NAPO-Ohio Blog

By now, many high school seniors have decided where they will attend college. If they haven’t, it will be decided soon. But before you start gathering the goods for the dorms, their family bedroom is something that should be processed. Countless clients have tried to downsize and move to only have their children not available or not have the time to clean out their bedroom. They may have graduated from college, moved into their own apartment and working full time. The last thing they want to do is process those things of youth.

Before high school finals finalize and graduation passes by, mention to your child that this project is something that needs to be done. 30 minute spurts of time can accomplish quite a bit. You may consider working with them in order to keep them focused. Setting a timer helps with the focus and offers an end to what can be a stressful project.  The typical piles of KEEP, TOSS and DONATE need to be established. Do they really want the trophies from their 3rd grade sporting events? Are the paperback books as important anymore and what about the beading kits from the birthdays past? All these things have been found in clients’ children’s rooms.

If there are special mementos they want to keep, by all means, let them keep them. The guideline is that by time they are thirty, they need to take it with them. At that point, they should have completed their education, be established in their career and maybe even have a home of their own. There are of course underlying circumstances that would prevent this, but use it as a guideline.

The items that they want to keep should be boxed up in a box or tub that closes so the boxes can easily be stacked. If you are using plastic tubs, a 55qt. size is about the biggest you want to use. Anything larger gets too heavy and difficult to manage. Mark the box with their name and general items enclosed. This gives them a gauge on the amount of stuff they are keeping. They will thank you later when you move into your retirement condo and their things have already been presorted. 

Are you often so busy that you feel as if you are on a train and the landscape and attractions are going by so fast that you can't get off? You have so much to do that tasks keep coming in and there is no break.

The feeling is described by many as overwhelmed, stressed, or defeated. These descriptions are also used by my clients when it comes to organizing. They feel so overwhelmed that they cannot get started and the train keeps putting the clutter into their space with no end in sight.

So how do you get off the train or make it stop? As you can imagine it does take some changing of behaviors and habits. Learning to say no to additional tasks will help keep you on track to complete current tasks. Many of my overwhelmed clients have a very hard time saying no to a new task or project. They feel guilty if they say no, so the projects just pile up and none of them get completed.

Asking for help is another habit to change as we feel weak if we need to ask for help for a task that seems like anyone can do it, such as organizing. As I tell my clients, we are gifted with a talent and organizing just happens to be mine, but art and singing are not talents I was gifted.

When it comes to organizing, being overwhelmed is preventing you from moving forward so it continues to pile up. To get off that fast moving train you must say no to new tasks, give yourself permission to ask for help, and remember that getting organized is a process not an event. The train did not just start going fast, so it will take some time for it to stop.

Celebrate every tiny victory!

We live in a very competitive culture. We are surrounded by people who will do anything to be the best, to be the one on the top of the victory stand, to get the blue ribbon or the gold medal. Sometimes it seems that the message is that if you don’t finish on top, you really haven’t accomplished anything worthwhile.

I am here to encourage you to celebrate every personal victory along the way to your personal goal. It really doesn’t matter about how your progress matches up to anyone else. When you are in the arena, “daring greatly” as Teddy Roosevelt would say, you are one step closer to your personal victory. And that is reason enough to celebrate.

When we say goodbye to perfectionism,

we open up the door to personal victory!

When we give ourselves permission to be less than perfect, we take a big load off of our shoulders and an even bigger load of stress out of our lives.  It enables us to see that the mistakes we make can still be stepping stones to personal success. And you get to define your definition of success.

I happen to like a colorful checkmark or cheerful happy face to acknowledge a job well done. J I also like to celebrate with a delicious treat. Sitting down with a cup of tea to savor the memory of a tiny victory works too.

After an introduction at a recent speaking engagement, the host said, “Let’s

welcome Olive with some applause!” And to my surprise, I said, “Yes, everyone likes a bit of applause—it makes everyone smile!” as I applauded for the attendees in the audience.

A distinctive part of every Toastmaster meeting is enthusiastically applauding every member for their contributions to the meeting. The applause acknowledges a willingness to be more than a spectator.  It helps to cultivate an awareness of small steps of achievement.  Celebrating those tiny victories creates momentum for taking another small step.

So here we are at the start of a new year.

Set a goal to accomplish something that is meaningful to you.

Then figure out your own way to celebrate your personal accomplishments.

Savor the victory with joy and excitement.

Then take one more step each day toward your goal.

2018 is a fresh start, a blank canvas. What masterpiece will you create?

When life is sweet, say thank you & celebrate.

When life is bitter, say thank you & grow.

Olive Wagar is owner of Organized by Olive LLC. She helps overwhelmed people discover the less cluttered side of life. She offers residential organizing and unpacking services.  She lives in Troy and serves clients in Miami County, Shelby County, Darke County, and Montgomery County.  She is Secretary for NAPO-Ohio and Toastmasters Area 5 Director. She is a Star Blogger for Professional Organizers Blog Carnival. She enjoys offering workshops and speaking presentations. She recently was a featured speaker at TEDx-Dayton 2017. She loves being Grammy to 2 sweetie pies in Tennessee.

