I'm good at wrangling stuff, but not as good at wrangling tasks. I tend to get overly ambitious with my To Do lists. Like many, I stress out about all my perceived commitments. I have discovered that sorting tasks into two groups, "have to" and "want to," helps me a lot.

I'd say that if you have to do something, it's something that, without which, you would literally die. Fortunately, most of these things are automatic, such as your heart beating, breathing, immune defenses, etc. There are a bunch more things that, if you stopped doing them for a whole day, would cause discomfort and also possibly damage: off the top of my head I can think of sleeping, eating, drinking, blinking, and urinating. Fortunately, we naturally remember to do those things (more or less), so they don't need to be on a list.

So then what are the Have Tos on a To Do list?
( Read more... )

Most of my organizing clients tell me that their parents never taught them how to be organized, either by overt instruction, or else by modeling the behavior. Whether the parents were messy or neat doesn't seem to make as much difference as the way the kids saw them engaging with their stuff (or failing to engage with it).

If someone's going to learn how to be organized, they need to see a clear example - a role model - of what that means. I spent some time recently thinking about that. Where is there a space in the world with everything one needs and nothing extra, where everything is easy to access, where stuff comes in and stuff goes out, in an effortless way? Where things are both comfortable and beautiful?

It's got to be the womb.* The temperature is always perfect; the light is dim and rosy. Everything you need comes in through the placenta; everything you don't need gets filtered back out. There isn't much to do, but you don't really need much in the way of entertainment (as far as we know; I wonder if there's a way to measure fetal boredom?). You have all the space that you need and nothing more; the room expands to fit your growth. Sometimes you have a roommate or two (or six or seven), but that doesn't cause you any stress, and (again, assuming everything works) there's enough of what you need for all of you. And once it's too small for you, you move out and leave behind the stuff you no longer need. Time management is no issue; you sleep and wake whenever you feel like it, and you don't have anywhere else you need to be, or anything to do except grow and develop, which happens on its own.

When you move out, your needs become more complex: you'll need a source of oxygen (the atmosphere), a source for food/water (breastmilk or formula), a waste disposal method (generally a diaper system and people to manage that), a way to manage your temperature (blankies), and a warm parental body with a heartbeat to snuggle with. Unfortunately, none of these things are automated except the oxygen, so you have a fair amount of stress trying to get what you need when you need it, but parents generally figure it out.

And then your parents start giving you stuff, and that's when it starts to get difficult. But in the beginning, we were all perfectly organized.

____________________________________

*Okay, this is assuming that everything works the way it's supposed to.

I bet most of you have old electronics you need to discard. (I do!) I just learned about this company: Earthworm Recycling. You can drop off the following electronics there for free. (They charge for pickup.)

Monitors/Flat Panels Computers Keyboards and mice Printers, scanners and fax machines Laptops Modems, routers, hubs, etc. Copiers Telephones and cell phones PDA’s Backup power supplies Cables Miscellaneous (call us, we’ll tell you if we can recycle it)

http://www.earthwormrecycling.org/electronics.html
EARTHWORM, INC.
35 Medford Street
Somerville, MA 02143
Tel: 617-628-1844
Fax: 617-628-2773
E-mail: info@earthwormrecycling.org

Hope everyone's doing well! Things are slow for me now, so it's a great time for you to schedule a session.

My company is now called "Find Your Floor Professional Organizing," or just "Find Your Floor." The website is now http://www.findyourfloor.org (though jenniferhunter.com still works). If you want to submit a review to Angie's List (you get 1/2 hour of free organizing from me as an incentive*) the company can be found under the new name.

