Space Treat: No Memory Required

Filing your paper is more about being able to find the documents you need than it is about just putting them away.

Clients who are fond of paper piles often tell me they know where everything is in the pile and can find anything when needed. This often turns out to be true… but it takes them 15 or 20 minutes to do so. Sound familiar?

Spending 15 minutes a few times a week adds up to hours. Is that really how you want to be using your time? Not to mention, it takes incredible skill to sift through these piles without disturbing it's precarious order.
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De-cluttering Your Feed Reader

I have two gmail accounts - don't ask, it's a long story - and what I've been doing is using the one as my main Google Reader account and the other for some blogs I wanted to keep track of, but they don't post regularly so those posts can pile up.

I've been subscribing like crazy to both my Google Reader accounts so they're getting out of hand and it's not uncommon for me to find 81 items unread, which is unusual for me.
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Paper, Paper and Still More Paper

If you're ever going to keep up with all the paper in your life, you have to decide on a system and keep tweaking it.

Read more about how to deal with mail clutter and decide if my system will work for you as is, or if you need to make slight adjustments. I'm cool with that!

One of the biggest mistakes people make with organising paper is jumping to the filing instead of eliminating the source.
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The Big O: Under 60 with Monica Ricci

Monica Ricci, Organizing Expert, Motivational Speaker, Author and Founder of Catalyst Organizing Solutions, LLC. is the special guest on the latest episode of The Big O on VickyandJen.com.

"Your time is short and your to-do list is long, so give us an hour and we’ll give you an organized life!" Not really, but use our Under 60 ideas and you will be much closer. Join us for this episode of The Big O: Under 60 where we share lots of projects that can be done in 1, 5, 15, 30 and 60 minutes.

Some examples:
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Space Treat: Fresh Eyes

Every week when I meet a new client we start the session off with a house tour. Even if their initial priority is the home office, we'll walk through the entire home.

This past week I met with a new client, Michelle. During her Phone Intake Consultation, we determined that setting up an efficient home office where she could store and access papers, schedules, mail, bills and files was her number one priority.
With that in mind we set out on a house tour. During this step we open all the closets, drawers and cabinets. There are 2 main benefits to the tour:
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Does De-Clutter Equal De Stress?

For the last couple of weeks, I have been under a LOT of stress. Sometimes my coping mechanism consists of spending all my free time in bed with the television and a generous helping of something calorie laden and delicious.

But I found a nice wallet/planner while shopping a few days ago and found that it was just as satisfying, if not more (and a lot less fattening!) to transfer all my addresses and phone numbers from the old one to the new one.
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Show me your desk - a challenge

I posted this picture of a minimalist desk on my blog recently and people weighed in with their comments - most said it lacked personality but some said they liked it and actually wanted theirs to look the same.

Read all the comments here

So I came up with a wonderful idea!

Let's all show off our own desks - tidy, untidy, inspirational, messy, cluttered, minimalist, etc.
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Recycle Paper the Easy Way

I've always said that if you make something too complicated, it just won't work, no matter how well-intentioned you are. That's why it's so important to make your systems easy, especially if you live with other people and you want them to live by your organising "rules".
That's true for designing a good flow for laundry in the home and also for recycling paper in the office.
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Clutter Control: Organizing Computer Passwords

For the longest time, I had the bad habit of creating usernames and passwords for different websites that I visited thinking, “This password is easy enough; I’ll remember it.” And for the first two or three, I did.

Then I started jotting them down quickly while I was creating them, only to misplace or accidentally toss them later.
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10-minute clutter hacks - Computer

Don't get fooled by the Organising Myth that you have to have a block of 2 - 3 hours to get anything significant done.

Not true!

Here are some tasks that will literally take you only ten minutes.
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Stacks and Stacks Helps Canadian Village Go Green

The tiny village of Whale Cove in Northern Canada is finally going to have a recycling program, thanks to the efforts of a young villager named Sarah Igviksaq and StacksandStacks.com. This new program would help Sarah's small community pay for their sports teams to travel through the territories and do their part to save our planet.

