At our meeting on Thursday, I talked about Jamie Novak's list of the kinds of people that fall into the Clutter Trap. The list can be found in Jamie Novak's The Get Organized Answer Book (Sourcebooks Inc., 2009). She has identified seven different kinds of people and specific solutions for that specific issue. I don't know what you will think, but I can find aspects of many of these that I can identify with!
Types of disorganized people:
1. Organization product and tip junkie. You collect ideas and buy tools, but never actually do the work. Your solution: Stop buying and reading tips. Instead, set a timer for 18 minutes and tackle a small project.
2. Last on the list. You organize everyone else in the house, but your stuff is a mess. Your solution: Realize that you are setting an example for everyone else and they need to become self-sufficient. Show them how to organized on their own and spend a little more time on yourself.
3. The keeper. You keep everything because it means something to you, you paid good money for it, it’s still good or you might use it someday. But keeping everything clutters up space, preventing you from using the stuff you love. Your solution: Work on items that have the least meaning for you, and fill one bag with things you can give to a new home where they will be used and loved.
4. The last-minute emergency. The doorbell rings and you run around the house scooping up stuff and tossing it into baskets and bags. Then you stash the baskets and bags and greet your guests. Your solution: Plan ahead by breaking up larger clutter-clearing tasks into small jobs. Set a timer for 18 minutes and get to work.
5. The procrastinator. You plan to spend some time de-cluttering but never seem to get around to it. Or you start by picking up an item but then put it down, unsure what to do with it. Your solution: Set a schedule by making clutter-clearing dates with yourself and writing them on the calendar. Work for a small block to time and then give yourself a reward for a job well done. Your reward might be to watch a television show, have a special snack, have coffee with a friend, or relax and do nothing.
6. Driven to distraction: You set out to tackle an area and find something that belongs in another room. You bring it there and while you’re there get caught up doing something else, leaving your original project undone. Your solution: Focus on the task at hand by making piles of items to deliver somewhere else. Once the task is completed, distribute the items.
7. Perfection: You have a vision of what the space will look like, but there is no way you can live up to your high standard, so you do nothing. Your solution: Choose one small area and work on it. Resolve to make it good, and go back in your spare time to perfect it. (BLB: But remember, no one is perfect.)
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Last Word on Photographs from Jamie Novak
The following information is summarized and quoted from Jamie Novak's Get Organized Answer Book (Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks, Inc., 2009) Some is similar to the information I gleened from other Clutter Control books and sumarized in my last two posts. If you haven't spent some time with one of Jamie's books, you are missing some great motivational and factual information. Her books are full of practical advice for every kind of organizing challenge. Thanks, Jamie for your expertise!
First, Jamie suggests that you gather all of the photos you can easily find into one place; don’t go digging for them to get started, just work with the ones that are easily accessible. You will eventually need to get all of the undeveloped photos developed, including disposable cameras. Sort by event, person or chronologically. Have envelopes handy in which to send photos to other people, particularly duplicates. Don’t keep more than one copy of a photo. If there is no one to send them to, dispose of them. Don’t hold onto photos you don’t like.
Don’t do this in one marathon session and this is true for all clutter control projects. If you do too much, you may burn yourself out and cause you to lose motivation. Sort in front of the television; make it a family project or have friends come over with their photos and do the sorting together.
Once you have sorted all of the photos, then you need to decide how you are going to store them. Use whatever system works for you; if it isn’t easy for you to use, you won’t use it. You can enjoy photos from a box as easily as from an album. Precious photos like wedding and new baby photos should be kept in a disaster-proof box for safekeeping. This is also where you should store important negatives but the photos and the negatives should not be stored together in case something happens to one or the other. Use acid-free photo-safe boxes and store them away from direct sunlight, extreme temperatures and moisture. Standard photo-safe boxes hold about 1000 photos and have tabbed dividers. Negatives should be stored in acid-free envelopes or polypropylene pockets. For easy retrieval later, clearly label each storage “container,” whether you use albums or boxes. You can also use a combination of both – most photos stored in boxes with a few themed albums for vacations or other special events.
Don’t damage photos by:
- Storing them in the basement or the attic. Extreme temperatures can cause irreversible damage.
- Don’t store them where the humidity is over 70 percent (they can mildew) or under 40 percent (the can become brittle).
- Don’t expose photos to direct sunlight.