It isn’t a new notion that the holidays are stressful.  And the recent rise of social media has added to our holiday strain by creating a perception of Pinterest perfection and pitting mom against mom (whether intentionally or not) to one up each other to make their families’ holiday the happiest and most magical. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some holiday magic…but at what point does it become more about me, my expectations, my stress, my disappointment and less about enjoying the time with my family and creating lasting memories.  How can I channel my excitement and passion for the holidays into a few carefully curated activities and gifts that will create lasting memories without those memories including me crying or screaming?

By having a clear focus for your holiday energy, you are more likely to make those experiences truly special…because when we do everything all the time, it is no longer special.  It is now our normal.  So let’s make the holidays special again!

Priorities

What are your holiday must-dos?  One way to help curb the stress of meeting those holiday expectations is to have a clear view of what is important to you and your family.  Is it spending time with extended family and friends?  Seeing as many Santas as possible?  Having a beautifully decorated home?  Making exquisitely wrapped handmade gifts?  There is no wrong answer for what your holiday priorities SHOULD be.  The issue comes when all activities are given equal weight and importance.  Then, as the month goes by and tasks are not completed, the stress and anxiety sets in. 

Expectations versus Realities

It is easy to say “lower your expectations”, but how?  I mean, once that holiday rat race starts, it plows forward, full speed ahead through New Year’s with few stops along the way.  One way is to choose a few specific holiday activities and tasks that are really a priority for your and your family. Focus on doing those things that really matter well rather than “all the things” just ok.

Delegate

You may be thinking “yeah, right? Limit my holiday activities. Not a chance!” Ok.  What about paring back the scope of your activity or asking/hiring someone to do it for you?  Chances are there is someone in your community who would love to help you with these tasks.  And delegating doesn’t have to mean hiring someone to do all your work…it could mean spreading the work around.  One of my favorite holiday traditions is my Cookie Exchange.  Baking and seeing my friends are 2 of my holiday priorities.  By hosting this one event, I can fellowship with friends and get a ton of yummy treats for my family and neighbors.

Christy Lingo is a mother of 2 boys, Professional Organizer and owner of Simple Solutions Organizing serving Columbus, Ohio and the surrounding Central Ohio area.  She is the oldest of five children whose ages span 14 years with a mother whose motto was "Be organized or be lost."  Upon leaving home, she spent 14 years honing her organizing skills by moving more than 15 times and living in an average of 700 sq. foot, most times with minimal closet space and limited storage. You can find Christy on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and her webpage.

The Set-Up for Success

They've already begun... Black Friday ads, urging us to bust out of our turkey comas during the wee hours the Friday after Thanksgiving (or even Thursday night, before the pumpkin pie has settled in), open our wallets, and buy... lots of stuff.

The problem is, most of us don't need anything that's for sale on Black Friday (or Cyber Monday, it's more comfortable, order-from-your-couch cousin). Buying things just because they are "on sale" is a recipe for bringing anxiety-inducing clutter into our homes, going into debt, and eventually harming our environment as landfill waste.

(My only caveat to the anti-Black Friday movement: If you actually need to buy something that's on sale on Black Friday, by all means, go for it! Two years ago I bought my son Reese an electric scooter--his #1 Christmas present request--on Black Friday. I couldn't have justified the cost of this item if it hadn't been on sale. So there, I've shopped on Black Friday and I liked it! Perhaps I should stop writing this post right now...)

But I would argue that there is a difference between shopping for a specific item and shopping to shop. I urge you: ignore the latter.

For some people, Black Friday shopping is akin to family bonding. I get it. I've been there. If you have a family shopping tradition, consider a different type of bonding activity this year. Some ideas:

• have a board game marathon
• binge-watch a favorite TV series
• hike a local nature trail
• bake cookies
• visit an art museum
• put up holiday decorations
• make a craft
• create an obstacle course in the backyard
• volunteer to clean up an elderly neighbor's yard
• lend a collective hand at your local homeless shelter or other charity

There are truly limitless ways to bond with the fam that don't involve running up credit card debt and adding clutter to your home!

Another idea: if you want to shop, buy toiletries, socks, underwear, towels, linens, hats, gloves, and winter coats to donate to a local homeless shelter. These are high-need items at all shelters, and this type of shopping adds untold goodness to the world.

One last type of Thanksgiving weekend shopping that's Rose-approved: Small Business Saturday. Money spent at local mom-and-pop shops stays in local economies, which is good for all of us. It's hard to overspend at these types of shops, as the items are usually more expensive (AKA not made in sweatshops). Plus, you'll find truly unique gifts.

So, I urge you: let's make Black Friday a little better this year. Find a way to bond with your family that doesn't involve trawling the mall, and if you do shop, shop smart by using your dollars to provide relief to our neediest citizens or to support local businesses.

