To our American readers best wishes for a health, happy and joyful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.
Author Archive for Carolyn – Page 13
Just returned from an Ontario Sailing training camp in Miami at the US Sailing Centre. The trip was great but the luggage is not. We still use a super strong, two part suitcase designed to protect ski gear from air travel. I’ve weighed the darn thing and it comes in at 10lbs before I put in a single pair of shorts. The last three times I’ve travelled, despite pre-weighing here at home (has anyone checked those scales at the airport recently?) I’ve been overweight on luggage and paid the consequences.
Any suggestions for light weight, high volume, strong travel luggage on wheels? Has to be big enough to carry personal sailing gear – the dagger board etc is all in a the rigid equipment case with “fragile” luggage and they never seem to weigh that “almost too heavy to carry” piece. I’d love to hear your suggestions.
I have 4 hours all to myself today: that is, all to myself and the mound of paper work that accumulated while I was off tending to clients.
We schedule our meetings with clients, with staff and all manner of other related services for our lives but how often do we book time with ourselves to clear out the clutter? Unfortunately we know from decades of time management publications, that unless a priority activity is booked into our schedule, it will not get done. Is that why perhaps, some administrative or maintenance tasks in your life don’t get done?
Consider booking a regular meeting with yourself to accomplish some of the mundane tasks that life asks us to complete. It might be clearing kids school paperwork, catching up on correspondence, filing (electronically or otherwise) the bills that have piled up. If you book time on a regular basis, you will be surprised how some of this stuff doesn’t get a chance to pile up. Depending upon the task, it may be only 2 hours a week or perhaps one day a month is all that is required to clear out the backlog and keep up to date.
Are you staring at a shoe box of receipts? Here’s a quick and inexpensive way to get those receipts tamed. Pick up an accordion folder at the local office supply store with 12 sections, one for each month. Label the sections. Start by filing the receipts by date into the appropriate section.
Some people prefer to file by category. Date or category, it doesn’t matter. They all have to be accounted for at tax time and how you group them is up to you and based on the volume of receipts.
If it seems overwhelming, consider contacting a local high school student whom you trust and offer to pay the them to file the shoebox of receipts for you according to month. This is a great opportunity for the student to learn the benefits of organization and practise some basic filing skills. In addition, what you will need to pay the student is tax deductible and much less than your accountant is likely to charge you to accomplish the same thing.
The recent car battery troubles of my neighbour, and our own car last month, gave me a chance to ponder the need for battery booster cables here in Canada. As the car I drive often takes us out of the city and around the province, if not the country, we have booster cables that never leave the back of the car except to boost someone’s battery. We have a set for the second car which KLR drives but when that car was dry docked for a couple of months, the cables ended up in the garage.
After the neighbour’s distress call came in from a few blocks away, complete with young son in the car and freezing rain on the dash, KLR was dispatched since he was already out and about and the car was out of dry dock. The cables however, were still in the garage. Yours truly headed out instead.
Lesson learned: regular checks of your winter box are a good way to stay organized and ensure that your car will be fully supplied when life throws the proverbial curve ball. Items to carry in the box might include: booster cables, blanket, matches, candles, flashlight, first aid kit and hazard sign.
On behalf of the professional organizers at Wellrich Organizers, I would like to wish you all a very peaceful and joyful Christmas. We wish you a day full of cheer and hope.
Carolyn, Chris and Jennie
Here Comes Winter!
Is it snowing in your part of the world like it is here in Toronto? If you haven’t done so yet, now is a great time to clear the garage and make room for the car – so it can overnight out of the snow. Some quick tips:
- Check that the sports gear still fits e.g. no point in storing a bicycle that will be too small next spring;
- Put away the garden spades/shovels and put snow shovels close to where you will need them i.e. the side door to the pathway or the front door to the driveway;
- Hang up on hooks as many tools and toys as possible;
- Change to the snow tires and put away the all season tires;
- Make sure you have a snow brush, extra anti-freeze and a winter kit in your car for winter driving. That kit could include a candle, matches, blanket, hazard sign and first aid kit.
Before working as a professional organizer, I spent several decades in a corporate environment. Those of us who have ever worked for someone are familiar with the annual review process. But have you ever considered applying this concept to the organization of your office? If you were giving your office an annual review, how would it fare?
- Are the position description and expectations clear and understood?
- Are there annual goals and objectives that are in line with the company’s (yours) strategic objectives for the year?
- Do the annual goals and objectives meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited)?
- Did your office meet all its performance targets for the year?
- Did you office meet all its goals and objectives for the year?
- What recommendations do you have to offer?
Try this out on your office space whether your run a home office or a corporate environment. And remember – there should be no surprises at performance review time. Regular feedback on adjustment to performance of your office will ensure that those goals are met by the end of the year.
Organizing is about balance: enough stuff – not too little, not too much; enough stuff in your time available – not too little, not too much. Its also about having the right stuff at the right time in balance with the priorities of your life. As many of you know, I work with a significant number of hoarding clients. Much of our work together involves helping them balance the stuff in their lives with other priorities.
So when one of my clients called to cancel our session this week in favour of supporting his family through his newborn grandson’s critical state following a difficult delivery, I knew his priorities were in the right order.
The pictures we see of perfect, beautiful, organized rooms in magazines are exactly that: beautiful rooms designed to stimulate your creativity to apply colours, furniture, materials, tools and strategies in your own home. As a professional organizer, I encourage my clients to see those pictures as inspiration – not a target. We strive for good enough, not perfect.
The difference between perfect magazine pictures and a well organized home, are the wonderful priorities like new grandchildren that are so much more important than the stuff that can overwhelm our homes. By getting a grip on the stuff, we make room for our other priorities; the grandchildren, the children, the friends.
I will keep my client’s grandson and family in my prayers – his stuff can wait but will soon have to make room for that grandson to visit.
Today, the beginning of Chanukkah, we would like to wish all our Jewish readers a Happy Hanukkah.
