Peace of Mind Organizing

Modeling imperfection

13 August 2018

Tomorrow evening, I’m having a dozen or so fellow professional organizers to my home. Our chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO-St. Louis) has social events every other month and they’re typically hosted by members in their homes. I volunteered for to host this month’s social. This is third one I’ve hosted since 2009.

Back in 2009, I had a semi-major freak out prior to the social. I was worried because my home was nowhere near model-home perfect. As I’ve explained here countless times, I’m a naturally messy person and my house is not perfectly kept.

At the time, my wise friend Margaret Lukens encouraged me to let go of that anxiety and “model imperfection” for the other organizers. The notion made me breathe a big sigh of relief and it took away a lot of the tension I’d built up around the event. I turned the whole thing into a post for the amazing blog Unclutterer. (Here’s that post, which they called Uncluttering is not a competition.)

I re-read the Unclutterer post this morning as I created my list of tasks to do to get the house ready for tomorrow night. (I have a client tomorrow, so everything has to be done today.) Two things came to mind as I read it: (1) After an additional nine years as a professional organizer, my house is a lot more presentable than it was then—we’ve even renovated the kitchen. (2) No one’s judging me. Organizers are non-judgmental people; otherwise we could never succeed in our businesses.

There are a few things I’m going to do that will allow me to let this be easy:

• I’m going to serve exactly what I served last time. When I hosted the organizers in 2015, a friend and colleague told me what to serve. Happily, I took note of what I bought at Trader Joe’s and the supermarket and I’m going to buy exactly the same thing. Why reinvent the wheel?
• I’m accepting help. My friend and team member Terry Capehart of Organization in Bloom offered to come early and help. I said yes.
• I’m letting go of worries that people will care about the many imperfections in my home. Chances are they won’t even notice, especially with my standard poodle, Bix, doing his best to distract them.

In Episode 8: You Be You of our podcast, Getting to Good Enough my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I talk about how it’s our own standards that count (not those of other people) and how comparing yourself to others isn’t helpful. As I prepare my house for tomorrow’s guests, I’m going to keep that in mind.

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash.

Why I love American Ninja Warrior

6 August 2018

My favorite summer TV series is NBC’s American Ninja Warrior. It’s the only show I watch live, because I can’t stand to wait until the next day to watch online. I watch it with my 87-year-old father when I’m visiting him and when I’m not there, we talk about it the next day over the phone.

In case you’re not familiar with it, American Ninja Warrior is a competition show, in which men and women race against the clock on ridiculously difficult obstacle courses. There are qualifying contests in a variety of cities. The top competitors in each city qualifier advance to the city final. The top competitors of the city final advance to the national competition in Las Vegas, which has up to four stages. The competitor who makes it fastest through the fourth stage wins a million dollars. So far, in nine seasons (the current season is the tenth), only two competitors made it to Stage Four (they were both in the same year), so only one has one the grand prize. This is crazy difficult.

People are sometimes surprised when I talk enthusiastically about the show. After all, it’s not exactly the epitome of sophistication. It’s noisy and has lots of flashing lights and yelling people and loud commentators. But it is so enjoyable and inspirational.

Here are some of the reasons I love it:

• Men and women compete on an equal playing field. That’s right, all competitors run the exact same course. The only advantage women are given is that the top five will advance to the city finals, even if they’re not in the top 30, and the top two will advance from the city finals to Las Vegas, even if they’re not in the top 15. That’s it. These women are unbelievable. Watch Allyssa Beird (a fifth-grade teacher!) finish Stage One in national final in Las Vegas last year:

• Old and young compete on the same course. This year they dropped the minimum age to 19 (from 21). There is no maximum age. One of my favorite competitors is Jon Stewart, who is my age. This year, at the age of 56, he finished the Dallas qualifiers, breaking his own record as the oldest person to finish a city qualifier. How can you not shout, “Go, Jon!” while you’re watching?

And here’s the youngest woman ever to hit to hit a buzzer, 20-year-old Casey Rothschild, a college student, at the Philadelphia qualifier, also this year.

• The competitors all support one another. It’s really wonderful to watch the competitors don each others’ fan t-shirts and cheer each other on. Great sportsmanship is always on display. In the video above, you can see Allyssa’s fellow women Ninjas going crazy for her. One of her closest competitors, who had failed that course, is shown crying with joy.

