Organizing Maintenance

I baked a cake for my husband on Father’s Day. I’ve had the recipe since 2003; it’s the first time I’ve baked the cake. Fortunately, it was delicious and will be made again. Two weeks ago I baked some oatmeal cranberry muffins. Horrible, squishy, chewy little lumps. Muffins into the green bin; recipe into the blue bin. This is especially disappointing because I’d had the recipe since 2000.
In my defence, my recipe hoarding began long before I was a Professional Organizer. I’ve learned a bit about my own behaviours since then: If I don’t make a new dish soon after acquiring the recipe, the likelihood of my ever making it diminishes with each passing day.
I have a great system for storing my recipes and fortunately, each piece of paper takes up no more than 1 mm of space. Fairly unobtrusive. But regardless of how little space my recipes need, there’s no point having a folder full of paper I will never refer to. My system is rendered ineffective if I don’t maintain it. Establishing the system is the first step. Using the system is the second. But step three, ongoing maintenance, may be the most important of all.
So, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be getting reacquainted with the contents of my recipe folder. Old favourites will be returned to their labelled pocket. Recipes that intrigue me will be tried and judged. And those that make me think, “well, maybe . . .” will be immediately discarded. Because if I’m still on the fence, I’m never going to make it!

Organizing to Maintain your Sanity - 5 Enjoy being Organized

You are looking at the title of this post and thinking to yourself "OK, Carolyn has lost it. Why would I go to all this work if I don't enjoy being organized?"

Because people organize themselves for all kinds of reasons. Some of us like to be more in control of those parts of our lives that our within our control. Some of us are responding to the pressure from our spouses, our kids or - yup, even when in your own home - our parents. Some of us get ourselves reasonably well organized and then feel uncomfortable; its as if the clutter around us fills a void left by something else.

Whatever your motivation for organizing might be, a higher level of organization, supported by a daily 15 to 45 minute ritual as I presented in items 1 to 4, will help you spend time pursuing those goals that are really important to you rather than managing around, through, between, over or even under clutter.

So now that your home is in pretty organized shape, sit back and think about all the things you can focus on now rather than what you "should" be doing about the clutter. You've done it. Move on. In fact, you don't even have to look at the clutter any more since you cleared the floor, de-cluttered your entrances, set up for tomorrow and put things back in their homes. What is really important to you? Planning a favourite meal for your family? Reading a book? Studying for a "feels like its out of reach" university/college degree. Go for it. Make it happen. Enjoy your organization.

My Favourite Colour is - Organized!

Here is a quick follow up post from two days ago, after I received several questions from clients.

Yes, I really did mean for everyone in the family to pick a colour to be their colour for family organizing. You'd be surprised how successful this can be. Use everyone's favourite colour to help pick out all kinds of household items from toothbrushes to tote sacks to calendering.

My husband grew up in a family of 10: M&D, 6 children, one maid and her son. His colour was green. There was green thread on his socks so they could be identified in the wash. Naturally, when we picked colours for ourselves and the children for our family calendar - his colour was green!

Questions and Anwers: Paper

Q and A: Paper
This is the first of what will become a regular feature on the Wellrich Blog: a Question and Answer column. I often receive questions from clients. Many of the questions are very similar. I will post here some of the more common, interesting or helpful for your benefit. If you have questions you would like answered, send them to me at wellrichorganizers@rogers.com.

Q: I can't keep track of all of the paper that comes into the house- mail, school papers, etc. If I try to put things away I forget about them and miss things, and if I leave them out I can't find anything. What do you suggest? I currently have stacks of paper in various places, things on my bulletin board, and the really important things stuck into my planner. Cherri, Toronto

A: "How do I handle the paper?" is the most common question most professional organizers receive from their organizing clients.

Step 1 – The first step to correcting the solution is to get all the paper in one place so that it can be weeded out. Schools are notorious for sending second and third copies of forms to be signed if they haven’t shown up by the due date. Pull is all together in one big pile and let's go.

Step 2 – Go through and throw out (recycle) all the duplicates, envelopes and junk mail. What you have left is the material that you really need to address.

Step 3 – Set up a date sensitive/hot file type folder for handling birthday invitaitions, Kiwanis dates, doctors appointments or anything else that stale dates. This can be as simple as (my favourite) an alligator hook holding the date sorted papers hung on a hook in the kitchen, or as complicated as a 31 day accordion file used as a bring forward file.

Step 4 – Set up a reference material holder. This could be (my favourite) an accordion file labeled by subject (church, teacher, ballet studio, music teacher) or a binder with dividers using the same titles. File the paper related to these subjects as reference for when you need it. If it doesn’t contain reference, toss it.