If you'd like more tips on how minimalism can add more "thanks" and "giving" into Thanksgiving, watch my recent news segment for Good Day Columbus. 

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones!

Rose Lounsbury is a minimalism coach, speaker, and author of the Amazon bestseller “Less: Minimalism for Real.” After blogging about her own journey toward a minimalist lifestyle, Rose was inspired to start Less, a minimalism coaching company. Rose spends her days writing, helping clients clear their clutter, and soaking up the moments with her husband and their wild triplets. Rose is a member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and has been featured on Fox News Good Day Columbus and WDTN Living Dayton. She calls lovely Dayton, Ohio home.  If you’d like to contact Rose for a speaking engagement or help with a minimizing project, you can email her at Rose@RoseLounsbury.com or visit her online at RoseLounsbury.com.

Does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode when Jerry talks about a rental car company “taking reservations” but not “holding reservations”? That scene is playing in my head as I write this article.

We all attend meetings. We show up with paper and pen (or tablet and stylus). We listen. We contribute. We even take notes. But then what? What I see so often is that when the meeting ends, so do the thoughts and even worse, any action. Things get written down but may or may not get done. It seems that we “take” notes but we don’t “hold” (or process) our notes. Let me share this profound notion:

If you take notes and don’t process your notes, there was likely no point in taking them.

When you return from a meeting, instead of setting those meeting notes aside, take a few minutes to process them. Move any key information or decisions into the best location for recall. Do any quick tasks that might be required of you. Move any action items that require more effort (or your delegated items) to your To Do System. This will ensure you (or your assignee) stays mindful of the assigned items and Things. Get. Done.

May you have blessings and balance,

Janet Jackson

PS If the concept of a single To Do System is foreign to you, send me an email. We need to talk. J

Things have been a little crazy around here, thus the delay in sending this newsletter. In the last few months, we’ve overhauled my general business site (check it out! www.OrganizationSolutionsLLC.com), continued our monthly Express Trainings, recorded many eLearning sessions, and migrated to this newsletter tool, while also continuing to serve clients and businesses via consulting, training, and speaking.

And on Thursday, I ran out of gas.

So, Friday morning, I took some time to pause and reflect: Was I/Organization Solutions, LLC still even heading in the right direction? It is way too easy to get sucked into the demands of it all and keep driving (fast) without looking at the map, watching for the right exit. (That sentence literally occurred to me during my morning of reflection. I knew right then it was going to be my next newsletter.)

So my question for you: When is the last time you made a pit stop, personally or professionally? When is the last time you paused to reflect if all that you were doing was even what you wanted to be doing? Was all the driving taking you to your desired destination? Or further away from it? For that matter, do you even know your destination? If it’s been awhile, I encourage you to carve out an hour or two and have that internal conversation. (I recommend a journal…you’ll look less crazy.) It might take longer than just one morning; so, do be patient with the process.

For me, it turns out that I am still headed in the right direction. I just needed to refuel. Whew!

May you have blessings and balance,

Janet Jackson

www.ABetterWayTo.co

www.OrganizationSolutionsllc.com

If you look at what constitutes most piles of stuff or paper, you will likely find 90% of it is unnecessary or no longer useful and one or two things may be something of value. The lonely thing of value tends to be the glue that holds the rest of the useless items together–and useless items tend to proliferate. This is actually how most piles originate and grow. The pile then becomes a source of aggravation rather than a good place to return to find things.

Furthermore, if you tried to label this pile for longer-term keeping, it could not be described in one category or word. It would likely be called “Miscellaneous.” We seek to eliminate the Miscellaneous Label with clients as they generally represent a mishmash of things that aren’t valuable enough to be categorized. What might seem like a simple fix to store a few unrelated things temporarily becomes just another pile of unfound and unused items.

As an example, f you were to look inside your miscellaneous paper file, you might find things like a couple kept business cards, loose papers about upcoming events that have passed, an old list of things to do, some receipts, an advertisement with a coupon to your favorite store, a recipe, and the vaccination card for your child’s school records. They have been in a MISC file for months now, and you had to review them again to remember what was placed in this catch-all file. There is one item of value–the vaccination card--that should be filed away in a specific place such as Vital Records for that person. The other items can be managed in other ways or discarded/recycled: the business cards can be entered in your Contacts list and tossed; the recipe can be found online or can be photographed and kept in your favorite digital program i.e.; Evernote; the coupon is likely expired; the to-do list is no longer relevant; and the receipts should be reviewed to see whether any impact taxes or need to be kept for proof of ownership. Most likely the receipts will be eliminated too.

From this example, you can also create real file categories that might be needed, instead of the MISC label: Contacts, Recipes, Coupons, Receipts, Vital Records, etc. If something is important enough to keep, then it really should be important enough to have a category that won’t create a bottomless, mismatched pile.

So give it a try–attack one of your miscellaneous stacks and see what you come up with! Start by eliminating what isn’t needed/expired. Then apply categories to the items that remain and assign a better labeled home. Let us know how it went!