Archive for January 2009 – Page 2

Packrat Behaviour

Posted by Carolyn on

January 20, 2009

Managing the behaviour and characteristics of a packrat is a common reason that professional organizers are called by clients. Packrat behaviour is seen equally often at the office as it is in the home. The only difference is that at the office, there may be someone in a position of authority reminding you to keep your workspace in a professional state. The following behaviours and characteristics, modified from a list developed by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau in ADD-Friendly ways to Organize your Life, may be familiar to you because of your own life or perhaps the life of someone around you:

You hang on to things that you, or anyone else, hardly ever uses;
You eagerly collect items regardless of whether you need them;
You refuse to part with items because you think you will use them someday (but can’t remember the last time you used it);
You consider yourself a packrat;
Your workspace or home is so cluttered it is hardly functional;
You have difficulty making decisions about objects.

Sound familiar? The following strategies may help you get started on a healthier path.

Try the “two for one” policy when bringing new things into your environment. If you bring a new book into your home, commit to removing two books already there that you can’t remember the last time you touched.
Ask someone you trust, a clutter companion, to commit to a day of clearing out. It will probably take more than one session but you will find even starting will be very rewarding.
Clear a sorting table so that you have a clear space at waist height in which to sort. You will find this easy on your back and the sorting will feel easier.
Choose items of better quality and let the quantity of objects diminish. If you find 4 staplers, keep the best one.
Play the Friends, Acquaintances, Strangers game. Objects that feel like friends can stay. Acquaintances may or may not stay depending on their timeliness and utility. The strangers leave your space.
Establish and maintain a commitment to yourself to live in a healthier lifespace. You deserve it.

Organizing Challenges

Tags : AD/HD, mess, Packrat

Top 5 Series – Indicators of a Packrat

Posted by Carolyn on

January 20, 2009

· No Comments

Managing the behaviour and characteristics of a packrat may be something you assume that professional organizers focus on mostly with residential clients. The reality is that packrat behaviour is seen equally often at the office. The following behaviours and characteristics, modified from a list developed by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau in ADD-Friendly ways to Organize your Life, may be familiar to you because of your own life or perhaps the life of someone around you:

You hang on to things that you, or anyone else, hardly ever uses;
You eagerly collect items regardless of whether you need them;
You refuse to part with items because you think you will use them someday (but can’t remember the last time you used it);
You consider yourself a packrat;
Your workspace (or home) is so cluttered it is hardly functional;
You have difficulty making decisions about objects.

Sound familiar? The following strategies may help you get started on a healthier path.

Try the “two for one” policy when bringing new things into your environment. If you bring a new book to your office, commit to removing two books already there that you can’t remember the last time you touched.
Ask someone you trust, a clutter companion, to commit to a day of clearing out your workspace. It will probably take more than one session but you will find even starting will be very rewarding.
Clear a sorting table so that you have a clear space at waist height in which to sort. You will find this easy on your back and the sorting will feel easier.
Choose items in your workspace of better quality and let the quantity of objects diminish. If you find 4 staplers, keep the best one.
Play the Friends, Acquaintances, Strangers game. Objects that feel like friends can stay. Acquaintances may or may not stay depending on their timeliness and utility related to your or your company’s strategic goals. The strangers leave your space.

Organizing Challenges Top 5 Series

Tags : AD/HD, Disorganized Employees, Indicators of disorganization, mess, Top 5 Series

Disorganized Success – At What Price?

Posted by Carolyn on

January 14, 2009

· No Comments

Many of you are successful and busy professionals in either your own company or a corporate firm. Some of you are successful despite the fact your world teeters on the edge between organizational disaster and “pulled through again” as you live with your organizational struggles.

Disorganization can be very, very stressful. Living in fear that the rest of the office, business or corporation will discover how disorganized you really are is a stress that few professionals can withstand for very long. You may have tried to be more organized and failed. Perhaps you have been disorganized all your adult life. Perhaps your disorganization permeates your private life as well as your business life – but at home the world may be a little more forgiving.

What price is your disorganization costing your life? Stress? Someone else’s time to find things? Rework? Redo?

