Six Steps To Wrap Up The School Year

The last bell of the school year – is there a sweeter sound for any child? Thoughts of staying up late, swimming, adventures with friends, ice cream cones and cleaning out the school backpack beckon. Well, maybe cleaning out the backpack is not high on the list of fun things to do during the summer. But it is important and done with the right attitude it can be fun for both you and you child.  

Organizing Students’ Summer Homework

School’s out for summer! Students across the country are looking forward to ten weeks of playing, sleeping late and doing summer homework. What? Summer homework!? Many schools are adopting the idea of assigning reading and math work to do over the summer in order to keep students’ minds engaged and sharp. The work is to be turned in on the first day of the new school year.  The question is: how do you meet the student’s expectation of an unstructured summer with the school’s requirement to complete the assignments? Answer: plan with the student how to create just enough structure to complete the homework but provide plenty of unstructured time for relaxing.

Five Clutter Creating Things To Eliminate

Simplify the task of getting organized by minimizing what needs to be managed and organized. Eliminate these five things and you’ll significantly decrease the input of stuff into your life. 

Five Steps To Declutter And Organize Your Garage

One of the ironies of the garage is that it is designed to hold a car (or two or more) yet in many homes the garage holds everything but the car. Unfortunately the items stored in the garage are typically worth far less than the cars they are replacing. It’s time to take back the garage and make it an organized place to protect the expensive cars and equipment -- and maybe even enjoy.

Five Steps To Organize Your Tax Preparation

According to H&R Block, 20 – 25% of Americans wait until the last two weeks before the April 15 deadline to do their taxes. If you’re part of the last-minute crowd, let’s talk about how you can organize your tax preparation to minimize your stress and get the job done. 

How Do I Find And Work With A Professional Organizer?

Professional organizing is a relatively new profession, and as such it may be difficult to know where to start and what to expect when you want to work with an organizer. You might have seen professional organizers work on TV. Please bear in mind that the TV programs do not show the numerous behind-the-scenes helpers. It is difficult to get a sense of what the true timeline is for an organizing project when the entire process is compressed in an hour-long segment. There's also the cost. The TV shows have sponsors who provide goods and services. Your organizing project will take longer than an hour, will be manned by you and your organizer (and perhaps her organizer crew if she has one), and you will pay the cost of the services and the tools. But of course, you probably knew all of that. How do you get started in finding the right person to create the order you want? These guidelines should help.

Five Guidelines When Your Significant Other Is Disorganized

If you're struggling with your partner's disorganization, it might be tempting to jump in and throw out the clutter and organize his or her stuff. Your partner will see what organization looks like and will be inspired to maintain it plus you will reap the benefits of having a tidy space - except it doesn't work that way. Your partner will be angry because you threw something that was important (you didn't think so, but it was her/his stuff and therefore her/his call), your partner may very well feel devalued by your efforts, and that new organizing system may be confusing and difficult to maintain because your partner did not participate in it's creation. In short: don't go there. If your partner's disorganization is an issue, then it's important to address it in a respectful way. 

Fiive Steps To Building Your Organizing Mojo

     There are five steps for building your organizing mojo. Actually these steps are more like principles that provide the framework for organizing your life to increase order, calm, productivity and purpose.

The Sharpest (read: Most Productive) Tool in the Shed

Guest Post by Susan Brennan
 
I was recently preparing dinner for myself and I realized that the process was going slower than
normal. I was getting frustrated because the tomatoes weren’t dicing nicely, and even the
avocado wasn’t slicing well.

A Plan To Rectify Christmas Procrastination

Celebrators of Christmas: if you find yourself without gifts, without decorations, without an idea of what to serve at the holiday dinner, without a plan, and a bit (maybe a lot) stressed out, take a minute to read this.

Take a deep breath and ponder these things.

·      There still is some time, but not a lot of time, before Christmas.

·      Adjust the scope of your plans to fit the time that you have.

·      Write everything down so you don’t add on the stress of trying to remember things.

