Do Future-You a Favor, and Leave a Recipe!

I was at a professional event, and an IT guy mentioned leaving himself a recipe.  After a moment, I realized he was not referring to food, but to a note-to-self, a recipe, a map for his future self to follow to complete a recurring task.  I chuckled at the reference, but I use and absolutely recommend the practice of leaving recipes!

Recipes are great tools for those often-but-not-too-often tasks, the ones that are regularly scheduled but with large gaps of time between, like quarterly or semi-annually.  We do these tasks often enough to remember part of the process, but not often enough to make them a habit.

Let me give you a couple of examples, of the awkwardly scheduled tasks and the Recipe Solution:

  • Once a month, I post my upcoming presentations to Facebook and also to the NAPO-Chicago website.  I wish I could say that I quickly and confidently complete these tasks from habit or memory, but I can’t say that.  Every month, I have a moment of panic, trying to remember if I’m supposed to post to my personal FB page first, and then share to my Professional page?  Or is it the other way around….. and when I send the info to NAPO, did the contact person say PDF not Word?  Hmmm… Or Word not PDF….  Then the panic passes and I look at my note on my IPhone that tells me Professional then personal, and Word not PDF.   Whew.  Once I check my notes, my recipe, the process takes all of 15 minutes.  Done. 
  • I helped with an annual event last week for our school district.  Wisely, we recapped just hours after the event, writing up notes of successes and challenges, while all the details were still fresh in our minds.  We’ll add those wrap-up notes to all the other notes for the event.  Next May or June when we start working on next year’s event, the process will go that much more smoothly. 
  • Approximately 5 times a year, I have the opportunity to teach a class at Moraine Valley Community College.  I love teaching at MVCC, I always meet the nicest people.   And my contact person is very kind.  But she has to be getting tired of me, since for the first 4 classes, I missed some detail of the grading process and held up my students’ grades.  Each time, I have added details to my Recipe, like my log-in info and the correct screen to enter attendance, etc.  I really hope I’ve got it right this time, I’ll find out when I teach my next class in September!
  • Even my father-in-law’s habit of writing the oil filter size and oil weight for each car he has owned on the cabinet door in the garage is an example of a Recipe.  When it comes time to change his oil, he is reminded of what he needs.

Save yourself the scrambling, the head scratching, the moment of panic. Do Future You a favor, take some notes for those awkwardly spaced recurring tasks and leave yourself a Recipe!  Future You will thank today’s You!

Take the Misery and Mystery Out of Packing School Lunches!

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Way back in June, a number of people mentioned how glad they were that summer was here because they wouldn’t have to pack school lunches anymore!  I decided then to write a Back-To-School blog to help! 

 

Here are 5 ways to make School Lunches easier, cheaper and more appealing:

  • Communicate with your Kids.
    • Have an honest conversation about what they will actually eat, and how much time is provided for lunch at school. 
    • For example, my teens have early start times, so breakfast has to be nutritious, portable and easy.  And the freshman has only half a lunch period, due to a biology lab class, so lunch will also need to be nutritious, portable and easy!
    • In the interest of time, my youngest asked for half-sandwiches and soft fruits like grapes, dried cherries or raisins, etc., because carrots and apples are yummy but require a lot of chewing.  I willingly agreed, since less food is wasted and he actually wants to eat his fruit.
    • Packing lunches together offers an opportunity to discuss good nutrition like serving sizes, food groups and pyramids, pros and cons of fresh foods and convenience or pre-packaged foods, etc.
  • Choose the right space and time to pack lunches. 
    • Establish a lunch packing zone with lunch bags, sandwich bags, fresh fruit, napkins, plastic spoons, etc. 
    • Our family is much better at packing lunches after dinner than we are at packing in the morning before school.  So as we clean up from dinner, we pack for the next day. When helps us to ….
  • Strategically plan and package leftovers.
    • Taco night?  Put together some tortillas with refried and cheese, they freeze great and stay cold!
    • My youngest loves cold pasta (I can’t explain it, but he loves it!)  So if I make homemade mac and cheese, spaghetti or other pastas, we portion the left overs into 2 or 3 containers for lunches.  Ham for dinner tonight means ham sandwiches tomorrow, etc.
  • Do as much prep as possible at home.
    • When my kids were younger, I learned the lunch room monitors spend a lot of time helping really little kids open hard-to-open packaging.  Make sure your kids can navigate their own sandwich bags, prepackaged chips or snacks, and water bottle.  And peel the oranges at home!
  • Assemble the lunches for the week all at once, if that helps.
    • Use reusable containers and lunch boxes, if possible.  We use lots of little Gladware bowls for prepacking our lunches!
    • I spent half an hour last night chopping fresh veggies into snack-able sizes. 001
    • Pre-package your own foods, to save time and money.  On Sunday, we fill Gladware bowls with servings of pretzels, chex mx, cookies and dried fruit, then use them throughout the week for speedy lunch assembly!
    • For example: I traveled to New Mexico in June, and in preparation,  my 10 year old and I packed as much of his lunch for sports camp as possible for the days I was going to be gone.   We lined up 5 paper lunch bags, and put his name on them.  Then we dropped in apples, bags of chips and bagged up cookies.  We also made 5 ham and cheese sandwiches, cut them into wedges, bagged them up and froze them.  So every morning, he just grabbed a bag from the counter, tossed in his frozen sandwich and cold juice pouch and was ready for camp.   (He loved it so much, we did the same thing the next week, even though I was home!).

