Peace of Mind Organizing

Worth repeating: Reflections after a year in our new kitchen

20 September 2021

We renovated our kitchen five years ago, in 2016. A year later I posted some reflections. The new kitchen has been life enhancing and we still absolutely love it. We’ve done a little bit of rearranging but the organizational infrastructure I set up five years ago remains solid. My only regret is that we took 24 years to renovate our old red kitchen!

A year ago today, our kitchen renovation was complete and I finished unpacking our stuff into the new kitchen. A month or two later, I wrote a blog series about the renovation. I just re-read the series and relived the joy of that project. Honestly, it was a bit of a pain while we were going through it, but the results were absolutely worth the hassle and the money.

A year later, we’re still loving the kitchen. My favorite storage features are still favorites. I hadn’t mentioned how much I like the trash/recycling pull-out cabinet in the island. It’s so much better than having two trash cans on the floor, which is what we had before. The other thing I love is how easy it is for me to empty the dishwasher each morning because almost everything is stored right near the dishwasher (a huge departure from our old kitchen). I love that we have ample space to store everything. It’s amazing what a difference in quality of life it make when you create a highly functioning kitchen.

Unlike our old kitchen, the countertops in the new kitchen stay quite uncluttered. I think that’s because there’s a place for everything and it’s easy to put stuff away. And when countertops stay clear, they don’t attract random stuff. The exception to that is the counter that runs along the wall from the kitchen to the radiator. (We call that the bar area.) It has started to attract some clutter—things that didn’t really have a home, like a single copy of a Sunday New York Times purchased for its puzzles, the recipe cards that came with our trials of Hello Fresh and Blue Apron and the full-color book/program you get when you go to Opera Theater St. Louis. But it took me less than ten minutes this morning to clear off a six-month accumulation. So that’s not bad!

One improvement we added was a bar for our dishtowels, which we put on the far end of the island. We used an appliance pull that matches our cabinet and drawer pulls. That’s worked out great. Here’s a photo taken after I decluttered the bar counter (with special guest appearance by Bix):

There are only a few things I think we’d do differently if we had it to do all over again.

• We might have selected a different countertop because the solid-surface LG-Hi-MACS scratches easily and is heat-sensitive. I’m not sure what we should have chosen instead; we haven’t discussed that.
• I’m not crazy about the Allure vinyl plank flooring we chose. I think it looks fake. If I had it to do over again, I might have chosen vinyl tile or vinyl wood plank that doesn’t look distressed. I don’t mind that it’s vinyl; I’m just not crazy about how the one we chose looks. But I really do love that it’s waterproof.
• I kind of wish we’d designed a place for Bix’s food and water bowls because that water bowl has been kicked more than once. But I haven’t spent much time trying to figure out what we might have done. We’ve ended up placing them at the near end of the island, where we store his food. That’s working out pretty well.

Because everyone likes to look at before-and-after photos, I’ll run again the pix from the first post in the series last year. We don’t miss the red countertops. And we certainly like having upper cabinets!

From the entrance to the kitchen from the living space:

From the sink:

From the back door:

View of the built-in cabinet:

This last “after” shot shows that we sacrificed our pantry so that we could get the refrigerator out of the way. That was a stroke of genius on the part of the designer.

Meet my employees!

15 September 2021

For ten years, I led organizing teams comprised of wonderful independent contractors who have their own businesses. In 2018, I hired my first employee, Amy. I made a shift toward employees so that I could create processes and policies that by law I’m not allowed to impose on contractors. (I can’t tell contractors how to organize, but I can train my employees.)

A few months after hiring Amy, I added a second employee, Geraldine. Both of them were fantastic organizers. Unfortunately, they both had to resign in November 2019, due to circumstances beyond their control. Luckily for me, right at that time I was approached by a wonderful prospective organizer, Beth Hunyar, who was not interested in starting her own business. I hired Beth in December 2019 and we got right to work. And then, of course, the pandemic hit just three months later.

Beth Hunyar

Since we went back to work last year Beth has been an instrumental part of Peace of Mind Organizing®. I have stepped back from client work somewhat due to my husband’s health and concerns about COVID. Beth has filled the void, working with most of my clients, alongside independent contractors. She has moved into the lead organizer role and is doing a wonderful job. She is great at organizing and is simultaneously calm and enthusiastic. Her client skills are excellent.

Last month, I hired a second employee, Adrienne Pittson. She’s still in training, but she’s had her first client session, alongside Beth and me. (Spoiler alert: She did a great job.) Adrienne absolutely loves organizing and I’m very excited about her enthusiasm and readiness to learn, coupled with her natural organizing skills.

Adrienne Pittson

Both Beth and Adrienne are moms with young kids ranging from kindergarten to high school. (Beth has three, Adrienne has four.) They both juggle busy lives but as moms of young kids have amazing time-management skills. And they have the ability to really focus on the clients during sessions. Since they don’t have to run the business, all their work time is about the clients.

Beth and Adrienne make an amazing team. They both get such pleasure from organizing and from helping clients. I’m thrilled that they can benefit from my experience, because I can provide detailed training and instruction when they need it. We’ll be adding independent contractors to the team for larger jobs, as usual. We are more prepared than ever to help our clients!

