Peace of Mind Organizing

Worth repeating: I'm officially hooked on working with POs

18 February 2016

Five-and-a-half years ago, professional organizer Aby Garvey rocked my world by helping me reorganize (and rethink) my pantry. This weekend my plan is to declutter and fine tune my pantry, which has gotten out of control (as pantries have a tendency to do). I’m taking inspiration from this post I wrote after that initial session. If you have a pantry (or other space) to organize this weekend, maybe you’ll find it inspiring, too!

Last month I blogged about working with professional organizer Karel Worley in my basement. With my husband’s help, we tackled a dirty decluttering job in only four hours. It was one that I’d been dreading for months. It was amazing how much we got done and how painless it was.

Well, I’m at it again. My friend, Aby Garvey, of simplify101, and I have been talking about swapping services for awhile. We thought it would be more fun (and a lot faster) to work together on some of our projects at home.

I got to go first. Last week, Aby came to my home to help me organize my pantry. I was really excited; I didn’t feel a speck of dread. I couldn’t wait to see what Aby’s ideas for my very crowded pantry would be.

My husband, Barry, was always complaining that he couldn’t find stuff in the pantry. I knew where stuff was, but it was so clogged with expired food that I couldn’t tell at a glance what was there. So I would buy more food, exacerbating the problem.

Here’s the layout of the pantry. It’s essentially the size of a small coat closet, with fixed shelves on the right side. We’d added a custom-made extra-tall metro shelving unit on the left wall, opposite the fixed shelves. There’s a rack of shelves on the inside of the door as well.

Once Aby took a look at it, she made a simple, brilliant suggestion. She suggested we turn the metro shelving unit 90 degrees and put it in the back of the closet. That would allow us to see what was on it without stepping into the pantry. That had literally never occurred to me.

We started by emptying the contents of the pantry, tossing expired things and sorting what was left. Then we turned the shelf as Aby suggested, replaced the shelf liner on the fixed shelves and set to work putting stuff back. We put things away in the order they’re used (the categories with the most frequently used items were put away first, so they’d get the prime real estate).

What was so great is that Aby thinks of space differently than I do. Working with her I realized that I was thinking more about how things fit, rather than their function. For example, I had only small things stored on the small shelves on the door. Aby (rightly) proclaimed those shelves prime real estate (I hadn’t thought of them that way) and put the stuff we use most often there. Of course!

I’d also made an artificial separation between what was stored on the fixed shelves (primarily bowls and implements) and what was stored on the metro shelving (primarily food). Aby suggested eliminating that division and created a space where the two flowed together. The mixing bowls ended up on the deeper metro shelving, where they’re much easier to access. We got the pet food up off the floor onto the bottom shelf of the metro shelving.

The whole process was really fun, and once again, I enjoyed being in my clients’ shoes. For example, I was really interested in hearing Aby’s ideas, rather than expressing my own. I was more than willing to defer to Aby and I really sort of expected she’d come in and magically transform the space. She didn’t disappoint!

It was great to gaze at the new pantry when we were finished. Even better, it’s been great to use the new space. When I cooked dinner that night, the supplies I needed were right on the door. When I went to the grocery store a couple of days later, I actually enjoyed putting away food, because I had room to do it! When we were having some friends over this weekend, I could tell at a glance what food we had to nibble on and I was able to quickly put together a shopping list.

And don’t even get me started on the food-storage containers! That’s a post for another day (this week, I promise). That looked like an impossible challenge and the solution, which I initially doubted, has proven to be fantastic.

Here are a couple of before-and-after pictures, courtesy of Aby, whose photography skills clearly exceed mine.

The pantry was clogged. The pet food, paper bags, and garbage bags on the floor were clearly a problem.

Ahhh. Isn't that better?

Thank you, Aby, for a fun afternoon and for improving my quality of life!

If you’ve considered hiring an organizer but weren’t sure it was worth the investment, trust me, it is. Between the expertise, the company, and the focus the organizer provides, working with an organizer can feel miraculous. I can’t wait to do it again!

Testing out SHOTBOX, the tabletop photo light studio

10 February 2016

Last summer, I blogged about SHOTBOX, a tabletop photo light studio that was part of a Kickstarter campaign. I purchased one and it arrived in December, just when my puppy arrived. So I haven’t played with it as much as I’d like. But I’m impressed by it.

