Peace of Mind Organizing

My adventure with Project 333

1 August 2016

Maybe you’ve heard of Project 333 It’s the brainchild of Courtney Carver of Be More with Less. She designed this challenge for herself in 2010 and encouraged her blog readers to follow suit. It swept the nation and is going strong. It dovetails nicely with the current interest in minimalism.

Essentially, Project 333 challenges participants to dress using only 33 items of clothing for 3 months. You can read the details at the link above, but here are the essentials.

What’s included in the 33 items:

• clothing
• outerwear
• jewelry
• accessories
• shoes

What’s not included in the 33 items:

• underwear
• sleepwear
• workout clothes/uniforms
• sentimental jewelry you wear every day (like your wedding ring)

You choose the 33 items you’ll wear for that season, then pack everything else up and store it. Courtney does not ask you to discard everything else, just pack it away. (Of course, you can discard items that don’t fit or you don’t love.)

Courtney Carver came to St. Louis in June as part of her Tiny Wardrobe Tour. I attended her talk and was inspired to give Project 333 a try. While I was listening to Courtney’s talk I decided that the workout clothes I wear when I lead organizing teams would not count in my 33 items, nor would the shorts and t-shirts I wear on my daily dog walks. (This was based on the answers I heard to the questions the audience asked.)

Sunday, July 3, was the big day. First, I jotted down the trips I was taking and the events I was planning to attend in the coming three months, so I could plan my wardrobe accordingly. Then I took a hard look at my hanging and folded clothes.

I brought some bins into the bedroom and started binning up the items that didn’t make the cut. I had already pared down my wardrobe over the last few years, but I still had plenty to store. In all, I ended up taking four 66 quart bins to the basement. One was for the items I thought I’d want to pull out first when the three months was over and it was time to select my fall collection of 33. The second bin was for clothes that came out of the closet and the third for clothes that came out of the dresser. (Minus the ones that went into the first bin of course.) The fourth bin was for shoes and accessories.

Selecting the 33 items wasn’t all that hard. The truth is that I wear the same things most of the time anyway. The whole process was definitely made easier by the fact that I didn’t have to choose to keep or discard clothing. It was just about a short-term commitment not to wear certain items.

Here’s what I ended up with in the main part of my closet:

• 2 pairs of dress pants
• 2 pairs of jeans (blue and white)
• 2 jackets
• 1 cardigan
• 5 long-sleeved blouses/shirts
• 6 short-sleeved shirts
• 1 tank
• 2 dresses (not pictured)
• 2 ponchos
• 1 shawl
• 1 down vest (for late September, just in case)

I selected three pairs of shoes: sneakers, sandals and dress shoes.

In addition, I selected three favorite pairs of earrings and one necklace:

And I included my favorite animal print scarf and black belt with faux tortoise buckle.

It’s been a month now, which has given me time to reflect on the benefits and pitfalls of the experiment. Overall, it’s made life much easier. Here’s how:

• It takes me no time at all to figure out what I’m going to wear.
• It’s really easy to find and put away clothes.
• I don’t worry about whether or not someone has seen me in the outfit because they probably have.
• I don’t have to give any advance thought to what I might wear. (And I can think about more important things!)
• I can do all my laundry in one load.

The down side? I’m starting to get a little sick of my options. And I worry a teeny tiny bit that an occasion will come up for which I don’t have something appropriate to wear. I’ll let you know at the end of September whether that happened.

By the time this three-month period is up, I will have gone to one conference and taken four other trips. I will have had first appointments with probably 20 clients. (Those first-appointment clothes come from the 33-item collection.) And, of course, I will have gone to social events. I’ll do all that wearing only things from my tiny wardrobe!

It’ll be interesting to see how the selection process goes when it’s time to pick out the 33 items for the fall/winter season. I suspect I’ll be anxious to make the switch.

This has been a fun experiment. Have you tried it?

We're all leaders

26 July 2016

Recently, I attended the board retreat for the 2016-1027 board of directors of the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers. (I serve on the board as Immediate Past President.) Our chapter president, Jennifer Stewart, kicked off the retreat by showing us this terrific video, Everyday Leadership.

