simply-org.com Blog

For the fun of it…here are my favorite organizing tools.

It is the beginning of a new season and time to re-organize the closet.  It feels great to move the heavy sweaters out of the way and bring out the tank tops and sundresses.   It is not fun to do this if your closet is stuffed full.  Here’s a simple tip for everyone to help you de-clutter your over-flowing closet.

This is a really great idea because it asks you to continue to process of editing all year.

The change of season is the perfect time to review your wardrobe and make some edits.  You can do it all at once, or better yet, a little everyday.

No room in your closet?  Put your container in the laundry room.

Did we ever anticipate the amount of email that we would be sending and receiving when it first started? No way. The fact is the “office” has changed from a place to any-place as the internet and email are available anywhere, anytime. The messages keep coming at us and we keep responding, or letting it pile up, or getting stressed out.

It is interesting to see the major time management gurus beginning to address this shift in our culture. I will share that the core principles of time management still apply even with this explosion of messaging.

Stop reading email as it comes in.

Instead read it periodically.

Scattered email reading is really a time waster. There is tons of research on multi-tasking and interruptions which show over and over that interruptions take up to 10 minutes to recover. So imagine you are concentrating on something and also constantly flipping to your email, responding, filing, deleting, forwarding and more. The time it takes to go back to your original project and get your head back into that space can be anywhere from a few minutes to 10. Ouch, that is a lot of wasted time.

• Set up specific times to read email and communicate to others those times so that you manage their expectations as far as your response time.

• Respond quickly that have a simple and quick response.

• Leave the rest in either your in-box or folders you have set up for later When you have time to “do the work” to respond.

• Delete when you are done, or file it away. In other words, clean up your in-box often.

Are you having trouble finding basic things in your home or office? Are you wasting countless minutes looking, looking, looking?

There are a few things that come up over and over with my new clients. One of those basic things is that there is no “home” for things.

“A place for everything and everything in its place”

We have all heard this quote before, but do you practice it in your life?

Here’s an example. I was recently in a house where basic things did not have a home. Supplies for hobbies were in multiple rooms. Sports equipment was in the car, hall closet, and several places in the garage. Mail piles were all over the house.

The first thing this family had to do was to collect things together: all the scrapbooking supplies, sports equipment, mail, photos, etc. The technical term for this is Sort. (OK, you can chuckle at the phrase “technical term”).

The second key was to cull down the amount of stuff in each category.

Third, and very important, is to Assign a Home to each category of things. So the Scrapbooking supplies all went into the home office, the sports equipment in the garage and the mail has a station at the kitchen desk.

Have you assigned a home to things in your house? Take time this week to start working on this. Choose something that you are constantly searching for and losing time.   Start by pulling everything together and assigning a specific home to it. If you are constantly losing the keys, have one specific place where you drop the keys. Always leave them there, and always find them there.

What’s the thing that you need to assign to a home?

Be Prepared to close down and replace your lost cards and personal information in case your wallet ever gets lost or stolen. Think of it this way, if you wanted to call Visa and let them know your card is lost, where’s the phone number? It’s on the back of your card and that won’t do you any good once it is missing.

DO

• Empty your wallet (clean it out while you are at it).

• Make a list of all the contents and the contact telephone numbers.

• Store this list in a secure place.

• If you put this on a spreadsheet in your computer, be sure it is password protected and have a hard copy in a safe place.

• Consider making photocopies of both sides of all your wallet contents.

DON’T

• Never carry super personal information like your SS# in your wallet.

• Don’t list credit card numbers on your inventory list. You might have the last 4 digits, but the CC companies can look up your account with a few verifying questions.

• Don’t carry any passwords in your wallet.

I did this last week and it took only 15 minutes….you can do it too.

You have completed the “rough sort”, gotten rid of the junk, and  sorted your big pile into smaller ones.  Now you are ready to put these into file folders

• One color (manila works best) file folders.
• BOLD (possibly colored) markers.
• Hanging files for file drawers (cabinet or file box…either way you need a container).
• Use one color.  Why?  because you don’t want to get hung up on colors if you run out of one color.  If you really like color coding files, buy BOLD color markers.  Sharpie is making thinner tips in many colors.  Pick up a pack.

1. Title files with names that are meaningful to you.  There are no rules that you need use certain names.

2. Don’t use numbers.  instead or 2010 Taxes, say Taxes, 2101.
   

3. Put your piles into the folders.

4. Hang a group of hanging files in your container.

5. Make TABS with BIG HEADINGS straight down the center.  Don’t stagger the tabs.  Arrange in alphabetical order.

6. Make a second set of TABS with smaller headings for the sub categories and line them up straight down the right or left side.

• Why don’t you stagger the tabs?  It is less jarring on the eye to keep them all lined up.  Also, if you add a hanging file later it will mess up your stagger pattern and throw you in a tizzy.
• Why all these rules?  It is proven over and over that labeling and using an alphabetical system us easier to use.  Remember, you are setting this up to find things later.  Make it as logical and simple to use.

OK, you are ready to tackle those taxes…but don’t call me for tax advice.