?

22 April 2022

I published this article in my newsletter this month and, based on the feedback I received, it struck a chord. It’s an important message, so I thought I’d share it here.

Last fall, my aunt asked me to be her Power of Attorney for finances and health. She was 92 and had been told by her doctor that she had dementia. I was already my father’s Power of Attorney so I agreed to do it. I’m glad I did, though I didn’t actually realize how much work it would be.

This year, it became apparent that she needed to move to memory care and it fell on me as her Power of Attorney to find a place for her to move, convince her to move, arrange her move and get her house on the market. I continue to handle her daily finances. And she lives a couple of thousand miles away in Walla Walla, Washington. Luckily I have the skill set to do this fairly easily and I’m very glad to be of assistance.

But I started to think: What if she hadn’t made those arrangements? If we hadn’t signed papers last fall while she still had her faculties, everything would have been much more difficult today. Since moving in February, she had a stroke and has had to move into a skilled nursing facility.

You just don’t know what the future is going to hold for your health or the health of those you love. If you don’t have a will and a health directive, please get them. If you you haven’t designated a Power of Attorney for finances and/or health care, please do it now. And, finally, if you have an elderly relative who doesn’t have a Power of Attorney, please encourage them to assign one. I promise that at some point you will be glad you did.