How to Be Automatically Organized

This is a continuation of Top Tips to Start Getting Organized Week! More of my favorite tips and tricks are still to come.

Tip Number Three:

Leave Things Where You Used Them

Your space should be working for you; you should not be a slave to it. My room works for me. Everything I need is in a useful spot, and I only have what I actually use. Also, when things are in logical places, it is much easier to maintain. My favorite, tried-and-true method is to keep my items where I use them. If you do this, you will avoid being tempted to leave something in the wrong place after you use it when you are too busy or feeling lazy.

For example, my hair care products (my gels and sprays, blow dryer and straightener, brushes and combs) are all right in front of my mirror in a small narrow bookcase where I do my hair. Even when I am in a hurry, everything ends up where it should be because I automatically leave it there. Some days I might toss the items there instead of neatly placing them in a line with all of the labels facing forward (yes, I usually do this), however, since they all end up in the right designated space, they are very easy to tidy up at a later, less busy time.

Stay tuned for more of this week's tips and tricks!

How to Deal With Too Much Stuff

This is another trick in the spirit of my Top Tips to Start Getting Organized week! I will continue to share my favorite tips and tricks in the next few posts.

Tip Number Two:

Reduce Your Belongings by Using Designated Spaces

You cannot get organized if there is too much stuff for your space. If you are a pack-rat, or live with one, no matter how organized you try to be, the stuff will just fight back. One trick I like to use is designating specific places in your house or apartment for specific kinds of things. Limit yourself (and others that live with you) to only having what can fit in the spot you designate.

For instance, you decide that a particular bookcase will be the designated place for books. Over time (maybe not that long), the bookcase will be filled. Now someone in your house or apartment wants to add something to the collection. Something else from the bookshelf will have to go first. If you stick to that system, you will avoid letting anyone fall back into having more than you have space for. This trick works for closets, bookshelves, drawers, coffee/end tables, and any other place you would be able to leave your belongings. This does not include the floor because you should be moving away from storing anything there that is not furniture or a very large item that needs to stand alone (i.e. and exercise bike, decorative plant, etc).

This trick also helps save you money. You might want something when you are in a store, but then you will have to ask yourself "Do I need this? Do I want to give up something I already own just to have it?" You might decide that the new thing in just not worth parting with your existing belongings. And remember, your possessions may bring back memories, but they do not define you. Sometimes you may need that new thing, and you will have to let go of whatever item it is that you conviced yourself you cannot do without. Let go. Set your belongings free. Let them make some new owner just as happy as they made you.

Stay tuned for the rest of this week's Top Tips!

Fastest Way to Make Your Room Look Cleaner

This week I have some Top Tips to Start Getting Organized! I will share a few of my favorite tips and tricks in my next few posts.

Tip Number One:

Clear off the Floor

You may have one of those rooms that is simply too cluttered to walk across. The solution to this issue? Get things off the floor and onto shelves, tables, or other surfaces. Do not just grab armfuls of things and shove them in your closet. Instead, pick up each item individually. You are giving yourself the chance to see each one instead of seeing one collective mess. I realize your shelves, tables, and other surfaces might already be on item overload. In this case, if you truly do not have space to squeeze your items in, do the next few steps:

1. Pick a starting point in the room. Grab a bag/box/bin for items that belong in the room, another for trash, and another for items that belong in other rooms. I actually like to have a fourth bag/box/bin of items I want to donate. If you do not have enough containers, push things over to create floor space on which to organize.
2. Make your way across the room by picking up each item and filing it in one of these three (or four) boxes. You might find that a lot of the stuff on your floor is just trash, old mail, obsolete items, and otherwise unnecessary stuff. Separating out the items that belong either in the trash, in another room, or at your nearest donation center should help in clearing space for the items that do belong in that room.
3. Do not stop at just your floor. Do Step 2 for all of your shelfs, tables, and other surfaces. Now you will have space for the items that belong in the room to rest on someplace other than the floor.
4. Throw out the trash bag(s) and leave the donation bag next to your front door or even on the front passenger seat of your car.
5. Grab the bag/box/bin of items that belong in other rooms. Make a trip around your place and leave these items right at the entrance to each room. Each time you walk into that room, grab another item and place it in an appropriate spot in that room.

Hopefully you will be able to pair down the clutter using the bag/box/bin method. It is the quickest efficient way to deal with a large mess. Do not let the sheer volume of stuff stop you from trying this technique. Do parts of a very busy room at a time. And remember that you will be rewarded at the end with peace of mind and a clean space.

Don't forget to stay tuned for more tips and tricks!

