For week three we will be working on an oldie but goodie: Organization.
For 6 days this week organize an area of your life. This could be your purse; a drawer; your desk, your tools, a kitchen cabinet, that part of your house that collects the infamous paper stack, your closet shelves, dresser drawers...
Or if you take on a larger project like the one I need to tackle (my pantry) break it down into a few sections at a time. Because I won't have a large enough chunk of time in one day to do the entire thing, I will be making 3 different sections to work on and that will count as my point for 3 different days.
For your organization point on the 7th day this week please post a comment here giving us your best organization tip -- something you think can help all of us. Also, if you want to share a photo of an area you made progress on email it to me and I will post it here on the blog.
On Monday I will do the random draw for the Amazon gift card and let you know who the winner is.
PS. Wouldn't it be great if my pantry looked like this?
Happy week 3.
E
I thought I'd share my favorite evaluation question for cleaning out old clothes:
ReplyDelete"Even if this fit, would I wear it?"
This helps me weed out clothes that are out of style (and unlikely to come back), faded, unflattering, too young, worn, etc.
Happy Organizing, everyone!
I love this pantry. I want it.
ReplyDeleteLisa C.
***Notice - I started typing and didn't stop until I realized I had written an entire article. I wrote so much that Blogger is making me shorten it. Instead I'll split it into two comments. Feel free to skip past***
ReplyDeleteOrganization = efficiency. I think it is important to have an organized email account. It helps me get more done more quickly so I can spend more time doing things that matter.
I guess I'm supposed to share a few tips so here goes... I do these things periodically if I find my email inbox getting out of control.
1. Keep your unread emails to a minimum. Email accounts tell you how many unread emails you have for a reason. When I get on my Mom's email account (sorry Mom) I can't stand seeing that there are hundreds of unread emails. If you always mark every email as read(or actually read every email) you will notice the emails that matter.
2. Prioritize your email accounts. I have three main email accounts that I use daily. I know this sounds excessive but it is important for me. First, I have a work email account that I have to use daily. Second, I have a priority personal email account. Third, I have a junk email account.
For my Priority personal account I only received important emails there. I get emails from family, friends, important billing information etc. For any website that I have to sign up for with an email address (facebook, pinterest, groupon etc) I sign up with my secondary/junk email account. This keeps my important emails going to the right place and if I have time to sift through the other emails I can always log into my other email.
3. "Mark as Read" I can't control the amount of email I get in my work account - I have to just check every email or check the box to all the emails I don't need to read and select "Mark as Read". This is especially useful in my Junk email account. To keep the unread emails to a minimum on that account I frequently click the 'select all' box and then choose 'Mark as Read'. Remember, the emails in this account are usually junk anyway. I don't need to see every groupon offer that gets emailed to me. Which brings me to my next point...
*continued
ReplyDelete4. Unsubscribe. Control the amount of email that gets sent to you. Over the last few days I have been taking a mental note of what emails I actually take the time to read and what emails I don't bother opening. For me, I take the time to read the latest offers from Harbor Freight tools and I don't read junk email from twitter and from some of my yahoo groups that publish a daily digest. (Hopefully you have already changed your email address and most of the junk email goes to a second address). I have unsubscribed from all the daily digest emails I get from Moretprs (a yahoo group for networking with fellow teachers) and from twitter emails about friend suggestions. By reducing the amount of email coming in you can more easily stay organized online.
5. Priority Inbox. If you want more organization within your email account you may want to try a different inbox. In Gmail, for example, you can choose to use the normal inbox or others including a priority inbox - my personal favorite. This inbox sorts your email and puts the important/unread stuff at the top and below that leaves a section for all starred emails - emails that you want to be able to reference back to quickly or emails that require action on your part. Starring emails makes finding that flight reservation quick and easy.
6. This is just personal preference but when I worked in a career counseling office I would see people come in - college students and middle-aged adults alike - with resumes that looked very nice. Far too often, however, the email at the top of the resume was something like Blonde_1982@yahoo.com or getwedgies@hotmail.com (this is a real email address of a friend of mine). Now, as a teacher, I email parents with updates regarding their children. (I hope I'm not writing to a parent of one of my students.) I often find that my students' parents don't use email addresses that are not very grown up or professional. I recommend an email address with your name in it. My personal email addresses are simply FirstnameLastname@gmail.com and yahoo.com. It keeps it professional and simple.
Who knows, with an organized email inbox you might find that you spend less time sifting through junk on your computer and you can spend more time sifting through junk in your house.
Feel free to gloss over my errors. They are aplenty.
DeleteThanks Brent for the great tips!
DeleteMy tip is this: KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE.
ReplyDeleteok this is not really a tip it is a reminder for myself. While organizing my pantry this week I realized it was such a mess that there were things in there I had not been able to find so I had then purchased them again. So silly! Now that everything has a place I know just what I have.
When I am reminded of what I already have then I know I don't need more!
