Peace of Mind Organizing

Today's truth

27 August 2015

This phrase keeps coming to mind and I’ve probably said it to five clients this moth. So I thought I’d make it into a graphic to share with you here. (I used the website Canva to create it.)

If you keep everything, nothing is special. If you keep just a few things, you can love it all.

Worth repeating: Making your move easy(er)

25 August 2015

This past weekend my team helped a wonderful client get her spacious home unpacked after a move. It was fun and stressful simultaneously. And it was made more stressful by the fact that the movers, who packed the home, did a terrible job of labeling the boxes. So this morning I thought I’d blog about best practices to make a move easier, and then I saw that I did that a year ago. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m presenting last year’s blog post, written after we did a couple of unpacking jobs. If you have a move coming up, please read this!

A supply drawer we created while unpacking a client

Moving is stressful. There’s pretty much no way around it. Even if an employer is paying for the move and you have the movers pack you, there are a lot of details with which to contend and it’s a hassle. Working with a professional organizer can help, but even so, the process is stressful.

I’ve recently helped several clients settle into their new homes by bringing in teams to unpack and organize their belongings. All of them were packed by the movers. Observing how the unpacking and organizing process went, I’ve identified a few ways to make the move easier:

• Start early. It’s easy to procrastinate on decluttering, packing, and making logistical arrangements. But the more time you can give yourself, the less stressful the process will be—and the more likely you are to avoid last-minute crises.

• Declutter before the move. If an employer is paying for the move, you might be inclined to delay decisions about letting go of stuff until after you see how it might fit into your new home. But believe me, by the time you’re in the unpacking phase of the move you’re going to be tired. And the fewer decisions you have to make when you unpack, the happier you’ll be. Less stuff = easier move.

• Go through the unopened boxes from the last move. If you’ve been in your home awhile and there are still unopened boxes in your storage area, don’t just move them. Open up those boxes and find out whether the items inside merit the space you’re giving them and the effort and money involved in moving them.

• Categorize before packing. If each box contains a category of items, unpacking is much more streamlined, and less frustrating. It can also make it easier to find an individual item before you’ve finished unpacking. If you don’t organize before you pack, you’ll end up with a hodge podge of items in each box, which can create headaches when you’re unpacking.

• Mark the boxes for the destination room. If the layout of your new home is different from the old one, try to mark the boxes for delivery to the appropriate room in the new home, rather than the room it came from. That way you’ll be able to stay in the room that you’re unpacking.

• Try to unpack as much as possible as soon as you move in. I’m typically a big fan of little and often, and if you need to break down unpacking into tiny chunks in order to get it done on your own, so be it. But if you can power through the unpacking process so that you get rid of boxes and get settled, the transition will be easier.

• Unpack the kitchen first. I think it’s hard to get a semblance of normalcy until your kitchen is unpacked. When you can make coffee in the morning and fix yourself a snack, life is better. Eating off of real plates rather than paper plates will make you feel like you’re home.

• Let go of perfection. Don’t get bogged down in the unpacking process trying to decide the perfect place to store items. You can always improve on it later. Just choose a location and see how it works.

• Enlist help. Unpacking a home on your own can be overwhelming. Enlist the help of friends, family or a professional organizer (or organizing team). In the last two unpacking jobs we did, we were able to get the entire homes unpacked in two days. It felt like a miraculous transformation—from a sea of boxes to a comfy home in two days. The clients still had tweaking to do, certainly, but they were able to get in with their daily routines.

Yes, moving is stressful. But it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. With a little planning and forethought, you can make it relatively easy.

Worth repeating: 5 questions to ask yourself before getting rid of paper

20 August 2015

Paper is one of the toughest things for people to make decisions about. Three years ago, I wrote this post to guide you on letting go of paper. It’s still relevant today.

Sometimes when I work with clients, I realize that they’ve hung onto a lot of paper out of fear. They’re afraid that they’ll toss or shred a piece of paper and find out later that they need it.

When you’re afraid to let go of paper, before long you get overrun. Then you add a feeling of overwhelm to the fear and becomes really hard to go through the paper.

So to make things a little easier (and perhaps take away some of the fear), here are the five questions I suggest you ask yourself when you’re trying to make a decision about whether or not to keep a particular piece of paper (particularly paper related to finances):

• Can I get this information online?
• Can I replace this paper if necessary?
• Have I kept this type of information in the past and, if so, did I reference it?
• Can I scan this document and keep it electronically?
• What’s the worse that can happen if I get rid of this?