The photos from last week’s blog post on organizing my coloring supplies were taken using the SHOTBOX and the SideShot, the accessory that allows one to take nicely lit photos from the front.

Here are my initial impressions:

• The packaging was excellent. It arrived safe and sound from China with no damage at all.
• The instructions are good and hardly necessary because the product is simple and intuitive.
• The lighting is really bright (and it’s adjustable). Not only does the box light up, but the inside of the SideShot attachment lights up.
• I was able to get it up and running within minutes.
• The neoprene carrying case is excellent. All the components fit securely in the case and the stored SHOTBOX takes very little room to store. It comes with the Deluxe Bundle.
• I’m delighted that it comes with four different colored backdrops (white, black, green and blue), which are very easy to switch out.

Yesterday, I wanted to take a quick picture of a particular label on a box in my home for my genealogy blog and I was able to pull the SHOTBOX out of its case and take a quick picture. Before, I would have had a challenging time finding some decent light on an overcast day.

Here are some photos created by the SHOTBOX team that show the connectors and also how everything fits into the neoprene bag. They also provided the photo above. (I posted these and the ones below last week on my SHOTBOX review on my genealogy blog.)

Here’s a photo of my grandmother’s autograph book, given to me by my father in December. It’s taken from above.

Here’s a photo, taken from the front, of a small needle-felted replica of my departed poodle, Kirby. (It was created by Janet’s Needle Felting if you’re interested in having one of your own made.)

At $199 for the Deluxe Bundle (which includes the SHOTBOX, the SideShot, the backdrop kit, and the neoprene carrying case), I think this product is huge bargain. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that taking great photos is not one of my strengths. I’m hopeful that the SHOTBOX will mean that you’ll be seeing much better photos here!

Full disclosure: The SHOTBOX links above are affiliate links, which means that SHOTBOX gives me a percentage of the sale, but doesn’t affect the price. And it doesn’t affect my opinion of the product.

Organizing coloring supplies

1 February 2016

I jumped aboard the adult coloring book craze last June. I loved coloring as a kid and I love it now. It’s so wonderful that so many interesting types of coloring books are available. And the coloring supplies! When I was a kid, I used Crayola crayons. Now, I use pencils, pens, markers…it feels like the sky’s the limit.

As with many new hobbies, part of the fun is acquiring the supplies. I now feel like a kid in a candy shop in an art store, which is a new feeling. (I’m not particularly artistic.) But with the acquisition of supplies comes organizing challenges. I worked out a great organizing system for my colored pencils that I thought I’d share here. (I also color with colored Sharpies and I’m still working on a system for storing those.)

My first purchase was a single coloring book and a tin of 36 Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. Those were great—I loved the quality of the pencils and the blending I could do with them. They were contained, so all I had was a book and a tin, which I kept on the end table by the couch, along with a clipboard used while coloring a single page. Easy peasy.

But soon 36 colors wasn’t enough. So I went to locally owned Art Mart and bought more individual Prismacolor pencils. That’s when I started having a storage challenge. Then I bought more pencils and books (I asked for Art Mart gift cards for my birthday) and I had not only a storage challenge, but an organizing one. I love this kind of challenge!

Enter these lovely acrylic pencil trays from the Container Store. They’re high quality and hold two dozen pencils. I bought three. So I have space to store 72 pencils plus the 36 in the original tin.

So here’s how I worked it out. I sorted the pens by color category that made sense to me. In the acrylic trays I have:

• Reds
• Blues
• Neutrals

In my tin, I have three trays of 12. I’ve divided them into:

• Greens
• Purples
• Yellows

There’s a little overlap—some oranges could go in either the red or the yellow tray and some blue-purple pencils could go either way. Pinks go with the reds, but I put some with the purples. It’s all about how I think of them.

Here are some photos.

I store all the pencils in a Bigso Letter Box from the Container Store, along with my pencil sharpener and a box cutter for cutting pages out of a coloring book whose pages aren’t perforated. (I prefer to color a single page on a clipboard.)

See how nicely they fit?

(Incidentally, all these photos were taken using the SHOTBOX tabletop photo light studio.)

I used to store my coloring books in a second Bigso box, but after my friend Patti gave me six books for Christmas, my books outgrew the box. So I now keep them in magazine holders on a bookshelf in an adjacent room and keep my not-yet-organized collection of Sharpies in that second box, along with the current page I’m coloring on its clipboard. (I’ll post again when I figure out my Sharpies and other markers!)