Here is the letter we received from Sarah:
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Where Did All These Shoes Come From?!

I did not know that a family of five could own so many pairs of shoes! I am always shocked at how many, and how quickly they pile up by the front door. And if you are one of the unfortunate ones (like me) who don’t have an entry way at the front of your home, the shoes wind up spread across half the living room if they aren’t kept in check. But how? With no entry way, I’ve had to get creative with our shoe storage.
Here are a few ideas:
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Can't Let Go of Old Baby Clothese? Here's the Solution!

A lot of us have old baby clothes that we just can't bear to part with - a little pink Easter dress or something Grandma gave us when Junior was born…

Fortunately, I was able to narrow it all down to just my favorite few from each of my three kids, which I keep in a zippered bag in a trunk in my living room. But I know several people who just can't seem to do that.

Here are a couple of great ideas for keeping those same memories, in slightly different form:
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Here's how to get BIG, juicy results

How to set and achieve BIG, juicy goals that bring BIG, juicy results - teleclass/ webcast

Thursday 23 October 2008

Did you know that there are just over two months left before the end of the year?

Last year, a friend and I participated in an online goals challenge at exactly this time of year. We set some goals and my "big thing" that resulted from the challenge was 7 easy steps to organise your office, which is now a bestselling product in my store.
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The Idea of Having

J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly posted a great article called The Idea of Having. It gives some great insight on some of the reasons we have "stuff". Why so many of us can come to grips with controlling the present and future clutter in our lives, while still struggling with past clutter.

Thanks, J.D.

A Real Space Saver!

The folks over at The Home Know-It-All have a great little blog with lots of helpful tips for home design, improvement and repair.

They did us the honor of featuring the Stacks and Stacks Corner Space Saver Bookcase!

Thanks Guys!!

Clutter Control Through Boundary Setting

If you are an accumulator, if you snip articles out of papers, or purchase
endless amounts of fabric or beads, or save vast amounts of nails or old
cell phones or your children's art work. Or if you are crafty and you
collect odd things that you "might use some day" (such as 583 empty toilet
paper rolls), you need to set boundaries.
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An Organized Remodel

Our family is in the middle of a kitchen remodel. Now more than ever it helps to be organized. Remodeling can be disruptive; there’s noise, dust and people coming and going. In order to preserve our sanity, we thought it would help to maintain a few routines. One of those routines is eating dinner together. I wanted to continue that routine as much as possible. Because I’m a clutter control freak, I did a little advance planning.
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How Not to Feel Guilty About Disorganization

Having trouble keeping up with things that used to seem easy? Feeling guilty because you just can't seem to handle what you could before? Everyone in this world is disorganized in one way or another, at one time or another, even Professional Organizers (gosh did I just write that). It is true; we all have days and sometimes weeks, when we cannot stay on top of things and our lives get chaotic. The good news - you don’t need to let guilt about it take over your life! There are things that you should be looking at that may be the cause of the problem.

Now these are causes of problems, not excuses that you can use just because you want to procrastinate and not get the job done!
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An Organizing Tip From an Urban Gardener

I live in the city and have a small vegetable garden. When I first started gardening my Dad warned me that in order to grow carrots, I would need to thin them out if I wanted them to thrive. The first time my husband saw me pulling them, he protested. He didn’t want to waste those good “potential” carrots. So I thinned a few rows and left a few alone. The rows that I didn’t thin, produced underdeveloped and misshapen carrots.

Some of my clients save a lot of stuff because they don’t want it to go to waste. They plan on using it in the future. Unfortunately, they often forget they have it. When they get around to donating it, the item is yellowed, brittle or outdated. Don’t let things outlive their usefulness. “Thin things out” now and get them into the hands of someone who will use them. Then you will reap the added bonus of having less to care for and having better access to the things that are important to you.

Maintaining Your Decluttered Space

We had a ball over on my other blog with the August Declutter Challenge last month.