Dealing with task-management overwhelm

10 September 2021

I have a terrific Trello daily task management board that I’ve been using for 15 months with great success. It’s especially good at helping me complete important daily tasks. I’ve been supplementing it with a hand-written/hand-lettered task list most days that helps me practice my hand lettering and keep my tasks top of mind (plus it’s pretty to look at, which is nice.) My co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I talked about my hand-lettered task list a little in this week’s episode of our podcast Getting to Good Enough.

I don’t usually have a problem staying on top of my tasks and prioritizing them. Ordinarily I plow through a lot of tasks in a day and I’m generally pleased with my productivity. But right now, at this moment, I’m overwhelmed by projects and keeping track of all the tasks they entail. I feel out of control and that feeling alone is distracting. My productivity and peace of mind are suffering!

On top of my normal activities of client consults and administration, blogging and podcasting, I have these things going on:

• I hired a new employee, Adrienne Pittson (I’ll introduce her to you next week!);
• I have a leadership role in a community service project;
• I’m researching a new car to buy (I’m thinking of going electric!);
• I’m working with Molly Winters, a wonderful marketing consultant and copywriter, on a campaign targeted at new and aspiring organizers (if that piques your curiosity, shoot me an email and I’ll add you to the mailing list I’ll be building);
• I’m planning a trip to Walla Walla next month.

So today I created a new board in Trello called Projects – Fall 2021. Here’s what I did:

• I created a list for each project as well as a list called Empty the Brain.
• In the Empty the Brain list, I added a card for each task I could think of, regardless of what project it was associated with.
• I created a colored label for each project and marked each card with the appropriate label.
• I moved each labeled card to the appropriate list. (I used the Bulk Actions Power-Up to make labeling and moving the cards easy.)
• I created a list called DONE!, which I placed in the left-most position, and when I complete a task I will move the card into that list. That gets the completed task out of the list of things to be done and allows me to see at a glance which projects I’m making progress on.

Here’s a picture of that board as it stands now. (I haven’t started attacking the tasks yet.)

Even though I’ve literally completed only one task, I am feeling so much better. Just having one place to put all these tasks is very helpful—they were just too much for my already-crowded daily task management board. My brain is no longer swirling with tasks and I have the comfort of knowing where to put tasks as they come to mind.

I’m looking forward to completing some of these projects and being able to go back to using my Daily Task Management board alone. But for now, I’ll use two boards (one for the projects, one for the daily tasks and those not related to these projects). I already feel an uptick in my productivity!

Worth repeating (yet again): Why I'm a professional organizer

30 August 2021

I celebrated 16 years in business last month. I’m happy to report that I still love being a professional organizer. I just revisited this post, originally written in 2013, about why I became an organizer and why I continue being one. Eight years later, all the reasons in this post are still valid and I’ll add another: It feels so great to have helped so many organizers get their start in their own businesses by working on my teams. (I now use employees as well as independent contractors, which is also rewarding.) Peace of Mind Organizing® has helped hundreds of clients over the years and helped many organizers along the way. I feel so good about that. If you’ve ever wondered what a PO gets out of her work—which to some people looks decidedly unglamorous—read on.

Often when I meet folks who learn what I do for a living, they’re keen on learning how I became a professional organizer. I explain the training I took and how I went about starting my business. (That’s all detailed in my blog post, Are you interested in becoming a professional organizer?)

But seldom am I asked why I became a PO, rather than how. I thought I’d spend a little time today exploring that question.

In my observation, there are two sorts of folks who become professional organizers:

• Those who do it because organizing comes so naturally to them. Being organized is like breathing. It’s their passion. So why not make a living doing it?

• Those who enter the field because of their own struggles in getting and staying organized. They’ve spent a lifetime seeking solutions for themselves and want to share those solutions with others.

I fall into that second camp. As I’ve mentioned over and over, I’m a naturally messy person. I’m pretty organized in my space and I’m definitely organized inside my head, but I’m a bit messy and unruly. I sought solutions for my time management and clutter issues throughout my life and I learned a lot. I felt it was time to start sharing.

When I first contemplated starting my business, I was a freelance writer. I’d been writing about pets for ten years and had written hundreds of articles on various aspects of pet care. I’d had seven books published (most of which are no longer available) and contributed to several others. I was working on my last book, an ill-fated venture called Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe co-written with the famed primatologist. The process of that book about killed me (and was never published) and I knew that in order to get through writing that manuscript I had to know it was going to be my last book. So I started looking for other things to do.

As I considered becoming a PO, I thought of several very important things that being a professional organizer would offer that being a freelance writer was not delivering:

• The ability to help people directly and tangibly
• Respect for my expertise (I was being very disrespected during the whole Goodall book experience)
• Payment at the time of service

That was very appealing and a big part of why I became a PO. But why do I keep doing it, now that I’m in my eighth fourteenth year of business?