Zen Palate

If you happen to live in NYC, or plan to travel through there, make it a point to visit Zen Palate, on 46th and 9th in the theater district. This vegetarian, and mostly vegan, restaurant will fill your stomach with the most delicious vegetarian food I have ever eaten. Even my boyfriend, the biggest meat-eater I know, loved the food. I suggest trying the Hong Kong-Style Stir-Fried Rice Fettuccini. That one is my favorite. I dream about this dish. It taunts me in my sleep with its soft wide noodles, delicious sauce, scrumptious vegetables, and vegan ham. Trust me. It will convert you. My family has been there a few times now and we have always loved the dishes. The only thing I would avoid ordering is the tofu cheesecake. Aside from that, all of the dishes, such as the Stir-Fried Wheat Noodles and the Steamed Brown/Red Rice, are delectable. If I had an unlimited appetite, I would order one of each.

Just a quick note: To eat at the restaurant make sure to walk all the way back to the dining room. The front of the restaurant is a separate space.

Hope you enjoy this place as much as we have!

SnagIt!

I just recently discovered a marvelous piece of software called SnagIt. It is a tool to record images and video of your computer screen. SnagIt is extremely useful for all things you would use Print Screen for, as well as making video tutorials of anything you do on your computer.

For example:
My department at work was having trouble with having too many copies of the same files in our shared network drive from people sending files as attachments. My solution? Send the location of the file as a link. The issue? Most of my department did not know how to create a link from a folder address.

Instead of walking around to everyone's desk and showing them, only to have them forget how the next day, I created a video tutorial. And how did I shared it with the group? As a link in an email.

This is a tutorial I created with SnagIt (Note: this is not the exact tutorial I gave my coworkers because I had specified real files from a real shared drive. This shows a file from my hard drive. If you try to use links to send files from drives that are not shared, like I have done here linking to my hard drive, the recipient will not be able to open it. I will show how linking to your hard drive files can be very useful in a later post.)

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration, and I hope you are now just as excited as I am about this amazing, useful product. Stay tuned for more posts, and feel free to post questions about SnagIt or any other organization/productivity topic. Thanks for watching.

The Plan of Attack

As promised, here is how I created my Plan of Attack in preparation for our yard sale and total house overhaul.

This document lists the rooms in the house that we wanted to work on and what specifically can/could/will/should be improved. Each task is a bullet point so that they can easily be done one by one. I find this method to be less overwhelming than just saying, "I want to organize everything". My plan is to organize everything, but you can make it easier on yourself by doing it in steps. And who doesn't love to check/cross/obliterate things off a to-do list? Oh, maybe that's just me.

Okay. So you want to clean your house. Do these next steps for each room to assess what you would like to do and to start developing a Plan of Attack.

1. Stand in the middle of your space (if you can) and look around. Is there an area of the room that sticks out to you? Is one corner the "junk" corner? Is there a closet bursting with stuff? Or is the whole room just covered in a blanket of nonsense? Make a short list of the areas in the room you notice could use improvement (for example: bookshelf, TV table, desk, coffee table, etc).
2. Now close your eyes, or if you have space, sit cross-legged on the floor, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Visualize the space you would like to have. If you are anything like me, there is a lot less stuff in this visualized space. Now, for each of the areas you wrote down in step 1, go through and write next to each one at least one possible remedy. When I look at a bookcase, for example, I look to see if there are knickknacks in front of the books blocking the way, if there are books crammed into the shelves, or if the shelves just look too "busy". Then next to "Bookshelf" I write "Remove knickknacks from bookshelf. Weed collection to make a pile of books to donate." I make similar notes next to other areas such as the chifferobe in my bedroom: "Remove clothes unworn in past two year to donate. Donate old DVDs. Remove old body care products that I will not use." For help with a specific area of a room, comment on this post, and I will make sure to get back to you (except if that area is your closet as I will cover that in my upcoming post about closet overhaul).
3. With your list of areas to work on complete, make those suggestions into bullets. I typed all of mine into a word processor so that all of the formatting would be done for me. This also made it easier to drag different bullet points around and to add things that popped into my head later without ending up with a list on paper that looks like a first grader's homework.
4. Next, make yourself a realistic schedule. When I say realistic, I mean do not plan to check ten items off your list in a day. Make a more realistic goal of tackling one or two of them each day instead, and reward yourself when you stick to your schedule. For example, I planned to reorganize the bathroom shelves and medicine cabinet one day, weed through my older clothes the next day, and over the weekend tackle the basement or attic (depended on the heat) with my dad. This way, I never got discouraged or got the feeling like I used to freshman year of high school when I hadn't handed in my homework on time. It is not a fun feeling, so don't do that to yourself. And remember that your plans for the day (or week) can change in a second, so do not feel that you have failed if one day or so you have to put off one of your planned items. Just make sure you don't fall off the band wagon. Move your schedule back one or so day and keep working off that list.
5. In terms of rewards, I just love checking things off lists, but I know that isn't for everyone. Give yourself a pat on the back and remind yourself you did a great job that day. Have a little treat. But please, for the sake of progress, do not go and buy yourself more stuff as a reward. You will regret it later.
   