*If you think I'm crap, then really, no need to tell Angie's List. I'm sure you have something else you'd like to do. :-)

I just re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, after seeing Half-Blood Prince, and I found something that seemed relevant to organizing. ( Spoiler alert for the two people who haven't read <i>Deathly Hallows</i> yet )

I was driving down Montvale Road in Woburn this morning, and I realized something: the pavement was clear and empty. Oh, there was a single sneaker sitting by the curb (how does that happen?), but otherwise, not a thing. I don't see a lot of big empty spaces in my line of work, so I got to thinking about this one. In a "first world country," we pay people through our taxes to remove roadkill, litter, and snow from our roads. This way, we can safely get from points A to B, with a minimum of thought or effort. Now imagine if the roads on, say, your morning commute, were as obscured by junk as your house has clutter.* Your car might not be able to get through at all. My car could (hooray for four-wheel drive!), but it would be hazardous and require extra effort. Generally, people would be swerving, trying to avoid crashing into each other, skidding, possibly puncturing our tires, and traffic would be horrible. If this were the case on a national scale, how could we function? This is a way to think about the ways in which your clutter is preventing you from getting where you're going. This may be on a strictly physical level (can't eat at the kitchen table because it's full of stuff) or a more metaphysical one (how are you blocking your own path?).

Okay, I'm off to continue the seemingly endless Photo Organizing Project with a client in Reading.
___________________________________________________
*If your house has very little clutter, you can stop reading now, but send the link to someone who needs it!

I just added four new userpics. Whee! Okay, now I'm going to actually work.

Okay, I give in. I'm now "findyourfloor" on Twitter. My goal is to send tweets related to organizing, about once per day. They may be informative, whimsical, thoughtful, and/or silly. So, follow me!

I just decided to save something as memorabilia, and had to create a hanging folder for it.

I do have a plastic bin of memorabilia in the big closet in my daughter's room, but it's so rare that I add anything to it, I never needed a quick-to-hand folder in my office before. I think my clients are having a good effect on me, in terms of teaching me the value of my own history.

Hey, past and current clients:

If you belong to Angie's List, and you liked the work we did together, I'd love it if you could write them a report. I'm under "Jennifer Hunter Professional Organizing." (For now. I've decided I really want to register "Find Your Floor" as my business name. Maybe "Find Your Floor Professional Organizing.")

If you don't belong to Angie's List, and you feel like talking about how great I am, I could also use quotes for my new organizing pamphlet. Sooner is better! Thanks!

Goodwill and Salvation Army stores around here haven't accepted or sold children's toys for a while because of concerns over lead. But recently, the Goodwill in Davis Square has abruptly stopped accepting or selling children's clothing as well, due to some new government regulation that I don't know much about, but plan to investigate, because I think it's wack.

Anyway, I just called the Salvation Army store on Broadway in Winter Hill, and they are still accepting and selling kids' clothing. I wonder if that's going to last or not. Maybe I'll go in and buy up everything good in sizes from 8 (Ilana's current size) to 14, in case I'll be forced to only shop at "real stores" in the near future.

You can donate both clothing and toys to Cradles to Crayons. They're not affected by the new governmental regulation, because they don't resell the stuff; they give it away to those who need it. They have dropoff locations in a bunch of locations by us, including Winchester and Woburn.

Also, I have just discovered that the Gateway Motel on Rt. 2 (near Alewife, by "Faces" and the bowling alley) is housing homeless families with children age 0-5, and they need stuff; they will take toys and kids' clothes, as well as other things. ( Here are details as they sent them to me, only slightly edited: )

This shows you what we can do in four sessions, or in this case, 13 hours. The picture doesn't show the fact that we also organized all the drawers, including setting up a complete filing system (and going through all the old files that were in two of the drawers).






Paperwork is a very time-consuming thing to organize, but the results are so exciting! The beam on the client's face was priceless.

In my work as an organizer, I often find myself tossing receipts into recycling that didn't need to be brought into the house in the first place. When you purchase something, and the cashier hands you a receipt, you are not obligated to take it!

Here are a few good reasons to keep receipts:
1. If you are buying something that might malfunction and will need to be returned (and it'd be worth your time to do so).
2. If you need to keep track of the value of the thing for homeowner's insurance or home inventory.
3. If you will be claiming the thing as a tax deduction (including business meals out).
4. If you're going to be reimbursed for the thing (including medications and heath-related expenses).
5. If you're keeping track of all your spending (not just if you think you should be keeping track of all your spending).