Perhaps now is the time to consider getting help before the stress takes over or the balance of your life tips in the wrong direction. The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization is a research based education organization for professional organizers and other health care providers who are interested in chronic disorganization. The group provides resources to the public and a referral program. In the United States, the National Association of Professional Organizers also has a referral program. In Canada, the Professional Organizers in Canada can help you find an organizer with special skills in chronic disorganization in your area.

Don’t pay the high price of disorganization. Your life is too valuable.

Organizing Resources

Tags : ICD, Institute for Challenging Disorganization, NAPO, National Association of Professional Organizers, POC, professional organizers, Professional Organizers in Canada, Understanding disorganization

Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

Posted by Carolyn on

January 14, 2009

· No Comments

Many of you have made resolutions for the New Year – big juicy goals for your excellent life that you are creating.

How is that going for you? Here’s a site that might be helpful. Suite101.com offers a selection of articles on setting and keeping those resolutions. Here’s one that I found particularly helpful by Wie Yin Yong. New habits can be a challenge to establish – as frustrating as old one’s are to kick. This article on Making New Habits may be particularly helpful in anchoring the new bahiours in your life.

Organizing Strategies

Tags : Accomplishment, Goals, organizing goals

Prepare for Tax Time 2010

Posted by Carolyn on

January 13, 2009

· No Comments

Many of us have just come to the end of a fiscal year, matched up to the calendar year. Why not get a jump on tax time for the following year? Your box of receipts may still haunt you until you hire a book keeper for this year’s tax, but next year could be a different story for you.

Pick up at your local office supply store an accordian folder with at least 12 tabs. They are often available as 6, 13, 31 (date) or 26 (alphabetical) tabs. Label the tabs by month.

Use this monthly organization to put all your receipts for 2009. Each time a receipt comes in, drop it in the relevant tab slot. If your business is big enough, you may wish to have one for revenue and one for expenses.

If you are using electronic files, consider the opportunity to convert your paper receipts into electronic documents using tools such as offered by The Neat Company.

Office Organizing

Tags : organizing tax files, Paper, tax, tax preparation

The (Dis) Organized Teenager – Exam Time!

Posted by Carolyn on

January 13, 2009

· No Comments

Here is comes folks. All us semestered families are heading for the last stretch of the semester and the big E word: Exams.

For some teenagers exams are just another opportunity to show off how much they know and how much fun they had studying. Not my teenager. She is having fun alright: at the swim meet, the ski hills and movie nights at a friend’s house. So how do we instill the discipline to study and review all that must know information in order to encourage the best opportunity for success in our teens?

Here are some tips for your teen to set themselves up for success:

Step 1 – Establish a list of all the material that will be covered in the exam. If you aren’t sure, check in with the teachers before the term is over. Once classes are out they are harder to find. Most curriculum is broken into units providing a natural way to organize and list the material. A term is likely about 10 – 13 units. Review the list and your notes. Do you have all the information you need to study? Do you need to pick up notes from a friend or teacher for classes you missed?

Step 2 – Break down the material into the time you have to review it. If you have 5 days to study for 4 exams and 4 hours a day, you may choose to use one hour a day per subject. For ten units that would be 2 units per day. Did I loose you on the math? Simplify: Break down the material into bite size chunks for which you have the time.

Step 3 – Remove all other distractions (cell phone, ipod), be rested, well fed and take frequent breaks. Most adults can concentrate for about 45 minutes. Expect your teen to get up and move at least every 45 minutes.

Step 4 – Review, repeat. Review, repeat. Familiarity will assist with recall.

Good luck!

Organizing Students

Tags : Students, Teenagers, Time Management

Going Slow to Get Fast

Posted by Carolyn on

January 12, 2009

· No Comments

They all want to race down the hill as fast as possible at the age of 7. With no fear of dying, and only 3 feet to fall if they catch an edge, the young skiers head from top to bottom at mach schnell (made up word from KLR) if unchecked. KLR, their ski instructor, patiently and firmly reinforces the basics; you have to slow down in order to get fast.

