Tag: Back To School

Take the Misery and Mystery Out of Packing School Lunches!

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lunch

 

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!

Organizing Bedrooms with Your Kids

This past week, my son and I did a clean sweep of his bedroom.  The room is usually clean, but periodically we all need to review our stuff and our space, so that is what we did!  We reviewed toys, books and clothes.  We kept a lot, purged some and re-allocated a bit, and it looks and feels great in there now!kid clean sweep

So, the first question is “How do we organize a bedroom?”  And the other part is the kid-specific part – “How do we organize with our kids?”

I like organizing with kids. Like all of us, they like to share details about what is important to them.  In addition, organizing with kids gives them an opportunity to share their opinions about stuff and space which gives them a sense of control and ownership in the organizing process.  They are receptive to new ideas, too!  Here’s what you do….

  1. Clear 2-4 hours in the schedule, dependent on your schedule and your child’s age and attention span.
  2. With your child, determine destinations for the purge items and label bags accordingly.  The paper bags lined up in my son’s room are labeled “garbage”, “recycle”, “sell”, “donate – toys”, “donate – library”, clothes for “swap.com” and binsfor cousin “Joshua”.  A garage sale could be a destination, too.
  3. Start a pile of “go elsewhere in our home” items by the door, including dirty laundry, to maintain focus and avoid running items here and there during your project time.
  4. Grab a notebook to jot down ideas and to-dos as they occur to you (“buy new sneakers for school”, “return borrowed toy to xxxxx’s house”)
  5. Start small; really small.  Everyone gets overwhelmed at times.  If you are feeling overwhelmed and snarky about the bedroom project, imagine how your child must feel.  Tackle small spaces one by one instead of all together.  My son and I started with 2 storage cubes, then book case, then toy box, then closet.  And I reviewed his clothes while he made decisions about toys and books.  We tackled our project based on Julie Morgenstern’s SPACE method of organizing.
  6. Sort what you have: We sort toys and books based on type and clothes based on size and season.
  7. Purge items to your various destinations.  We purge based on condition, developmental age, size and season and / or interest level. Give yourself or your child a chant to help review items and stay focused.  For example, I worked with a young man last week who was deciding what to do with his books.  His repeated question was” Keep, sell, give to sister?  Keep, sell, sister?”  Over and over, with each book.donate books and dvds
  8. We Assign a home to and Containerize the items we keep.  Quite often, items go right back where they came from, especially clothes to the closet and dresser, or books to the bookshelf.  But tackling these projects presents a great opportunity to re-think your storage! We took this opportunity to move a toy sorter out of the closet and into the basement for use with the Legos, and moving the sorter out of the closet opened up lots of space for other things.
  9. “Equalize” is the fifth step in Morgentstern’s SPACE, and is a fancy word for maintenance.  So we equalize every time we tidy up, throw out papers, donate outgrown or beat-up clothes, etc.

Specifically, organizing with kids

  1. Let the papers go.  No, really, let them go.  The grades are complete, homework is      done.  Let the papers go.  Keep a few items from each year, but I guarantee you, your child will not care about every paper ever produced much past junior high.  Handing him or her bins full of old paper when he or she starts their own home will not be appreciated.
  2. Cultivate giving and purging from birth. My boys are used to purging old clothes, and donating used toys and clothes.  It’s a good habit to form.
  3. Provide a plastic container (sweater size, 6-12 qt size) for treasures.  But no larger than that.
  4. Grab your camera, to take pictures of large art projects so you can purge the project without losing the memory.  A picture of the catapult they made in class takes up a lot less space than the actual catapult!

So, take courage and spend some time organizing with your kids this week!  The bedroom will look better, you will learn some new things about your child, and you will both cultivate your organizing habits!

Conquer School Papers! (from finish to start?!)

Last week, my friend Julie mentioned “the back to school paperwork is out of control”.  Since she mentioned this on her birthday, this week I am offering tools for conquering school papers, for Julie, and Nancy who shared her paper management questions and Hershey Pumpkin Spice Kisses at the soccer game.

