Peace of Mind Organizing

Elfa sale going on until February 23

4 February 2021

I think one of the things I missed most during the pandemic is browsing at The Container Store. It’s open to the public, but I’m trying minimize my exposure to the virus and have been there perhaps twice in the last nine months. So most of my purchases have been done online.

One of my favorite things at The Container Store is their Elfa product line. It’s a shelving and drawer system that’s very flexible and modifiable. I love recommending it to clients for their kids’ rooms, for example, because the shelves, rods or drawers can all be switched around as the kids grow and their clothes and storage needs change. There are Elfa storage solutions for every room in the house.

I use Elfa in my own home, in a closet in my office and to store my yarn stash. I also use three different Elfa file carts in my office, one for my business archives, one for my genealogy papers and one for the files that I want close at hand. That one lives under my desk.

We’re about three weeks away from the end of the annual Elfa sale, where you can get 30 percent off on Elfa products and installation. (That brings the file cart down to $77.) I find myself yearning for an Elfa system for my guest-room closet, but I’m trying to resist because it’s definitely a want, not a need. But if you have a need, now’s the time to check out Elfa!

You can design your closet system on the Container Store website or go to a store, if you have one nearby, with your measurements and allow their designers to create a free design for you. This year, you can have a virtual design consult to get help your design without going into the store.

Don’t snooze! Sale ends February 23.

Building ease with daily habits

1 February 2021

My word of the year for 2021 is ease. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more appropriate word. I’ve set the intention of trying to build more ease into my life and also use ease as a parameter around which I make decisions. It feels great.

This morning, while I was doing a gentle yoga practice, it hit me that the daily habits I’ve cultivated over the last year or more have really helped introduce a lot of ease into my life. Specifically, doing yoga every day has meant that yoga is so much easier than it was when I tried it for the first time two years ago. Not only do I know many of the poses (and I sometimes even anticipate them), they are much easier for me to do. That’s because daily practice has made me stronger and more flexible. And what 58-year-old person doesn’t love that?

Another area where daily practice has made a huge (life-changing!) difference is in my financial life. I’ve been working for myself for 25 years and it’s only been in the past six months or so that I’ve built a daily practice around tending to my finances. That has had the happy result that I’m always caught up with my bookkeeping in Quickbooks! This has been an elusive goal for many years.

The secret weapon of my financial life has been the software You Need a Budget (YNAB). (That’s a referral link…if you use it and end up subscribing, we each get a free month.) With YNAB I budget every dollar as it comes in and it’s actually fun. So every morning I actually enjoy logging in and categorizing any expenditures as well as budgeting any income from the past 24 hours. I’ve been using it since November 2018 for my business. (On January 1 of this year I took over our family’s finances in YNAB.) It took me awhile, but I’ve created the habit of entering anything that comes through YNAB into my business’s Quickbooks and double-checking periodically that everything is in sync. So I am blissfully caught up.

Thanks to daily habits (and wonderful Yoga with Adriene and YNAB), two big things that used to be real burdens for me (exercise and keeping track of finances) are now both easy and full of ease. That feels like a miracle.

Of course this can apply to so many things, including maintaining order, taking vitamins and supplements, and keeping up with email or filing. When we make something as easy as possible to do and we practice it daily, we allow ease to flourish.

I’m going to keep looking for other ways I can build ease into my life with daily practice!

Look for me in the early spring 2021 issue of Secrets of Getting Organized magazine!

28 January 2021

Once again, I am thrilled to be a part of the new (early spring 2021) issue of Secrets of Getting Organized magazine from Better Homes & Gardens! I am fortunate to have been interviewed for this magazine at least once a year for the past few years. (And I was also quoted back in 2011.)

I used to be a magazine writer (I wrote about pets from 1995 to 2005) and purchased and read tons of magazines. Nowadays, I get most of my information online, but I really love reading Secrets of Getting Organized. It’s advertising-free, beautifully photographed, and full of great advice from professional organizers. In this issue, I’m quoted in an article called “Instant Entries,” about making the most of the area near your front door, which started on page 26, as well as an article called “What to Buy: Bedside Storage” that starts on page 66.