- Don’t place photos on magnetic pages in photo albums; the glue will ruin the photos.
- Don’t adhere photos to black photo pages. These pages are not acid-free and can damage the photos.
- Don’t write on the back of photos with a ball-point pen. It breaks the emulsion and can bleed through. Use a photo-safe pen instead.
- Don’t leave photos in a jumbled mess. Work in small yet consistent blocks of time to organize the piles of photos.
Digital Photos
Deciding to digitize your photo collection still requires a great deal of organization. To store and retrieve digital photos, you need to develop a system. Make it a habit to download your photos the same day you take them, no matter what. (If you don’t know how to do this, get help. Digital camera manufacturers often have toll-free numbers you can call for assistance.) As soon as you download the photos, delete the ones that are not so great. Better, yet, delete them as soon as you take them!
You can store photos in your computer in folders with the name of the event and date. You can group like events together in a large folder labeled with a time frame such as a year, or a season and the year, such as Fall 2009. Within the main folder you can create sub-folders for each of the events that you documented during that time frame. Name each photo with a recognizable caption. You can also group photos into folders by person, location or activity such as Mom’s Photos, Photos at Home or Company Picnics. The key to the success of this, or any, system is consistency. Whatever file naming system create, follow it regularly.
If you prefer to store and share actual photos, you can print them on your home printer; you can bring a flashdrive or disk to the local on-site digital printing facility such as your drugstore or variety store like Wal-Mart or K-Mart; or you can upload them to a photo publishing website like www.snapfish.com, www.Kodak.com, or www.shutterfly.com.
To store photos somewhere other than on your computer, you can burn them onto a CD. Then once you have labeled it, store the CD in a CD case. Again store like photos together, and make a CD of the same type of photos. Try not to burn photo of a wedding and a holiday onto the same CD. Make duplicate copies of CD’s containing special photos, and store them at someone else’s home or in a disaster-proof storage box. Also, make sure to back up your computer. If you don’t back up the files, your photos might be lost in the event of a major crash.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Digital Options
Rather than keep a lot of photographic prints that need to be put into albums and protected from temperature changes and moisture, you can consider storing your photos digitally. The main issue with this method is the capacity of the media type you choose. Photographs are usually very large files that take a lot of memory in your system, so many people choose to make copies of their photos to store in other places on other media than your hard drive. As with all information stored electronically, you run the risk that the media you have chosen becomes obsolete. I have heard recently a recommendation to update your archived files and their media type every ten years, but that may be too long. You need to keep abreast of the latest trends in electronic storage and weigh all of the factors that come into play – size of the device or media, the cost to store and maintain the data and the safety and stability of the media to be protected from damage or erasure. I’m sure we have all heard the horror stories of someone’s wedding video that got taped over by a football game or something along those lines.
The current favorite would be using a CD to store your digital images. CDs are very inexpensive to purchase and very easy to create. They allow another layer of classification for retrieval in that you can create CDs that are arranged by date, subject, location or photographer, just as we discussed yesterday for hardcopy photos, and you can make copies for your friends and relatives. DVDs are another alternative, but some older computers don’t have DVD burners and the media is a little more expensive and possibly a little more sensitive to damage. There are now a lot of inexpensive external hard drives that are great for storage of data. The smallest would be the flash or thumb drive and the cost/size ratio keeps getting better and better. When they first came out, a 512k flash drive could set you back $50+ and that device would not hold many photo files. Now you can get a good quality 8 gigabyte flash drive or larger for as little as $10.00! The fear with using flash drives might be that USB ports, where a flesh drive connects to your computer, could just as easily be replaced by some other connection in the near future that is faster or better…you never know. Consider that people who started saving their photos at the beginning of the digital photography era might have had to changed their media four or five times by now: 5 ¼ floopy disks, to 3.5 disks, to Zip or Jaz disk to CDs and now HD CDs and DVDs (and I’m sure I’m not up-to-date on the latest and the greatest). The factors that have made these different types of media come and go are more than just the capacity of this media. Other characteristics are the data transfer rate, seek time, power consumption, audible noise and shock resistance.
There are many sites on the Internet that now offer digital storage online that make sharing photos with friends quite easy, but this will have ongoing costs to continue to have them stored at these sites and your photos are at risk if the site you choose should shut down without notice.
