Adriene is fond of saying “A little goes a long way” when it comes to yoga. I got to thinking that that’s also true of decluttering and organizing.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, organizing, pockets of time, yoga, yoga with adriene
One of the tiny projects I included in my November Tiny Projects challenge was putting together a hospital go-bag. My husband had been hospitalized in October and then again in November with heart issues, so I took the time after that second hospitalization to create a go-bag that I could grab in the event of a sudden trip to the hospital.
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Tagged with: 15 minutes, emergencies, emergency preparedness, organizing
I saw that messy box every day and most days I vowed to do something about it. But it felt like it would take at least an hour. I thought I’d see how far I could get with my jewelry box in 15 minutes. To my astonishment and delight, I actually finished it!
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean bureau, jewelry, organizing products, tiny projects
Today is my fifth and final tiny project of this challenge. It’s the top drawer of the desk we call our household desk. I declutter it every decade or so. And today when I opened it I realized it was ripe for a tiny project challenge.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clutter, decluttering, desk, office supplies, organizing, tiny projects
So when he got home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago, together we created a list of items to keep in a bag that I can grab on my way to the emergency room, should this come up again. I’m hoping that this will have the same effect as bringing along an umbrella when it’s threatening to rain: I won’t need it. (In fact, I created a similar bag for my dad several years ago and he hasn’t been hospitalized since!)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, emergencies, emergency preparedness, organizing, tiny projects
When I look around my house, it’s not hard to find tiny projects for this series! Today, I cleaned up an area that had become a dumping area in my home.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, office supplies, organizing, tiny projects
Today, I spent 20 minutes on my main office-supply closet. My office is in a spare bedroom. I took the sliding doors off the closet and filled the closet with shelving to store office supplies. Since those supplies are so visible, I don’t let the closet contents get too crazy before decluttering an organizing.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, office supplies, organizing, tiny projects
Today I focused on the little drawer in my laptop stand that houses office supplies I want close at hand.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, desk, office supplies, organizing, tiny projects
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. It was amazing what great quality-of-life improvements I was able to make in those small chunks of time.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
It’s the fifth and final day of my Tiny Projects challenge! It’s been fun to look around and identify little projects that pack a punch. Today, I spent a half hour on the Elfa rolling file cart that lives under my desk.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, closets, organizing, paper management, tiny projects
Today, I turned my attention to a tiny challenge that has a big impact: the area of my desk that I look at constantly. I probably view this area of my desk more minutes a day than anything else in my home, except probably my computer monitor.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, closets, organizing, tiny projects
Today, I spent a half hour tidying and organizing one of the closets in my office. My office used to be a bedroom and it has a large closet, whose sliding doors I removed, where I store my office supplies. (If you’re curious, I did a before-and-after of that closet a few years ago in this post.) But the office also has a small reach-in closet, original to the 1908 house. In it, I store two rolling file carts, some archival things, and mostly genealogy-related items.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, closets, organizing, tiny projects
Today I focused on my cluttered computer desktop. I don’t tend to see my desktop—it’s hiding behind the many windows I always have open on my Mac. The only time my cluttered desktop bugs me is when it gets so full it fills the entire desktop on my big external monitor and starts slopping over to my laptop monitor. That happened a little while ago, so I decided to address it in as a tiny project.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, computer desktop, organizing, tiny projects
This morning I spent 15 minutes on a tiny project that’s been on my list forever: my pajamas.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
Back in May, 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. In only about an hour, split up over the course of five days, I was able to make some very nice, life-improving changes.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
On this fifth and last day of my personal tiny projects challenge, I moved out of my office to the living room and spent less than 15 minutes on the end table next to the chair where I watch TV, write postcards to voters (and in doing so practice my hand lettering) and knit.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
I focused my attention on my printer stand/snack bar today. In about 20 minutes, I decluttered and tidied this little space and it felt great!
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
Today, I focused on my desktop (the top of my actual desk, not my computer desktop). I forgot to set my timer and I was watching Anderson Cooper on Stephen Colbert at the same time, so I don’t know how long it took. But I’m confident it would have taken less than 15 minutes if I’d been focused.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, organizing, tiny projects
It took me twenty minutes this time, but when I finished, I whittled the papers down to one smaller bin. (It’s small multi-purpose bin from The Container Store.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
I decided to kick off my five tiny-project challenges this week with my scanner stand. It’s a repurposed printer stand (it’s got to be 20 years old) that I use for my ScanSnap S1500M sheetfed scanner and my ScanSnap SV600 contactless scanner. It had become a bit of a dumping ground.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
I am spending a lot of time at my desk these days. Since I’m not going into clients’ homes, I’m probably at my desk at least eight hours a day, if not more. Some days I’m staring into the computer and barely looking around. Other days, the disorder jumps out at me. It’s time to do something about it.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, organizing, tiny projects
When social distancing started, I attacked a few organizing projects around my house because I suddenly had time to do them. But my enthusiasm for them waned pretty quickly. Now, one month in, I’m starting to address some teeny, tiny projects that will remove some irritations without much effort.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, covid-19, declutter, decluttering, quarantine
I’m passionate about asking people to be kind to themselves and not let guilt about clutter (or anything else) get in the way of living their lives. I wrote this post more than ten years ago and its message remains just as strong today. It’s one of my very favorite posts, so I thought I’d share it again today.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, empowerment, self-care, shannon wilkinson, worth repeating
I wrote this post in 2014, but it’s as true today as it was then. The items on my desk have changed, but the need to focus on clearing it for just a few minutes hasn’t. It’s amazing the results that ten minutes of focused tidying can produce!
