Message Center

 Clearing Clutter, Mental Clutter, Space  Comments Off
Mar 242013
 

Keeping family affairs running smoothly requires an area to collect and disseminate information. This is where schedules and lists are posted, mail and messages are left, and baby sitter’s information noted. It is the family communication hub — space for information that needs easy access and quick retrieval.

The message center can become a focal point for family expression, as well as activity. By displaying children’s artwork, birthday invites and travel photos, it symbolizes our lives in progress and a reminder of why it is important to keep everything organized.
The family message center can be a bulletin board, chalkboard, magnetic whiteboard, an over-sized color-coded wall calendar or a combination of any of these things. Include children’s activities, due dates for special projects, school holidays, appointments for everyone in the family (including the pets) and weekly menus. Now you have a tool that will keep you on track.
Choose what works for you and your family. To ensure that this area functions at its best, remember to keep it up-to-date. Sunday night is the perfect time to update and review the coming week.

And, the last thing you have to do is decide where to put your family message center. You will want to put it somewhere that gets a lot of morning traffic, probably the kitchen. Located well, it will serve as a constant reminder of what is happening.

How do you use a family message center?  Post your comments below.

 

 

Label, Label, Label

 Clearing Clutter, Paper Management, Space  Comments Off
Mar 172013
 

A Professional Organizer’s Secret:  If you want to find something again, then label, label, label!

File drawers, cubbies, boxes and baskets are a means of maintaining items and information until needed, and labeling is the key to finding-what-you-want-when-you-want-it in any storage system. Labels accelerate the retrieval process, and filing or storage system is about retrieval.Ask yourself what you would be thinking about when looking for a particular item.

Throw away those preprinted labels and create your own wording. You can use verbs, nouns or full sentences — whatever works for you. Julie Morgenstern, the author of Organizing from the Inside Out, states that “A label produced on a label maker, word processor or typewriter speaks with more authority than a quickly scribbled handwritten label in pencil.”

Take the time to make clear, bold, black, neatly made letters when labeling and see if that doesn’t make a difference. While helping my mother set up a filing system, we came across a pile of totally unrelated papers. I asked her why she was keeping them. Her response was, “Just because!” Thus, a new category was born: Just Because I Want Them.

How effective is your labeling system? Share you comments below.

 

Paper Management

 Paper Management  Comments Off
Mar 102013
 

The accumulation of papers can be one of the greatest irritants in trying to organize our homes and offices. Unless you begin to take control, you will be buried. Mismanaging the endless influx of papers can cripple your ability to function efficiently.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. The key to dealing with papers is to decide its importance and know how to handle it. Will you toss it, file it, or perform some type of action?  Toss – File – Action!

Paper management is a decision-making process. Every piece of paper can be effectively managed by placing it in one of the following places:

  • In-basket, Sort Tray or a Control Center: This is a temporary spot for papers that require action. Schedule a date and time to deal with everything in this area.
  • Wastebasket: A place to eliminate unnecessary papers. Insufficient use of the wastebasket leads to crowded files, a chaotic desk and a cluttered mind.
  • Tickler File System: A reminder file that hold papers until a future-action date.
  • Active Files: An alphabetical, numerical or categorical file system for current information only. For most households, current means papers accumulated from January through December and then purged during tax preparation time.
  • Reference Files: A storage area for reference material. This file is slowly becoming obsolete as the internet has become our personal library of information.
  • Inactive Files: An alphabetical, numerical or categorical storage area for archived records that are closed yet need to be retained.

To maintain control, remember the most basic organizing principle: “A place for everything, and everything in its place”

 

Every Home Needs an Office

 Clearing Clutter, Paper Management, Space  Comments Off
Mar 012013
 

Yes, it is true that every home needs an office to handle the business of running a household. There are bills to pay, health records to maintain, an assortment of receipts, bank and financial statements all with tax implication. There are insurance papers, contracts and frequent flyer accounts along with addresses and telephone numbers. The list goes on and on. It does not matter if you live in an apartment or an old colonial home; there is a need to process paperwork.

March is Home Office Month. Click here to read more.

 

 

Paperless

 Clearing Clutter, Electronics, Email Clutter, Paper Management  Comments Off
Feb 242013
 

According to a 2007 study performed by Javelin Strategy & Research, we could save 16.5 million trees each year if every household in the U.S. switched to paperless bills.

It is time to go paperless. Here are a few tips to get you started:

  1. Download bank statements to reconcile accounts.
  2. Request billing notices via email
  3. Pay bills online. Check out your bank’s option of e-pay.
  4. Eliminate junk mail and catalogs, the two biggest sources of annoying and unwanted paper. Check out www.CatalogChoice.org.
  5. Check out Optoutprescreen.com where you can request to be removed from credit and insurance offer mailing list.
  6. At DMAchoice you can register to opt out of direct marketing mail you don’t want as well.
  7. The Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Alert also includes information on how to stop receiving unsolicited mail and telemarketer calls.
  8. Instead of printing documents onto paper and filing them away, “print” them to PDF files or Microsoft Document Writer. (If you don’t know how, just send me an email – click here – and I will help you through the process.)
  9. Instead of jotting grocery shopping items or making other lists on scraps of paper, use the reminder app on your smart phone.
  10. Take time to learn about all the features on your smartphone and eliminate the old habit of paper use.

Digital technology has come a long way. Now there are tools and apps that can sync your information across various devices – desktop computer, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Going paperless reduces clutter, protects data, saves money, saves trees…

Remember, February is Computer Cleanup Month.

 

 

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