The magazine is on sale now at newsstands, grocery stores, big box stores, etc. It will remain available until March 19, 2021.

Here’s the cover so you can easily spot it on the newsstand.

Everyday Mindfulness review + giveaway

25 January 2021

A couple of months ago, my husband, Barry, surprised me by suggesting I take a course on mindfulness. At the time, we were discussing my propensity to stumble and sometimes fall when I was walking our dog, Bix. (We have loads of uneven sidewalks in our historic neighborhood.) He said that when I’m out on a walk I’m too much in my head and not watching where I put my feet. He wasn’t wrong.

That very day, I received an email offering me a review copy of the book, Everyday Mindfulness. I took it as a sign and eagerly accepted the review copy. The publisher also offered up a copy for a giveaway to a reader of this blog (see below). This book, by Melissa Steginus, offers “108 simple practices to empower yourself and transform your life.” It’s meant to be read over 108 days with an essay and exercises for each day. Each exercise takes only five minutes or so.

The book is divided into six chapters: (1) Physical; (2) Emotional; (3) Rational; (4) Spiritual; (5) Occupation; and (6) Network.

I went through the first 48 days before I felt like I’d read enough to write this review. I found the book patient and gentle, which of course I love. In some cases, it made me realize that I have some solid practices in place already. In other cases, it introduced me to some ideas that were insightful and helpful. While the108 days fall under an umbrella of mindfulness, I think, the book has an emphasis self care, one of my favorite topics. Though I haven’t yet finished all 108 days (60 to go!) the book has been beneficial and a little eye opening for me.

Giveaway!

I’d love to provide you a free copy! The publisher, TCKPublishing.com is offering one print version to a US reader and one electronic version to an international reader. While I ordinarily read books on my Kindle, I was glad to have a hard copy of this book, because I wrote my responses to the exercises right in the book. (But I could have almost as easily used a journal.)

To enter, just leave a comment to this post by midnight central time on Friday, February 19. In your comment, please indicate where you live so I know which giveaway to enter you in.

ETA: The giveaway has closed. Congratulations to the winners, Dee and Jody!

50 days in, I'm still loving my Rowena dress

22 January 2021

Day 49

Fifty days ago today, I put on my Rowena swing dress from Wool& and took on their challenge of wearing the same dress for 100 days in a row. I love challenges and I love simplifying getting dressed so I jumped at it. There’s even a prize: $100 Wool& credit toward a new dress if I photo document that I wore it for all 100 days.

You’d think that after 50 days I’d be sick of this dress. But, weirdly, I’m not. It is so comfortable and so easy to wear. I typically wear it with leggings or tights. And if I’m taking my dog Bix for a walk on a cold day, I just pull fleecy pants on over my leggings or tights and take them off when I get home.

I like adding ponchos or shawls and sometimes wear a belt with it. I have even worn it under other dresses. The wool dress is thin enough to tuck into jeans, but I don’t find jeans comfortable, so I haven’t done that. I bought some tights from Snag Tights that are very comfortable and have been a great addition to my choices of what to wear with my dress. I bought some black wooly ones, as well as some opaque colored tights (grey and burgundy). I joined a Facebook group called 100 Day Challenge where I’m often inspired by how others they wear their dresses.

Basically, my dress is a neutral base layer over which I put more interesting clothing or accessories. I also always wear something under it, since I’m laundering it so seldom. So far, I have washed it three times and it remains clean-looking, unwrinkled, and unsmelly. (25 days ago, I wrote more about that.)

I used to spend way too much time thinking about what to wear, even during the pandemic when my husband is the only one seeing me. (We discussed this in Episode 134: Pandemic Clothing Quandaries on our podcast Getting to Good Enough.) Now I still think a little about the accessories, but dressing is so much easier and the result so much better. Thank you, Wool&!

Join us for Declutter Happy Hour!

19 January 2021

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you may remember Declutter Happy Hour. It was a teleclass that life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I created back in 2009. We did it a couple of times as a live teleclass and then morphed it into an ecourse before we retired it. We didn’t know it then, but it was a precursor to the podcast that Shanon and I now host, Getting to Good Enough.