Keeping your photographs digitally is a great space saving option, but it may not be a time saving option and it requires you to always have access to a computer or other electronic device to save them and to display them.
You can consider digital storage even if you did not take the photos digitally. You can scan your old pictures into your computer, which is incredibly time consuming or you can have them done professionally by a photo lab, which is very costly. In the Princeton area, you can bring all of your old photos to a photo lab like Taylor Photo on Alexander Road in West Windsor, (www.taylorphoto.com, 609-452-9444) and they will digitize them all and return them to you on a disk(s). If the photos were taken digitally, it will be more economical to deal with them electronically and never print them. If you want to share them with someone who does not have a computer, you can purchase a digital picture frame, load your pictures and give it as a gift. Make sure that you send detailed directions if you are sending this to someone who is not computer literate or you may find that they put the frame away never realizing that there are photographs stored on it for their viewing pleasure!
Like physical photos, virtual photos need to be organized and it is essential that you set up a system and continue to follow the guidelines you establish in order to ever expect to locate a single image after time has gone by. These guidelines will include a naming convention for each picture, a data storage tree of files, folders and subfolders and a sorting hierarchy similar to the physical photo storage system by date, place, event or subject. As with photo prints, the bad digital photos (over exposed, blurry, eyes shut, pose mis-aligned, etc.) should be deleted as soon as you take them or at the very latest when you download them from the camera. There is even less sense keeping bad digital photos since at the time you retrieve them from the camera, you have not spent any money on them to feel guilty about throwing away. And if you have been using digital photography for some time, you have probably gotten into the habit of taking many shots since “they don’t cost anything” but the theory of that practice is that you probably only get one out of 20 (or less) that are worth keeping. The best way to handle digital photos is to download the images from your camera right away (on the day they were taken if possible) so that you won’t be faced with a full disk of 300+ photos taken over a six month period to deal with. Once they are downloaded you need to edit them, name them, sort them and “file” them while your memory is still fresh.
The current favorite would be using a CD to store your digital images. CDs are very inexpensive to purchase and very easy to create. They allow another layer of classification for retrieval in that you can create CDs that are arranged by date, subject, location or photographer, just as we discussed yesterday for hardcopy photos, and you can make copies for your friends and relatives. DVDs are another alternative, but some older computers don’t have DVD burners and the media is a little more expensive and possibly a little more sensitive to damage. There are now a lot of inexpensive external hard drives that are great for storage of data. The smallest would be the flash or thumb drive and the cost/size ratio keeps getting better and better. When they first came out, a 512k flash drive could set you back $50+ and that device would not hold many photo files. Now you can get a good quality 8 gigabyte flash drive or larger for as little as $10.00! The fear with using flash drives might be that USB ports, where a flesh drive connects to your computer, could just as easily be replaced by some other connection in the near future that is faster or better…you never know. Consider that people who started saving their photos at the beginning of the digital photography era might have had to changed their media four or five times by now: 5 ¼ floopy disks, to 3.5 disks, to Zip or Jaz disk to CDs and now HD CDs and DVDs (and I’m sure I’m not up-to-date on the latest and the greatest). The factors that have made these different types of media come and go are more than just the capacity of this media. Other characteristics are the data transfer rate, seek time, power consumption, audible noise and shock resistance.
There are many sites on the Internet that now offer digital storage online that make sharing photos with friends quite easy, but this will have ongoing costs to continue to have them stored at these sites and your photos are at risk if the site you choose should shut down without notice.
Keeping your photographs digitally is a great space saving option, but it may not be a time saving option and it requires you to always have access to a computer or other electronic device to save them and to display them.
You can consider digital storage even if you did not take the photos digitally. You can scan your old pictures into your computer, which is incredibly time consuming or you can have them done professionally by a photo lab, which is very costly. In the Princeton area, you can bring all of your old photos to a photo lab like Taylor Photo on Alexander Road in West Windsor, (www.taylorphoto.com, 609-452-9444) and they will digitize them all and return them to you on a disk(s). If the photos were taken digitally, it will be more economical to deal with them electronically and never print them. If you want to share them with someone who does not have a computer, you can purchase a digital picture frame, load your pictures and give it as a gift. Make sure that you send detailed directions if you are sending this to someone who is not computer literate or you may find that they put the frame away never realizing that there are photographs stored on it for their viewing pleasure!