• They have such good attitudes when they fail. They almost always smile after falling and usually the comment is, “That was so much fun!” Even when the Ninja superstars (who are always expected to finish) fail, they just shrug and say some form of, “It happens to the best of us.” Witness superstar Drew Dreschel’s reaction after his embarrassing fall on the second obstacle in the 2014 Miami final.

• They showcase amazing come-back stories. Recently, there was an amputee who competed with prosthetic legs. There was a previous competitor who, between seasons, had been electrocuted and nearly died. There are always cancer survivors and people who have overcome all sorts of adversity. Again, inspirational.

Watching American Ninja Warrior is a wholesome, positive experience. It’s enthralling, inspirational, and a highlight of my summer each year. While ANW is a summer phenomenon, there are specials and variations you can see at other time of the year, I also love American Ninja Warrior: Ninja vs Ninja on the USA Network, which has teams of three ninjas, competing head to head, tournament style. Those courses are shorter because they’re all about speed. There is always at least one woman on a three-person team. So fun. There are also all-star competitions, international team competition, and even a celebrity edition (for Red Nose Day).

You can watch American Ninja Warrior on the NBC website and on Hulu. You can see clips on You Tube. You can purchase whole seasons (like I’ve done) on Amazon video. You can watch Ninja vs Ninja on the USA Network’s website. And you can tune in live tonight at 9/8 central!

Scripts for sticky situations (New Insider's Guide)

2 August 2018

I’m really excited to announce a fifth title to my series of Insider’s Guides for New Organizers. This one, called Scripts for Sticky Situations with Organizing Clients provides suggested scripts for 20 different situations you might encounter with organizing clients.

Each scenario has at least two suggested scripts, which are designed to prepare new organizers so that these situations will be less awkward. In 13 years of business, I’ve navigated all these situations without a map. I’m hoping this guide will help you handle these situations without stress if you encounter them.

Topics include:

• Clients home is too cluttered or squalid
• Client could benefit from a therapist
• Client isn’t letting go of enough
• You’re not making fast progress
• You’re raising your rates
• Client is dissatisfied
• Client is not a good match
• Client’s check bounces
• Prospective client balks at your rates

Plus 11 more!

Insider’s Guides for New Organizers are concise, downloadable pdfs that sell for $9 each. This new guide is 17 pages.

Click here to purchase!

Using Trello for task management

30 July 2018

I’ve known about Trello for years. My weird location-based memory allows me to remember exactly when I learned about it, from a client: May 20, 2013. That day, I glanced at the website, accepted her enthusiasm for it, but for some reason dismissed it. (I was probably enamored with another system at that moment.)

Of course, Trello has come up many times since but it’s only been this month that I started playing with it. I don’t know what took me so long, since Trello has so many things I like:

• It’s beautiful
• It allows me to use a kanban-style board
• I can drag items around it
• There’s an app so it’s always with me
• It’s extremely flexible
• It can also be extremely simple
• I can embed information and deadlines into notes but they’re not in my face
• It’s free!

Trello consists of boards (you can have many boards) that contain a series of lists, organized in columns. The lists contain notes. That simple format is extremely flexible.

So far, I’ve created a few Trello boards for task management. One has tasks by category (each list is a category). One has the day’s tasks, organized kanban-style, with lists called Tasks, Doing, and Done. Right now I’m playing around with having an hourly task board where I select the tasks I’ll be doing in the next hour (each time slot is a list) with the first list being all the day’s tasks. The idea is that it can provide structure on those days I’m working at my desk all day. I have a board that allows me to categorize tasks after the fact, so that I make sure that I’m doing things that help me, my family and the world every day. Here’s a screenshot of that board. (I call it my Do Good Task Board.)

One beautiful thing about Trello is its beauty. When you create a board, you can select from a wide variety of background images (or you can just have a solid color as a background). I like that it’s very easy for me to distinguish one board from another if you have more than one open, like I usually do. The images, in general, are peaceful and lovely. The format is simple.

Earlier this year, I was using Todoist, a very robust task app. But I quickly got overwhelmed and it became scary to even look on the tasks on that list. So it’s on ice for the moment.

On our podcast, Getting to Good Enough, Shannon Wilkinson and I recorded an episode on task management (Episode 6). We talked about various ways we track tasks and emphasized that there’s no such thing as a perfect way to do it. Both Shannon and I confessed that Todoist had gotten out of hand for us. Shannon has since told me that she regained control of Todoist and is enjoying it. But I’m experimenting with Trello, which seems simpler and more flexible to me. I’ll keep you posted on my progress with it!

