I don’t really have a bucket list, but every now and then I think about making one. If I did make one, I’d probably include: “Be quoted in Real Simple.” And I’d be able to check it off! (Am I the only one who adds items to my task list that I’ve already done, just so I can check it off?)
Tagged with: aby garvey, magazines, media, real simple, secrets of getting organized
Four years ago, I wrote this post about how much I love the little dip bowls from West Elm. My love for them has not diminished over time. And, amazingly, West Elm is still selling these little beauties, so I thought I’d repeat this post. The one thing I now use them for that I didn’t use to is dip! They really are good for that. But I like them for all sorts of things, including looking pretty.
Tagged with: aby garvey, organizing products, organizing solutions, repurposing, storage, style, west elm
For seven years, I’ve periodically swapped organizing services with the amazing Aby Garvey. Aby is not only great at making spaces function really well, she makes them beautiful too. I absolutely love watching Aby fiddle with a collection of something to make it look great in a container. I could do it all day.
This past Saturday, Aby was kind enough to come to home and help me address my the large closet in my home office, where I keep supplies. Three years ago, she helped me tackle the same space and made it really lovely. I blogged about that experience in a post called Lessons learned while decluttering. In the intervening three years the space had become a little unruly. It still functioned well, but it had lost its visual peace.
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, home office, professional organizer
Five-and-a-half years ago, professional organizer Aby Garvey rocked my world by helping me reorganize (and rethink) my pantry. This weekend my plan is to declutter and fine tune my pantry, which has gotten out of control (as pantries have a tendency to do). I’m taking inspiration from this post I wrote after that initial session. If you have a pantry (or other space) to organize this weekend, maybe you’ll find it inspiring, too!
Last month I blogged about working with professional organizer Karel Worley in my basement. With my husband’s help, we tackled a dirty decluttering job in only four hours. It was one that I’d been dreading for months. It was amazing how much we got done and how painless it was.
Tagged with: aby garvey, kitchen, professional organizer, worth repeating
In 2011, I wrote a blog post in praise of Target’s Itso bin. I was inspired to do so because of a great post by my friend and colleague Aby Garvey on the Simplify 101 blog.
Tagged with: aby garvey, organizing products, storage
As I wrote two weeks ago, I’ve fallen behind on a number of things, including my Inbox Zero habit. But last Wednesday I got my inbox down to zero messages once again. It felt so great—like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It’s been a huge boon to my productivity and I’ve emptied each day since. I was going to write a new post about Inbox Zero and then realized that I’d have a hard time improving on the one I wrote this past November. So here it is.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I’m a huge believer in storing food-storage containers with the lids on them. I resisted it at first, but now I love it and I encourage all my clients to consider it. A year ago, I wrote (another) post about it, that I think bears repeating.
Tagged with: aby garvey, kitchen, rubbermaid, worth repeating
Even professional organizers benefit from the help of professional organizers. After I worked with my friend and colleague Aby Garvey last summer, I wrote this post, which summarizes the insights I gained from our time together. Aby and I have swapped services for years, and I never tire of it!
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, home office, professional organizer, worth repeating
Yesterday I had a lovely Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday and I think it’s just wonderful that we take time off as a nation to celebrate gratitude. It got me thinking about how grateful I am for a habit I developed in January of 2011. For almost four years, I’ve been clearing out my email inbox, taking it to zero (or near zero) virtually every weekday.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I love it when I find myself in situations that plant me squarely in my clients’ shoes. This past weekend, my friend Aby Garvey, who is an amazing organizer, offered to come to my house to help me organize my office. We swap services occasionally and it’s always fun and rewarding.
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, home office, professional organizer
Yesterday I had the opportunity to help a client declutter her somewhat vast and varied supply of food-storage containers. Different shapes, different sizes, different brands. We emptied all the containers and lids out of the cupboards and drawers and put them on the dining-room table. I set about sorting them so I could match up tops and bottoms so she could see what she had. There ended up being some tops without bottoms (and vice versa) and the client ended up letting go of a lot of containers, which was great.
Tagged with: aby garvey, kitchen, rubbermaid
I’ve been using the free website and app Springpad for a few months now and if you’ve been reading my blog you know that I’m quite a fan. It’s helped me eliminate random notes and scraps of paper and, for the first time, I’m using an electronic task list successfully.
Tagged with: aby garvey, productivity, springpad, task management
While on a trip, I wandered into a “West Elm”: store and was immediately entranced by these beautiful little Textured Dip Bowls. I don’t serve a lot of dip, but I immediately saw the potential for using them to store little stuff. (My friend Aby Garvey is rubbing off on me after all these years.)
Tagged with: aby garvey, organizing products, organizing solutions, repurposing, storage, style, west elm
I’ll be celebrating three years of routinely clearing out my email inbox come January. I wrote this nuts-and-bolts post about how I do it in January 2012, after I’d been practicing this habit for a year. Now, more than a year and a half later, nothing’s changed. I use the same procedures and I’m still in love with this habit, which make my life unequivocally better.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity, worth repeating
Having great habits and routines is the key to living an easy life. I believe this whole heartedly and I talk to anybody who’ll listen about how important it is to make tasks automatic by creating well-established habits and routines.