Like physical photos, virtual photos need to be organized and it is essential that you set up a system and continue to follow the guidelines you establish in order to ever expect to locate a single image after time has gone by. These guidelines will include a naming convention for each picture, a data storage tree of files, folders and subfolders and a sorting hierarchy similar to the physical photo storage system by date, place, event or subject. As with photo prints, the bad digital photos (over exposed, blurry, eyes shut, pose mis-aligned, etc.) should be deleted as soon as you take them or at the very latest when you download them from the camera. There is even less sense keeping bad digital photos since at the time you retrieve them from the camera, you have not spent any money on them to feel guilty about throwing away. And if you have been using digital photography for some time, you have probably gotten into the habit of taking many shots since “they don’t cost anything” but the theory of that practice is that you probably only get one out of 20 (or less) that are worth keeping. The best way to handle digital photos is to download the images from your camera right away (on the day they were taken if possible) so that you won’t be faced with a full disk of 300+ photos taken over a six month period to deal with. Once they are downloaded you need to edit them, name them, sort them and “file” them while your memory is still fresh.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Photographs among the clutter
I have been finding some common themes that are addressed in every book I have read on the subject of clutter. One common theme is how to deal with photographs. I suspect that photographs occur in everyone’s collection of clutter. Dealing with photographs is time consuming even for the most organized person because you have to deal with storage systems, format and retrieval. I think this is a subject that is worth exploring in this blog.
The biggest hurdle when dealing with photographs is selecting a system for storage. There are many options available, from scrapbooks, which have become a significant pastime for many people; to photo albums, boxes or binders; or to one of a myriad of electronic storage options. Every book agrees that the best system is the system that works for you personally and making that determination will be worth any time and effort you dedicate to it in the long run. You might assume that whatever system you may have attempted in the past has not really worked if you find that there are photographs mixed into your piles of clutter. The criteria you should consider when evaluating these systems are ease of use, cost of purchasing and expanding the system, and ease of retrieval and the bottom line on all of these considerations is keep it simple!
Unless you are looking for an enjoyable yet time consuming and often expensive hobby, scrapbooks should not be your primary system of choice. Even if you are a dedicated scrap-booker, you should have a method of storage and retrieval that can handle photos from the start quickly and easily; you can always move the special ones to a scrapbook at some time in the future. Photo albums are the easiest way for people to casually glance through snapshots, but the photos in the albums and the albums themselves need to be organized and labeled in some meaningful way. Making guests rummage through page after page of dull photos is a sure fire way of insuring that your friends will think twice about coming to visit you in your home!
The first task is to sort through the photos and throw away any repeats or multiple shots of the same view. Keep one (or two) at the most of each view and only keep the best. Get rid of most of the negatives as well. There are very few photos that you will go back years later and have reprinted from a negative; making copies of actual photos is very easy to do these days. Keep negatives only for prized photos and truly meaningful events. For those that you do save, they should be stored in their own envelope, labeled as to the content, or in archival polyethylene transparent holders and in a different location than the photos themselves. Neither photos nor negatives should be stored in the attic or the basement.
The second most important task is to label all photos as soon as possible with as much information as you think will be necessary for future recollection. There should at least be a date and the full name of anyone who appears in the photo. If the location or the action of the photo isn’t obvious to any causal viewer, you should include that information as well. You should never write directly anywhere on the photo itself; use an acid-free label applied to the back of the photo or write the information on the album page. Use only albums with acid-free paper; albums with “magnetic pages” or black paper are not safe for the storage of photos. Use only archival adhesives. Albums are easier to store and flip through than looking at stacks of photos in photo boxes, unless you are very good at sorting and making section labels for the box. Also, putting them in albums makes you consider more carefully which you should keep and which you should send to a friend or relative or throw away.
Your final task before relegating photos to a storage system would be to sort them into some usable and logical order either by date, location, activity or person (either the subject of the photo or the one behind the camera.) You should select the sorting categories based on how you might imagine you will want to use the photos in the future. Consider if you are more likely to want to take a trip down memory lane by date (as in what we did in our 20’s), by location (as in what countries have we have visited in Asia), by activity (as in let’s compare all of our Christmas trees) or will you want to have all of the pictures you have of your brother or all of the pictures taken by your daughter all in one place. This may or may not be possible and exceptions can be made, but the clearer your method of sorting, the easier it will be to put photos away in the future. You also may be organized to have several different types of storage systems and a heirarchy of sorting, but the more decisions you have to make, the less likely you are to always get your photos stored.