School papers.  Ugh.  I get it, trust me.  Three boys, 3 schools, 3 team schedules, Religious Education, Boy and Cub Scouts (did I mention I am a den leader and Cubmaster this year?!), 3 choirs, 2 bands, blah, blah, blah…

But be strong, friends, you can clean up those school papers, and here’s how!  (I’m starting with the end, in case you’re in a hurry!)

The vitally important final steps to successful School Paper Management are:

  • Put everything away.  AWAY.  File what needs filed, purge what needs purged, put the bills-to-pay with the other bills-to-pay,put academic papers in each child’s binder (past blog on binders). AWAY.       You’ll have a small pile of papers that represent actions to take or information to add to your calendar. That’s it.  Everything else goes away.
  • Make and keep a daily appointment to add info to your planner and to fully complete the action papers and send them on their way.  Complete forms and return to school; follow up on memos; send the emails, place the orders.  No, really.  Get things all the way done, and file what is left.  And then give the nice clean counter or desk a pat, turn off the light and go to bed.

Now, back to the beginning:

Pick a location to collect and process your papers.  Outfit that location with a garbage can, recycling bin and shredder.  Consider them all pets that need regular feeding, and make sure to toss, recycle and shred often!  In addition, assemble the following:

  • Your papers and mail (obviously) in Mom’s InBox (I just have a spot on the counter, but you can get a real in-box if you would like);
  • Your mom-file (Are you drowning in Kid Papers?  http://colleencpo.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/210/)
  • Stapler, paper clips, pen;
  • Calendar or planner;
  • Check book, and an envelope of small bills.  During the school year, I always seem to send in $4 here for one little thing or $7 there for another.  We keep an envelope with $20 worth of small bills in the desk drawer to keep our tasks / sign-up sheets / permission slips / raffle tickets / etc., moving along.

Process your papers once and only once a day.  Save time and hassle, and wait until ALL the papers have arrived for the day, in the mail and backpacks.

Dedicate 10 minutes a day to process your papers, maybe 15 to start.  Sort through everything, and make decisions today, right away.  There are only a few options for your school papers:

  • Recycle, toss or shred what you can.  Ads, unsolicited mail, catalogs, notices for activities your family does not participate in (father daughter dance?  Not this house.  Martial arts classes? Been there, tried that.)
  • Actions to Take / Stuff for Mom or Dad:  permission slips, forms to complete and send back, order forms, checks to write, memos to read, etc.
  • Dates and contact information to add to your calendar / planner.  Make a habit to commit everything to your calendar / planner, so you can trust the planner when you need to make decisions.  This is the best time-saving organizing tool you can use. Keep paper schedules or memos as back up, if you feel you need to, but file them – do not put them back in your pile.
  • Homework to complete – hand this right back to your children, unless they are 6 and under!
  • Completed and graded daily assignments / homework. For goodness sake, get this out of your in-box or to-do pile.  Look at it, commend or comment with your student, and then file it for a predetermined amount of time (we purge all but the treasures after the end of every quarter).  Put one a week on the fridge if your student reallllly wants to see it.
  • Important documents (certificates, records or report cards).  File until the end of the year or longer.  We have binders for each student, with pockets in the binder for papers from each school year. (“Bind Up That Paper Monster!”  http://colleencpo.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/bind-up-that-paper-monster/)

     And the two most important final steps to successful School Paper Management are.. oh, right, you already know those.  Now, no more dawdling, take courage and go tackle that paper.  Let some go, get some done, and put all away!

10 Habits for the Organized Student at School

It is vital for a student’s academic success
to find what they need when they need it.

     I offer a class called NAPO In The Schools, a service project through the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO.net) geared towards helping 3rd-5th graders get and stay organized.   Establishing organization skills early helps in school and in life.  I spend 50 minutes with the student groups helping them to positively answer:  “Can you find what you need when you need it?”

     Here are 10 suggestions to help your student ‘find what they need when they need it’ at school.

Time Management:

1.  Take a minute every day to tidy up your desk or locker and get rid of trash.  Maintenance is worth the time investment. 

