Peace of Mind Organizing

Inching toward normal

9 April 2021

Today, April 9, all Missourians 16 years and older are eligible for a vaccination. Earlier this week, I became fully vaccinated when I hit the two-week mark after my second Pfizer shot. I lucked into a leftover dose back in February and was absolutely thrilled I didn’t have to wait until all Missourians were eligible, since I didn’t qualify in any other tier.

To celebrate being fully vaccinated I planned several fun things this week. It felt so good to do some once-normal things that I haven’t done for over a year. Here’s a look at my special week (and the special plan I have for next month):

• I went to my favorite resale shop and bought some accessories to go with my two Wool& dresses. (I’m still wearing the Rowena I wore for 100 days and I’m alternating it (and sometimes combining it) with my reward dress, the Sierra.) And then I went to DSW and bought three pairs of summer shoes. I am all set for shoes.
• I got a facial and a brow shaping at Ginger Bay Salon and Spa.
• I floated in flotation tank at FLOAT STL (it was sooooo relaxing).
• Tomorrow I’m doing an in-person consult with a favorite client.
• Sunday I’m going to a birthday party(!) for dear friends. Our whole little group is fully vaccinated and we can’t wait to see one another again.
• In May, I’m flying to Walla Walla, Washington, to see my dad and will spend some time with my friend and podcast co-host Shannon Wilkinson in Portland, Oregon.

I know that COVID is still far too prevalent. I’m wearing a mask and maintaining social distance in public. But I am so delighted to be past the fear of contracting or spreading the virus.

As larger numbers of people are vaccinated and things get back to how they were, I will still embrace some of the new pandemic habits that have proven beneficial, like:

• daily Yoga with Adriene
• daily handling of my finances with YNAB
• frequent Zoom calls with distant friends

I think it’s probably good that in 2020 we didn’t know how long this was going to stretch out. But today, with blooming flowers and some restored freedoms I’m feeling like 2021 might just turn out okay.

My easy daily gratitude practice

5 April 2021

I’m a big believer in the power of a gratitude practice. I think expressing gratitude for the many things I have to be grateful for helps me focus on the positive and keeps me centered. I’ve tried a number of ways to practice gratitude, including a gratitude journal and a gratitude email exchange.

In early 2021, I came upon a new method that has been so successful for me that I wanted to share. I heard about the book, The Five Minute Journal, which provides a space to briefly reflect on gratitude by answering the same questions each day. I borrowed the questions from that book and made them into a Trello card that is on my Daily Task Management Board.

Each day, a task called Five Minute Journal is moved into my To Do Today list on Trello. Each morning, I fill it out (it actually just takes a minute or two) and move it to my Done Today list. Then I get a burst of confetti. (That confetti is so rewarding!)

Here’s what the back of the card looks like, so you can see the questions I’m answering each day:

This process has made it outrageously easy for me to embrace gratitude in my daily life. If you use Trello (or I’m sure other task apps), I encourage you to give it a try. Or go old school and buy the book and fill in your answers to the questions by hand.

A gratitude practice is so valuable. By integrating it into my morning routine and filling it out right in my task board I never miss a day.

Styling your Zoom backdrop

29 March 2021

Before 2020 I very rarely talked with anyone via video. But then the pandemic hit and just like that Zoom became a way of life. I started out mostly chatting with friends, but gradually I started doing consultations with clients via Zoom (or occasionally FaceTime). I used my laptop’s webcam, which is at about 90 degree angle from the big external monitor I ordinarily face. When I’m using my computer, facing that monitor, I have a bulletin board on my left.

The result was that when I turned to face my laptop’s webcam, my bulletin board was my Zoom backdrop. I love my bulletin board and it contained things that make me happy (like my Hamilton Playbills). But as a Zoom backdrop it was quite cluttered and distracting. That view also showed the top of my desk, which meant I usually had to tidy up before going on Zoom.

See what I mean?

Once I started doing presentations via Zoom, I realized it was time to up my game. I purchased a Logitech webcam that I attached to my external monitor in front of me. So the backdrop completely changed, as you can see in this picture.

Then I did something really smart: I asked my friend, Geralin Thomas of Metropolitan Organizing to advise me over Zoom how to style my backdrop. We styled it in real time, with her sending me around my house looking for items that might work. At the end of the session, I had a short shopping list of things to purchase to fill things out.

Geralin has helped me with my wardrobe for years and she’s been a guest in my home. She knows that I have a minimalist approach to home decor. We spent some time on the lighting and adding a few touches of decor to the top of the radiator and the wall. (I have to share that the painting above the radiator was created by my dog, Bix.) We cleared off the bulletin board, except a small area not visible in the webcam shot.

Here’s how it looks now. So much more peaceful. And there’s even a little business branding!