And whatever system you decide on and whatever method you use for sorting your photos, this should be done as soon as possible after the photos are taken and developed or printed. Don’t set them down somewhere to do later…do it right away…and knowing that this will be your goal; create your system with this in mind.
Tomorrow I will look at electronic storage of photos.
The biggest hurdle when dealing with photographs is selecting a system for storage. There are many options available, from scrapbooks, which have become a significant pastime for many people; to photo albums, boxes or binders; or to one of a myriad of electronic storage options. Every book agrees that the best system is the system that works for you personally and making that determination will be worth any time and effort you dedicate to it in the long run. You might assume that whatever system you may have attempted in the past has not really worked if you find that there are photographs mixed into your piles of clutter. The criteria you should consider when evaluating these systems are ease of use, cost of purchasing and expanding the system, and ease of retrieval and the bottom line on all of these considerations is keep it simple!
Unless you are looking for an enjoyable yet time consuming and often expensive hobby, scrapbooks should not be your primary system of choice. Even if you are a dedicated scrap-booker, you should have a method of storage and retrieval that can handle photos from the start quickly and easily; you can always move the special ones to a scrapbook at some time in the future. Photo albums are the easiest way for people to casually glance through snapshots, but the photos in the albums and the albums themselves need to be organized and labeled in some meaningful way. Making guests rummage through page after page of dull photos is a sure fire way of insuring that your friends will think twice about coming to visit you in your home!
The first task is to sort through the photos and throw away any repeats or multiple shots of the same view. Keep one (or two) at the most of each view and only keep the best. Get rid of most of the negatives as well. There are very few photos that you will go back years later and have reprinted from a negative; making copies of actual photos is very easy to do these days. Keep negatives only for prized photos and truly meaningful events. For those that you do save, they should be stored in their own envelope, labeled as to the content, or in archival polyethylene transparent holders and in a different location than the photos themselves. Neither photos nor negatives should be stored in the attic or the basement.
The second most important task is to label all photos as soon as possible with as much information as you think will be necessary for future recollection. There should at least be a date and the full name of anyone who appears in the photo. If the location or the action of the photo isn’t obvious to any causal viewer, you should include that information as well. You should never write directly anywhere on the photo itself; use an acid-free label applied to the back of the photo or write the information on the album page. Use only albums with acid-free paper; albums with “magnetic pages” or black paper are not safe for the storage of photos. Use only archival adhesives. Albums are easier to store and flip through than looking at stacks of photos in photo boxes, unless you are very good at sorting and making section labels for the box. Also, putting them in albums makes you consider more carefully which you should keep and which you should send to a friend or relative or throw away.
Your final task before relegating photos to a storage system would be to sort them into some usable and logical order either by date, location, activity or person (either the subject of the photo or the one behind the camera.) You should select the sorting categories based on how you might imagine you will want to use the photos in the future. Consider if you are more likely to want to take a trip down memory lane by date (as in what we did in our 20’s), by location (as in what countries have we have visited in Asia), by activity (as in let’s compare all of our Christmas trees) or will you want to have all of the pictures you have of your brother or all of the pictures taken by your daughter all in one place. This may or may not be possible and exceptions can be made, but the clearer your method of sorting, the easier it will be to put photos away in the future. You also may be organized to have several different types of storage systems and a heirarchy of sorting, but the more decisions you have to make, the less likely you are to always get your photos stored.
And whatever system you decide on and whatever method you use for sorting your photos, this should be done as soon as possible after the photos are taken and developed or printed. Don’t set them down somewhere to do later…do it right away…and knowing that this will be your goal; create your system with this in mind.
Tomorrow I will look at electronic storage of photos.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Post Inventory Information
We did an inventory here in the library yesterday. Every employee regularly scheduled to work Friday was assigned a section of shelves to scan and, with 40 employees and volunteers, we completed most of the non-fiction section. As was the case last year, I was so impressed by how much you can get done if you just plan a task to get completed and set your mind to it…and get the help of 40 of your friends and family members! If only we could have a crew like that at our disposal to help with the task of de-cluttering! Some books suggest having de-cluttering parties where you have your friends come over to help you de-clutter and you do the same for your friends. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you are fairly well organized and your friends are clutter-a-holics. You may never have the opportunity to get back to your own house to enjoy the success you had during your de-clutter party.