In this video of his TedxToronto talk, Drew Dudley recounts the tale of how he made a huge difference in the life of an individual without knowing it. Or even remembering it. His message is that even our smallest actions can have an impact on others. That’s the essence of leadership. And we all do it.

It’s a profound message, with implications for our self-esteem, for our mindfulness, and for our kindness. Our actions matter. We don’t necessarily have to feel the need to change the world. But without even realizing it, we can change the world one individual at a time.

As Drew says, “It’s a simple idea, but I don’t think it’s a small one.” Watching this video is worth six minutes of your time. I urge you to go ahead and press Play. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Quick & easy checklist

20 July 2016

Last month our standard poodle, Bix, had an issue with his eye that required ointment be applied three times daily. My schedule is variable so my husband and I shared responsibility for giving him the medicine. So I knew there had to be a way to keep track of whether it had been given.

Ointment is tricky because there’s no way to tell by looking at the container whether it’s been used. So I created a quick checklist to post in the bathroom. It was so easy and useful I thought I’d share it here.

Here’s a photo of it:

And here’s how I created it—it took maybe five minutes.

1. I created a table in my word-processing program and printed it out.
2. I put the sheet in a sheet protector.
3. I clipped a binder clip to the top of the protector.
4. I grabbed a magnetic hook and put in on the set of four metal towel hooks we have hanging on the bathroom door.
5. I hooked the binder clip over the magnetic hook.
6. I placed a dry-erase pen on the metal hooks.

The idea was that when Bix got his medicine, we’d check it off. It had the double advantage of helping us keep track of whether he’d received his medicine while also reminding us to give him his medicine.

As you an tell from the picture, even with this tool it was hard for us to keep up with applying the medicine three times a day. But I’m sure we did it more than we would have in the absence of the checklist. The good news was that he had a re-check and the vet reduced the frequency to an easier-to-implement once a day.

If we hadn’t had those metal hooks. this wouldn’t have been so easy-peasy. But I could have used Command hooks for the checklist and a pen.

There are higher tech ways to create checklists, but this was quick and (pretty) effective for us. Maybe it’ll help you too.

Worth repeating: Getting and staying on task

14 July 2016

Effective task management is a moving target for me. I’ve come to accept that I need to switch things up in order to keep myself engaged and get stuff done. So I vary my systems according to my need and mood. This post, originally published May 22, 2013, describes a sort of emergency intervention I use when I just can’t get myself to get anything done.

For the last two days, I have had such a difficult staying focused and productive at my desk! My day yesterday was completely unstructured, which is sometimes a recipe for disaster for me. Without an appointment looming, it can be really hard for me to get started.

Today, I’m just trying to get a few hours of work in after my client appointment.

It’s not that I don’t know what to do: I have a four-item list I created this morning. (I usually create that the night before; that’s how unproductive I was yesterday.) A couple of those items will be very easy to accomplish. So why aren’t I starting?

I think I feel, for whatever reason, just really unfocused. Usually my to-do list is enough to focus me. Today, it’s going to take more. I’m pulling out the big guns: a timer + a reward.

One of the easy items on my task list is doing 15 minutes of Quickbooks entry. That’s right, just 15 minutes and I can check that off my list and feel accomplished. I often feel such resistance to even opening the Quickbooks program, though. It’s inexplicable. I actually rather enjoy accounting and my cash flow is positive, so it should feel good. But sometimes getting started on it is like pulling teeth. Thus the low threshold for success (15 minutes).

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to spend 15 minutes on Quickbooks. And when I finish that, I’m going to give myself a reward: 15 minutes watching the mini-series The Pillars of the Earth which I have on DVD from the library. (I just finished reading the book again, so I’m going to enjoy it, I’m sure.)

I’ll layer 15 minutes of TV watching in after I finish each of the four items on my list.

Another good idea: I’m going to keep away from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. They’ve been such a distraction these last couple of days.

There. I have a plan. I’m starting to feel productive!

If you hit a productivity rough patch, you might try the one-two punch of a timed burst of activity coupled with a reward. It can be pretty powerful!

ETA: It worked! I got all the things on my list done, as well as some other stuff. That timer really got me going.

