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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Happy Thanksgiving!

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

Have an Amazing Day!!

5 Ways to Have a Happy Thanksgiving for Adults with ADD

Well, the holiday season is officially upon us! And for some adults with ADD, this is the most stressful time of year. Here are a few practical tips for managing your ADD this Thanksgiving (or any holiday.)

1. Know Your Own ADD and Plan Ahead to Deal with It

You know yourself better than anyone, so ask yourself "How does my ADD affect me on the holidays?" Make a list of all the things that tend to stress you out, and make a plan to deal with them.

Here are a few examples:
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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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Lists Are Your Friends

"I can't remember anything any more," said one of my clients. "None of us can," I told her. And it's true. And that's why lists are so helpful.

Here are some of lists I personally find useful; I'm sure you'll have others of your own.

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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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It's Almost Contest time!

Woohoo!

We have our best contest ever starting on Wednesday, November 19th.

The Grand Prize is this five piece bedroom set from South Shore Furniture!

Other prizes include a bath organizer and a cabinet organizer from Organize It All, a luggage rack from Winsome, and a shoe rack from Polder.

Come back here on the 19th to enter!!

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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Now Open: Neat and Simple Living Cafe

Ariane Benefit from the Neat & Simple Living Blog has created an amazing online gathering place called the Neat and Simple Living Café.

This "cafe" is a place to connect with like-minded people and support each other in dealing with common life challenges shared by creative people, ADDers, and most self-employed people. Here is an excerpt from the ‘welcome’ page:
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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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Why Do I Procrastinate?

Ever wonder why, if the results of procrastination are so unpleasant, you do it anyway?

Because, for a lot of us, procrastination becomes a way of coping with the emotions and physical symptoms that accompany depression. Like any form of escape, it may bring some temporary relief, but eventually compounds our misery later.

Do you fall into one of these categories of procrastinators?
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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.

Simple Ways to Improve the Resale Value of Your Home

With all of the homes on the market it is more important than ever to make sure that your home stands out to potential buyers. Before placing your home on the market consider doing some simple and inexpensive work on your home to really make your home stand out.

Remember that first impressions count!

The exterior of your home is the first thing a potential buyer will see. Make it inviting and it will set a good first impression. Make sure that there is no trash or debris in the yard and that the lawn is mowed and edged and looks well kept.

Make the foliage inviting: trim the hedges and weed and mulch the flower garden. If you do not have a flower bed consider investing in one– an inviting yard makes a great first impression.
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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!