Anyway, as luck would have it, I was assigned the section of shelves where the de-clutter books are kept! For those who want to visit this section, you will find it just past the cookbooks at 648.8. I have pulled all of the books that were in that section and I thought I might take a moment to tell you what titles we have. We have a copy of Outwitting Clutter, by Bill Adler, Jr. (Globe Pequot Press, 2002) which I shared at our last meeting; Jamie Novak’s first clutter-control book, 1000 Best Quick and Easy Organizing Secrets (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006); Organizing From the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life by Julia Morgenstern (Henry Holt and Company, 1998); Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff: the Q.U.I.C.K.* Way to Bring Lasting Order to Household Chaos, edited by Lori Baird (Yankee Publishing Co., 2002); The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Simple Life by Georgene Lockwood (Macmillan, 2000); Simplify Your Space: Create Order and Reduce Stress by Marcia Ramsland (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2007); The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living by Janet Luhrs (Broadway Books, 1997); and Organize It!: How to Declutter Every Nook and Cranny in and Outside Your Home by Mervyn Kaufman (New York: Filipacchi Publishing, 2006). The last book on this list is a Woman’s Day Special publication and includes photographs of clutter free spaces using storage systems and furniture designed for such a purpose. These space are inspirational, but are they spaces used by real people?
I will glance through these books to see what information I can glean for the meeting next week but get them back on the shelves as soon as possible, in case someone might like to borrow one in preparation for the meeting. See you Thursday evening!
*Quantify Your Clutter, Unload, Isolate, Contain, Keep it Up from Lori Baird's book Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff.
Anyway, as luck would have it, I was assigned the section of shelves where the de-clutter books are kept! For those who want to visit this section, you will find it just past the cookbooks at 648.8. I have pulled all of the books that were in that section and I thought I might take a moment to tell you what titles we have. We have a copy of Outwitting Clutter, by Bill Adler, Jr. (Globe Pequot Press, 2002) which I shared at our last meeting; Jamie Novak’s first clutter-control book, 1000 Best Quick and Easy Organizing Secrets (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006); Organizing From the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life by Julia Morgenstern (Henry Holt and Company, 1998); Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff: the Q.U.I.C.K.* Way to Bring Lasting Order to Household Chaos, edited by Lori Baird (Yankee Publishing Co., 2002); The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Simple Life by Georgene Lockwood (Macmillan, 2000); Simplify Your Space: Create Order and Reduce Stress by Marcia Ramsland (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2007); The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living by Janet Luhrs (Broadway Books, 1997); and Organize It!: How to Declutter Every Nook and Cranny in and Outside Your Home by Mervyn Kaufman (New York: Filipacchi Publishing, 2006). The last book on this list is a Woman’s Day Special publication and includes photographs of clutter free spaces using storage systems and furniture designed for such a purpose. These space are inspirational, but are they spaces used by real people?
I will glance through these books to see what information I can glean for the meeting next week but get them back on the shelves as soon as possible, in case someone might like to borrow one in preparation for the meeting. See you Thursday evening!
*Quantify Your Clutter, Unload, Isolate, Contain, Keep it Up from Lori Baird's book Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tips for Success 3.0
I will try to glean today’s tips from Michelle Passoff’s Lighten Up! (HarperCollins, 1998). Although the book is written in chapters within three major sections and not in the form of the other books I have been consulting which are generally a series of short paragraphs giving tips or answering questions, there are “at-a-glance” checklists at the end of each section that serve as a helpful summary of the ideas Ms. Passoff has presented in that section. The following tips are direct quotes or are paraphrased from the at-a-glance sections of the book:
Part One - Getting Started At-a-Glance (pgs. 50-51)
1. Being clear on what you in your life (instead of the clutter and the time wasted on its maintenance) will help you choose what to keep and what to get rid of. Write these goals down and refer to them for encouragement.
2. Start by taking a non-judgmental tour of your home to identify clutter hot spots. Keep a journal of the process, including your goals on what you are making room for by clearing the clutter. Take before and after pictures of each location for encouragement along the way (have your digital camera handy to record these images and to capture an image of items that you want to remember, but not save.)