Using my early-morning time

11 July 2016

I’m a morning person. I know that I’m most productive in the morning. Especially first thing in the morning. My brain is turned on and I can be pretty focused when everyone else in the house is asleep. (And by everyone else, I mean my husband and dog.)

I’ve learned that if I want to get something done I should do it during this precious early-morning time. For me, this is especially true of blogging. It’s easier for me to blog first thing in the morning than later in the day. I have trouble sitting down and focusing on blogging in the afternoon or evening. So I know that if I want to blog consistently, I am best off doing it in the morning.

Recently, I’ve turned that early-morning focus to doing genealogy research. (I blogged about this very thing on Organize Your Family History recently.) I had not been taking the time to do genealogy research, which was really disappointing me. Now that I’m doing it first thing, I’m really enjoying it and making progress. Of course that makes blogging the second thing I do in the morning, but that’s working out too.

I started to think about the things I can do to make it easier for me to do important things first thing, even on days where I have early client appointments. I’d prefer not to have to get up earlier, so I try to do routine things the night before instead of taking precious morning-brain time in the morning. These things include:

• Loading my car with supplies
• Deciding what I’m going to wear and even putting out the clothes
• Making lunch or gathering snacks
• Clearing off my desk so it’s easy for me to get right to work
• Making a short task list for the next day so that I’m reminded of what I want to get done first thing (instead of mindlessly going to email or Facebook)

Just doing these easy things the afternoon or evening before can allow me to harness the power of my early-morning brain. If you’re a morning person and you have something you’re having trouble getting done, you might give it a try.

If you’re an evening person—which is okay too, of course—you might try switching this up for your schedule. If you know your peak time, work around that. If you’re on your game at 9 pm try to make sure the mindless before-bed stuff is done so that you can really get into your flow at 9 and nothing gets in your way.

Is there something you’ve been wanting to accomplish regularly that keeps going undone? Try doing it before everything else.

Coloring folders giveaway winner!

7 July 2016

After numbering the entries, I used the Random Number Generator to randomly choose the winner of the Smead Coloring Folders that I reviewed last week.

The winner is Jessica Stallsmith!

I was tickled she won, because her comment/entry made me smile. She wrote:

I have an incredibly unhealthy obsession with arts, crafts, and office supplies. I finally confess. And the fact that these folders are everything in one, makes my heart sing. Speaking of heart, these also have the added benefit of reducing stress! Perfect! Since I was just diagnosed with high blood pressure! See what I did there? So clearly, if I win you could be saving a life! Or… Just make a little person like me extremely happy for 32 minutes.

Enjoy those 32 minutes of coloring, Jessica! Actually, with 12 folders I think you’ll get a lot more than 32 minutes of enjoyment out of them.

Coloring for Peace

4 July 2016

Continuing with the theme I started last week about adult coloring, I wanted to highlight an amazing coloring book I think you should know about. (And don’t forget I’m doing a giveaway this week for a set of Smead Coloring Folders!)

One of the positive things that came out of the protests and subsequent vandalism that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, as well as in my own Tower Grove neighborhood, was the art painted on plywood boards that covered broken storefronts. The community came together to paint messages of peace, unity and love. It was truly inspiring.

My friend and client, Carol Swartout Klein, a native of Ferguson, was inspired by that art and created an award-wining children’s story book, Painting for Peace in Ferguson that came out in 2015.

This year, she partnered with artist Robert O’Neil to create a coloring book based on the painting for peace art, Painting for Peace – A Coloring Book for All Ages. I saw her recently and she gave me a copy.

The coloring book, like all good coloring books, is appealing from an aesthetic standpoint. I found it hard to choose the first page to color because there were so many great options. But it’s also really moving. Color photos of the actual paintings that inspired the coloring pages are printed on the inside front and back cover, and the coloring book includes profiles of some of the original artists with an explanation of the art. Coloring pages are on the right side and complimentary inspirational quotations are on the left. It’s printed on high-quality paper and is appropriate for both adults and kids.

Here’s the cover of the book:

Here’s the first picture I colored from the book. I used primarily Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone colored pencils.

This coloring book, and the children’s book before it, convey important messages of peace, love and hope. I encourage you to purchase either or both books. Your purchase not only spreads a message, it benefits youth, art education and economic recovery programs in the affected areas.