I hope this strategy helps you start assessing your organizational needs and motivates you to start weeding out your clutter. Remember, assessing your space, making a list, and setting a realistic schedule can be a more productive (and much less painful) way to start on your journey to organized, less stressful living.

Stay tuned for more posts (on a more regular basis), and feel free to post your comments and questions. I would love to solve your organizing issues.

The Yard Sale

It has been too long since my last post! I have been busy doing what I love: Organizing!

My mom and I decided it was time to do a total overhaul on my parent's house. Our house is, in short, disorganized. I am very excited to see what we can do with it! In preparation for this organizing extravaganza, I developed what I call The Plan of Attack. I will detail how I created this plan in a later post.

We set a date for the yard sale and had the goal of finishing the preparation for it in a week. Kids, do not try this at home :P Just kidding. I encourage everyone and anyone to take the first steps towards living a more organized, less stressful life. I do suggest, however, giving yourself more than one week to accomplish the task. Do set a date though, or else it will never get checked off of your metaphorical list.

The preparation for the yard sale included gathering all of the belongings we planned to sell in one location which in our case was our living room. You do not want to get to the day of the sale and have everything in all corners of the house. Plus, if you haven't taken the stuff to sell from the places they used to be in your house, you will not be able to tell whether or not you made a dent in the clutter. Yes, the living room was not the prettiest sight for one week, but it was all over quickly and was so relieving when everything left the house.

One issue was that Mom wanted to see the house less cluttered (making cleaning easier), but Dad did not want to get rid of anything. But let me tell you, people can change. You would not believe how receptive Dad became to the idea of letting go of some of our possessions. It was just so great when Dad beat me to the basement to start bagging up garbage and picking out things to sell. This will probably not happen with your resident pack-rat, but I wanted to share it anyways.

When considering having a yard sale, it helps if you have a few "big ticket items", for instance a dresser that is not in use or the exercise bike that is collecting dust. Yard sales that only have the small things like dolls and records will not be very useful to you and do not attract as much attention from potential buyers.

Quick tip for those considering a yard sale: Make a rule that anything that enters the yard sale does not re-enter the house (or apartment). Plan to donate everything you do not sell to Goodwill or other donation center. This will take pressure off you because even if you do not have a profitable yard sale, you will still have a success because you rid yourself of a lot of unwanted items. If you tell yourself, "Oh, if this item doesn't sell, I am just going to keep it and try to sell it later", you will FAIL at ridding your house of your clutter. Do not, under any circumstance fall into this trap. Be good to yourself, and the people benefiting from charities like Goodwill, and let go of your belongings. Set them free.

Another trick that has been very successful for me (it worked really well for our past two yard sales) is to not bother with all the work of pricing your yard sale items. When you do not price your items you save yourself lots of the preparation work that cause most people to avoid the whole idea of a yard sale. The only preparation we did was to gather all our belongings to sell in the living room and post an advertisement for the yard sale on Craigslist. Simple and pain free.

On the day of your yard sale, all you have to do it move all of the designated stuff out to the lawn and driveway for passersby to see. Any time a person shows interest in your sale, tell them "Welcome! Everything here is pay what you like. Anything we do not sell is going to Goodwill. Please let me know if I can help you find anything, or if you are looking for something specific." This statement gets a very positive reaction, and more often that not the person will stop and seriously look through what you are offering.

One other thing to consider doing: Donate the proceeds of your yard sale to the charity of your choice. In my case, I donated our proceeds to Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation, of which I am an active member. Donating your proceeds to charity does one more good thing for you: You are less worried about how much people are paying for your things and more concentrated on selling as many things as you can. Also, you can mention that "All the proceeds from this sale are going to charity", which can sometimes get a couple extra dollars if people believe it is going to a good cause (and you might get to spread the word about your charity when people ask!)

So remember, gather your yard sale items in one spot in your house, do not price your items, donate all unsold items from your yard sale to charity, and possibly even donate the proceeds as well. After it is all over you will have done something good for yourself and helped out someone else too.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed these tips, and I hope you check back for my next few posts.

• The Plan of Attack
• Top Tips to Start Getting Organized
• My Closet - "Where the devil are my slippers?"
• Keeping Track of Your Finances and Budgeting - Money Saving Tips You Never Thought Of!
• Excel Tips