Here’s a piece of exciting news: Our friends at Fly Paper have invited us to bring Declutter Happy Hour back! This time it will be via Zoom, rather than the telephone, which will make it even more fun.

Declutter Happy Hour is a live experience where you actually get some decluttering done. I think it’s really special because it infuses the decluttering process with a secret ingredient: mindset change courtesy of Shannon’s mad skills in hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming (NLP). And I guarantee that there will be plenty of fun and laughter.

Each of the four sessions starts with a discussion led by Shannon and me about an important aspect of the decluttering process and the mindset shift that goes with it.

Then, during the class, you get time to work on a decluttering project of your choice. Whatever you decide to work on, Shannon and I will stay in the Zoom room, ready and waiting to answer any questions and provide support and encouragement.

By the end of a month of Declutter Happy Hours you’ll have let go of more than just stuff and you’ll have the tools to take on decluttering projects on your own.

Declutter Happy Hour will be held each Wednesday in February from 6 to 7:30 pm central time. Register at eventbrite but don’t delay! Space is limited so we can make sure your questions get answered.

I’d love to see you there!

Enrollment is closed for the February 2021 Declutter Happy Hour, but we may offer it again this year. Drop me an email if you’re interested in hearing about new sessions!

Worth repeating (again): Getting a ring off a swollen finger

18 January 2021

In December 2014, I didn’t let a broken wrist stop me from supervising a move for a favorite client couple. I must live a charmed life, because the husband in this couple is a hand surgeon. My finger was swelling around my precious heirloom wedding band and he took took the time to use his acumen to remove it so that I didn’t have to have it cut off. Here’s how he did it.

On the evening of December 3, 2014, I fell and broke my wrist, though I didn’t know immediately that it was fractured. That night, I took my engagement ring off, but my wedding wasn’t moving and I (stupidly) left it on.

The next morning, I went to urgent care and had the wrist x-rayed. For whatever reason, the urgent care doctor and nurse were unconcerned about my ring.

The following day, I left to supervise a three-day move-in for a client in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. (A couple of hours from St. Louis.) Thankfully, my wonderful team made my injured wrist irrelevant to the success of our job. But it really hurt that first day. And part of the reason for the pain was that my finger was swelling around my ring.

I was really fortunate because the husband of the couple we were moving is Dr. Andrew Trueblood, a hand surgeon with Advanced Orthopedic Specialists in Cape Girardeau. When he came home from work at the end of that first day, he took one look at my hand and rewrapped the bandage around the splint, which provided some instant relief. Then he said, “We have to get that ring off.”

Here’s a photo of my rewrapped wrist, showing how the wedding band was squeezing the life out of my finger.

For a half hour, he worked on getting my ring off, telling me that if we weren’t successful it would have to be cut off. I really didn’t want to have my precious ring cut off. It’s a family heirloom: My great grandmother, Alice Jeffries, wore it for 70 years. And I’ve worn it for another 25.

Andrew’s efforts paid off, and I am so grateful for his skill and attention. I wanted to share here the technique he used, in case you ever find yourself in need of getting a ring off your finger

Step one: Wrap the finger in dental floss.

Over and over Andrew wrapped and rewrapped my finger with dental floss so it looked like a mummy. He said this would reduce the swelling. He did it for probably 25 minutes.

Step two: Get the dental floss under the ring

Since Andrew’s house was still packed (the movers had just brought their stuff to the new house), his access to tools was limited. After he unwrapped my finger for the last time, he patiently used the tines of a plastic fork to ease a strand of floss under the ring, going from of the top of my finger toward my wrist.

Step three: Make the finger slippery

We had some liquid soap on hand, and Andrew soaped up my finger.

Step four: Pull the dental floss

By pulling on the floss and allowing it to go round and round my finger, the ring was slowly eased off. As it was happening, I turned on my phone’s video camera so I could record the last 30 seconds of this miracle. Be sure and watch it to the end to get a glimpse of Andrew.

I am amazed by my good fortune in finding myself in the home of someone who could ease my pain so effectively after this accident. I am grateful to the patience of Andrew and his wife, Amy, and, of course, to my outstanding team that weekend. We got them moved into their gorgeous home without letting a fractured wrist get in the way.