2.  Break big tasks into little manageable pieces:  For example, if you are working on a book report, reading a chapter a day is good for your final grade and personal satisfaction, instead of skimming in a hurry the night before a report is due.

Stuff Management:

3.  When it is time to move, either from class to class, or when you are heading home for the day, think ahead to your next activity, and grab all the stuff you need, so you don’t have to come back for anything.

4.  Make it easy to find your stuff.  Color code your notebooks and folders, or at least CLEARLY LABEL each notebook, so you don’t grab the wrong one.

5.  When it is time to go home, go through a check list in your head. Use a memory trick, like thinking about you from head to toe to remember all your snow gear, or thinking about your class schedule to remember your homework assignments

6.  Consider the people around you, and keep your stuff from overlapping into other people’s space.

7.  Keep similar things together.  Like all your soccer equipment in one bag, specifically for that sport.

8.  Store stuff where you need it.  Like the stuff that is to go home in your locker or backpack instead of in your desk.

9.  Designate a spot for the really important stuff and make sure those important things always make it back to that spot.  Always put your house keys or cell phone in the same inside pocket of your back pack, so you can find them when you need them.

10. Keep the stuff you use all the time close at hand.  Like pens and pencils and other small items at the front of your desk, so you can see them and grab them quickly.

So, print these up and present them to your student.  Sit down and discuss with them which suggestions you both feel they have already mastered, and then pick one more to try this week.  Help your student establish organizing habits for success in school and in life!

6 Lessons I Re-Learned This Week.

Over the weekend, I spent some quiet travel time on a time management consultation on …..me!

You see, I went back to high school last week.  I’m not wearing the uniform or walking the halls, which is good since it’s an all-boy’s school, but let me tell you, I am still getting an education!  My son started high school, and I am learning to navigate it as a parent.  I re-learned some life lessons this week.  We don’t always have to learn new lessons, often we need to be reminded of what we already know.  To help you conquer time management challenges at work or at home, let me share what I re-learned this week:

Ask “What are we trying to achieve with improved Time Management?”

     In our case, encouraging independence and responsibility, but also balance and stress reduction for my awesome over-achieving son (though I think I was more stressed than he was).  Let the answer to that question guide the rest of your actions.

Pare down your schedule to just essentials.  

Let me ask you:  If your schedule is insane, what habits are you willing to leave behind, to make room for the important essentials?  Less TV, shopping, Angry Birds or Where’s My Water, Facebook and surfing the web, etc?
For the teenager, TV, hanging out and reading for pleasure late into the night may just have to wait.

Get sleep and good nutrition.

This is critical to all of us, not just teenagers.  Going to bed at a regular time, and making sure your body is fueled with good food empowers us to do more with better focus.

Have the Right Stuff, and Only the right stuff.

My question to you – what do you need to get out of the way, out of your office or home to simplify your life?
Organize your stuff to streamline your time management.  My guy still stumbles over getting dressed and out the door in proper uniform.  This evening, we (he doesn’t know this yet!) are going to clean off his dresser top except for the stuff he is currently and actively using.  We all need to get back in the habit of packing sports and band bags the night before, too, to decrease the last minute scramble.

Ask for help. 

Regardless of what challenge you have, remember you are not alone, and you don’t always have to be the expert.  I need to re-learn this lesson every week because I am terrible at asking for help, and therefore get overwhelmed when faced with a task I don’t know how to complete.  I know I am capable and smart enough to learn, but it feels like it may take FOREVER to get it done.
High school introduced many new, unfamiliar high-tech tools like on-line homework, text books, bulletin boards, etc., and they all required some set up.  My good and tech-savvy husband, the expert in this case, and the teenager spent most of an afternoon getting everything set up all at once, so now we’re good to go.  We just needed to ask the expert.
What is your challenge, and who can be your expert?