Meet the school lunch challenge head on with a few of these tips.  Happy munching!  

And here are a few more resources on the topic:

 

Tweak Your Morning Routines this Week!

This past week provided excellent practice for heading back to school.  All three of my sons have had morning activities, helping us refresh our morning routines morning-clipart-5-free-summer-clipart-illustration-of-a-happy-smiling-sunbefore school actually starts.  We have discovered some stumbling blocks, and can now clear them before the first day in a few weeks.

Whether you are going back to school or not, I recommend we all take some time to tweak our morning routines this week.  Here is how:

  1. Sit down with everyone involved in your morning routine. Discuss start times, breakfast options, bedtimes, carpooling, etc.  If your schedule is the only one to consider, sit down with a pen and paper, and think about your morning routine.
  2. Look at what works:
    1. My youngest son’s schedule is unchanged, so he and I will stick with our regular plan, in the 7 am to 8:20 time slot.
    2. I have the most flexibility in the morning, since I am up really early but don’t need to be anywhere until I drop off the little guy.  I’ll move my routine around everyone else.
  3. Look at what needs fixed:
    1. We have to rearrange our shower schedule from years past, as we’ll have two high-schoolers with a 7 am start time and my husband still needs to be up and out of the house by 6:45.  (I am just going to stand back, though, and let the three earliest risers figure out their plan).
    2. We need to recommit to better breakfasts.
  4. Get everyone their own clock, and make they know how to use it correctly!  Kids need alarm clocks.  Because Mom is tired of nagging (or maybe that’s just me).
  5. Make breakfast portable.  Not everyone likes to eat breakfast before 7 am, at least not in my house, but they still need to have something nutritious with them.  So healthy and portable breakfasts are going to be very important this year.  With my kids’ collaboration, I’m planning on breakfast bars or granola bars, microwaveable breakfast sandwiches and fresh fruit.
  6. Plan ahead now!  Regardless of your student’s age (or yours), determine bed times and wake-up times.  And start adjusting your current sleep and wake times to line up with the new ones.  For example, we came home earlier than normal on Sunday night  from a weekend away, because early Monday morning was just too chaotic last week.   As mentioned, great practice for back-to-school!

Spend a little time this week improving your morning routine, and reap benefits all year long!

5 Ways to Find Productivity in Little Bits of Time

Since Chicago is a transportation hub, we have train and truck traffic in my neighborhood, and we hourglassget stuck by trains.  Drivers get justifiably aggravated with train traffic.  My Village of Evergreen Park listed the customer service number for a troublesome train line on their lighted marquee… right next to an intersection often blocked by those trains.  Genius!