Those initial three reasons did prove to be powerful rewarding. In addition, here are some other things I’ve found to be very rewarding:

• I get to help people transform their lives.
• I help people feel better about themselves as I normalize (and empathize with) their messy behaviors.
• I can help my clients go from striving (and failing) to be perfectly organized to reveling in being organized enough.
• I get to effect vast, fast change for my St. Louis clients by bringing in a team of organizers.

Being a professional organizer is life-changing work for me. And its results can be life changing for my clients. It is easily the most rewarding work I’ve done in a career that’s spanned more than three decades. And as long as it continues to be this rewarding, I’ll keep doing it.

Making back to school a little easier

27 August 2021

Around here, school started this week for many kids. I don’t have kids, but I know this is a time of transition for many parents (and children, of course). Throw in the uncertainty of the pandemic and perhaps it feels a little stressful.

I have a suggestion: Choose one small thing that can make getting the kids off to school easier (even if the school is at home). Then try implementing it every day for at least a week and see if it helps you. You can make it easier to remember by pairing it with something you’re already doing every day. (For example, make lunches right after cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.)

Here are a few suggestions…perhaps they’ll spark some ideas that will help you in your specific situation:

• Make school lunches the night before
• Store breakfast foods together so the kids can make their own
• Make sure backpacks are ready to go the night before
• Get up 15 minutes earlier to your morning less hectic
• On Sundays, have the kids select what they’ll wear each day and put the outfits together to make getting dressed easier (you can use a closet organizer like this one to store the week’s outfits, one per shelf)

I’m not suggesting you try all these things. Or any of them, really. Just use these suggestions as a springboard for an idea of some way to make your life just a little bit easier right now. Give it a week. And maybe keep going with it if it helps.

We all can use a little more ease right now!

Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

Worth repeating: What to do with cards you're given

23 August 2021

I just came across this post, which I wrote in 2018. Cards continue to be a challenge for my clients, so I thought it was time to repeat this advice. I occasionally look at the sympathy cards that were sent to me when my mother and pets passed away. So I’m glad I’ve saved them.

I’ve noticed in my clients’ homes that it’s hard for some people to let go of greeting cards they’ve been given. The trouble with saving them, of course, is that they can accumulate over the years and become a storage problem.

I have a couple of clients who save every single Christmas card. But they use them in their holiday decor. Each client bundles the cards by year. One places them in a series of festive baskets. The other creates little books of cards, one for each year. Both look at and enjoy the archived cards every year. I think that’s wonderful.

More commonly I see cards jammed in bags or boxes in the basement, sometimes in rubber-banded bundles. That’s less wonderful, in my opinion.

Here are some options to think about when it comes to figuring out what to do with these cards:

1. Recycle them for your own use. If you’re a crafty type and a card appeals to you, you can cut the image on the front of a card out and glue it to some card stock. One thrifty thing I do when I buy cards for my husband is to sign them on sticky notes so I can just take off the note and put the card right into my organized cards to send later stash.
2. Donate them to a school or nursing home that might use them for crafty activities.
3. Keep them and respect them like the clients I described above.
4. Just keep the ones that touch your heart and let go of the rest.
5. Put them in the recycling bin. I give you permission. That’s what I do with the holiday cards I receive. And I have yet to regret that habit.

I got to thinking about cards today because in my own house I came across some cards I’d stashed, which is really unusual. I took them out, put on my reading glasses and went through them to see if I could let them go. Turns out they were the cards sent me when my mother passed away in 2015. (I honestly don’t remember saving them.) And there were some cards received when my dogs, Pip and Kirby, died in 2010 and 2015 respectively, as well as when my cat, Joe, died in 2012.

I really enjoyed looking through those cards and was touched by the sentiments people had written in them. I bundled them back up—and this time I put a sticky note on each bundle so I could tell at a glance what they were. Then I put them away in a plastic shoe box and put them in a closet. It was nice going through them today and I bet I’ll enjoy them again. But as much as I love receiving annual holiday cards, I have no desire to read them again. So I feel fine about recycling them.

Storing our pizza peels

16 August 2021

My husband bought an Ooni Koda 16 outdoor pizza oven. Lucky me! I get to eat his delicious homemade pizza, cooked on our new deck.

The purchase brought a few storage challenges. Challenge #1: a table to put it on. We ended up buying this terrific outdoor table from IKEA: Kloven Sideboard with ice bucket. (We took out the ice bucket to make room for the propane tank.)

Challenge #2 was where to store the pizza peel. This wooden paddle, used to take the pizza in and out of the high-temperature pizza oven, is 16 × 23 inches. We have two other peels as well. And a 16-inch diameter pizza pan.

We didn’t have spare cabinet space in our kitchen to store these large items. But there is a shelf on the pizza oven table. I was thrilled to find that Our Long Under Bed Box from The Container Store is just big enough to hold the peels plus and the pan. And it fits on the pizza table’s shelf! Since it has a lid, the contents stay clean even though they’re stored outdoors. Plus the pizza oven and table are protected by a custom-made cover that Barry ordered from Covers and All.

Here’s a photo of the setup:

And here’s a photo of how the pizza table looks with the custom cover on it:

This simple repurposing of an under bed box has made our pizza life easier so I wanted to share. Honestly, the clear plastic bins with lids at The Container Store are my go-to for so many storage challenges!