The fact of the matter is that very few papers are irreplaceable. So fear of getting rid of them is pretty unwarranted. You can always ask your tax advisor or your financial planner for advice. But hanging onto unneeded paper can weigh you down.

Why not take a few minutes now to go through your file cabinet and get rid of some outdated paper? (Don’t forget to shred anything with identifying information like social security numbers or account numbers.)

Welcome back, Itso bin!

13 August 2015

In 2011, I wrote a blog post in praise of Target’s Itso bin. I was inspired to do so because of a great post by my friend and colleague Aby Garvey on the Simplify 101 blog.

Aby had turned me on to the Itso bin, a rather non-descript plastic bin. It’s slightly narrower than a plastic shoe box, with higher sides and no lid. Aby showed me all sorts of great ways to use Itso and became my go-to container. I bought them whenever I saw them. I used them in my own home, as well as with clients. And then, in 2013, Target discontinued them.

This year, in what feels like a storage-solution miracle, Target has brought back the Itso bin. The color is different—it’s more milky white than translucent (they call that color “sour cream,” which seems kind of icky to me), and it now also comes in smoky gray and blue (below). But the shape is the same and they’re still very useful.

It appears they’re available only in-store on not online. I check for them when I’m in Target and more often than they don’t have any. But I just wanted those of you who missed Itso to know that they’re back!

Something important to remember

10 August 2015

I made this graphic using the super-easy (and free) website Canva. I created it for social media, but thought I’d share it here because the message is so important. And it’s something I say to clients all the time.

Do you control your things or do your things tend to control you?

Why do we overpack?

6 August 2015

I just returned from an eight-day trip to visit family in Walla Walla, Washington and attend my high school reunion. I had a great time, but I’m glad to be home.

As usual, I packed too many clothes. (That’s a photo of my suitcase on this trip as I was facing down repacking it.) I was getting frustrated, so I started to ponder why I (and I assume others) do this. It’s an irritating practice because it actually makes life on the road harder. As I’ve written about it before, there are benefits to packing light:

• It makes it easier to choose what to wear when I’m on the road, particularly if I plan my outfits by ahead of time.
• It makes it easier to find things in my suitcase, if I’m not able to unpack at my destination.
• It makes it easier to repack to return home if I have unpacked.
• It saves me room to bring home gifts (or, in the case of trips to Walla Walla, wine).
• It makes my suitcase lighter and therefore easier to manage during travel.
• It makes it easy to carry on bags, rather than checking them.
• It makes unpacking easier.

So why don’t I pack less? I think it’s because I’m afraid I won’t have the clothes I want when I’m getting dressed at my destination, so I pack extra. And it’s easier to delay decisions about what to wear (does that sound familiar?). So packing gets easier but living on the trip gets harder.

I travel again in a few weeks and I vow here and now to pack as light as possible. I know it will make my life easier and that’s the name of the game for me.

How about you? Do you consider yourself an overpacker? And, if so, why do you do it?

SHOTBOX can turn your phone into a scanner

30 July 2015

I blogged last week about SHOTBOX, a tabletop photo studio on my genealogy blog, because I’m so excited about how it can help digitize documents and images with a phone. It occurred to me that the readers of this blog would also benefit from knowing about it. So I’ve adapted that post here.

This portable lightbox makes it easy to use your phone to take good-looking, well-lit photos of three-dimensional objects, which is great for those of who blog. It would also be really useful for folks selling items on eBay, etsy or craigslist. And as a knitter I think I’ll be able to take better pictures of my finished projects to upload to Ravelry or share on social media.

What’s great for the genealogist or the scrapbooker, though, is that it provides the ability to easily take well-lit photos from above, which can be very useful for digitizing documents or photos (or photo album or scrapbook pages). If you have delicate documents you wouldn’t want to put through a sheet-fed scanner, or if you don’t have a scanner at all, SHOTBOX might be the tool you need to use your phone to digitize documents without risk of damage and without shadows.

Right now, SHOTBOX is running a Kickstarter campaign while they work with the factory to finish the manufacturing and ship by October. I pledged and pre-ordered the SHOTBOX plus the SideShot Kit (a lighted attachment to hold the phone or tablet steady for photos taken from the front), for a total of $149. Once the product is in production, the anticipated retail price will be $149 for the SHOTBOX and $89 for the SideShot. [Note: The Kickstarter campaign is over, but you can now pre-order directly from the SHOTBOX website.]

You can see examples of photos taken with SHOTBOX on their website.

I’m really excited to receive my SHOTBOX this autumn and put it to use. Maybe you’ll notice an improvement in the quality of the photos appearing on this blog!