3. Seek encouragement from family and friends, like our de-clutter club!
Part Two – Learning Skills At-a-Glance (pgs. 154-155)
4. Handle one item at a time. Don’t worry about getting everything where it is ultimately going; just get it on its journey whether it be to somewhere else in your house or out of your house altogether – to the dump, the recycle center, the consignment shop, etc.
5. Leave no stone unturned – go 100%!
6. Dispose of stuff with panache and ceremony! Celebrate your successes!
7. Don’t cover your tracks – once an area is de-cluttered, don’t put any more clutter there! Be diligent and don’t be afraid of empty space – this is a good thing!
Part Three – Living Clutter Free At-a-Glance (pgs. 185-186)
8. Routinely handle the daily mail and don’t let it accumulate – have a system in place and discipline yourself to use it until it becomes habit. Adapt it as necessary until it feels comfortable.
9. Use your new found time wisely – let go of ideas that restrict and confine you. Use time for its best and true purpose – as the space within which you can live your life fully. Keep and carry only one time planner or date-book system and use it to create a schedule that corresponds to what you are making room for in your life and that you look forward to following.
10. Housekeeping at regularly scheduled times can not only help you keep the space you created open, but make it sparkle. Declutter emotional, mental and spiritual realms as a way to continue to honor yourself and be more at home in your world.
Part One - Getting Started At-a-Glance (pgs. 50-51)
1. Being clear on what you in your life (instead of the clutter and the time wasted on its maintenance) will help you choose what to keep and what to get rid of. Write these goals down and refer to them for encouragement.
2. Start by taking a non-judgmental tour of your home to identify clutter hot spots. Keep a journal of the process, including your goals on what you are making room for by clearing the clutter. Take before and after pictures of each location for encouragement along the way (have your digital camera handy to record these images and to capture an image of items that you want to remember, but not save.)
3. Seek encouragement from family and friends, like our de-clutter club!
Part Two – Learning Skills At-a-Glance (pgs. 154-155)
4. Handle one item at a time. Don’t worry about getting everything where it is ultimately going; just get it on its journey whether it be to somewhere else in your house or out of your house altogether – to the dump, the recycle center, the consignment shop, etc.
5. Leave no stone unturned – go 100%!
6. Dispose of stuff with panache and ceremony! Celebrate your successes!
7. Don’t cover your tracks – once an area is de-cluttered, don’t put any more clutter there! Be diligent and don’t be afraid of empty space – this is a good thing!
Part Three – Living Clutter Free At-a-Glance (pgs. 185-186)
8. Routinely handle the daily mail and don’t let it accumulate – have a system in place and discipline yourself to use it until it becomes habit. Adapt it as necessary until it feels comfortable.
9. Use your new found time wisely – let go of ideas that restrict and confine you. Use time for its best and true purpose – as the space within which you can live your life fully. Keep and carry only one time planner or date-book system and use it to create a schedule that corresponds to what you are making room for in your life and that you look forward to following.
10. Housekeeping at regularly scheduled times can not only help you keep the space you created open, but make it sparkle. Declutter emotional, mental and spiritual realms as a way to continue to honor yourself and be more at home in your world.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tips for Success 2.0
Today’s tips, as promised, are all quoted or paraphrased from Donna Smallin’s earlier book; Unclutter Your Home (Pownal, VT: Storey Publishing, 1999). This is a book that claims to have 700 tips and ideas, so there are lots to share…
1. Store the things you use most often in the most accessible location. This is true for placement in your house as well as for placement within a closet, cabinet or bookshelf. Store things where you use them.
2. When uncluttering a shelf, drawer, cupboard or closet, take everything out. If you pick and choose things, you will never make a dent. Clean the closet or shelf while it is empty including vacuuming the carpet and dusting all of the contents. Put like things together; get rid of stuff you don’t use, need or like; contain what is left and put it back. Time your projects to be able to complete each task and put everything away by the end of the session. (However, I have also read that leaving a project unfinished will help motivate you to continue and save you the time it will take to decide what to do.)
3. If you have a bag of stuff to discard, and it is not near garbage collection day, plan a trip to a dump or recycle center, otherwise you may be tempted to reconsider your decisions.