I confess, I enjoy getting stopped by a train, so long as it’s a brief stop.  It is a reasonable excuse for being a few minutes late – texting “Train.  Sorry.  Be there soon”, folks will understand.  And it’s a mini-break in the midst of a busy day.  I grab a productive few minutes to check email, make a call, send a text, clean out my bag or car, or just play a game of Sudoku on my Iphone. As an added bonus, I find having something to do while I wait distracts me from getting aggravated, too.

We all benefit from improved time management and productivity.  Productivity means getting things done, managing our tasks and time well, taking good care of our responsibilities and relationships.  It means taking care of business effectively, so we can move on to something else.  I prefer to work in large, uninterrupted blocks of time, but rarely get that luxury.  Subsequently, I work hard to make the most of little bits of time, stuck by a train or between appointments, tasks, obligations and fun, especially in the summer!

Ideas for Finding Productivity in Little Pieces:

  1. Recognize that large tasks are comprised of related small tasks.  For example, I have “Client Care” on my to-do list every Tuesday.  “Client care” consists of emailing, texting or calling 5-10 clients, to arrange or confirm appointments, or just check in, and can occur in little pieces around other appointments and activities.  Any 2 or 3 minute pause can be used for “Client Care”.
  2. Keep a detailed to-do list.  “Run Errands” is not detailed enough.  “1. Drop off donations; 2. Pick up order at doctor’s office; 3. Make banking deposit; and 4. Drop off dry cleaning” is detailed.  And with today’s personal to-do list in hand, you can accomplish these tasks around other blocks of time on your schedule.  An errand or two on the way to work, at lunch and on the way home.  Details are key.
  3. Set your brain on a task or a question, and be open to the answer.  At the top of my to-do list I write “Unique gift idea for wedding?”  Or “Creative blog topic for next Tuesday?”  I’m always amazed at the people or ideas that come to me when I do this, providing inspiration!  Perhaps song lyrics, a client question, an on-line article, even a billboard.  I could waste a lot of time and mental energy forcing ideas or I can just let them come to me in small pieces.
  4. Boost productivity and assign “time allotments” to your tasks.  Looking at today’s tasks, I assign 5-10-15-30 and 60 minute labels to them.  Then throughout my day, when I have a few minutes, I can reach for the 5 or 10 minute tasks (make appointment, confirm client, make grocery list) and complete them in those little bits of time.
  5. Create a habit of checking and re-checking your efforts during your day. Many times a day, I stop and ask myself if I am working on what I need to be working on.  Or, am I aimlessly following links on Facebook?  I am not suggesting that you can’t just relax for a few minutes – relaxing is necessary for productivity, too!  But I am suggesting that we relax for a few minutes, and then return to the task at hand.

Next time you find yourself stuck by a train, in line at Starbuck’s, or waiting for your kids to get out of practice, seize the moment.  Breathe deeply and gently stretch your neck from side to side.  Then think through today’s tasks and spend a productive few minutes.  These little bits of productive time really add up by the end of the day!

Dedicated to JS, thanks for editing with me!

Swap 60 Minutes With Your Mail for 167 Worry-Free Hours! 

Does this sound familiar? mailbox-clip-art_436249

Piles of new / old / opened / mystery mail are scattered on flat surfaces all over your home.  Somewhere there’s a utility bill that might be due, and that reimbursement check from work is missing.  You are always vaguely worried about business falling through the cracks.

You’re not alone.  I worked with a client just last week with a similar challenge, and here’s how we cleaned up her surfaces, took care of this week’s mail and took care of business, in no time at all. Try it for yourself!

First, we collected the mail from the hall table, kitchen counter, dresser, mail box and desk top.  We wiped off a counter top, and made some space to get to work.

As we worked, I shared these truths with my client:

  1. The Pareto Principle (a.k.a. The 80/20 Rule)
    1. 80% of what we use in 20% of what we have.
    2. In business, the 80/20 rule says that 80% of our business comes from 20% of our clients.
    3. In a closet, the 80/20 rule says that if we own 10 pairs of pants, we wear the same 2 or 3 all the time.  In the kitchen, if we have 10 appliances, we use the same 2 or 3 every day.
    4. And if we get 10 pieces of mail today, we actually need to keep and act on 2 or 3.
  2. You will receive mail you don’t need and didn’t ask for.  Just because someone sent you something doesn’t mean you need it.
  3. Your daily mail is unlikely to contain anything truly urgent.
  4. Once you’re organized, maintenance takes no time at all.
  5. Sometimes a conscious effort once a week to work on mail all the way to completion is better than halfhearted dealings every day.