How often could we all profit from KLR’s sage advice? Are you moving too fast, wound up in the day to day tornado of life at the office, that you can’t get to the end result fast enough?

Try slowing down and reviewing the basics. Is my company clearly focussed on where I want it to go? Have I reviewed and revised the firm’s strategic goals to reflect the marketplace and our relative position in it? Do all my employees understand their role in the strategic goals? Do they understand the firm’s expectations of them?

Do I demonstrate in my behaviour the professional behaviour I expect from my staff? Do my actions reflect the goals I hold for myself and my firm? Do I demonstrate the priorities and focus my attention and resources clearly on their importance?

Slow down. You’ll finish faster.

Office Organizing

Tags : Goals, Strategic Planning

Focus – and Refocus

Posted by Carolyn on

January 6, 2009

· No Comments

I first published this post in 2007. The women at iLash Girls have reminded me that we are wise to revisit our focus on a regular basis. Thus I have chosen to republish in the hopes that you will find it helpful to refocus your view of the work to be accomplished this year.

Focus – with a camera? A noun or a verb? And what makes me think it has anything to do with business anyway? Ever try creating something without it?

Probably the single biggest reason employees fail to reach their goals and business fail to succeed is lack of focus. Do you have a mission? Do you know where you are going? Do you know what it will look like when you get there? Do you have a road map? Have you shared the map with anyone else? Have you shared it with everyone else?

If you or your employees are not focused on the goals of the company, they are messing around with what I call corporate clutter; All the stuff that gets in the way of your business, project, division, board of directors or _____________ succeeding (you fill in the blank). It is no different than in your home where clutter takes time, energy and money to manage, and manage around. If your day is cluttered with unnessary and unfocused activity, you are messing with clutter and wasting energy that would otherwise help your business succeed.

Focus: think about it.

Office Organizing

Tags : Goals, Leadership, Management, SOHO

Client Questions – Going Vertical

Posted by Carolyn on

January 6, 2009

· No Comments

Q It seems that every surface in my home has stuff on it. My home is cluttered but I have no other place to put things. What else can I do?

A It is human nature to put an object down or away in the place of least resistance or the most accessible spot when we are finished with it. For many people, that spot ends up being an empty flat surface. The result can be a cluttered space with every flat surface filled and, in worse case scenarios, several layers of objects on every flat surface.

Switch from horizontal to vertical storage strategies and habits. Vertical space is up and down space in your home. The floor, counters and table tops are horizontal space. Keep your horizontal space clear and your home will look and feel less cluttered and be easier to move around in.

Book shelves are great vertical storage and can be used to storage an array of items besides books. Putting similar items in containers such as boxes, baskets or other plastic containers on the shelves reduces the messy look of many objects. A hook on a wall is another simple and effective means of using vertical space, great for clothes especially in a child’s room.

Home Organizing

Tags : Accumulation, Client Questions, mess, Understanding disorganization

Menu Planning Monday

Posted by Carolyn on

January 5, 2009

· No Comments

Has your home settled down after the holiday activity? There is nothing like a little routine to get us all grounded and reorganized. If you haven’t tried planning your menus, I highly recommend it. MPM comes from my colleague Laura over on OrgJunkie. She has posted some great links to gluten free recipes for those of you with special diets in your home.

In the meantime, what’s on your menu this week? Here’s our lineup:
Monday – Swim team: Fish, rice, frozen vegies, green salad
Tuesday – Swim team: Our traditional pasta night, meat balls, green salad, Italian bread
Wedneday – Swim team, choir: BBQ pork kabobs in marinade, rice, grilled vegies, cruditee salad
Thursday – Swim team/lessons: BBQ chicken in Diana sauce, spinach/raspberry salad with caramelized almonds
Friday – Ski night: Sandwiches on the road
Saturday – Supper for 9: Pasta with Tomato and Meat Sauce, spinach salad (again), Italian Bread
Sunday – Make your own pizza

Organizing Resources

Tags : Kitchen, menu planning Monday, organizing food, Recipes

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Archive for January 2009 – Page 2

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