Peace of Mind Organizing

Worth repeating: Creating an anchor on your desk

20 January 2022

I originally wrote this post several years ago. My little tray is still in use on my desk. The Container Store is no longer selling the little tray I bought, but you can buy a pair of ceramic trays for about $20 on Amazon. Or this little Muji tray, similar to what was recommended on Wirecutter, is available for only $2, with a $9 shipping charge.

On social media, I saw a link to a New York Times Wirecutter article called Tame Your Desk Clutter With This One Simple Trick. You can bet I clicked on it.

The article, which is definitely worth a read, suggests using small Muji plastic trays to place random small items in to corral them. (That’s the one simple trick.) To be sure, a desk surface can attract small items that can feel hard to keep in check.

In organizing, we call this anchoring. If you put a tray or basket under a more-or-less random pile of stuff, it feels orderly. Think salt-and-pepper shakers and other tabletop paraphernalia. They can feel scattered if unanchored but if a tray is placed underneath, it feels organized.

I found myself wanting to buy one of these little Japanese trays and give the concept a try on my desk, though I don’t have a whole lot of desk clutter (this week, anyway). When I was at the Container Store, I picked up a Compact Plastic Lid/Tray. It’s part of a set of containers, whose lids are sold separately, that come in four sizes. I bought the Extra Small size (5 5/8” × 3 7/8” × 3/4”) though I would have purchased the Small lid (7 3/4” × 5 5/8” × 7/8”) if they’d had any in stock.

I have two little items on my desk that make me smile (a metal poodle, which my husband gave me to represent Bix when getting Bix was my birthday present four years ago, and a little metal disk I found on the street that says “Hello Sunny”). They used to live on my monitor stand, but when I got a new monitor I emptied and moved the stand. So these items were floating free on my desktop. I put them in the little tray, along with my water bottle (also from the Container Store back in the day) and I have to admit the whole thing makes me happy! My water bottle feels less likely to be tipped over and less like clutter. And my little poodle stays visible.

What do you think of this concept? I’m not sure it’s life changing, but it was a fun experiment for me.

An easy fix for worn keyboards

17 January 2022

I spend a lot of time typing over the course of a week. I have a MacBook Pro, but I use an external keyboard, mouse and monitor when I’m at my desk. My favorite keyboard is the Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. I’m not a numbers cruncher, but I do use my calculator enough that I prefer a 10-key number pad. I like that it connects wirelessly. I like that this keyboard has rechargeable batteries. I also like its low profile, the way it looks and the way it feels. The main thing I’m not crazy about is its price tag, $129.

That’s why I was really disappointed when the numbers started wearing off the keys. As a touch typist, I don’t look at the keys that much but when I do look at them, I do need to be able to see them!

Here’s a photo the keyboard and its worn keys.

I didn’t want to shell out another $129 for a new keyboard when this one otherwise worked well. I tried replacing it with Wirecutter’s pick, the Logitech K380 bluetooth keyboard, which I bought on Amazon for $40. It was fine, but my hands felt cramped and it lacked the 10-key number pad. It also lacked a delete key and, for whatever reason, the keyboard shortcut I use on my laptop to delete letters to the right of the cursor, Fn-Backspace, did not work on this keyboard.

It got to be frustrating, so I started seeking other cost-effective solutions. When this happened on a different keyboard back in 2017, I made letter decals with my label maker to cover the missing letters. It didn’t look great and at first I didn’t care, but the edges ended up curling and it became unsatisfactory.

This time, I took a more professional approach. I googled around until I found this website, Keyshorts. It’s a company out of Poland that makes customized keyboard stickers and laptop skins. They offer some really beautiful decals that can transform a keyboard. But all I wanted for my keyboard was for it to look like it used to. They can do that too. Since the site had good reviews, I placed my order. The cost was $23.25, including shipping from Poland.

I was pleased to get a personalized response asking me for a photo of my keyboard to make sure they sent me the right decal set. It took a few weeks, but the decals arrived in perfect shape earlier this month.

It was very easy to adhere the decals to all the keys on my keyboard and I very quickly became used to the slightly different feel of the decal-covered keys.

Here’s what the keyboard looks like now.

I am thrilled. For under $25 I have my beloved keyboard back! I give a big thumbs-up to Keyshorts.

P.S. I see that they also sell clear decals to protect keyboards. So if I ever get an expensive new keyboard, I may get a set!

Did you catch me on the radio?

10 January 2022

I’m a podcaster and I enjoy being a guest on other people’s podcasts but being interviewed live on the radio recently was a thrill! (It was fun to enter a client’s home the other day and be called a radio star.)

On December 30, I was interviewed by Jennifer Blome and Wendy Wiese on The Jennifer and Wendy Show on KTRS-AM here in St. Louis. It was fun—we covered a lot of topics, including whether people are born organized (or disorganized), the difficulty of parting with sentimental items, my advice for decluttering and organizing, Marie Kondo, and the benefits of living with fewer clothes.

You can listen to it here now, if you’d like:

I was flattered to be asked and thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

What's your Word of the Year?