With these truths in mind, we tackled this week’s mail (and you can, too!):

  1. We pulled out ads and old newspapers, and recycled them.
  2. We pulled out magazines, confirmed my client actually wanted to read them, and created a reading pile.
  3. Next we opened up every envelope.  Why?
    1. Just like the book and cover analogy, you can’t judge your mail by the envelope.  For example, health insurance reimbursement checks look just like Explanation of Benefit envelopes.  In addition, credit card solicitations don’t always look personalized on the outside envelope, but can contain personal information inside and therefore require shredding.
    2. We can recycle parts of every mail item. For example, my client’s ComEd envelope contained a bill page, a return envelope, a “customer privacy info” sheet and an advertisement.  We kept only the bill page, as she pays her bill on-line and didn’t need the return envelope,
  4. Next, we put the “bills to pay” and the follow-up items in a small pile, for my client to complete when our session was over.  Since we had purged 80% of the papers, there were only 3 or 4 action items, which will take maybe 15 minutes to complete.
  5. We took out the recycling, shred a few papers containing personal info and filed the rest (just a few).
  6. Total elapsed time – 15 minutes. Done and Done.

For many of us, tackling the mail once a week is enough.  And by “tackling”, I mean taking our daily mail all the way from the mailbox to complete and filed.  This approach requires up to an our once a week, uninterrupted, but surely an hour of hard work and focus is worth the freedom from paper management tasks for the other 167 hours!  Give it a try!

Lug, Wash, Dry, Hang, Fold, Put Away. Repeat.

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I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time in my laundry room. We recently updated our appliances which motivated me to re-organize the space. If your laundry room is a potential organizing project for you, too, here are some ideas to consider:

Look at what IS working:
For us, the bins for too-small clothes for my two younger sons work great, especially with the “donate” basket on the shelf between the bins. Clothes that my middle son outgrows go into labeled bins in the crawl space, to be used once the youngest son is big enough. The clothes the youngest son outgrows goes to our younger cousin or into the donate basket.

Look at what ISN’T working:

My aging washer and dryer worked only with a lot of squeaking and leaking. We replaced them – hooray! Quiet, leak-free, clean and so quick!

Got Clutter? Use up the random products you have collected over the years, then purge your recycling.

Unruly piles of clothes can indicate a problem.
   

      Is the clothing dirty?  If yes, make a concerted effort to get all the clothes actually clean at the same time. Set a timer, dedicate a Saturday, and catch up. All the way to AWAY.

 Do you lack flat space for folding your clothes?  If yes, set up a portable table or install a counter top near your laundry space strictly for sorting and folding clean clothes.

Do you have just too many clothing items, for yourself or other members of the family?  A nice family I worked with had a mound of t-shirts for the teenage sons just outside the laundry room door. The mound was almost as tall as me, so I assumed there was a table under the mound but it was all clothing. That is waaaay too many items. A friend with a large family limits the total number of clothing items per person, just to make laundry time easier. They replace things more often, but they save in space and effort!

 Do you lack a laundry system?

If yes, it’s time to create one! Dedicate a day or two a week to plow through the piles of laundry. Or tackle it every day, by completing a load every morning or every other, depending on how quickly the dirty clothes pile up.

I employ the everyday method, usually getting a load all the way to folded / hung up before we leave for the day, or before dinner. This requires a habit, but it is worth it!

Get everyone involved in the system! Even the youngest child can put their dirty clothes in the hamper, and everyone can help put away, too.

A few words about hangers:

  • Invest in nice hangers, either plastic tubular or felt-covered. Quality hangers treat your clothing better, offer a better visual presentation and help maintain a little space between your clothing on the closet rod.
  • We hang most of our clothing items the moment they come out of the dryer. This minimizes wrinkles, and cuts folding time down to about a minute a load.
  • Buy hangers in different colors for different family members, to save time sorting.
  • Purge wire hangers. They bend, rust, snag fragile items, and they look terrible. Return your hangers to your dry cleaners, most will recycle.

