Peace of Mind Organizing

Ten things I know are true

16 July 2015

This month I celebrate the 10th anniversary of Peace of Mind Organizing®. It’s incredible to me how quickly time goes by. It’s been a wonderful decade and I look forward to moving my company into the next decade.

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.

Trying to catch up

14 July 2015

I am so behind in my work. And I hate that feeling!

My mother passed away suddenly on June 17. I had to leave town with no notice to fly to Walla Walla, Washington, to be by her bedside and then stayed for a week after her passing. That meant I had to reschedule a bunch of client appointments. So when I returned, I spent the first couple of weeks working with clients, with little energy for anything else.

Then my brother, Larry, who lives in Australia, arrived for a (wonderful) week-long visit since he was in the country for our mother’s memorial service. He leaves in a couple of days. I’ve had to do some client work while he’s here (and lead a NAPO-St. Louis board and membership meeting). When I’m not doing essential work, I’m spending time with him. As it should be.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying I’ve done no admin work for almost a month, my email is piling up and who knows how many balls I’ve let drop. Thank goodness I don’t get much snail mail, so I don’t have a daunting pile of mail to deal with.

I feel so behind. And I feel a little overwhelmed at the prospect of catching up, though I’m really anxious to be caught up. That, of course (once again), puts me firmly in my shoes of my clients.

I know that I need to formulate a plan to get caught up after Larry leaves and I need to bear in mind that I’m still grieving and I need to be kind to myself.

So here’s what I think I’ll do:

• Make list of the various areas of my work life that need attention (email, paperwork, financial, client relations, etc.)
• Set a goal for each area, so I know where the finish line is
• Prioritize
• Schedule time to work daily on the backlog, starting with the priority areas
• Try to stay on top of the incoming work so the backlog can shrink more quickly

I think I’ll use Evernote to capture the information. And I’m going to try to let this be easy and not get hung up on doing things exactly right.

I’m also going to not over schedule myself, because I know that down time right now is really important. If I run myself ragged, I risk getting sick and that doesn’t help anyone.

One thing that’s working in my favor is that I have had a great evening routine that keeps me on track, even though at the moment it’s fallen by the wayside. When I’m back to doing my evening routine, I’ll feel under control again. I miss that feeling!

Register now for August 29 "Ask the Organizer" panel

6 July 2015

If you’re in St. Louis, I hope you’ll consider coming to a fun event where you can get your organizing questions answered live and in person. Here’s the best part: It costs only $10!

On Saturday, August 29, from 9:30 to 11:30 am the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers is putting on a Q&A panel event called Keep Calm and Ask a Professional Organizer. All are welcome.

There will be two panels, one whose panelists are professional organizers and one with associate members of the chapter—companies that provide products and/or services that complement organizing.

This event was originally scheduled for February 21, but had to be canceled due to inclement weather.

I’m one of the professional organizer panelists. Here’s the lineup for that panel:

• Janine Adams of Peace of Mind Organizing
• Lisa Bianco of Perfectly Organized STL
• Terry Capehart of Organization in Bloom
• Shelly Collins of Clutter Contained
• Julie Hough of The Ordered Home and
• Sharon Johnson of Fixed Assets LLC

The Professional Organizer panel is being moderated by Shannon Tamme of Shannon Tamme LLC.

Here are the companies being represented on the Associate Member panel:

• Cintrex audio-video conversion
• College Hunks Hauling Junk and College Hunks Moving
• Garage Decor & More
• New Space custom closets and cabinetry

The Associate Member panel is being moderated by Lisa Gilliam of Six Hour Organizer.

The event is being held at The Lodge Des Peres, 1050 Des Peres Rd, Des Peres, MO 63131.

Please come with all your organizing questions—we’ll be prepared to answer them! And please come up before or after and introduce yourself to me!

Registration is only $10. For more information and to register, visit the NAPO-St. Louis website.

What does freedom mean to you?

4 July 2015

It’s Independence Day here in the United States and that got me thinking about what independence means to me.

Last year I decided to create a little graphic to declare what I think brings true freedom.

I’m about to celebrate ten years as an organizer (watch for a future blog post on that!). The longer I do this work, the more sure I am that we’re all better off when we surround ourselves with less.

Photo by Paul Poli via Flickr.

Worth repeating: Chipping away at a project

29 June 2015

I wrote this post a couple of years ago, but I really needed it today. I’m once again a bit behind on my Quickbooks data entry. This morning, I entered a recurring daily task in my task-manager app to spend 15 minutes working on the backlog. This post is strengthening my resolve to get caught up a little at a time.

Sometimes projects, big or small, feel too overwhelming to even start. Sometimes tasks are ongoing or recurring and we have a tendency to let them build up before starting to tackle them.