Step 5 – Set up a filing system for day to day items such as statements that you still receive in hard copy. Get into the habit of keeping only the minimum required e.g. one year of statements, latest bill, total year to date etc.

Step 6 – Set up a mail station with a separate slot for every member of your family. This could be as simple as a cereal box cut like a paper tray (get the kids to decorate their own), plastic stacking paper trays, wall hanging shoe holders or anything else you can imagine. Go vertical! Label each members slot and make sure that when the mail comes in, it gets sorted. This is a good “chore” for a grade 3 student.

Step 7 - Give your kids a folder – plastic, 2 pocket, which they can choose the colour and decorate. Have them use this folder for everything that comes home for you. They bring it home and put it in your mail slot. You take out the contents, sign the forms and put it back in their slot. They check the slot each morning before school.

It will take a while for your family to buy into all of this but persevere. They will catch on and the kids will love not being nagged at school for the forms which used to be always late. Kids also like having their own mail slot. It makes them feel important and on an equal footing to older siblings/parents at least in this one department.

The (dis) Organized Teenager 1 - Is There Hope?

Next to “what do I do with all the paper?” the question “what do I do with my teenager?” is one of the most frequent questions I am asked as a professional organizer. When I dig deeper for information, most of you are concerned about 1) their bedroom which often looks like a cyclone went through and 2) their school desk/locker which looks like the cyclone dumped everything there.

Why are the teenagers so messy? Why are they so disorganized? What am I, as a parent, going to do about it?

Great questions.

Teenagers have a lot of “stuff” going on in their minds, which means they may be too distracted and preoccupied to worry about the “stuff” on the floor of their room. Keeping track of the relationship with and between friends, who is wearing what, who is talking to whom – or not – is a lot for a preteen and teenager to be thinking about. When you consider how quickly this social scene can change when you are between the ages of 12 and 19, especially the 12 to 14 year olds, their brains are on fast forward just keeping up with social dynamics.

Now add issues around school work and assignments, part time jobs and any other sports or activities they might be engaged in. We aren’t done yet; now add in the physical growth challenges like how to use arms and legs that grew (apparently) overnight, brains that are just plain tired from growing. Finally, to top it all off, the oversupply of (feels like new) hormones with attached emotional ups and downs, and – well – whether or not the laundry is in the hamper pales in significance by comparison. Can you blame them?

There is hope. The frontal lobe development occurs in the teenage years and with it the executive control that is housed there.

What can you do? Children tend to learn their organization skills from their parents. If you send out the message from your own state of organization (what does your desk look like?) that organization is not a priority, they will follow your step. Allowing them to leave the laundry on the floor until it stands itself up in the corner is sending the message that dirty laundry on the floor is ok.

We all know as parents – in case you wondered, yes, I have a teenage daughter – that we have to pick our battles. Organization is no different. I will leave you with this thought and homework: What message are you sending to your teenager about organization? Does everything have to be perfect? Is mess and disorganization ok as long as no one sees it? Is there a level of organization that is required, or desired, in order to meet our obligations at whatever stage of life we are in?

Think about it.

Welcome to Wellrich Organizers Blog!

As we blast into the 21st Century, I am finally hitting the cyberspace community with my own blog. Congratulations to me! And you found it; Congratulations to you! It seems appropriate to start off an organizing blog with the most common question I hear:

Why is staying organized so difficult? I used to be organized, what happened?

Here is what I have come to understand. Western society is moving through an age of accumulation. We are bombarded each day by ads, through many different media, that encourage us to buy, buy, buy. If we were to believe them all, our lives are incomplete if not meaningless without one of each of the latest _____________ (fill in the blank). Add in a pinch of easy credit, a heavy helping of parents or grandparents who have lived through wars, depression and/or evacuation and are therefore reluctant to part with anything. Now bake in an environment where we expect our brains to move at the same speed as our laptop computers, information is available with a key stroke and the pressure on families to arm their children with multiple talent, skills, experience and extra curricular activities in order that the children can succeed, is greater than ever.

Clutter is a delayed decision. It doesn't matter whether it is clutter in your calendar, on your desk or in your garage. Most people's clutter reflects an inability to decide what to do with objects or an inability to part with them. Making decisions takes energy (emotional) and acting on those decisions takes energy (physical). If you are worn out from a day managing work, family life, traffic, news and cyberspace communication there is likely little else for managing the stuff or planning your time.

I am left to wonder, not why any of us might be disorganized, but how anyone stays on top of it all?