E
Emily just posted some cabinet pictures which is what I organized today. We are thinking about painting our cabinets and I would like to do open shelving on both sides of the sink. My husband thinks they will never be clean, so today I took off the cabinet doors to those two cabinets and re-organized all of the stuff in my upper cabinets so that the pretty stuff would be seen and not the ugly stuff. My tip is to organize what you feel like when you have the urge. It's hard to force yourself when you don't feel like it, so if the mood strikes, get to work!
ReplyDeleteI honestly have no tips on organizing. I had the same experience as Emily this week. I found things in my cabinets and shelves I had no idea were there! Flea meds for our cat who has not been with us for almost 4 years for example. My only thing to share is what I was reminded of this week: it takes much less time to just tackle the organizing job then to worry and think about it and procrastinate some more and feel bad every time you see the mess. Cheers!
ReplyDeletei didn't come up with this myself, but i think it is a good one: if it isn't useful, beautiful or (seriously!) sentimental - get rid of it!
ReplyDeleteI follow the Getting Things Done productivity program to manage projects and keep email organized (and my work email inbox almost always empty). It is simple and effective. Here's a cheat sheet (http://lifedev.net/2007/02/gtd-cheatsheet-the-workflow/) though I recommend the book (http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280).
ReplyDeleteA thought from "Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living" (whew! she needs to declutter than title!) that has stuck with me: Ask yourself "Is this (thing) paying enough rent for the space that it is occupying?" It pays rent by being useful or beautiful. If it's not paying enough rent, out it goes.
ReplyDelete"A goal not written down is only a wish" - unknown
ReplyDeleteI think this is my best organization inspiration. It can apply to any size goal but for me if I do not make and actual (written) list of what needs to be done each day I am a mess.
Anyone who has seen my house would laugh at me giving any organizing advice but this advice isn't my own, it came from the blog Money Saving Mom. It is to start slow so that it isn't overwhelming. For example, I decided to spend 15 min a day organizing my house and hope to have it look much better by the end of the year. Also, I have decided to find 5 things do get rid of every day. And hopefully that will seriously reduce the clutter and stuff that we have.
ReplyDeleteOrganizing is such a daunting task. My only tip (and it's not even really a tip) is to just do it! It's so nice to tackle the junk drawer,the basement closet or whatever it is that needs to be done. This week I found so many things I was missing or had forgotten about (like picture of my husband and I when we were dating!). Now that things are organized I have incentive to put things away properly, instead of throwing them in the closet/drawer to be organized at a later date.
ReplyDeleteI like to follow the touch it once rule when dealing with paper--mail and papers from school. I sit down at night and go through it and immediately shred, recyle, or pay the bill I got, etc. It seems to help keep the piles of paper down.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this is good advice, but it's something I'm learning about organization at a really busy stage of life. It is this: to accept real life in my house while I'm organizing things. We have 10 people living here, and I want my children to help with work and putting things away, so forcing everyone to do things my way all the time doesn't work much. Organization around here won't look magazine ready but if we can take care of things well enough that we can easily find/get to what we have when we need it, we're doing ok. I guess what I'm saying is that organization can be about how things look, or it can be about how things flow and I'm learning to value the "flow" over the "look."
ReplyDeleteI love boxes, bins and baskets. They help hide things so less clutter and when organizing I like to list what is in the bins that are in the cabinet so things are simple to find. ~Janet
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to follow the one minute rule from The Happiness Project. It's similar to Sarah Jane's one touch rule. It applies a bit more to keeping things organized, but essentially if there is something that needs to be done and takes less than a minute to do, do it then. (Hanging up a coat, putting something away in the closet, etc)
ReplyDeleteThe only rule of organization that I try to do (and I'm far from perfect on this) is to try to do a little cleaning/organizing every day. That way things never get completely out of control.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that works best for me is to make a to-do list every night before bed. I check the calendar to see what I have on tap for the next day and then list the jobs I need to accomplish. Helps me sleep better, too, since I'm not waking up in a panic remembering last minute things. Also feels good to cross things off the list!
ReplyDeleteLisa C.
My best tip is to have a 1inch binder for each child of mine where I put important papers that pertain to each child. This might include a sports schedule, a shot record, a team directory, a class list, a scout camp packing list, anything ongoing that needs to be referred to agiain; you get the idea
ReplyDeleteMy best organizational tip is that everything in your home should have it's own "home". If you can't fit it, don't have it. It's pretty simple...and that way when something is used it always returns to it's spot when you are done with it. I imagine that this is much more difficult with a gaggle of children...but it would be a good lesson for them. At the end of every day...everything is back in in it's place and ready for the next day!
ReplyDeleteI picked this up at work but it can apply at home too.
ReplyDeleteHandle a piece of paper once.
I have realized that if I am going to expect organization out of my kids then I better be setting a good example for them. If I want their room to be clean, then my room/closet/bathroom better be clean too!
ReplyDeleteMy tip is: clean as you go. It drives some people crazy, but I can't live any other way.
ReplyDelete