Everyone was so motivated and I just knew that if we didn't do something, ANYTHING, to maintain those beautiful decluttered spaces, 80% of participants would fall back to the old ways.
It's nothing against them, or you; it's just a fact of life.
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The Big O: Ask Monica!

For all of our Monica Ricci fans, Vicky and Jen.com is hosting the podcast "The Big O: Ask Monica!"

In this special episode of the organizing series, listeners present Monica with their personal organizing challenges. They cover messy cars, toys, school papers, artwork and much more. They even have a surprise personal pop quiz for Monica to help us learn more about our favorite organizer!

Check it out!

A launch pad saves you 5 hours a week

That's a picture of my handbag on my launch pad.

A launch pad enables you to hit the ground running every day.

In the office
Your launch pad is writing down your high priority items on your eat the frog form so you start off your day on the right note.

You can save TONS of time if you don't have to think about your priorities every morning.

How much time could you save if you immediately started each day on the most important tasks?
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Fall Organizing Tips

Autumn officially began a week ago. For most homeowners, this signals a shift from indoor organizing to outdoor organizing. Time to think about storage for garden supplies, grills, and patio furniture.

And along with the inevitable seasonal wardrobe change which will soon take place, the garage is a great place to start.
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Get Back to Basics with Menu Planning

When things start going a little bit crazy, the first thing I do is go back to basics.

Like when I feel overwhelmed with the business, I drag out one of my master to-do lists and start writing down everything.

In the same way, when if feels like things are too busy in my life at home, I get back to basics with a few things. I:

1. write EVERYTHING down on our kitchen calendar
2. clean my kitchen (I like a clean and uncluttered working space so this helps me feel centred; a friend of mine likes doing laundry - she is obviously crazy :)!!!)
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   Posted September 23 2008, filed under How I de-cluttered, Clutter Control Products, Clutter Hacks | 2 Comments | Permalink

Ellen’s Penicillin Method of De-Cluttering

This post came from Declutter 101: Strategies To Cut Clutter | Organized Home. This was such a great analogy, I just had to share…

Often, decluttering efforts chase their tails in an endless loop. The home manager declutters the small table in the hallway and moves on. By the following week, a whole new species of clutter has returned to the cleared area.
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Everything You EVER Wanted to Know About Organising Your Computer

* Do you find yourself wasting time looking for files on your computer?
* Do you get frustrated because you just don't know where to start?
* Do you know when and how often to do a back up?
* Has your computer ever crashed and you lost everything?
* Do you know how to organise and contain all those free things you keep downloading off the internet?
* Do you know how to name and store files so they're easy to find?

We can help you!
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How to Handle Sentimental Clutter

I don't know about you, but I find myself with things stashed away in cabinets that I know I'll never display or use again, but I just can't bring myself to part with them because a certain person gave it to me. Or it evokes a wonderful memory from my past.

Marcia Francios over at Organising Queen has posted a couple of times now on a great idea to reduce sentimental clutter.

Take a picture! You can memorialize it in a photo album or in your blog. This way, you keep the visual stimulus of that person or memory without taking up the space!

Fantastic idea, Marcia - thanks!

How could you use this tip in your life?

Back to School - With a Twist!

When I was home schooling, I tried to give our "classroom" the look and feel of an authentic classroom.

I guess part of the reason was that I didn't want my kids to feel so "different" from their non-home-schooling friends. And the other part was because it was just plain fun!

I had a few things to make our home school feel like a classroom;
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4 Tips to Tame E-Clutter

Well, what good is organizing your office and desk while your computer is spilling over with clutter?

Here are four helpful tips to move you towards electronic bliss!

1. Make time daily to delete emails. I've told you before that my goal is to delete 100 emails daily so I go through my inbox, sent items, folders, etc. every couple of days.

2. When you download photos from your digital camera, choose the best ones there and then and delete the rest. I don't know about you but I usually take about 3 or 4 pictures if I can (if the subject is not moving) so that I can choose the absolute best pictures.
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