Peace of Mind Organizing

Tiny Projects Challenge, take three

16 November 2020

Back in May and then again in August, I took on a personal tiny projects challenge, in which I completed five small organizing projects around my house in a week. I did one a day and blogged about it the day I did it. I tried to pick challenges that would take 30 minutes or less and it was amazing what great quality-of-life improvements I was able to make in those small chunks of time.

With the surge in COVID-19 cases, I’m hunkering back in. I will be spending a whole lot of time at home, so I figure now is a good time to take on another challenge. Every other day for the next couple of weeks, my plan is to do a tiny project and blog about it that same day. Of course, I’ll include before and after photos.

I have plenty of things I could work on. They include (but are not limited to):

• My jewelry box
• My file cart of business files
• The medicine cabinet in our master bathroom
• My organizing supplies
• My lettering pens
• My masks and COVID sanitation supplies
• Creating a hospital go bag
• My knitting tools
• A frequently used but rarely organized office-supplies drawer in my laptop stand
• My office-supply closet

Would you like to join me? Perhaps if you take a look around, some tiny projects will emerge. We can make a big difference in our homes by isolating just one little area and improving it in less an 30 minutes of effort. Watch out for my first tiny project tomorrow!

My blog turns 14 today!

10 November 2020

I can’t believe it. Today, I celebrate 14 years of blogging. I started my Peace of Mind Organizing blog on November 10, 2006. My first post was, What is organized?

In the 14 years since, I’ve published 1455 posts (including my Worth Repeating posts, where I revisit favorite posts). I try to blog twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays), though that doesn’t happen every week.

Writing a blog is a lot of work—particularly if you dedicate yourself to posting regularly. But for me it’s been well worth the effort. This blog has helped me and my business in so many ways. Here are a few:

• It helps my search rankings, which puts me in front of prospective clients
• It lets clients and prospective clients get to know me and understand that I’m not perfect
• It also lets clients and prospective clients know that despite my imperfection, I have expertise
• It’s allowed me to connect with people and companies throughout the world
• It’s given me a lens through which to look at the world
• It’s helped record my personal history so I don’t have to rely on my memory (in a way it’s a very public journal)

One thing I like about blogging, over relying on social media channels to reach prospective clients, is that a blog is less ephemeral. Past social media posts are harder to find. Now I have a 14-year library all in one place that anyone can search or browse. I also prefer the spaciousness of blogging that social media doesn’t permit. I can use as many words as I want.

I like blogging so much that in 2012 I started a second blog, Organize Your Family History, which marries my passion for organizing with my passion for genealogy research. I try to post there twice a week as well (Tuesdays and Fridays). That blog has also been really beneficial to me.

Blogging regularly takes discipline. But it’s also something that can easily become a habit. I don’t pre-write (or even pre-plan) my posts. I just decide what to write each morning. I include blogging as a daily task on my Trello task management board, just in case I need a reminder. And I also keep a Trello board of blog post ideas.

I’m always open to blog post ideas from readers. If you have an idea for a post, please email it to me!

Photo by Jane Graystone on Unsplash

It's that time: VOTE!

2 November 2020

Election Day here in the U.S. is tomorrow, November 3. The world is watching. This is my eleventh presidential election as a voter. And I think it’s the most important.

If you haven’t voted already, please vote tomorrow. Or vote early today, if that is available to you. If you have a mail-in ballot, don’t risk sending it in through the postal service at this late date. Drop it off, if possible. Or take it to the polls, have it spoiled, and vote in person.

If you’ve just now decided that you want to vote, it’s not too late, assuming you’re a registered voter. (If you live in Washington, D.C. or one of the 21 states that allow same-day registration, you can register to vote on election day.) Go to vote.org to check your registration status and find or confirm your polling place.

If you’re voting in person tomorrow, please allow plenty of time. You may need to stand in line for awhile. But it’s worth waiting to make your voice heard. Bring along some water, maybe some snacks and a great attitude. And of course bring your mask.

It’s been gratifying to read of the voter engagement in 2020. But it’s important to remember that all the early votes may result in late results. So we will all need to be patient while waiting for the presidential election results to be determined. It’s going to be an interesting week!

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

An extra hour on Sunday!

29 October 2020

In the U.S., we gain an hour on Sunday as Daylight Savings Time (finally) ends. I always love this day because we’re given the gift of an extra hour. Back in the day, before clocks automatically set themselves, I made a point of turning the clock back after I woke on Sunday (rather than before bed), so I could actually experience gaining an hour. Nowadays, I settle for planning ahead about how I’ll use the hour.

For me, this year, my plan is to use the extra hour doing genealogy research. I will have just finished with a 30 × 30 challenge on my genealogy blog, Organize Your Family History, and mindfully using that extra hour for genealogy research will help keep the momentum I gained in October going.

How about you? Do you have plans for your extra hour? It might be fun to give it some thought. Whatever you decide to do, I encourage you to consider doing something for yourself, if possible. Maybe some sort of self care. Or a phone (or Zoom) conversation with a friend you haven’t seen in awhile. I hope you enjoy your extra hour!

Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash

The Power of Enough Zoom presentation

27 October 2020

Since June 2018, life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I have hosted the weekly podcast, Getting to Good Enough, about letting go of perfectionism so you can do more of what you love. We just recorded Episode 128!

We were tickled to be invited by the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) to do a virtual presentation for their chapter (and anyone else who wants to buy a ticket) called the Power of Enough…Effort. Professional organizers are accustomed to talking with clients about identifying when they have enough physical stuff. In this presentation, Shannon and I will be talking about when to know you’ve put enough effort into something.

We embraced our motto “Let it be easy” when we set a couple of parameters before saying yes to the invitation. We requested a very informal presentation: No Powerpoint, no pre-set talking points. Instead, this will be an unrehearsed Zoom conversation where Shannon and I will discuss the power of enough effort and then answer questions from the audience.

The presentation will be on Wednesday, November 11, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm Pacific time. (This is the time frame for the chapter meeting; our presentation will take about 60 minutes of it, but I’m not sure which 60 minutes.) It occurs to me that some of you who read this blog (or listen to the podcast) might enjoy attending. The fee for those who aren’t NAPO-SFBA members is $30. For more information and to register, visit the event page on the NAPO-SFBA website.

We’re excited to model the power of enough in our presentation (as we do in our podcast)!

Good things can happen when you open your mail!

22 October 2020

Keeping up with the snail mail is a challenge for a lot of my client. Sometimes it goes unopened for days or weeks. I had a couple of experiences this week that made me grateful that I make a habit of opening the mail every day. (For some reason, I’ve always loved opening mail, so it’s not a hardship.)

• We received a routine-looking piece of mail from our health insurance company that I expected to be an Explanation of Benefits. My husband had a health incident recently that necessitated an ambulance ride and a short hospital stay. (He’s fine now.) I opened the mail from the insurance company and inside was a $528 check! It was to reimburse us for the out-of-network ambulance. I don’t fully understand it. But I’m very glad I opened it!

• In the same mail delivery was an envelope from our auto insurance company, with the policy renewal. I took a look at the new rate and my eyes bugged out. The premium for my van had more than doubled. So I called the next day and got the wheels in motion to correct it. Our premium is paid automatically, so if I had not opened that mail we would have paid a much higher premium. Obviously, we would have noticed it, but it would have been a more stressful situation.

So the moral here is to take a moment and open your mail the day it arrives. You might find a check! Or a mistake that you can rectify. Bonus: If you open your mail daily and discard everything you can, your home will be tidier.

If this message resonates with you, you might be interested in purchasing my $9 Organizing Guide about handling the mail, called Love Is (Forever) Stamps—how to fall back in love with snail mail. Oh, and as an fyi, I’m having a half-off sale when you buy all eight of my organizing guides. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page linked above and click the Add to Cart button under “Want them all?”. Then enter the coupon code VOTE at checkout and you can get all eight guides for only $31.50. The coupon expires on November 3.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Worth repeating: The importance of a place for everything

19 October 2020

I wrote this post four years ago when we were in the midst of a kitchen renovation. The disorientation that losing access to your kitchen brings is real. But, of course, it’s worth it. We love our new kitchen. Re-reading this post today about the importance of having a place for everything made me want to share it again, because it’s such a universal truth.

My husband and I are in the midst of a kitchen renovation. If you’ve ever done that, you know how disruptive it can be. We’re lucky in that we actually have a spare kitchen to use. (We live in a two-family house, but no longer rent out the downstairs apartment.) Still, despite my best efforts to organize the downstairs kitchen for our temporary use, everything feels topsy turvy.

This has led to two realizations on my part:

• The kitchen really is the heart of the home. Take it away and you feel adrift.
• When you don’t have a place for everything, you really can’t maintain order.

I’m a naturally messy person, as I’ve written here many times. I don’t mind a little disorder around me. But I’ve come to learn that the critical component to maintaining my sanity amidst disorder is that I know where everything goes and know I can put it away swiftly.

Right now, we have items that usually belong in the upstairs kitchen (our main kitchen) and need to reside on the second floor that I just can’t find a home for. So the dining room table and a desk remain cluttered, despite my efforts. We’re slowly getting into a groove (we’ve been out of our kitchen a week). Just getting out the door has been challenging because we’re accustomed to exiting from the back staircase off the upstairs kitchen and that’s where items like our keys, my purse and dog-walking paraphernalia used to reside. For a little while, until we established a new place for them, we’d walk all over the house looking for those items.

The whole experience has given me new-found empathy for my clients who struggle because they don’t have a place for everything and therefore can’t find anything. And it’s made me understand the relief they feel when we help them establish a place for everything so they can put things away.

So far, the renovation is on schedule and (knock wood) we’ll be back in our kitchen by the end of the month. I cannot wait to unpack our kitchen stuff into the new space. (I created a spreadsheet detailing where everything’s going to go.) I’ll probably enlist the help of one or more professional organizers to help me organize my kitchen when that happy day comes.

Here’s the bottom line. The adage, “A place for everything and everything in its place” is truly the key to a peaceful life for me. If you’re not living it, I encourage you to do what you can to get there! (Here’s a hint: the first step is usually decluttering!)