For either of those types of projects, one solution is to do a little. Just do something. Because a little effort on a regular basis will get the job done, eventually.

I’m experiencing that right now when it comes to getting caught up with my Quickbooks bookkeeping for my business. In the past, I’ve let it build up and tackled months’ worth at a time. I’m happy to say that that’s not been the case this year, but I still struggle to stay caught up with it. As of this afternoon, I was about three weeks behind and, despite some dueling priorities, I decided I had to get at least some done. So I’ve been working on it for the last hour or so and by the time I quit for the night, I’ll at least be caught up with August and I’ll have entered all September deposits and checks. That’s my vow to myself. Knowing I don’t have to do it all in one session allowed me to get started.

I received an email over the weekend from a woman who had attended a talk I gave this summer. In that talk, I encouraged people to just spend 15 minutes a day on organizing or decluttering. Much like my bookkeeping, I urged them to just do something even if the job wasn’t finished.

This woman was kind enough to share with me that she took my advice to heart and 15 minutes at a time, tackled 12 years’ worth of accumulated financial papers. These were papers she hadn’t been able to face after her husband died. Now they’re processed and, as necessary, shredded.

This was a task that was completely overwhelming and emotionally difficult for her. 15 minutes at a time (sometimes 30), she got it done.

So there you have it. Whether you’re looking at overwhelming backlog or just keeping on top of a task (like data entry or laundry) so that it doesn’t get overwhelming, you can chip away at it, doing a little bit at a time, can make it much easier.

Have that difficult conversation

23 June 2015

My mother, Betty Sue Brown Adams, passed away on June 17. She’d been living with Parkinson’s Disease for years and the end of her life was swift and peaceful. My father, brothers, and I took great comfort in that.

One other source of comfort was the pre-planning we did back in 2006, when my mother was 73 and relatively healthy. I had just taken a two-day estate organizing workshop from Jeanne Smith of Exit Stage Right. One day was on helping people organize their affairs prior to death. The other day was on helping people organize after the death of a loved one.

That workshop was in California and I headed straight up to Walla Walla, Washington, to visit my parents. I asked them to help me in my training by going through the pre-death organizing process. The conversations were actually pretty easy and, believe it or not, we had a little fun going through the Exit Strategies workbook that Jeanne created and sells.

Nine years later, that planning paid great dividends after my mother passed away. That very night, we pulled out the workbook and pored over the pages in which my mother had specified her desires for the details of her memorial service (down to the flowers and music), burial, and obituary.

Those pages were absolutely invaluable the day after my mother’s passing, when my father and I went to the funeral home. We did not have to speculate what my mother would have wanted. And thanks to the workbook, the obituary practically wrote itself.

The workbook also provides a handy checklist of things to do after a death, as well as people to inform.

My father and I have agreed to go through the workbook again and make sure his desires and other information (like his financial account information) are up to date.

I urge you to consider discussing these details with your loved ones. Jeanne’s workbook is a terrific tool, but any information you gather will be helpful. It can be a difficult discussion to have, but it’s much easier to have it while folks are healthy. Since my mom died, my dad has expressed over and over how grateful he is that we did it. (I overheard him on the phone brag to someone that they worked with a professional organizer to do this planning.)

The pre-planning we did made a difficult time much easier. It’s yet another way being organized can be beneficial.

Give your father the gift of time

18 June 2015

Father’s Day is Sunday and that always makes me want to encourage you not to give gifts that will become clutter. I think this is particularly true of gifts to parents, who may have an especially hard time letting go of items you give them.

I’ve mentioned before that you can give clutter-free gifts like fresh flowers, restaurant gift certificates, or coupons for services. But today I’m thinking about how wonderful it is to give the gift of time to a parent.

I haven’t lived within a thousand miles from my parents since I was 17 and left for college. I’m not sure I’ve spent Father’s Day with my father since 1980. But this year I’ll be there. It wasn’t intentional. My mother has been hospitalized and I’m rushing there to be by her bedside. The bright spot of that is that I’ll be with my 84-year-old father on Father’s Day this year.

Here’s a selfie I took of my dad, Gene Adams, and me at a basketball game last year. He’s a great guy.

Facing the prospect of losing my mother makes me wish I had more often given my parents the gift of time together. Throughout my adult years, I paid at least an annual visit to my parents. As they became elderly, I upped that to twice a year. This is my third visit this year and I have two more scheduled.

If you have the opportunity to spend more time with your parents than you’re currently spending, I urge you to consider scheduling regular outings (or just quiet visits) together while you can. I’d be willing to bet that they’ll be more special to your parent than any physical item you could give them.