It may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes the cure for clutter is having multiples of certain things. Take, for example, a pair of scissors. How often have you gone into another room to get the scissors, brought them back to where you needed them, used them, and then neglected to return them to their usual place? Days later, you go to get the scissors and they are aren’t where you expect them to be, resulting in lost time to search for them,…
Read more →I’ve written in the past about New Year’s Resolutions and how they are destined to fail without proper planning. (See Say “No” to New Year’s Resolutions and Setting Monthly Goals Instead Of New Year’s Resolutions). This year, I’m trying something different. I’ve chosen a “Word of the Year” using Christine Kane’s Word of the Year Discovery Tool. (Thanks to my organizing colleague Janine Adams of St. Louis for bringing this to my attention). My word of the year is Balance. It encompasses the business and…
Read more →I have previously written about how to greatly reduce your pile of snail mail by opening the envelopes, removing the fluff, and unfolding the important papers. (See Honey, I Shrunk the Mail.) In that organizing tip, I coined the term “paper thickness”. A single piece of paper is one paper thickness. A piece of paper folded in thirds, such as when inserted into a business envelope, is three paper thicknesses – three times as thick as when it is unfolded. An envelope is two…
Read more →I didn’t always own a file cabinet. During my 25-year business career, I always had multiple file cabinets in my office, but I never even considered owning one at home. I viewed file cabinets as clunky metal things that didn’t fit into any type of home décor. A few years before I left Corporate America , my supervisor worked with an efficiency expert who got all her papers in order. She was so impressed that she authorized all of her direct…
Read more →It always surprises me when someone asks me for my address even though this person has been to my house before. Everyone has a way of capturing contact information, don’t they? It may be in electronic form, or it may be in a physical address book. So why would someone have to ask me for my address again? I think it’s because it is just not a habit for most people to retain contact information beyond its initial usefulness. But it’s…
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