4. Repurpose containers you like, such as bowls, baskets and decorative boxes, to store items in plain sight. A basket can contain rolled towels on the floor of the bathroom near the shower or tub or a basket or decorative box can contain CDs on a shelf near your audio equipment. Keep a small bowl or tray in the places that things like keys or change accumulate. Decorative hat boxes, piled on top of a shelf, high dresser or even on the floor, make attractive storage containers for miscellaneous items like scarves, gloves, etc. or for individual craft projects.
5. Use your vertical space to the best advantage. Shelving units that don’t go to the ceiling waste the space above. If you do go up high to store things, keep a step stool close at hand.
6. Use the back of every door in every room, closet and cabinet. Use store bought racks that are made for this purpose to store shoes, books, pantry items, etc. At the very least, install a few clothes hooks.
7. Use a hanging shoe bag with clear pockets on the back of coat closet doors to store mittens, gloves, earmuffs and hats. You can also use a shoe bag in other closets to organize smaller items: in your clothes closet for hose, socks, scarves and accessories; on the back of the bathroom door or inside the linen closet to store miscellaneous toiletries and make-up or in the closet where you store cleaning supplies to put vacuum bags, sponges and brushes.
8. Hang a doorknob or wall-hanging basket or key hooks on or near the door you use most often to contain keys and outgoing mail.
9. Think of your refrigerator as a large cupboard. Designate specific shelves for specific things. Always keep leftovers in the same place in the refrigerator so that things won’t get hidden. Use storage bins for small items on the shelves and get racks that hang below the shelves for large soda bottles. Consider adding a turntable to make items at the back more accessible.
10. Keep a nylon bag hung on the back of the bedroom door in which to put clothes that need to be dry cleaned.
And one final word of encouragement from Donna Smallin’s book: In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Always do what you are afraid to do.” Tackle that clutter today!
1. Store the things you use most often in the most accessible location. This is true for placement in your house as well as for placement within a closet, cabinet or bookshelf. Store things where you use them.
2. When uncluttering a shelf, drawer, cupboard or closet, take everything out. If you pick and choose things, you will never make a dent. Clean the closet or shelf while it is empty including vacuuming the carpet and dusting all of the contents. Put like things together; get rid of stuff you don’t use, need or like; contain what is left and put it back. Time your projects to be able to complete each task and put everything away by the end of the session. (However, I have also read that leaving a project unfinished will help motivate you to continue and save you the time it will take to decide what to do.)
3. If you have a bag of stuff to discard, and it is not near garbage collection day, plan a trip to a dump or recycle center, otherwise you may be tempted to reconsider your decisions.
4. Repurpose containers you like, such as bowls, baskets and decorative boxes, to store items in plain sight. A basket can contain rolled towels on the floor of the bathroom near the shower or tub or a basket or decorative box can contain CDs on a shelf near your audio equipment. Keep a small bowl or tray in the places that things like keys or change accumulate. Decorative hat boxes, piled on top of a shelf, high dresser or even on the floor, make attractive storage containers for miscellaneous items like scarves, gloves, etc. or for individual craft projects.
5. Use your vertical space to the best advantage. Shelving units that don’t go to the ceiling waste the space above. If you do go up high to store things, keep a step stool close at hand.
6. Use the back of every door in every room, closet and cabinet. Use store bought racks that are made for this purpose to store shoes, books, pantry items, etc. At the very least, install a few clothes hooks.
7. Use a hanging shoe bag with clear pockets on the back of coat closet doors to store mittens, gloves, earmuffs and hats. You can also use a shoe bag in other closets to organize smaller items: in your clothes closet for hose, socks, scarves and accessories; on the back of the bathroom door or inside the linen closet to store miscellaneous toiletries and make-up or in the closet where you store cleaning supplies to put vacuum bags, sponges and brushes.
8. Hang a doorknob or wall-hanging basket or key hooks on or near the door you use most often to contain keys and outgoing mail.
9. Think of your refrigerator as a large cupboard. Designate specific shelves for specific things. Always keep leftovers in the same place in the refrigerator so that things won’t get hidden. Use storage bins for small items on the shelves and get racks that hang below the shelves for large soda bottles. Consider adding a turntable to make items at the back more accessible.
10. Keep a nylon bag hung on the back of the bedroom door in which to put clothes that need to be dry cleaned.
And one final word of encouragement from Donna Smallin’s book: In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Always do what you are afraid to do.” Tackle that clutter today!
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