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

For the sake of time management, if you need to get something done and someone else is involved in the process, you have to communicate well to get things done.  We’ve had a couple of communication snafus over the last 10 days.  I had a piece of paper he needed, he forgot to tell us about a team event parents were expected to attend, etc.
I was reminded in an article this morning that good leaders use multiple means of communication, all the tools available, really, to get their message across.  So, if you want to increase communications with an individual or group to get things done effectively, find methods they already like and use.
In my son’s case, those methods are texting and using his student planner.  I suggested that my son text me as he remembers something I need to know, or jot it down in his planner if it’s during school hours.  And I admitted to him that I have to write stuff down all the time because I just don’t remember stuff unless I write it down.

  Learn from my experience!  And tell me, what lessons do you find yourself re-learning?  Please share, I would like to know!  You could be in my next blog?

3 Reasons We All Should Love Back-To-School

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I love Back-To-School time, and not just because my sons sometimes drive me buggy during the summer months. Whether in school or not, this time of year always feels like an opportunity to start fresh, get back to a new and improved routine, find all sorts of cool gadgets in the stores, and learn something new. It’s like New Year’s without the snow, winter misery or credit card bills. So use Back-to-School time as an opportunity to embrace new ideas and gadgets, and improve yourself and broaden your mind, not because you have to but because the world is full of new things to learn every day.

Start fresh, get back to a routine:

I love the lazy days of summer, but as a mother of three busy boys, a small business owner and recovering insomniac, I recognize that a routine is vitally important to everyone’s well-being.  We all benefit from having a Routine, a reasonable yet necessary set of tasks and expectations for certain times of each day.  August brings regular bed- and wake-up times, routine chore completion and basic hygiene without nagging, regular office hours for my clients and regular sleep patterns for all.  Sit down with family members and think about what needs to happen before leaving the house every morning or going to bed every night, and incorporate those tasks into your morning or bed-time routine now.

Cool new stuff and gadgets:

Book lights for in-bed reading; post-it notes for every imaginable application; 5-subject notebooks to keep track of your lists for all your projects in one central location; a new Websters Dictionary because it is a good thing to have (and yes, Ginormous is now a real word); comfy new ergonomic back packs or messenger bags for toting your stuff; colored index cards for anything you can think of (like making checklists and laminating them or assigning household tasks by person or room):  the stores are bursting with problem-solving gadgets and back-to-school stuff.  My all time favorite tool is a dry erase marker – Leave messages for family members on the bathroom mirror, whether “Pick up the kids at soccer practice” or “Comb your hair!”.  Wipes right off, and the kids use it, too!

Learn something new:

Education is important.  Learning new things keeps us sharp.  Knowledge is power.

There are so many wondrous things in the world, and now is a great time to commit to learning something new. Two goals for me for the Fall are learning how to knit and how to meditate (though certainly not at the same time), plus 5 books recommended to me by people I respect.  Goals are only dreams until you put them into action, though, so to make my goals happen, I have found out when a local knitting shop has drop-in lessons, and I’ve tracked down a book that offers a 30 day approach to learning to meditate and one of the recommended books.  The ideas are limitless, and you don’t have to sign up for a class – your local library and the Internet have information on everything under the sun (and I know a really nice organizer who offers classes all over the South Side if you want to learn about organizing!). So pick a topic and get to work!

Embrace Back-To-School time whether you are going back or not.  Determine the 5 or 10 simple tasks you need to do morning and evening to make your life run smoothly, and make those tasks Routine by doing them every day.  Check the stores and on-line for problem-solving devices.  And get out there and learn something new!

An Organized Work Space for Student Success

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Got students going back to school?  The most important organizing rule for students is to be able to find what they need when they need it (from NAPO In the Schools), whether it’s their backpack or a box of crayons, a scientific calculator or laptop.  That’s why students need a dedicated space for doing homework.  And setting up a workspace at home reinforces to you and your student that learning is important.  We all just want the best for our students.

My friend Lisa asked “how do we make everything accessible to the kids at their workstation? We have half of my dining room available for the boys to use and we want to make it functional and of course, organized” (the question about study habits will wait for another day!  Today is for setting up your student space).