3 January 2022

Each year since 2013 I have come up with a Word of the Year to guide my year. I keep a list of them in Evernote. Here’s the list:

2013: growth
2014: innovation
2015: recognition
2016: balance
2017: fearless
2018: connection
2019: expertise, processes, health
2020: intention
2021: ease

This year I added my tenth Word of the Year. It is generosity. I came up with it when I was behind the wheel of my car, cursing another driver for a minor infraction. I realized I would benefit (really, we all would benefit) from a more generous spirit toward others and myself.

That was in December and the word has come to mind many times since then. My hope that is in 2022 I will embody generosity in thoughts and actions.

Why do I take the time and effort to come with a Word of the Year? (It’s not usually as easy to come up with one as it was this year.) A Word of the Year serves as a filter through which I make decisions throughout the year. It helps keep me on track. It’s my North Star.

Most years, I try to come up with some sort of reminder of my word to keep it top of mind. Last year, I bought a necklace from My Intent that was a metal circle pendant with the word EASE stamped on it. This year I haven’t yet come up with a great reminder, but I am posting on my bulletin board the Post-It® note on which I wrote my word for the top of this blog post.

If you don’t yet have a Word of the Year, you might consider coming up with one. I urge you to stick to a single word. In 2019 when I had three words, the whole exercise really lost its power. I couldn’t remember them! If you’d like a little help in coming up with yours, check out Christine Kane’s Word-of-the-Year Discovery Tool. I’ve used it many times to come up with my word.

The Word of the Year can be a powerful tool and it is fun to look back and see what your focus was in years gone by!

Top nine blog posts of 2021

30 December 2021

As the year wraps up, I thought I’d take a look back at my favorite posts of 2021. I narrowed it down nine that I thought were particularly helpful. I hope you find them useful (or at least interesting)!

In chronological order:

Challenge completed! 100 days of wearing the same dress. I literally wore the same wool-blend dress every day for 100 days and it was an awesome experience.

Styling your Zoom backdrop. When Zoom became a way of life, I knew that I had to up my game with my Zoom backdrop. So I called in the big gun, my friend Geralin Thomas to help me create a peaceful (and branded) Zoom backdrop.

Decluttering dog toys. My standard poodle, Bix, love his toys. And he had an overabundance of them (to say the least). I gave them the big declutter treatment.

10 things you can throw away right now. Lots of folks hang on to stuff they needn’t be afraid of tossing. This list can get you started throwing stuff away.

Go-bag to the rescue. My husband is having some health issues that have resulted in sudden hospitalizations. I created a hospital go-bag to grab when necessary and it proved to be a great help.

Meet my employees. In 2021 I added a second employee to my team and I (finally) put a page about them on my website. They’re great people and great organizers!

Buying and selling a car in this crazy market. When I decided to take a high offer for my van, I had to use my wits to snag a new car to replace it. Here’s what I did.

Do you back up your computer regularly? My computer suddenly died one day in October and having both a backup on an external hard drive and in the cloud meant I didn’t lose anything (though I may gained some grey hairs in the process).

I feel fortunate to have this blog to help me remember what went on in my life over the last year (last 13 years, actually). It’s so nice to be able to share those things that have helped me.

Thank you for reading this blog. I wish you the very best for 2022!

Join me for 30 days of yoga!

27 December 2021

I’m a HUGE fan of Adriene Mishler’s Yoga with Adriene YouTube channel. Encouraged by my niece back in late 2018, I’ve been doing yoga semi-regularly (I went more than a year without missing a day!) and one of my goals for 2022 is to weave yoga into my daily routine so that daily yoga becomes effortless. (You can read Nine Things I Love About Yoga with Adriene if you’d like to learn more.)

Adriene makes it really easy to start a new year off with a daily yoga practice by offering a new 30-Day Yoga Journey every January. This is the eighth year in a row she’s offered it and I am eager for it to start. This will be my fourth or fifth 30-day journey. One of the things I love about it, besides it taking away the dilemma of which yoga video to do today, is that it’s intended for participants of all experience levels and it’s carefully curated, with fresh content that builds on itself.

To sign up, just go to the Move website. The whole experience is free. You’ll receive an email each day with the link to that day’s video. And you’ll be doing yoga with hundreds of thousands of people. What a community!

If you plan to participate, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Great advice from organizers (including me!) in Porch.com + Secrets of Getting Organized

23 December 2021

In case you’d like to hunker in this holiday week and read some great organizing advice from professionals, I wanted to share a couple of resources that I was included in. These are both outlets I’ve been featured in more than once and it’s always nice to be asked back!

First it’s, Tips for Starting 2022 Clutter-Free: The Experts Advice, an article on Porch.com. I’m one of more than a dozen professional organizers offering advice in various areas. (I was also part of their Home Organization: Tips from Professional Organizers roundup in November 2020.)

In addition, I received in the mail yesterday the most recent issue of Secrets of Getting Organized magazine from Better Homes and Gardens. This is the fifth year in a row I’ve been interviewed for this glossy magazine. (It’s such an honor to be included among my esteemed colleagues.) And it’s a really enjoyable magazine to read. There are no ads, the advice is terrific and the photos are absolute eye candy. It’s available wherever you buy magazines (or online at magazine.store) until March 10, 2022. That’s a picture of the cover at the top of this post.

Now’s a great time to read about getting organized. I hope you’ll check these resources out!