The two boxes reside stacked on the end table, because I typically color while watching TV (though sometimes I color on the dining room table nearby). If we have visitors, it’s easy for me to move them out of the way.

If you’re a colorer, how do you store your supplies?

Worth repeating: Eliminating the extraneous

29 January 2016

My desk needs some serious help at the moment, probably because I’m spending too little time in my office these days. This weekend, I plan to focus on creating more visual peace in my office. I’m taking inspiration from this blog post, which I first posted on February 18, 2013. I’m so glad I signed up for Jen’s program and I wish she were still offering it!

I recently signed up for the fabulous Workspace and Studio Redesign program offered by Jen Hofmann of Inspired Home Office.

In the eight years since I last rearranged the furniture in my home office, I’ve spruced it up a couple of times (with the help of friends), but I’ve been feeling like I’d like to change it up a bit more. When I read about this program, I hopped on board.

Jen and I had our first session last week and she helped me realize that I have a lot of extraneous stuff in my office. While I had worked on clearing out and organizing the two closets in my office, I hadn’t done a thing about my desk, which was starting to close in on me. Stuff was there by default.

(Incidentally, I think one of the reasons I’ve been having trouble keeping up my clean desk habit is that so many things actually were residing on my desk that the clear space felt like it was shrinking.)

My assignment from Jen was to touch everything on my desk, as well as the stuff I can see while I’m working, and evaluate it based on the question, Does this represent who I am and where I’m going?

On Saturday, I got to work and it was absolutely liberating! I have a teak desk organizer that we bought in the early 90s. It’s been on various desks in the house, and on this desk in particular since at least 2001. I realized in talking with Jen that there were only about four things in it that I actually used on a regular basis.

So I took it off my desk. Now my desk contains only the essentials. I did keep a little decorative dish that contains sea glass I picked up on my trip to Barbados in November. And I added a felted-wool bowl I knit that at the moment contains my Valentine’s candy. Those two things make me happy.

Here’s a set of before and after photos.

Talk about more visual peace! As you can see, I also cleared off much of the stuff on the bulletin board above my desk, though I haven’t exactly artfully arranged it.

There will be more evolution (I have two more sessions with Jen), but I had just to share the progress I made in a just a couple of hours on Saturday.

It’s been amazingly easy to keep my desk clear since then. (I’m so motivated!) In the morning, my uncluttered desk greets me with open arms.

Facing down my inbox

25 January 2016

For five years, I’ve been extolling the virtues of my Inbox Zero policy. Honestly, emptying my email inbox is one of the best things I do to stay on top of all the aspects of my business.

I’m probably sounding like a broken record, but my puppy, Bix, is getting in my way. Since bringing him home on December 13, Inbox Zero nirvana has been elusive. I haven’t achieved it a single time. Not even once.

The issue is that when I’m not working with clients, I’m keeping an eye on/playing with/training the puppy and putting out figurative fires. So the urgent email is getting handled, but I’m letting emails linger in my inbox. And I’m sick of it.

This week is another busy week with clients. I hope that isn’t going to change any time soon. So I’m pledging right here and now to get my inbox down to zero at some point this week and after I’ve done that, to have zero messages in my inbox at the end of the day for the rest of the work week. (I traditionally relax the Inbox Zero policy over the weekend.)

Why is this so important to me? Email in my inbox has the same effect on me that an excessive amount of physical clutter has. It clutters my mind. I lose things in my inbox. And I know it’s not necessary because, as in my home, I have a designated place for things. I have a great system for achieving and maintaining inbox zero. I need to get rid of my backlog and put it in place.

I know the benefits to my psyche and my business. Making the time to get there this week is a priority.

I promise I’ll report back, most likely as an addendum to this post. Thank you for providing me with accountability!

Update! It’s Thursday, January 28, and I just got my inbox down to zero. Such sweet relief!

Illustration by Haberdashery Badges via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

The value of joining a NAPO chapter

21 January 2016

If you’re a professional organizer, I hope you’re lucky enough to live where there’s a local chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers. And if you do live near one, I hope you’ve joined it!