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down at my cleared-off desk (I’d cleared it because the housecleaner was coming that morning), and proceeded to trash it. I don’t know what happened—I think I was looking for something I’d written down but couldn’t find. Plus I’d probably dumped some stuff on the desk when I came home. (Yikes.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, decluttering, worth repeating
Effective task management is a moving target for me. I’ve come to accept that I need to switch things up in order to keep myself engaged and get stuff done. So I vary my systems according to my need and mood. This post, originally published May 22, 2013, describes a sort of emergency intervention I use when I just can’t get myself to get anything done.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, productivity, rewards, time management, worth repeating
I wrote this post a couple of years ago, but I really needed it today. I’m once again a bit behind on my Quickbooks data entry and have entered a recurring daily task in my task-manager app to spend 15 minutes working on the backlog. This post is strengthening my resolve to get caught up a little at a time.
Sometimes projects, big or small, feel too overwhelming to even start. Sometimes tasks are ongoing or recurring and we have a tendency to let them build up before starting to tackle them.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, habits, productivity, time management, worth repeating
I wrote this post a year ago, but the scenario has been repeated here many times. Taking just ten minutes to put stuff away and tidy up can have powerful results!
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down at my cleared-off desk (I’d cleared it because the housecleaner was coming that morning), and proceeded to trash it. I don’t know what happened—I think I was looking for something I’d written down but couldn’t find. Plus I’d probably dumped some stuff on the desk when I came home. (Yikes.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, decluttering, worth repeating
I love this trick from Mark Forster about tricking your reactive mind into doing things that you have trouble starting. I shared it first in 2008 (!) and thought it was worth repeating today.
Do you ever have items on your to-do list that just loom there? You know you need to do them, you think about doing them, but you just can’t get going on them?
Tagged with: 15 minutes, mark forster, procrastination, productivity, time management, worth repeating
I wrote this post in July of 2012 and it still rings true. When the fun or rewarding parts of life become just aspirations, rather than reality, we miss out. The special project that I referred to at the end of this post was my blog, Organize Your Family History that I debuted that summer. It has provided lots of motivation for me to pursue my genealogy research!
For more than ten years, I’ve been interested in doing family history research. I would dip my toe in the water every now and then, but would get overwhelmed and withdraw it. Mostly, I just didn’t feel I had the time to do it properly. So I didn’t do it at all.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, family history research, organize your family history, time management, worth repeating
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down at my cleared-off desk (I’d cleared it because the housecleaner was coming that morning), and proceeded to trash it. I don’t know what happened—I think I was looking for something I’d written down but couldn’t find. Plus I’d probably dumped some stuff on the desk when I cam home. (Yikes.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, decluttering
I often mention the power of setting a timer for a short period of time to gain focus and accomplish a lot. One fun way to set a timer is to create a playlist of songs that ends after a set period of time.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, motivation, music
I’ve been away from home about a week visiting family in Washington state. After a couple of half-days of travel, I’ll be home on Saturday. This blog post, which I wrote a couple of years ago at the end of the trip, reflects how I still feel about getting back into the swing of things. I’m happy to say that I didn’t leave my office in such disarray this time, but I am coming to a full week of client appointments. My routines will keep me sane!
Tagged with: 15 minutes, habits, routines, travel, worth repeating
I have an Inbox Zero policy that I dearly love. It’s typically easy for me to maintain and keeps me feeling under control.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, email, inbox zero, timer
Sometimes projects, big or small, feel too overwhelming to even start. Sometimes tasks are ongoing or recurring and we have a tendency to let them build up before starting to tackle them.
For either of those types of projects, one solution is to do a little. Just do something. Because a little effort on a regular basis will get the job done, eventually.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, habits, productivity, time management
I’m always amazed at what a big difference a little focused effort at decluttering, tidying, and organizing can make. I blogged about that last October.