So, if your laundry room is the most used room in your house, too, spend a little time and effort on it this week to make it run more smoothly!

Who’s Driving This Car Anyway? You. You Are In Charge. 

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Every day, we’re bombarded by unwanted pressures influencing our decisions.  To improve time management, clear mental clutter and find Peace of Mind, it is important to remember Who Is Driving This Car, Anyway?  You are.  You own your decisions.

It’s hot outside, but a client just purchased flannel sheets… patterned with snowflakes. Why?  Because he keeps a running list of household items he needs, and then peruses emails from his favorite retailers, waiting for a good sale and free shipping.  He found some high quality sheets on clearance, got a great deal plus free shipping.  This client is driving the car.  He’s in charge, and uses retailer offers to his best advantage.

Speaking of sheets, another client asked “Why should I buy sheets in January?” Major retailers typically offer White Sales and special deals on bedding, towels, etc. in January, but she resents pressure from outside forces to buy bedding only in January.  If we need new bedding now, why wait?  And if we don’t need bedding or towels, we may succumb to advertising pressure and begin to think maybe we really DO need them, since the advertisements say we do.  This client is in charge, and will buy bedding based on needs, not on advertising pressures.

What should guide your actions:

  • Your beliefs, faith, personal goals and objectives
  • The needs and wants (within reason) of your loved ones / the people you are responsible for
  • Your own needs and wants, in that order
  • Your work responsibilities, your own agenda, personally and professionally, and the tasks attached

What should NOT guide your actions:

  • Indecision. Fear. Procrastination. Inertia.  Busy work.
  • Pop-culture pressures.  Anything you see on TV or in a catalog, article or newspaper, unless it fits in with the list above of “Should Guide Your Actions”
  • The unsolicited suggestions or opinions of strangers, or other people’s drama / goals / objectives

I mentioned in a paper management class last week that we should unsubscribe from every Catalog.  We live very happily without an item until we see it in the shiny pages of a catalog.  And then we are reeled in with the artfully crafted ad and MUST HAVE that piece!  A class participant shared an insight she gained from that statement:

She has been struggling to stay inside her weekly food budget. She dutifully reviews the grocery store ads for the best deals on her food items, and uses coupons, too.  However, she lets the ads dictate her grocery list, instead of looking first at what she already has on hand in her kitchen.  The stores were driving the car, not her own needs.  She will now shop for what she needs, and not just what is on sale.

I read an article last week about how double spacing between sentences is now outdated, and everyone should single space after a period.  The writer reasoned that the age of computers has eliminated the need for double spacing as fonts are more readable now than on a typewriter.  Reading this reasonable (single spaced) article could influence me to edit the last 20 years of my articles, just to conform to this writers’ assertion.

But… it turns out, I don’t care.

I don’t care if my sentences are single or double spaced. Perhaps I should, and perhaps I will try to start that new habit, but probably not.  I could spend hours and days adhering to some stranger’s suggestion.  But I won’t.  Because 1.  both ways are technically correct, 2. I have other things to do with my time, and 3. I’m driving THIS car.

Get clear on your own beliefs, values, needs and wants. Make sure you are the one Driving This Car.  You will make better decisions, and be less likely to cave under external pressures.

Strike the Balance Between ‘Too Much Emotional Clutter’ and “Ruthless Purging’.

My clients search for motivation or inspiration to “ruthlessly” purge their clutter, once and for all.  “Ruthless”, that’s their word, from three people in one week.  What is ‘Ruthless’?  In this case, we’ll use “cold, merciless or hard-hearted”.

Clutter is defined as anything we don’t need, use or love (if I knew who said this first, I would give them credit).  Our stuff turns into clutter for a number a reasons, feeding a number of emotions.  Love, sentimentality, desire, want, fear, anxiety, apathy, need.  When we take the emotion back out of our clutter and look at it purely in the context of “I need this” or “I don’t need this”, suddenly, it’s easier to get rid of our clutter. 