Here are some of the things I learned in that session, supplemented by information from an email exchange I had with Geralin while I was writing this.

Considerations when creating a Zoom backdrop:

• Try to make it reflect your personal style and values.
• Keep your backdrop uncluttered but not too spare.
• Keep it simple enough that you don’t have “set dress” before every Zoom call.
• Pay close attention to your lighting and make sure you have lighting both in front of you and behind you (see below).

The right lighting can make all the difference. Geralin had me put a table lamp on the floor behind me. She also had me put a goose neck craft light next to my monitor at a level that doesn’t cause too much reflection in my glasses. (I set it on a thick book to raise it to the appropriate level.)

Lighting can be particularly challenging to those who wear glasses. Here’s what Geralin told me about that: “Lighting from above and below will illuminate you but not reflect in your glasses. If you’re wearing glasses you’ll need to make sure that the lighting directly in front of you is blocked to avoid glare.” It took quite a bit of trial and error to get my lamp position right to avoid glasses glare. (I also tried to let go of trying to make it perfect. Sometimes there’s a little glare and I live with it.) Geralin also cautions glasses wearers to be aware of the light of your computer screen reflecting in your glasses at night. “You fix this this by raising the light source a little above your head and leaving a little bit of light below your eyes so your chin and neck have light.”

I’m easily overwhelmed by all of this stuff, so having a trusted expert to help me was so helpful. And I am delighted with the results.

If you’d like Geralin’s help with styling your Zoom backdrop, just schedule an Ask Me Anything call.

Worth repeating: A simpler way to file paid bills

25 March 2021

I wrote this post back in February 2015 when I was attending RootsTech. I still stand by the advice so I thought I’d run it again.

I’m in Salt Lake City attending a genealogy conference. Last night I had dinner in the hotel and struck up a conversation with a woman sitting near me at the bar. Naturally, we started talking about organizing (as one does at bars) and she confessed that her biggest challenge was staying on top of the filing. I suggested that she file her paid bills by month and she found that suggestion revelatory! This morning, I thought I’d blog about it, because it had such an impact on her. A quick search revealed I’d done just that on October 24, 2011. So rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided to repeat that post. Here it is, as relevant as ever.

Do you hang on to the paper bills that your creditors send you after you pay them? (Do you even receive your bills in the mail anymore?) A certain percentage of my clients have either gone paperless or automatically shred the bills after paying.

But a larger number of clients (and my family as well) receive most of their bills in the mail and hang on to the paid bills for at least awhile. Most of those clients, at the time I meet them, are doing what I used to do: they’re filing the paid bills by payee. (All the electric bills together, all the credit-card bills together, etc.) Or, more accurately, they’re letting the paid bills pile up because it’s such a pain to file them by payee. (I used to do that, too!)

What I recommend — and I got this idea from Freedom Filer — is instead of filing paid bills by payee, file them by the month you paid them. Freedom Filer has labels for odd year and even year months, which allows you to keep a two-year backlog. (That’s what I do.) But a one-year backlog for non-tax-related documents is almost certainly sufficient.

Here’s what you do:

1. Label a dozen hanging file folders, one for each month of the year. (I prefer hanging folders to accordion files because they’re much easier to file into.)
2. Create another hanging file folder (or folders) for tax-related documents.
3. When you pay bills, separate out any that can serve as documentation for a tax deduction. (This is particularly important for those of us who write off home offices.) Put those in the tax file.
4. Drop the rest of the papers in the file corresponding to the month in which you’re paying them.
5. After you’ve done this for a year, you’ll find the monthly file full of last year’s bills when you go to file the current month’s bills. Simply pull out the contents and shred them. Drop the current month’s bills into the file, where they’ll stay for a year.

It’s that simple! I also put my receipts (again, non-tax-related) in the monthly files, as well as bank statements from my husband’s and my joint checking account. I’ve been doing this for years and have yet to have it cause any problems. I so very rarely need to find anything in the files, but when I do it’s not difficult to find.

One note about tax-related documents: If you don’t keep track of your expenses electronically, you might want to create a series of category-related tax files to make it easier at tax time. Or just do a big sort at tax time.

This method of filing paid bills is so much less time consuming than filing by payee that the “To File” pile becomes a thing of the past. If you’re hanging on to your paid bills, I urge you to give it a try.

How Trello supercharges my Power Hour

18 March 2021

I’ve long been a fan of the concept of a Power Hour. I group together a bunch of small tasks (like sending emails, making phone calls and mailing promised things) and I power through the list in a short period of time. It feels great.

In the past, I sometimes found it difficult to get myself to do the Power Hour and when I was in the mood it would be difficult to think of all the little things I could do in a Power Hour.

My daily task management Trello board has changed that. Yesterday I had the most productive Power Hour yet, which made me want to share my method with you.