Over the past week, I let my office get a little out of control. Getting ready to travel for a long weekend, I had stopped clearing my desk off each night. My early-morning pre-flight preparations made things worse. And when I got home from the trip on Monday afternoon, I worried about catching up with email, not cleaning things up.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, disorder, order, worth repeating
For the last two days, I have had such a difficult staying focused and productive at my desk! My day yesterday was completely unstructured, which is sometimes a recipe for disaster for me. Without an appointment looming, it can be really hard for me to get started.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, productivity, rewards, time management
I’m passionate about asking people to be kind to themselves and not let guilt about clutter (or anything else) get in the way of living their lives. It’s been almost six years since I wrote this posted, called Self-Care, but it remains one of my very favorite posts. I thought I’d share it again today.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, empowerment, self-care, shannon wilkinson, worth repeating
Over the past week, I let my office get a little out of control. Getting ready to travel for a long weekend, I had stopped clearing my desk off each night. My early-morning pre-flight preparations made things worse. And when I got home from the trip on Monday afternoon, I worried about catching up with email, not cleaning things up.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clean desk, disorder, order
For more than ten years, I’ve been interested in doing family history research. I would dip my toe in the water every now and then, but would get overwhelmed and withdraw it. Mostly, I just didn’t feel I had the time to do it properly. So I didn’t do it at all.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, family history research, time management
I’m a huge believer in the value of routines. They keep my life running smoothly. But right now, my routines are all messed up. I was away for a week, attending the ICD conference. Then I was home for four days and too busy to focus on my surroundings. Then I left home for a lovely, relaxing weekend in Nashville with friends.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, aby garvey, habits, routines, travel
As I mentioned last week I went on vacation last month. I was gone for eight days and though I know better, I didn’t really allow a day or two to catch up before jumping right back into work obligations.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, backlog, paper piles, pockets of time, productivity
Inspired by my friend, Margaret Lukens, I’ve decided to point out some of my favorite from this blog from Junes gone by. June is usually a pretty busy blogging month for me (though not so much this year). I had so many posts to choose from that I’m going to split the recap into two posts.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, accountability, clutter clearing, decluttering, email
I’ve had a difficult time coming up with insightful blog posts lately. I think about what to write and nothing comes to me.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, disorder, home office, priorities, productivity
One of the themes of Declutter Happy Hour, the e-course I offer with life coach Shannon Wilkinson, is to capture small blocks of time to work on decluttering.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, erin doland, unclutterer
In my newsletter, which goes out today, I mention the power of focus and how by setting a timer for a short period of time, I can get a lot done. (This is a refrain here on the blog too). I also mentioned that sometimes instead of (or in addition to) a timer, I’ll play a playlist of songs that ends after a set period of time.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, declutter happy hour, decluttering, motivation, music
As part of the preparations for Declutter Happy Hour, the four-week teleclass I started offering with Shannon Wilkinson last month, I’ve been doing a lot of small decluttering projects around the house.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, shannon wilkinson
A decade ago, Flylady told me to set my timer for 15 minutes and declutter. She told all of her followers, “You can do anything for 15 minutes.” I’ve put that into use over and over again through the years. And I blog about it a lot because it’s so true.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, clutter, declutter happy hour, decluttering, flylady, shannon wilkinson, time timer
This week’s Blog of the Week is an oldie but goodie. I first became aware of Flylady back in the late nineties, before I ever dreamt of becoming a professional organizer. Technically, it’s not a blog. (It predates blogs.) But it’s frequently updated and full of treasures.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, blog of the week, decluttering, flylady, routines
Some days I look around my home or office and say to myself, “I really need to xxxxx” and it’s a general task like, “get organized” or “reorganize my closet.” Sometimes it’s just “create some order around here” when things have gotten out of hand.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, order, procrastination, productivity, time management, unclutterer
I’m always struck how clutter gets in the way of life. I have many clients who constantly feel an obligation to deal with their clutter. They plan to devote a weekend to decluttering, then they start to feel overwhelmed, so they don’t actually deal with it. (Until they call me.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, empowerment, self-care, shannon wilkinson
Yesterday I blogged about overcoming the reluctance to get started on a task, citing Mark Forster’s tip on fooling your reactive mind. Today, I’d like to share some of Forster’s advice about keeping going on tasks once you’ve started.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, mark forster, productivity, time management
Do you ever have items on your to-do list that just loom there? You know you need to do them, you think about doing them, but you just can’t get going on it?
Sometimes, you just need to get started and once you overcome the resistance and do the task, it turns out that it’s not so bad. This happens to me all the time. I build up tasks in my mind, thinking they’re going to take forever, then they take no time at all.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, mark forster, procrastination, productivity, time management
I’m constantly amazed at what can be accomplished in just 15 minutes. I often advise my clients (and I do this myself) to set a timer for 15 minutes and focus on one task: decluttering, filing, sorting, etc. As long as they keep going until that timer dings, they’ll get a good amount done. It’s astounding what can get done in such a small amount of time. (As an aside, that’s one of the ways I use my beloved Time Timer.)
Tagged with: 15 minutes, big picture, focus, mark forster, productivity, time management, time timer
I’m going through one of those periods again where I completely empathize with my clients. I had a very busy March and April (I was out of town half the month of April) and now that I have a little time to breathe, I look around my house and think, “I need a professional organizer!” There are no shortage of wonderful organizers here in St. Louis I could hire for help, but I’m going to try to economize and do the work myself.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, accountability, backsliding, decluttering, productivity, time management
Chances are you’re familiar with Flylady. Flylady, who’s real name is Marla Cilley, has a wildly popular website which helps readers dig out from clutter, establish routines, and stay organized.
Tagged with: 15 minutes, decluttering, flylady, habits, routines