So, for purposes of clearing clutter, “Ruthless” can be a useful emotion.  As cold and uncaring as the word sounds, I absolutely agree that sometimes we need to be detached and unemotional about our stuff if we intend to clear clutter and restore order.  To change our environment, we may, indeed, need to remove our emotions. Emotions aren’t bad, but they can make us hold on to stuff, to clutter, long after it ceases to be useful, needed or helpful.

How to move from Drowning in Emotional Clutter to Ruthless Purging?

  1. Choose charitable donation destinations that you are emotionally attached to.  Knowing that others will benefit from your purging efforts will make it easier to finally let go and donate your clutter.
  2. If you have clutter for emotional reasons, make clearing clutter a pleasant task:
    1. Keep your eyes on the prize.  Imagine how good you will feel when the clutter is gone.  Imagine all the benefits that will come from clearing a space.  And give yourself a reward to look forward to, for when you are done with today’s project. 
  3. If you have clutter for emotional reasons, make clearing it a social event: 
    1. Take a picture, text a friend.  Ask for support from your friends and family. 
    2. Share the news that you are de-cluttering, and you will be amazed at who will understand.   We all share similar struggles.
    3. Have someone, like a professional organizer or objective friend or family member, help you with your clutter project.  The objective person is not emotionally attached to your stuff, and can see your stuff just as stuff.  Useful or not useful, whole or broken, usable or spoiled.  Objectivity is a great lens through which to view your stuff.
  4. If you have clutter for emotional reasons, make clearing it a meaningful event:
    1. Saving something to give to someone some day?  Write a note, or even give it to your loved one now!
    2. Grab the notebook, write down next actions for your items. 
    3. Take a picture, or jot down a few notes in a journal about your items, and then let them go.  We are not neglecting a person or the memory of a person by clearing some clutter. 
  5. Let go of negative emotions as you clear your clutter.  Emotions and sentimentality can be both negative and positive.  If an item generates a strong response inside, determine if it is a positive one or a negative one. Keep the stuff that makes you feel good, and feeds your love of others.  Anything else is not worth keeping.
  6. Imagine an open hand.  Clench up your hands tightly, in fists, squeezing very hard.  Feel how your arms and shoulders start to tense up, too?  Now relax and release your hands.  Wiggle your fingers, feel the blood rushing back into your fingertips. Imagine goodness flowing into your open hand.  Yes, this an analogy, not even a very subtle one.  We hold on tightly to our clutter because doing so is a habit.  But it feels SO GOOD to let some of that go.  And once our hands are open, we are ready to receive new goodness.
  7. Cut yourself some slack through this organizing process because we may mourn when we give away things.  But the benefits outweigh the pain!

 If you, too, search for inspiration and motivation to clear the clutter, try one of these tips to make the transition! 

Keep the Vacation Going with an Organized Re-Entry! 

Keep the Vacation Going with an Organized Re-Entry! 

Why?

A friend suggested that, for every day we’re on vacation, it takes an equal number of days to get back to normal.  If you’re gone a week, it will take a week when you get back to feel like you’re caught back up, organized, focused, productive, etc.

We travel several times a summer.  Weekends at a family lake house, trips to see friends a few states away, and destinations like Washington, DC and Philmont, NM this summer.  But using my friend’s math, if we travel 2 or 3 times a month, and the first day or two back are a struggle, we could spend a lot of time struggling.

Instead, I would love to keep that relaxed vacation feeling as long as possible, and not ruin it with the ‘just got back struggle’!  So plan ahead for your “Re-Entry”!  When you get home:

  • Unpack your car.  All the way.  Clothes, shoes, food wrappers, etc.  If you’ve been to the beach, do a quick vacuum (or have the teenager do it).
  • In my case, repack the car for your business week (i.e., put briefcase, tool kit and supplies back in my van).
  • Start a load of laundry.
  • Eat dinner.
  • Check mail and messages.
  • Unpack your bags, and put everything away.  Yes, everything.
  • Keep a running to-do list with you all the time, and add ideas for when you get home to it as you travel.

There are lots of ways to travel better, too, to make re-entry easier. 

