When I suggest to my clients that we review their bookshelves and see if they can let any books go, they usually look at me in a panic and say, “But I LOVE my books!” Books are just like any collection: a bunch of individual items that are viewed as an entity but are actually quite diverse in terms of their usefulness or emotional value.
Read more →What do you do with your receipts after you bring them home? Several of my clients save them — piles and piles of them — so that they can analyze their spending patterns and better understand where their money goes. That’s a worthwhile endeavor. Unfortunately, saving them in piles does not shed any light on your spending patterns. It just creates clutter and causes you stress. It also makes it difficult to find an important receipt when you need it.
Read more →I’m breathing a big sigh of relief, because for the first time in months, I’m not packing. We spent the first two weeks of July on a family safari in Africa. Then, a few days after we got back, we drove our 13-year old daughter — and her luggage — to camp for a six-week stay. In the weeks before I go on a trip, people always ask me, “Are you packed yet?” They assume that, because I am an organizer, I pack my…
Read more →Do you consider yourself a procrastinator? Interestingly, most people do. Even though I teach time management and productivity, that’s no guarantee that I won’t succumb to the lure of on-line Sudoku in spite of my beautifully prioritized to-do list. Recently, I had two tasks that I just couldn’t get started on. I got everything else done but still couldn’t get started on those two. When I ran out of time-wasters, I even did some productive things that weren’t on my…
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