I recently wrote about mystery cables, which most of my clients have boxes of. But there’s another mystery item that seems to afflict most people, and that’s keys. Mystery keys collect in desk drawers, kitchen drawers, and receptacles of random stuff. There are a lot of possibilities as to what those mystery keys might open: Your old apartment or your old car. Your mom or dad’s home — but they are no longer living. Your best friend’s keys — but…
Read more →Last time, I wrote about how to identify different types of cables so that you can get rid of any cables you don’t need and downsize what you have too much of. (See You Have Too Many Cables.) This time, I want to write about how to prevent the madness so that you don’t have too many cables in the future. When you get a new device, take a few minutes to label the cables. If the plug is large…
Read more →When people ask me what my favorite organizing product is, I think they are surprised by my answer: Ziploc bags. I’m actually brand-agnostic, so I use the term Ziploc to mean any sealable, transparent bag. One of my favorite things about them is their transparency. When we store things in opaque bags or boxes, we think we will remember what is inside, but much of the time, we just don’t. I can’t even count the number of times a client…
Read more →I recently wrote “When A Piece of Furniture Has To Go.” You can subtitle this post “When Another Piece of Furniture Has To Go”. I’m referring to my desk. Not the desk where I spend most of my time working on my computer, but the desk I’ve had since I was a child. It also served me well through many years of adulthood. It was a place to pay bills and write letters and sign school permission slips. But that…
Read more →I love return address labels. I’m guessing that I’m not the only one, since charities send out return address labels to get on your good side and guilt you into sending them money. Some of my clients hold on to every return address label that was ever sent to them, even though they have so many that the labels will most likely outlast them. Personally, I play favorites, keeping only the ones that I really like or that reflect the charities…
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