In 2011 I created and taught a fun online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines. I’m delighted to announce that it’s being offered again, for the fourth time. This session runs from August 15 through September 12. You can sign up now and get early-bird pricing (20 percent off!) through June 26.
Tagged with: aby garvey, habits, routines, workshops
I wish I had the answer to the age-old question of how to organize business cards. I manage my contacts electronically. I keep my contacts on my Mac in the Address Book program, which syncs to the Contacts app on my iPhone. Yet those little business cards still hang around and make me nuts.
Tagged with: aby garvey, business cards
I have to admit, I’ve been a little slow to the game with Pinterest, the online pinboard social media site that’s swept the nation. Lots of my friends have been loving it for years, but in the past, I’d go to the site and scratch my head trying to figure out how it could be useful to me.
Tagged with: aby garvey, geralin thomas, jennifer hofmann, pinterest
I’m a glass-half-full person. I tend to see the bright side of things. That sunny point of view has been enhanced and amplified by a gratitude habit I’ve had the privilege of developing over the past two years.
Tagged with: aby garvey, gratitude
One of the most fun parts of helping clients declutter is finding great stuff. My favorite thing to hear is, “I’ve been looking for that!” I also love finding money, which happens with surprising frequency.
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, knitting, storage, wips, yarn
As I’ve written here before, I love swapping services with professional organizers. In theory, I shouldn’t need organizing help in my home, since I know what I’m doing. But in fact, bringing in a PO yields amazing results. And it’s loads of fun!
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, home office, professional organizer
I think creating great habits and routines is the key to the good life. I tell clients that I can help them declutter, but unless they change their behavior—and that typically encompasses establishing new habits and routines—disorder will once again reign.
Tagged with: aby garvey, habits, routines, shannon wilkinson, speaking, workshops
In 2011 I created and taught a fun online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines. I’m delighted that it’s being offered again, for the third time. This session runs from July July 19 through August 16. You can sign up now and get early-bird pricing (20 percent off!) through June 26.
Tagged with: aby garvey, habits, routines, workshops
Last fall I developed and taught a fun online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines. I’m delighted that it’s being offered again, February 21 through March 20. You can sign up now and get early-bird pricing (20 percent off!) through January 27.
Tagged with: aby garvey, habits, routines, workshops
It’s been over a year since I started my Inbox Zero habit. On January 2, 2011 I cleared out my email inbox. And, for the most part, it’s been empty at the end of each workday since.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, email, habits, productivity
I’m not so keen on New Year’s Resolutions. I think we tend to make them when we get caught up in the hopeful feelings that a fresh, new year brings. But I think they’re frequently not realistic. And we don’t give them enough time. And when one goes by the wayside, we give up hope on all of them.
Tagged with: aby garvey, clean bureau, clean desk, email, goals, habits, resolutions, shannon wilkinson
If you’re on the east coast, it probably felt more like Christmas than Halloween with the blanket of snow that fell.
The holidays are just around the corner. I urge you to do as much, but no more, than you want to do in terms of holiday prep and decorating. If you do like to decorate, give gifts and entertain at holiday time, now’s the time to start getting ready.
Tagged with: aby garvey, holidays
My friend Aby Garvey of Simplify 101 is such a smart organizer. Not only does she organize well and come up with innovative solutions, she also makes things beautiful. She helped me organize my pantry two years ago and I’m still in love with it.
Tagged with: aby garvey, organizing products, storage
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 announced a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to be teaching an online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines. It’s going to be a terrific workshop that will help you learn how to create great habits and routines so that you can live the life you want to lead.
Tagged with: aby garvey, workshops
I can barely contain my excitement: I can finally announce that I’ll be teaching a fun online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines! The workshop will be offered October 4 through November 1. You can sign up now and get early-bird pricing through September 8.
Tagged with: aby garvey, habits, routines, workshops
I occasionally am asked by clients for ideas on what to do with their kids’ copious artistic masterpieces. I don’t have kids myself, so I typically answer pretty generally and without a whole lot of insight.
Tagged with: aby garvey, artwork, children, organizing kids
On January 2, I cleared my inbox down to zero email messages. And since then i’ve done it every work day except two, when I was out of town without my computer. That’s nearly five months of inbox zero at least five days a week. (I usually do it on the weekends as well.)
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, blogging, don't break the chain, email, habits, productivity
I am bursting my buttons with pride, as I report that I have achieved Inbox Zero each and every day since January 2. That’s 38 days in a row that I’ve handled each message that’s come into my email inbox.
Tagged with: aby garvey, email, habits
Last night, I reached the elusive Inbox Zero. That’s right, I emptied my email inbox. This isn’t to say I don’t have any email messages. It’s just that they’re filed away in folders (or “mailboxes” in Mac Mail parlance).