I find that I only need to save maybe 25% of the receipts I'm handed. I also don't keep receipts from ATM withdrawals, since they all show up on my bank statement anyway. Fortunately, my bank's ATM gives you the option of no receipt. At a store, just say to the cashier, "No thanks; just toss it." They may look at you funny, but they'll do it. If you forget, toss it in the first garbage can you see. If you're using plastic, and you're concerned about identity theft, take a glance at the receipt first to make sure your whole credit card number isn't on it. Then ditch it!

Receipts are small, but they are super-ugly clutter when they travel far and wide in your home, or sit in piles on your desk, and they each require as much time and effort as a full-sized piece of paper when you have to clean them out of your purse, wallet, or pockets, and then go through them and read them to see whether you need them. Don't let them into your house if you can avoid it!

I have an article up about last summer's toy swap on Sprout For Parents.

As you may or may not know, I've been ill for most of the month, but I'm almost all better now, so I'm back on the job, and I have openings for sessions as soon as next week!

When you have too much stuff, you can (with relative degrees of ease) get rid of some. But what do you do when you have too much stuff to do? A lot of my clients are faced with what seems like an impossible situation: they have more to do than they can possibly manage. The workload is such that, unless someone figures how to give up sleeping, it will never get done.

The ideal response to this situation would be to scale down the number and difficulty of these tasks, until everything that remained were easy to handle. And some stuff can be blown off without too much trouble: say, events you attend only out of obligation, hobbies you used to like but have tired of, a sale at a store when you don't really need to buy anything. You can take a pay cut to work fewer hours. You can exchange your houseplants for cactuses.

But not everything in our lives is so easily modified. Choices we made in the past lead to jobs, school curricula, homes, children, pets, romance, friends. Love, values, or simple practicality keep them in our lives, and all these choices come with responsibilities attached.

( So then what? )

Would "Organized Religion" be a good name for a professional organizing company?

Yesterday, I asked my daughter (age 8) how attached she was to a particular item: a comforter cover that would need repair if we were to keep it. She said, "Um, I'm attached with tape." When I said, "Huh?" she said, "You know, attached with tape, attached with glue...." and I realized that even if she didn't mean it that way, it could provide a very useful metaphor for us to think about how attached we are to our objects:

I'm attached to the item with.....
1. Solder - You can pry it from my cold, dead fingers
2. Glue - It's very important to me
3. Tape - I really like it and I'd rather not get rid of it
4. Post-It - Eh, whatever, give it to Goodwill
5. Rubber band - You can borrow it, but I'd like to get it back eventually

I'm sure there could be more.. any ideas?

Look at this very nice post that moominmolly made about our work together.

Sorry for a lack of other content. This week I hit my all-time record for the number of organizing sessions in a week: SEVEN! So I'm exhausted. More to come after some sleep.

Okay, I deleted the slightly offensive userpic (and the post that went with it).

I might use it in my personal LJ, though. :-)

Ah, professionalism.... A neverending quest.

I've known about the therapeutic value of yoga and meditation for years, but have never managed to make either of them a regular routine for very long. This morning I was thinking that if I just did them both every day, I would be so much more healthy.

Then I had this barely conscious negative thought about "people who do that" and another barely conscious thought that "I'm not like that." I caught these thoughts out of the ether and asked myself "What do I think about these people?" I realized that I was thinking they were holier-than-thou, head-in-the-clouds, and irresponsible about practical things. So it's no wonder I have never managed to stick to a yoga and meditation routine, when I value hard work and humility; my assumptions led me to believe that I would become a spacy snob! So, I'm going to sit on that for a bit and see about stretching myself in a different way. (puns intended)

In the meantime: It occurred to me that people who struggle with disorganization might have some assumptions about what organized people are like: maybe that organized people are rigid, petty, obsessive-compulsive, unfriendly, snobby, judgmental, and so on.

I'd love to hear people's comments on this topic. I won't take it personally if you have negative ideas about organized people, as long as you'll do me the same favor if you're a dedicated yogi/meditator!