As a child, I couldn’t articulate what it was about that I didn’t like about rubber bands, but as a professional organizer I can.  Some kinds of containers help you GET organized and others help you STAY organized.  Rubber bands do neither.

Any of my clients will tell you, my favorite containers for GETTING organized are banker boxes and Ziploc bags.  The banker boxes are a good size for sorting, they are stackable, reusable, and you can affix a label to them.  Ziploc bags are great because you can see what’s inside of them, including a label to clarify the contents further.  Both of these solutions are designed to be temporary launch pads to proper systems.

Rubber bands offer no such launch pad.  The only things they can launch is themselves (and that’s not a bad idea.)  We may associate a flexibility with rubber bands, but the truth is, there’s a certain rigidity to rubber bands.  Take business cards, for example.  Once you neatly bundle them up in a criss cross of rubber bands, let’s face it, that’s the end of them.  The problem was that business cards were all over the place and the “solution” is that they are now under control, with rubber bands.  The rubber bands send the message that the business card problem has been settled.  It hasn’t.  It has been bundled up and, in some ways, the problem is worse.  The only card that you can see in the bundle is the top one.

If the intention of this bundle is to represent a FINISHED system, then the rubber band fails even further.  I’ve seen hundreds of organizing systems, good and bad, and there is always one consistent element that makes systems successful:  they’re easy! Unbundling, shuffling, and bundling business cards, to continue with the same example, requires effort, not a lot of effort, but effort, enough not to happen.

Big fat files that are bound up in rubber bands are especially difficult to use.  The resistance of the rubber makes these files difficult to slide in and out of the file cabinet and the bands cut into the files, leaving them in tatters.  One is not encouraged to use files like that, so one doesn’t.

Even for rolls of paper, I try to avoid the rubber band.  If you have a lot of large paper that matters, a set of flat files is well worth the investment.  For small amounts a portfolio is better.  Rolling paper up never improves it.

Finally, rubber bands are NOT so flexible because eventually they dry up, get brittle, and snap.  Granted, this takes quite a long time, but that’s not a problem for the rubber band.  Things tend to sit bound up for YEARS.  Why? Because there is never a plan for moving on from the rubber band solution.  It’s done, settled, and often a royal pain to unbind.

Oh, and it gets worse.  It’s not enough that these monstrosities snap as their bloated contents explode, they actually have the gall to adhere themselves to folders with an epoxy-like strength, rendering said folder non-reusable and non-recyclable.

Rubber bands have their place, on lobsters and broccoli, but unless you are actively seeking a DISorganizing tool, my advice would be to keep these little menaces out of your home office.

Coalhouse Pizza

On Tuesday Coalhouse Pizza featured a beer dinner, five courses of delicious pairings of gourmet food and varieties of  Stone Brewing beer.  I was in heaven.  This foodie/beer boy did not, however, leave the organizer in me at home.  I was blown away by how well organized the event was!

Of course, I’m biased, but I believe the success of the operation was down to one MVP:  clear work surfaces.   Now don’t get me wrong, the planning, the prep work, the team work and the management (Captain Gerard rocks!) were all first rate and indispensable, but in terms of reliable systems to deliver all these features, the clear work surfaces were the unsung heroes.

In past posts I’ve made no secret of the fact that I believe there is no better organizing tool than a clear work surface, but that’s not enough.  Every effective organizing system is made up of two vital components:  an appropriate structure and an easy habit.  If the clear work surface is the ultimate organizing structure, what then is the habit that must accompany it?

A clear work surface must be accompanied by the habit of clearing it between processing, NOT MOSTLY, but 100%, whether this processing concludes at the end of the work day or between courses.  The team at Coalhouse Pizza gets this.

They had the challenge of serving 5 courses with 5 different beers to 95 guests. That’s 950 servings in less than 2 hours! There were already lots of pizza-prepping surfaces in that kitchen, but their first order of business was to bring in two extra large tables into the middle of the floor for the major processing task ahead.  You can see all the surfaces in the photos above.

As you can also see, these surfaces aren’t mostly clear between courses, they’re 100% clear.  How do they know each course is 100% done? Because the surfaces are 100% clear, 100% ready for the next course.  That’s the pattern to aspire to for EVERY work surface in your home or place of business.

At Coalhouse Pizza these surfaces are treated as runways for take off, not airplane hangars for storage.  Food circulates in, gets prepped, and flies off like airplanes.  Of course, for these runways to work here, there must be similar runways in other parts of the restaurant.  In the kitchen where the food is cooked there must be clean work surfaces.  There must also be clear surfaces to process all the dirty dishes as they are emptied and circulate back from the restaurant floor.

To enjoy a well organized home or office, take a tip from a successful restaurant like Coalhouse Pizza and keep those runway surfaces clear for take-off!

A truly effective organizing system must circulate freely, just as your body’s blood supply must circulate freely.   In both cases, when there’s a blockage there’s a problem.  It’s also important to note that the circulatory system moves forward in stages.  It advances forward to the next valve, then it stops and moves forward to the next and so on, but it is a reliable circular flow forward. 

Let’s compare this to the daily mail.  When it piles up on the dining table, it can be overwhelming and it can easily lead to trouble like bills not getting paid, opportunities missed, and late fees.  The opposite extreme would be to pay the bills the same day they come in.  I admire people who can do this, but for most of us that’s not practical.   What IS manageable is to move the bills FORWARD to the next stage, the next valve if you will.  Do a quick (2 minute) divide-and- conquer and dispatch with the magazines, catalogs, newsletters, junk mail, etc. then place just the bills in a bill organizer, ready to pay a week before due.  Now the next stage is FORWARD to bill paying, not backward to the dining table.  The bill paying stage will flow more freely because the bills are isolated, ready to go.

A complete organizing system must have a complete cycle.  To continue the bill paying example, after the payment is sent the record goes in your file cabinet; after the statement stays handy for the tax year it can be archived; after it has been archived for 7 years (usually) it is safe to recycle or shred; after it has been recycled into new paper it can (at least theoretically) be used for new bills.  Thus the cycle comes full circle.

Some items in our homes tend to circulate more naturally.  For example clothes: they need to go from dresser to body, to hamper, to washer, to dryer, and back to dresser again.  Another example dishes:  they need to go from cupboard to table, to sink, to dish rack, to cupboard again.  We know that when the laundry and dishwashing don’t get done, the clothes and dishes start piling up.  These examples may seem pretty obvious, but the point is you need similar systems of circulation for EVERY item you use.

Every healthy living thing requires systems that circulates freely.  Blood, oxygen, and water are just a few examples of things that need to circulate.  If you want your home and office to feel alive, it must have organizing systems that circulate too. 

TODAY’S KEY TO UNLOCKING CLUTTER:  Circulation prevents accumulation.