Are you feeling hemmed in when sitting at your desk?
Take a quick inventory of what’s on it: computer CPU, printer, screen, keyboard, telephone, several “In” piles, three projects in process (at least that’s what you can see well enough to count).
Move all the hardware off your desk. Do a quick sort of your In piles into four file folders: read, call, write, decide. Put them into a vertical file holder on your desk, to the left if you are right handed, (vice versa) with the labels facing toward you. Make sure the three projects are in some form of file holder and add them to the vertical file holder.
Take a quick inventory of what’s under it at your feet: computer CPU, printer, several pairs of shoes, gym bag, handbag, assorted brief cases or other business cases, recycling box.
Move the CPU and printer. Put the shoes, gym bag and any other clothes in the closet or in a bag hanging behing the door. Put the business cases in the closet. Use the recycling box for the sorting in the second paragraph above.
Enjoy your space.
Author Archive for Carolyn – Page 32
We all have dishes, pots and perhaps many other items in our homes that we used seldom if ever. In this case, the client rarely if ever served fondu and now that her children were away at university, it seemed even less likely she would ever use it. The client was not interested in a garage sale and the pot contained enough sentimental value, that she wanted to find a new home where it would be used.
Sound familiar?
A helpful approach to shedding these objects is to ask yourself a) how often do I use it? b) how easily can I replace it or borrow another one if and when I do need it.
Ask around family or friends to see if anyone else would like a fondu pot or if they have family heading off to university or setting up a home that might like one. If they already have one, ask if you could borrow it from time to time.
Overwhelmed with email? Many of us are. Many of us are also concerned with the amount of time it can consume. Have you ever found yourself still clearing email several hours after you started, not having realized the time that was eaten up?
To begin taking back control, turn off the email alert on your screen. Very few of us really need to know when emails are coming in unless we have a time-sensitive message for which we are waiting.
Avoid clearing email first thing in the morning. Having planned your list of things to do the night before, you know what your top priorities are: let those have your best hours first thing in the day. Schedule time to clear email towards the middle of the day and again later in the day. Allocate a certain amount of time and stick to it.
This question came from a client who had just replaced her glasses. She was eager to see her old glasses put to good use.
Most reputable opticians (in Canada) collect their client’s unwanted eye glasses to send to communities overseas for use by individuals who otherwise would not have access to eye glasses. Ask your optician directly if they participate in such a program or for redirection to another optical store that does.
We’ve just returned from a two week trip from Toronto, through Kingston and on to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, following the route of the Optimist Dinghy Fleet from CORK to their Canadian Championships. You would think our car would be the most organized in the lot given my credentials. Sadly, with boat gear, swim gear, overnight gear, a boat and a few extra boat pieces which we carried for another sailor, our van look liked a barely controled wilderness of gear.
We managed the obvious strategies: keep what you are using in the order you use it, take the time to repack the gear when stopped for several days to keep the order efficient, use laundry hampers for the wet (and salty) stuff to keep it open and airing.
By far though, the best strategy, was keeping two coolers: one for the lunch and one for the rest of the parishables. Each day we were on the road, we prepacked the lunch cooler with not only lunch, but a full complement of snacks to keep ourselves and our two children happy for the 8 – 10 hour days. Having the rest of the parishable food in another cooler meant the second cooler kept cold longer and the food less likely to parish. Having a lunch bag cooler at the handy in the car meant less money spent at convenience stores and better snacks for everyone.
And if you have not yet been to Nova Scotia, I highly recommend it!
For many people, the pantry shelves represent the last frontier of organizing in the kitchen. Never was this more true that in my own kitchen, despite being in business for over 3 years as a professional organizer.
Organizing a pantry, often filled with half-full boxes of dry goods, is an exercise in matching up the right container with the right food stuff to fit in the right space. Remember those pre-school “fit the right shape into the right hole”? Here are some strategies to help you along:
- Rigid containers always store better than floppy bags. It doesn’t matter whether you are purchasing food storage containers from a direct marketing distributor or the dollar store, consider repackaging your dry goods out of their original product bag into a rigid food storage container.
- Go vertical – often we loose valuable storage space by not using up the full height of a storage shelf. Try and fill up as much of the shelf height as possible. If necesary, consider investing in some additional shelf steps to turn a tall shelf into two shorter shelves.
- Label – no surprise here. Labels provide directed choice. It’s like opening up the pantry and finding the road map with your route already marked to the wild rice or icing sugar.
- Buy only what you use – get rid of what you don’t. If your family won’t eat the whole wheat pasta no matter how many different versions of their favourite sauce you put on it – get rid of it. (Maybe the neighbour’s children will eat it?). Your pantry space is valuable – don’t use it to warehouse food you won’t use.
- Group similar items together. If all the vinegar is organized together on the shelf, determing if you have any balsamic for the new salad dressing recipe is much easier.
- Enjoy! After your hard work of sorting, repackaging and organizing the food – plan a great meal for yourself and/or your family to celebrate all the great food you found in there!
Having trouble managing or organizing time?
Do you feel as if you are always busy but get nothing done?
Take a look at what you spent the majority of yesterday – or even this week – doing. Now reflect on what you did not do.
Time management is a challenge most of us face most of the time. All too often, we spend our time busy, busy on things that come up and convince us they are urgent in nature. At the end of the day, those things rob us of the time we need to accomplish things in our life which are really important to the values and goals we hold most dear.
Try this time management tip: allocate your time such that at least 50% is spent on those tasks or projects which are directly related to your highest values and greatest goals. Now book the time and protect it from unimportant intruders.
Enjoy achieving your goals.
Having trouble managing your time?
Are you feeling as if you are always busy but get nothing done?
Check out your daytimer and see what is scheduled. Now take a look and notice what is not scheduled.
Time management is a challenge most of us face most of the time. Organizing time can be harder than the paper!
Too often we book time for those things in our business which is urgent but at the end of the day not very important to the goals and objectives of our organization.
Manage your time – don’t let time clutter manage you. Try this time management tip: allocate at least 50% of your day for those things which are most important, but not urgent, and directly target achievement with the goals and objectives of your organization.
Now watch your productivity soar and your business take off.
Individuals coping with dyslexia are often looking for strategies to support them both in the workplace and at home. As a professional organizer, I am often asked about organizing strategies for managing varies learning disabilities. This knol, recently written by Sandra Crux, may be helpful to those of you who are managing with dyslexia. The knol, or bit of knowledge, is designed to be an authoritative article on a subject. Ms. Crux provides a comprehensive collection of strategies for managing dyslexia both for adults and childrens. I hope you find it helpful.
http://knol.google.com/k/sandra-crux/dyslexia-4-using-organizational/8d8s0hdum67q/5#
As a professional organizer, I am often asked about organizing strategies for managing dyslexia and other learning disabilities. This recently written knol provides a collection of organizing strategies for individuals managing with dyslexia. The knol, or bit of knowledge, is designed to be an authoritative article on a subject. Sandra Crux has written a comprehensive set of such strategies which will be helpful to any of you managing this attribute in yourself or your children. I hope you find it helpful.
http://knol.google.com/k/sandra-crux/dyslexia-4-using-organizational/8d8s0hdum67q/5#
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