Getting past "I might need it some day"

26 July 2018

One of the most common reasons folks (including me) tend to hang to items that they use or love is that they feel they might need it at some point in the future and they fear regretting that they let it go. If you live in a home with plenty of storage space and you’re organized enough that you can find the item when you need it, then this might be no big deal.

But if your home is crowded with “I might need it some day” items, or you don’t have any systems in place to allow you to store the items where you can find them again, you might want to consider asking yourself these questions to get past that barrier:

• What are the chances I’ll need it?
• Will this item likely be the best choice at that time (considering that clothing goes out of fashion, technology becomes obsolete, books go out of date)?
• Would I be able to buy a new one if I did end up needing it?
• What’s the worst that could happen if I did find I needed an item that I had I let go?
• What’s more expensive: replacing the item down the road or hanging on to it indefinitely?

That last point is particularly potent when you pause to consider the cost of keeping stuff you don’t need or love. When your home is crowded with unloved or unused items, it often makes it harder to find the stuff you do love and use. There’s a physical and emotional cost of keeping unwanted items “just in case.”

Sure you might need that item in the future, but if what you need now is more space and order, then perhaps letting it go is the most beneficial course of action. I’ve been a professional organizer for 13 years now and I’m constantly reminded that our lives become so much easier when we let go of excess.

Getting my desk under control

23 July 2018

Last week, my desk got out of control. I had a leather in tray that was overflowing, despite my having gone through it recently. I had a busy client week and spent what time I was at my desk dealing with urgent items. Look how bad it got. (I’m not proud of this picture.)

So yesterday I decided I needed to get serious about my desk. It took me a couple of hours, but here’s how it looked this morning:

It’s so much easier to think about getting work done when I have a clear desk!

Here’s how I went about doing it:

• I cleared all paper, even the stuff I was storing in my desktop riser, off the desk into a container.
• I (permanently) removed the leather paper tray.
• I made sure a trash can and recycling bin were nearby.
• I started going through the items in the container, tossing many papers and filing others in clear project view folders.
• I organized a couple of current move projects on a clipboard for easy use on site.
• I scanned a few papers and tossed them.
• I used a medium Multipurpose Bin from The Container Store (which I had on hand) to contain the project files and project clipboards.

To keep my desk more clear, I placed the multipurpose bin on top of the radiator behind my desk. That way the files are handy, but not in my way. When I have a little more time, I think I’ll clean out the rolling file cart under my desk to make room for those project files.

Here’s a picture of that action bin. It makes the radiator more crowded than I’d like (next to it are notebooks I like to keep close at hand), but I think it’s going to work.

It’s so easy for me (and my clients) to let stuff clutter up a desk unnoticed until it’s out of hand. It feels really great to have taken a little time to focus on my desk. My intention this week is to put everything away before closing up shop for the evening (which was part of a wonderful evening routine I had back in the day). I think it’s going to make for a highly productive week!

Ten things I know are true

13 July 2018

I started Peace of Mind Organizing® in July 2005. When I made this big transition from being a writer, I strongly suspected it would bring me happiness. (You can read about why I became a professional organizer, if you’re interested.) What I didn’t know then is how much I would learn and what a life changing profession it is. On my tenth anniversary, I reflected on ten truths I’ve learned as an organizer. I want to share them again today on the occasion of my 13th anniversary.

Thinking about my anniversary, I took a moment to write down ten things I’ve learned as a PO that have been proven true over and over again. I thought I’d share them with you this month.

1. The less stuff you own, the easier your life is. Less stuff = more freedom.
2. Relationships are more important than things. Don’t let your stuff get in the way of your relationships.
3. There is no such thing as perfectly organized. Strive for “organized enough” instead.
4. You can’t put something away unless you have a place for it. And you can’t have a place for it if you have more stuff than you can comfortably store.
5. It’s easiest to create a new habit if you pair it with something you’re already doing. Use that trick to let habit creation be easy.
6. Indecision leads to clutter. Make it a habit to decide immediately what to do with items.
7. It’s okay to ask for organizing help. In fact, it can be very beneficial.
8. Messy does not equal disorganized. I’m living proof.
9. Tidy does not equal organized. I’ve seen many neat but disorganized spaces.
10. You are not your stuff. Don’t let your stuff (and your ability to organize it) define you.