When I started Peace of Mind Organizing® in 2005, the first thing I did was join NAPO. The second thing would have been to join NAPO-St. Louis, except it didn’t yet exist. Thanks to the hard work of others, the chapter was established in 2006 and I was lucky enough to be a founding board member.

Through the last ten years I’ve remained involved with the chapter, serving on the board for the first six years of its existence, then taking three years off before joining the board again for another two-year stint that ends in 2017. So clearly I’m invested in the chapter.

Here’s a photo of the NAPO-St. Louis chapter members taken by Membership Director Sheila DeHart at the January 2016 meeting.

Why do I devote so much time and energy to the chapter? Because it gives so much back to me. Here are a few of the benefits of chapter membership:

1. Camaraderie. For new and veteran organizers alike, the opportunity to spend time with like-minded people sharing advice and experiences is invaluable.
2. Leadership experience. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be as good at leading my organizing teams if I hadn’t had the experience of being president of the chapter from 2008-2010. It helped form the kind of leader I’ve become.
3. Education. NAPO-St. Louis meets in person nine times a year and the chapter’s programs are really valuable. We use both outside speakers and have programs presented by chapter members—there’s an amazing wealth of knowledge among our membership! The chapter also makes conference recordings available to its members as a membership benefit. (I’m certain this is a common chapter benefit.)
4. Visibility. All chapter members are listed on the NAPO-St. Louis website, giving them another exposure to prospective clients.
5. Referrals. When chapter members receive inquiries from clients they might not be right for, they’ll sometimes send them to me. And vice versa.
6. Client resources. We have 13 Corporate Associate Members of NAPO-St. Louis and I refer clients to them all the time. I can also look for resource recommendations from fellow members of the chapter on our online forum. The chapter makes me a better resource for my clients.
7. Business development. These days I focus my business on leading organizing teams. All my team members are NAPO-St. Louis members. I’ve made it a requirement, because I want to use independent contractors who have shown a dedication to their businesses by joining NAPO national and NAPO-St. Louis. I can assure my clients that all my team members abide by NAPO’s Code of Ethics.

I honestly don’t know where my business would be without NAPO-St. Louis, but I’m pretty sure it would not have grown like it has. If you’re a PO or an aspiring PO I urge you to get involved with your chapter. It will reap huge dividends!

If you’re a member of a NAPO chapter, please feel free to comment on what you get out of your chapter!

The curse of the large house

19 January 2016

My husband and I own a house that’s larger than we need. It was built in 1908 as a two-family house and when we bought it, we lived in the upstairs apartment and rented out the downstairs apartment. The upstairs apartment, which has two bedrooms and is 1600 square feet, was plenty big for the two of us. But we rather hated being landlords, despite the fact we had good renters. (Truth be told, we’re born renters.)

We moved to Brooklyn, New York, for four years and in that time rented out both units of the house, with the help of a property manager. Our rent in Brooklyn was twice the mortgage payment of our St. Louis house. So when we moved back to St. Louis, we decided to live in the whole house and avoid the stress of being a landlord.

So we literally have twice as much space as we need. (More than twice a much, actually.) Plus we have a full basement.

Recently I’ve been decluttering some deep storage in our home because we’ve waterproofed our basement and now have the ability to store stuff down there. I came across items that we put away in 2001 when we moved back to St. Louis. This is stuff we haven’t used in 15 years. Stuff we didn’t even miss. Or remember owning. (I’m talking about items like tablecloths, games, and a bag marked, in my handwriting, “Barry’s shirts.” What was I thinking?) Most of it has been donated.

The longer I’m a professional organizer the more fervently I believe that life is better when we have less stuff. I believe that owning fewer belongings leads to more freedom. And I see it in my clients as well.

I have two clients looking to put their houses on the market on February 15. Both clients own spacious homes. Consequently, both clients have lots of stuff. I am encouraging them to let go of as much as possible as we pack up items for storing for staging purposes. As my team members and I are handling these items, I just keep thinking about how much better off we all would be dragging around less stuff.

If you live in a small home that is bursting at the seams, you may think the answer to your clutter problem would be moving to a larger home. I’m here to tell you that it isn’t true. When we have large homes, we tend to acquire more. (Just like when we have higher incomes we tend to spend more.)

At some point before long, I suspect Barry and I will sell our house and move. Believe me, I will be advocating for a much smaller space! As challenging as the downsizing might be, I’m confident having fewer belongings will lead to happiness and peace of mind.