Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
Serving Eastern Pennsylvania, Central and Southern New Jersey, and Delaware
I spent this past Thanksgiving holiday with my son and his extended family in Florida. Traveling during a major holiday has never been my first choice, but as a professional organizer, I realize that being organized helps to lessen the stress that holiday travel can bring. Most would agree that Thanksgiving has the best part of Christmas (family gathering) without the gifts getting in the way. In my profession, I see many gifts go unused regardless of the generous spirit in which they were given. Some of my clients dread the pending influx of additional clutter and want suggestions on how to curb the CRAP.
As a result, I often recommend clutter-free gift giving. A clutter-free gift is the gift of time, memories, an experience, or health. You can also give a gift that helps others who have needs beyond our imagination. Here are some suggestions:
CLUTTER-FREE GIFTS
GIFT CARDS (not entirely clutter-free)
NON-PROFIT GIFT GIVING
GIFTS OF TIME
Finally, if you can’t go clutter-free, choose a gift that donates a portion of its profit to a favorite non-profit agency of your choice. Verify the charity at www.give.org.
Organize your best holiday season by starting early and focusing on family. Happy Holidays to you and yours!
“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Are you ready to downsize? Do you get stuck when trying to let go of items to which you have a sentimental attachment? Well, here are some tips to help you move forward:
HAVE A TREASURE HUNT
Consider the process of downsizing a treasure hunt. You’ve collected and inherited a plethora of items, now it’s time to select your treasures and let go of the rest.
USE MEMORY TRIGGERS
Ask yourself if you have other items that can serve as better memory triggers. For example, could you let go of brochures or souvenirs from travels because you have photos of the trip? Could you let go of Grandma’s broken sewing machine because you have her pearls? Another great option is to photograph items to preserve your memories, then release what you don’t use or love.
THE HEAD VS. HEART APPROACH
Let your storage space dictate how many of a category you will keep. You might decide that one shelf in your closet is practical to store your vases. If you have more than will fit that space, let go of your least favorite or seldom used ones.
Consider using numbers to help keep you logical, rather than emotional. For example, ask yourself how many of a specific item seems practical to keep. Four black purses seems generous. You have nine. Let go of five of your least favorite ones.
THE JOY FACTOR
Another way numbers help is by using The Joy Factor. Use a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 meaning ‘great joy‘ and 1 meaning ‘not so much’. Now, ask yourself where on the scale an items falls. If you want to downsize in a big way — you might keep only 5’s as these are your treasures.
PLEASE DON’T TOUCH!
Some people find that holding and touching an item greatly increases their attachment. If that’s you, you’ll want to have a friend, family member, or professional organizer help you. Have the other person hold up items so you can say “yay” or “nay.”
Letting go can be hard, but I assure you that the results will be well worth the effort. Living in a clutter-free environment promotes clarity, focus, peace and happiness.
What items do you find hold the most sentimental attachment?
Back in September, I attended my monthly meeting with the Environmentally Conscious Organizers which is a special interest group with the National Association of Professional Organizers. Our guest speaker was Beth Terry, who is the author of “My Plastic Free Life.” In 2007, Beth began an experiment to see if she could live without plastic and began blogging her experience after seeing a picture of a sea bird carcass whose belly was full of plastic.
She explained how recycling is a business and if there is no market for certain plastics they add them to our landfills or ship them to China just as our e-waste gets shipped to Africa. The best thing we can do is put very little into our recycling buckets as well as our landfill cans.
Most of us at the meeting had heard about the large amount of plastic floating in our ocean. According to Greenpeace.org “The trash vortex is an area the size of Texas in the North Pacific in which an estimated six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton, along with other slow degrading garbage, swirls slowly around like a clock, choked with dead fish, marine mammals, and birds who get snared. Some plastics in the gyre will not break down in the lifetimes of the grandchildren of the people who threw them away.”
You may be asking, “What does this have to do with organizing?” Well, this knowledge allows us the chance to train our clients on the many ways we can live in an environmentally conscious home.
Here are some tips from Beth’s list of 99 ways to live a plastic free life from her plastic free living guide.
1. Carry reusable shopping bags
Say no to plastic produce bags. If you have a car, keep your grocery bags in it and remember to bring them into the store with you! And one more thing: reusable bags are not just for groceries! Carry them for all your purchases, from electronics to clothing.
2. Give up bottled water
Not only does it come in a plastic bottle, but tremendous resources are used to extract, bottle, and ship it. And many brands of bottled water are simply filtered tap water. Instead, carry a stainless steel travel mug or water bottle at all times for coffee and other beverages while out and about.
3. Choose reusable glass or stainless steel containers for leftovers
We save nearly all glass jars and bottles for purchasing bulk foods and for storing leftovers in the refrigerator or even the freezer. When we run out of jars, we store leftovers in bowls with saucers on top instead of plastic wrap. Bowls with saucers are great for stacking as well.