Five Steps To Bidding Adieu To The Holidays

1)   Get in the right frame of mind. After all of the excitement and activities of the holiday, the idea of putting things away can be a little dispiriting. Breathe some life into this project by giving yourself a deadline for putting things away and reframe the task - make the job part of the celebration with music, cookies and family involvement. Take pictures of each decorated area and put the pictures in the holiday notebook.

  

Holiday Cards - Party On

It’s fun to receive holiday cards. Their color and cheer add to the holiday spirit. And I love having tangible correspondence that connects me to friends and family in ways that social media can’t. But sending out cards – well that can be a task - a dreaded task at that. For a lot of people the shear volume of the work involved in sending out cards causes them to procrastinate. Rather than get caught up in the dread, let’s look at how sending cards can be more approachable by improving motivation and simplifying the process.

Getting Ready For The Holidays In Five Steps (Without Pulling Out Your Hair)

In 2011 USA Today asked people “Which best fits your holiday emotional state?” Not surprisingly, 27% of the respondents reported they feel stressed during the holiday. There are many sources of stress during the holidays. Undoubtedly some of the stress comes from the sheer volume of things to do during a relatively short period of time.  The house has to be gotten ready; the menus have to be written, shopped for and prepared; the social calendar managed; and the gifts gotten and wrapped – just to name a few of the extra concerns that come with the season.  Managing the holiday load will help you manage the stress, and you can do it in five steps.

Five Steps To End Crowded Closets – Steps Four and Five

Your wardrobe and accessories have been purged so that what remains projects your personal style and brand beautifully. You’ve compared your closet space to the volume of your wardrobe and picked up some tools to maximize the use of available space. Now it’s time to place items in your closet and discuss maintaining the order in your closet.

Five Steps To End Crowded Closets – Steps Two and Three

In step one the clothes that fit you, flatter you and convey your personal message were identified as the ones to keep. Charities, online selling and consignment shops are happy to take the clothes that do not compliment you. Now that you have distilled your wardrobe to a fashion concentrate, it’s time to analyze your space and storage needs and get the appropriate tools to increase the efficiency of space usage.

Five Steps To Ending Crowded Closets - Step One

Does the chill in the air have you looking for your sweaters and your heavier clothes? What are you going to do with those summer tank tops and shorts? This month’s 1380 Clutter Challenge will help you - we are going to end crowded closets with five steps.

Step one: have a fashion show!  Put on some upbeat music and maybe pour yourself a glass a wine. For the next few hours you’re going to work the runway.

Five Steps To A More Organized Desk - Steps Four and Five

The first three steps of organizing your desk entailed setting up your action system and sorting through the piles. If you feel like it took along time to go through your papers, keep this thought in mind: a one-inch stack of paper contains about 50 sheets of paper and that can translate into 50 separate decisions. Congratulate your self on your tenacity for sticking with the job.

Step 4: Review your new to-dos and put things away. After a sorting session review everything that you wrote down on your master list.

Five Steps To A More Organized Desk - Step Three

Steps one and two focused on evaluating your current organizing systems and setting up an action system for handling the paper that is currently coming across the desk. I like to implement an organizing system as early as possible. If we started going through the stacks of paper before setting up a new organizing system, the new paperwork will end up in a stack as well - further delaying a vision of a clean desk. Now that the action system is in place it's time to hit the stacks.

Step 3: Gather your tools and sort! Now we’re going to dig into those stacks and drawers.

Clear Spaces on 1380 The Woman - The Clutter Challenge

I'm excited to announce that I will be on the Let's Talk Shop show with Dawn Meadows Dixon and Teach Tigue at 9:45 AM every fourth Thursday of the month. Just turn your radio dial to 1380 AM.  Did you know that 1380 is the only woman-talk radio station in the area? Probably the country!

Five Steps To A More Organized Desk - Steps One And Two

Somewhere under the paper, the letters, and the electronic accessories there’s a desktop just earning to be productive.  In five steps you can be reunited with your desktop and be a whole lot more productive and focused. Although there aren’t many steps, this project will take time – the amount of time depends on the depth of your stacks. It’s time well invested because not only will you have a lovely vista for cranking out work, but also you’ll be developing habits that will have you increasingly more organized.