Here’s how I supercharge my Power Hour with Trello. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read my previous blog post about my task management board, linked above, so this makes sense. (And you might want to also check out my first post on my Trello task management board.)

1. I label all the small Power Hour tasks with a yellow Power Hour label.
2. I set a timer for 15 (or 30) minutes
3. I touch the F key (for filter) and then select the yellow Power Hour label. All tasks without the yellow label vanish, allowing me to focus on the Power Hour tasks.
4. When I finish a task, I move it to Done Today (and enjoy my confetti reward)
5. I move on to the next Power Hour task and work until my timer goes off
6. I take a little break and then reset my timer and start again until the Power Hour is up (or until I’ve run out of Power Hour tasks!)

Here’s a photo of a sample board with the Power Hour filter in place.

This supercharged Power Hour is one of many reasons I love my Trello daily task management board!

Challenge completed! 100 days of wearing the same dress

14 March 2021

Day 100

Saturday was Day 100 of the Wool& 100 Day Dress Challenge I started on December 4. For 100 days in a row, I wore the same dress, the Rowena Swing dress from Wool&. I’m writing this on Day 101 and guess what…I put the dress on again this morning!

The prize for wearing my dress for 100 days (and taking pictures every day to document it) is a $100 credit toward a new Wool& dress. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out which dress to buy with that reward and I’m still not sure. But here’s what I do know. It won’t be black. After 100 days of wearing a black dress, I’m craving some color.

I enjoyed wearing this dress every day for so many reasons. Here are a few of them:

• My main choice of what to wear was a foregone conclusion, making getting dressed easier.
• It’s outrageously comfortable. It’s non binding and, for me, it’s not remotely scratchy, even though its main ingredient is wool.
• It’s warm but not hot. (I’m always cold.)
• It’s machine washable.
• You don’t have to wash it often because it resists odors and wrinkles. I washed mine a total of six times in the 100 days.
• I love the way the dress looks on me and makes me feel.

One thing that was great about the dress was that I could change the look substantially. Turn the pockets out and tie them at my waist and it’s a great top to wear with yoga pants. Add a belt, scarf, tights and boots and it’s dressier and flirtier. Wear a sweater or poncho to completely change the look. Combine a quarter or a button with a hair tie and create a drapey ruching effect through some amazing alchemy that I learned about from a wonderful Facebook group called Wool& 100 Day Challenge.

I anticipate purchasing perhaps two more Wool& dresses (for a total of three) and wearing nothing else. Right now, that feels really good. I can’t even tell you how much I enjoyed not having to make a big decision about what to wear each day. I look forward to many more days like that!

P.S. Click here if you’re interested in reading the other four blog posts I wrote this challenge.

P.P.S. It’s now 110 days after I started wearing the dress and I’m still wearing it!

The joy of Inbox Zero

11 March 2021

I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with Inbox Zero. I’ve blogged in the past about the glory of Inbox Zero and how I’ve achieved it. Yet I invariably fall of the wagon. That usually happens when I’m stressed or busy or otherwise unfocused. But when I am in a headspace to be decisive, I can achieve the elusive empty inbox at the end of the day.

That happened almost a week ago, on March 5. For the past year, probably, I had a daily goal of Inbox 20. In other words, I could count myself successful if I got my inbox down to 20 at the end of the day. (I track all this stuff in my awesome Trello Daily Task Management board). There were about eight messages that just kept hanging around at the bottom of those 20. A couple were newsletters that I meant to look at and was afraid I’d forget about if I archived the message. A few were emails I was waiting to make a decision about so I could respond to. For whatever reason, I just wasn’t taking action on them and those emails languished in my inbox.

On March 5, I set the goal of getting my inbox down to zero. It wasn’t hard. Once I got rid of the detritus (like the many newsletters I receive and look at daily), I just had to make some decisions. And add a few things to my task board so I could archive the related message.

In the intervening six days, I have achieved Inbox Zero each and every day. It’s been a joy to empty my box by making decisions immediately, replying as necessary and deleting, archiving or filing immediately after I’ve read something that doesn’t require a reply. I am now using my task management board, rather than my inbox, to stay on top of my tasks. It feels great!

It’s hard to describe the satisfaction of maintaining a lean inbox. It makes me feel more in control. It stops me from delaying decisions. It keeps me on top of my correspondence. And my tasks are together where they belong, on my task-management board, not split between Trello and my inbox.

Inbox Zero may feel elusive. But if you’re inspired to go for it, check out this blog post that describes in detail how I emptied my inbox in 20 minutes at the end of 2019. Or take a look at the more detailed post linked in the first paragraph of this post.

It feels so great to be on top of my inbox. I’m now deleting messages as soon as I read them, trying to empty my inbox many times a day. If that sounds appealing, I encourage you to give it a try. Any effort you make at reducing your email backlog is beneficial!