For more information on how to live a plastic free life, go to www.myplasticfreelife.com
Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The grocery store revealed the first clue that something was happening. There — I was greeted with remnants of goblins and candy, cranberries and stuffing, tinsel and gift wrap galore – ALL AT ONCE.
Immediately, my mind tallied the numerous tasks that needed to be accomplished in the next few weeks. By the time I made my way to the check-out line, I’m fairly certain that my frazzled expression and my declaration that the “holiday season has arrived” caused the cashier concern.
I really do enjoy the holidays, but sometimes it’s hard to wrap my head around the extra seasonal tasks and obligations that need to fit into my already busy 24 hours. It’s a time puzzle indeed!
With these five simple strategies below, you — and I — will have time to enjoy this season.
Take a few minutes and “Brain Dump.” Do NOT keep your holiday to-dos in your head! One of my favorite everyday organizational tools is workflowy. It’s a great way to organize your projects and tasks on your computer, smart phone, or tablet. For those who like to write, a notebook works just as well, but have it with you everywhere you go.
Focus on what’s important. Pause and really think about what makes your holiday season special to you and your family. Are there traditions and events that you look forward to or approach with less than a little enthusiasm? For example, if the thought of baking 12 dozen cookies does not fill you with the holiday spirit, take it off your list or delegate it!
Calendar your important holiday projects and tasks first. You will be more productive knowing that you are planning for and doing what brings you joy during the holidays. Then fill in with the less significant tasks. Be at peace, if you cannot accomplish it all.
Set time limits to these tasks. Parkinson’s Law states that ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’ You will be amazed how quickly you are able to make a decision with a time limit. Go ahead, limit time spent gift shopping at the store or online.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. If you are entertaining during the holiday season, allow others to help you. This can mean a guest bringing a dish to contribute to your festive meal, someone setting the table, or helping with the mega dish clean-up. This year, I recognized that hosting the Thanksgiving meal was more than I could take on. After discussing alternatives with my family, we agreed that getting together was very important. Our solution — to meet at a centrally located restaurant for a leisurely family dinner. Less time shopping, cooking, cleaning, traveling and MORE time being together. I am grateful!
Feel free to share with us how you are planning to ease the stress of your holiday season.
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Eliminating all email isn’t really an option for most of us, but if it feels like you are drowning in your inbox, there are a few very simple ways to overcome email overload.
The first step is to control what’s coming in and where it goes. No matter what email system you use, whether it is through your company, Yahoo, Gmail, Verizon, Comcast, or some other platform, you have these tools available.
1. Unsubscribe from almost everything. The best, easiest, and quickest way to do this is clicking the “unsubscribe” button on the bottom of any newsletters or form letters you receive. These are legitimate automated unsubscribe functions, and you should use them liberally. (Do not click on any attachment with a .zip ending, since these are usually viruses.) Unsubscribe on a month’s worth of old emails all at one time, or do it on new emails you receive each day for the next month. (But stay subscribed to this one!)
2. Filter email into folders. Filters may work a little differently on each email service, but they are all roughly the same. You set up a “rule” that causes incoming email to automagically get sent to one of your email folders instead of your inbox. This is great for newsletters that you want to receive, but you can’t typically read during your regular day. They get batched together into a folder, and you can visit that folder when you have the time. Almost every email system has folders, rules, and filters. If you aren’t familiar with how to use them, click on your email’s help button and search for “how to use filters.”
3. Ruthlessly delete. Do you recognize this scenario? When you receive an incoming email that you aren’t sure if you need to keep, you just leave it in your inbox, just in case. But it’s just as easy to start defaulting to hit the delete button, and fish things out of the Trash folder if needed. Just be sure that your Trash folder doesn’t empty immediately. Set it to empty for somewhere between a day and a month, whatever you are comfortable with. You can usually change this setting.
If you do these three things, what’s left in your actual inbox will be much more manageable. Start today to reduce email overload. This is the first set of steps to take to eliminating unwanted email so you can focus on the email you do want.
With the holidays and photo taking season coming up, it’s not too early to start taking some steps toward organization. This will make it easier to retrieve photos, create cards and books (think gifts).
Because organizing the past can be overwhelming some people choose to start with the current. My personal choice is to do the old ones as well. Decide whether you want to go back and clean up all of your old photos OR do you want to start from now.
Download photos from your phone, camera and tablet frequently. If you lose your phone- your photos could be gone forever.
There are many software programs, some are great for sharing, some are great for printing cards, invitations and pretty much whatever you want, others not so much. Choose a program that meets your needs. Some of the more popular ones are: Linea, Shutterfly, Picasa, Flickr, and there are many more available your computer/laptop may already have software on it. If you are a Mac user iPhoto is good for organization.
When you are looking through your photos delete what you can, they take up a lot of space and we don’t want to use up space for bad photos.
Delete:
Some programs will allow you to tag your photos and rate them. That will help you sort them more easily if you are searching for something. This may not be necessary but it is available in some programs.
Now you are ready! You can easily create and print your cards, photo books photos on canvas and the myriad of other products available.
The final step is to BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP.