When you are determining the best place for your student to study, ask for their input, so that your solution is one you all can live with.  Think about:

  • Have one specific place for unpacking homework, leaving fewer places to lose things.  We store backpacks by the back door, but unpack them where we work.  All completed work goes back in the bag!
  • Whether the workspace is in a home office, a bedroom or at the kitchen table, remember the basics: comfortable seat and temperature; well-lit; room to spread out; well-stocked with supplies; quiet, or with quiet music on earphones, preferably instrumental.
  • Consistency:  Use the same place every day, and try to use the same times, too.
  • Family logistics:  are little hands (younger siblings) in the way?  Is it noisy or disruptive?
  • Portability:  Does your student stay at more than one home, or do homework in the car while commuting?
  • How much guidance / interaction does your student require with his homework?  If it is a lot, the homework place needs to be closer to you.
  • Learning styles:
    • Recognize there are 3 different learning styles:  visual, auditory and kinesthetic.  Some people (kids and adults alike) learn best by seeing, some by hearing and / or speaking, and some by doing.
    • Recognize we all have one strongest style, but we are a mix of the three.  Therefore, having options for different locations or postures to get through study blocks is a great idea.  So the next time I am tempted to tell my 8-year old to “sit down and do (his) homework”, maybe he would do it better standing up or walking around!  Or, when my middle son is listening to music on his IPod, it just might be helping him concentrate.  The oldest son loved the look of a standing work station online the other day.  He’s also likes to do his homework at the dining room table, but reads sitting up at the foot of his bed.  Variety works.basket
  • Stock with the right stuff:
    • Supplies:  My favorite suggestion for supplies is the homework basket.  Our basket contains pencils and pens, erasers, markers and crayons, 3×5 cards, flash cards, glue, scissors and a ruler.  The basket sits on the kitchen desk when it is not time to do homework (it’s attractive enough to sit on the counter, and not very big), and then we move it to the dining room table (or wherever your student works) after school.
    • On the kitchen desk, there is also a stash of loose leaf paper and a couple of empty folders, for just in case.
    • Computer / internet safety:  Computers in well-monitored family space and not in bedrooms.
    • If you are like us, and use your dining table for homework, have your students spread out on a poster board, and pick up all the work at once and move it to another flat surface when it comes time to eat dinner.
  • For us, homework is done at the dining room table, though you can establish your study space wherever you have space.  I have been strategizing about expanding our study spaces this year, since one son heads to high school and one to junior high.  Both will be spending more time studying, and will need more computer and internet access, too.  We have three computers, but the challenge will be keeping the computers available to the students (as I sit working on my computer at 5:20 on a Monday in my work space!).

If you have a student returning to school, or would just like better workspace for yourself, give some thought this week about establishing good work spaces in your home.  Make sure everyone can find What They Need When They Need It.  We all just want the best for our students!

Never Be Late Again!

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Every organizing challenge we face requires time management to conquer it.  Improving time management skills creates good habits for using your time, either to add to current skills or replace old bad habits.   These four ideas will help create good time management habits and make life run more smoothly.


1. Did you know?  Americans waste 9 million hours total per day searching for misplaced items, according to the American Demographics Society.  That breaks down to each of us wasting an average of 55 minutes a day, roughly 12 weeks a year, looking for things we know we own but can’t find, according to a Boston Marketing firm (statistics from the NAPO.net website).


To Never Be Late Again, stop wasting time searching for stuff!  Establish a home for the important items that you CAN NOT leave home without, like cell phone or car keys, and commit to keeping them there while at home and at work. Invest in a bowl, make it pretty if you’d like, make it the same at home and on your desk, if  that helps you, and make it a habit to put your important items there every time you arrive home or to the office.  This will speed the leaving process and eliminate hours of searching.


2. Prepare to leave again as soon as you arrive home.  I re-load my briefcase with supplies at the end of every day when I am more likely to remember what I need, instead of waiting until tomorrow.  This idea works for personal lives, too – for example, we used to re-pack the diaper bag for the sitter as soon as we got home from work.   Create a check list, like “6 clean diapers, lots of wipes, 2 or 3 clean outfits, etc.”