  • Tidy up before you leave.  Nothing kills a vacation buzz quicker than coming home to a mess. 
  • For longer trips, keep a large envelope for receipts, programs / brochures / tickets from destinations, and other keepsakes, to look at later.
  • Employ a laundry bag.  We always use a dirty laundry bag or standing cloth hamper when we travel.  As we unload the car, the dirty stuff goes straight to the laundry room, while the clean items (if there are any) get unpacked and doled out to their owners to put away.
  • Leave your travel toiletry kit packed all the time.  I have a purple travel kit with all sorts of “Mom” stuff in it (first aid kit, small sewing kit, and eyeglass repair kit, etc) packed all the time.  In addition, we carry personal toiletries in a couple of Ziploc bags inside the purple kit.  Upon arrival home, the purple kit goes back in the closet, the Ziplocs get emptied immediately, and our stuff gets put away (at least by the next morning, when we use it all to get ready on a Monday!).
  • If you go the same place regularly, leave an empty bag in your closet or near the door to toss things for next time.  Right now, I have ready 2 bags:  1 bag of items to take to the lake house; and a bag of gifts for a big family birthday party the end of the month.   You can organize your next trip as warp up from your most recent trip.

So, organize your Re-Entry and keep the relaxed vacation feelings going!  Dedicated to my awesome accountability partner, Jan!

What’s Lurking In Your Garage?

ImageIs your garage scary?  Why are garages such an organizing challenge?

  • Everything is just bigger.  We have to organize bicycles and yard implements instead of dishes, books and papers.
  • Garages are used by every family member, and sometimes by people who don’t even live in our homes.
  • We can look past the clutter in our garage for a long time.  If we use our garage for parking our cars, we just pass through the space when we come and go, and turn a blind eye.
  • If we don’t park in our garage because it’s full of clutter, the usage and priority slip even further, and it sinks even lower down the to-oganize list.  And the dread monster and feelings of overwhelm build….

I’ve worked in a lot of garages lately, so I know it’s a great time to tackle garage projects!  If you, too, are challenged by your garage, here’s how to organize the space, tame the monsters, and breathe easier.

  1. Assemble your supplies:  Garbage bags, sharpie markers, a notebook to jot down follow-up tasks, a smart phone to take pictures of items to sell or donate.
  2. Remove items already slated to leave.  Load up and drop off the trash, recycling or donations.
  3. Get a little tough with your loved ones.  It’s time to STOP storing items for family members who no longer live in your home.  Employ both a request and a deadline: “The donation pick-up is scheduled for July 1, take what you want or it goes out to the curb”, or something similar. Image
  4. Break down the cardboard boxes.  It is amazing how many we have, and how much space they take up!  Keep a few, but flatten them for easier storage.
  5. Choose a starting spot, perhaps near a door, and slowly move around the space, making decisions about the clutter you find.  Clutter is defined as anything you don’t need, use or love.  So ask yourself:
    1. Do I need this?  Yes?  Then where and when do I need this? (and store it accordingly)  No?  It may need to go away…
    2. Do I use this?  Yes?  Then where and when do I use this?  (and store it accordingly)  No?  It may need to go away…
    3. Do I love this?  Yes?  Then treat it as treasure and store it in a clean waterproof container NOT in your garage.  No?  It may need to go away…
    4. Other related questions may be:  Do I have similar items that do the same job?  If the item is large and job specific (like Imagecamping equipment), can it be shared among a couple of households (so one of you can get rid of it!?!?)
  6. Brush down the walls and sweep the floor as you move things around.
  7. Once you have decided what stays and what goes away, determine where your items will be stored:
    1. Store similar items together, like seasonal decorations, gardening tools or sports equipment.  This makes it so much easier to find and use things again!
    2. Consider your budget, and add shelves if possible.  Installed shelves are expensive but attractive.  Plastic or metal shelving units are often on sale at the big box hardware stores, easy to assemble, and if the unit is free standing, you can be flexible about where you keep it. It’s amazing what you can store on just one 4-5 shelf unit.Image
    3. Look at the walls for vertical storage, like pegboards, racks or large hooks from beams or rafters.  Too often garage stuff is piled in short piles on the floor, while the walls stand bare.
  8. Most importantly, once you organize your garage, keep it that way!  At least twice a year, run through this process again.  The piles won’t be so tall next time, and the project won’t seem so scary!