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, decluttering, email
I’ve been keeping sort of a crazy schedule for the last week. Lots of work outside the home, lots of phone time at home, quite a bit of fatigue. The result is that my email inbox, which I usually try very hard to keep under control, has grown and grown.
Tagged with: aby garvey, email, mark forster, time management, time timer
I wanted to update you on a few recent blog posts:
Tagged with: aby garvey, container store, declutter happy hour, elfa, linda samuels, napo la, napo st. louis, shannon wilkinson, shred and protect
I subscribe to the Weekly Quick Tip that organizer Aby Garvey sends out every week. Yesterday’s was fantastic. She said it came to her from a participant in one of her online workshops.
Tagged with: aby garvey, gift wrap, holidays, recycling
I’ve written here before about the importance of habits and routines to make your life easier. I call it automating your life. Over the past couple of years, I’ve created some habits which have helped me maintain order around my home and office. (This is huge, because I’m a naturally messy person.)
Tagged with: aby garvey, clean desk, flylady, habits, routines
The Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers has established the Los Angeles Organizing Awards—our industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. If I’m not mistaken this year is fifth year for the awards, a gala event held in January. They seem to gain in prestige every year.
Tagged with: aby garvey, denslow brown, napo la, napo st. louis
In yesterday’s blog post I chronicled the great fun of working with professional organizer Aby Garvey on my pantry. I hinted that organizing the food-storage containers was a bit of a challenge. I’ll tell you the saga now. Don’t worry: it has a happy ending.
Tagged with: aby garvey, giveaway, kitchen, rubbermaid
Last month I blogged about working with professional organizer Karel Worley in my basement. With my husband’s help, we tackled a dirty decluttering job in only four hours. It was one that I’d been dreading for months. It was amazing how much we got done and how painless it was.
Tagged with: aby garvey, kitchen, professional organizer
Two months and a week ago, I blogged about how I was experimenting with inbox zero, that is keeping my email inbox pared down to just a few messages that required action. This represented a major changing in thinking for me. For more than a decade I typically had thousands of uncategorized emails in my inbox (and many more thousand filed in folders). I never found that to be a problem.
Tagged with: aby garvey, accountability, decluttering, email
I freely admit that I’m an email packrat. Since my hard drive is large, I have no problem hanging on to emails I think might come in handy some day. This is a habit I’ve had since I started with email in the 90s. And I don’t intend to change.
Tagged with: aby garvey, decluttering, email
I love having an organized purse. For some time I used the Baggallini City Bag, which I liked because it held what I needed and I could find things fairly easily. But it was a little more casual than I wanted when I was dressed to impress.
Tagged with: aby garvey, butler bag, geralin thomas, purse
If you want to avoid being stressed out by the holidays, now is the time to start planning for them. (Okay, planning for them before now would have been even more helpful, but let’s work with what we have.) As I posted yesterday I encourage you to simplify as much as possible. Streamline the holidays and make it easy on yourself.
Tagged with: aby garvey, holidays, workshops
I’m still playing catch up and haven’t been coming up with inspiring ideas for blog posts. So instead of coming up with my own thoughts on the role of organizing in these worrisome times (though I did write a little about that in the latest issue of my newsletter, which went out yesterday), I want to share with you a fabulous blog post from my friend and fellow organizer, Aby Garvey, of simplify 101 and the Creative Organizing blog. Here’s the post, entitled, Empowered by Organizing.
Tagged with: aby garvey, control, economy, empowerment
I had a day yesterday that was absolute heaven. My friend, Geralin Thomas, who among other things does wardrobe consulting, is in town for the annual conference of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. She came in a day early, arriving at 8 a.m. yesterday morning, to see me and to do some wardrobe organizing and enhancing.
Tagged with: aby garvey, closets, geralin thomas, shopping, wardrobe
Organizing guru Julie Morgenstern is all over the place promoting her new book When Organizing Isn’t Enough: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life . I haven’t read it yet, though I’ve read some interviews, including one here at Unclutterer . After I read the Unclutterer interview, I went to my library’s website and asked for the book to be sent to my branch when it’s available, so I can check it out
Tagged with: aby garvey, books, decluttering, julie morgenstern, unclutterer
This week’s blog of the week belongs to Krista Colvin, an organizer in the Portland, Oregon, area, whose blog helps those of us who like to add a little style to our organizing efforts. Organize in Style presents cool products and cool ideas with a great injection of fun.
Tagged with: aby garvey, blog of the week, blogs, brandie kajino, krista colvin, o myth, organize in style, the shebang
So let’s get started. My very first Blog of the Week is (drumrolll, please)....Creative Organizing the wonderfully creative and personal blog from my friend, Aby Garvey the high priestess of organizing scrapbookers.
Tagged with: aby garvey, blog of the week, freelance success, scrapbooking