Consider ambulance drivers and fire fighters.  They clean up and reload their rig after every call. Life is not an emergency, but it’s easier to be flexible when we know we’re prepared.


3. My next suggestion is what I call “next step-ping”.  I work through this process with clients –  today, look at tomorrow’s schedule and plan ahead now instead of reacting tomorrow.   Perhaps on tomorrow’s schedule I see a PTA meeting, a tennis lesson, then 2 clients back to back.  So tonight I leave my PTA notebook, my tennis bag and clean clothes and my briefcase by the back door to make tomorrow morning better.


I do this with my kids, too.  We look at today, starting with Now! and move forward: Eat breakfast, get bags to back door, review assignments, make sure lunch is in backpack, consider after-school extracurriculars, take something out of the freezer for dinner, etc.  We might even think about tomorrow, to avoid last-minute emergencies.


4. Finally, to Never Be Late Again, we need to understand and embrace the difference between Load Time and Leave Time (Confessions of a Tardy Mom, Parenting 2009).  Sometimes our time management issues are our own, and sometimes they are created by others, but most often they are both.  Over the weekend, I was talking to a professor friend.  I was pondering this presentation, and we chatted about time management.  She admitted she’s late to her own classes because she can’t make it down the hallway without being stopped.  So, other people interrupt her, which is their issue, but she allows the interruption to make her late, which is her issue.

     Let’s say a meeting is set for 10 am and is 5 minutes away.  In a perfect world, we could leave at 9:55 and arrive on time, but – alas – we do not live in a perfect world.  Load Time is rarely Leave Time.

     To Never Be Late Again, we have to start factoring in that extra 5 minute cushion to respect our time and the time of everyone else around us.  Personally, I need to realize one child will always have to run back in the house for something before we head to school.  Professionally, we have to realize that if the meeting starts at 10, we really need to arrive by 9:50 to network and prepare, instead of arriving at 10 and interrupting everyone else.

     Using my friend’s story as an example, if you, too, have a difficult time getting to a meeting on time, set the alarm clock on your cell phone to chime warnings at 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 2 minutes to class time, providing a way to break out of unsolicited conversations in the hallway.

             I can’t guarantee that you will Never Be Late Again, but trying one or more of these ideas will certainly help!  Give them a try, and let me know what you tried and what worked for you!

Don’t Just Pile, Act then File!

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     This week’s article is inspired by Mary and AnneMarie, so thanks, ladies, for the inspiration.   And thanks to all of you who offered comments and insight in the Pile vs. File debate, via email or Facebook.  And the responses also inspired a future topic (perhaps next week) of Cool Tools and High-Tech Solutions for your papers.

     Most of the folks who responded feel they are both Pilers and Filers of papers, meaning they pile papers for a while and then file them, with a variety of time frames, from “once a week” to “whenever I can’t find something”.  And a little pile of work to be done is Ok, but please, not too many piles!

     This month’s Real Simple reported that 83% of HR managers “say the appearance of an employee’s workspace affects their perception of the employee’s skill level and professionalism.  Want to be a go-getter?  Then go get those dirty coffee cups and messy piles of paper.”

     I find the challenge with paper is that each piece of paper represents something else.  This post-it note is not just a piece of paper, it is a place holder that represents a phone call to make, a letter to write, an action to take, a past event, a loved one.   There are 3 types of papers:

  • Active: Papers requiring action:  Bills to pay, forms to fill out and return, coupons, receipts for returns, articles to read
  • Passive:  Papers we need to hold on to for a prescribed time, perhaps to refer to or not, then purge: receipts, paid bills, kid’s activity schedules like soccer or baseball rosters
  • Archive:  Papers we need to keep forever, like mortgage papers, tax records (for 4-10 years, depending on who you talk to), birth certificates, wills, passports, etc.

Why Do We Keep Papers?

  • We haven’t completed the actions they require.
  • We think someone will care about them in the future.
  • We haven’t gotten around to doing anything with them, or it didn’t occur to us we could toss them. 

 Why Do We Pile Papers Instead of Filing Them?

  • We’re afraid if we put something away, we’ll forget where it is or that we even have it.
  • We don’t like or trust our filing systems because they are too complex, or too basic, or they were not created by us for us.
  • We don’t feel like filing, because we don’t see why it matters.  Or we are busy, lazy, got called away, the files are far away, the drawer is broken, we need to clean the old stuff out of the file cabinets before we can put the new stuff in, and that job seems too overwhelming, too, yada, yada, yada.  I do this for a living, I have heard lots of reasons why people don’t file.  The reasons against filing are legion.

 Why Does Piling Paper Cause Problems?

  • Piling papers vertically makes retrieval of information difficult or impossible.
  • Gravity.  We can only pile things so high before they topple.
  • There is only so much horizontal space in most homes
  • Visual clutter is distracting
  • Piling papers puts all papers equal, regardless of importance, type of action, value, etc.

 Why Do You File Papers?

  • Well, to counteract all the problems listed above, of course!
  • Filing things away makes finding them and everything else easier.  Papers stay where we put them.  And then we can see the beyond the clutter.   
  • File folders and holders hold paper vertically and are open at the top, maximizing space and allowing viewing and retrieval.
  • Maintenance is so much easier than catching up.  A few minutes daily is much easier than a monthly paper mess!  I am very proud of those of you who answered that you are both a Piler and a Filer. 

 First Things First:  Set yourself up to Succeed:

  • Sit down with a shredder, recycling bag and 10 minutes on the timer.  Power through your piles, re-sorting your papers into Action, To File – Passive, To File – Archival, Recycle and shred. 
  • Now that you’ve sorted your Papers, Jump In!
  • Active Papers:  Active Papers are the only papers you should have on your desk right now.
    1. Try a new way of holding your Active papers, like a standing file folder on your desk. (No Piles, remember?!?!)  
    2. Break down your Active Papers Pile into types of actions to take: title manila folders “bills to pay”, “forms to complete and send back to school”, etc.   
    3. Break down the actions into little tiny steps, if necessary.  I read an article about a woman who needs to file her expense reports more quickly. 
      • Currently:  Her expense receipts get stuffed in her wallet until it is too full, then she takes them out and piles them on the desk until the pile falls.  A couple of times a year, when the spirit moves her and / or she needs the money, she files her expenses. 
      • New Requirement:  Her employer now requires a 60-day-or-less turn around.  If she wants to get paid, she has to step up.
      • Her folders now live in a holder on her desk, and walk her papers through the reimbursement process.  They are entitled: receipts to expense; receipts to copy; copied receipts to submit for reimbursement; reimbursement requests sent; and Reimbursed Expense requests and proof of payment, 2011.
    4. Schedule time to actually act on your action items.  If you don’t dedicate time to Action items, they will never get done.  Monday morning are my Action mornings. 
    5. Once you act on a paper, ask yourself again what the next action is for that piece.  It could be Return to School, pop in the mail, give to someone else, recycle, file, etc.  Papers need to keep moving!
  • Passive Papers: Stand and deliver
    1. Once you decide a paper gets to stay in your files, spend time every day or every week filing things away.  I have spent lots of blog time on Paper Management issues, so click here for pertinent links to topics like categories, filing systems, etc. 
    2. Archival Papers:  File forever.  These are the easiest papers to deal with because you don’t see them often, and there aren’t many of them.  Unless you have 30 years of accumulated passive papers, which leads us once again back to maintenance. 

     I like filing.  I like the feeling of accomplishment, of Done-ness.   I like clutter-free, visually peaceful space that comes from filing.  I use filing as the final act of closure on my work day, before I turn off my computer and go do fun Colleen / Mom stuff.  I never have much to file, and my folders are convenient to put things away.

    I challenge you, this week, to look differently at your pile of papers.  Do a power sort and purge the easy stuff, then Act on your Active Papers and file the rest.  You can do this, I know you can.  And you will be amazed at how much better you work when the piles are gone!