Are you attached to your stuff? I hear this from clients all the time. It’s provided as an explanation for why there is too much stuff in their homes. There’s nothing wrong with being attached to something. Attachments bring us comfort. However, it is important to be aware of what we are attached to. If we are attached to too much, we get weighed down, and we can’t go anywhere.
Over the weekend I made the mistake of going into Staples for some boxes I needed. As I should have anticipated, the store was overrun with back-to-school shoppers. As I waited in a very long line, I couldn’t help but notice how similar the stacks of new spiral notebooks I saw awaiting purchase resembled the stacks of used spiral notebooks I see in my clients’ basements and attics.
We’ve all heard the classic organizing mantra “a place for everything and everything in its place.” That may be a good place to start, but to truly benefit from being organized, it’s necessary to push that goal a little further.
One of the many factors that compromise productivity is an overwhelming pile of papers on one’s desk. Often the cause of this excess, is a lack of space in one’s file drawers. That’s a pretty easy problem to solve. Here are three tips to create file space.
Effortless Entrepreneur is not an organizing book, but it does emphasize the importance of systems and it uses one of my favorite services as a model. It was written by Nick Friedman and Omar Soliman, the co-founders of College Hunks Hauling Junk. I had the pleasure of meeting Nick at the NAPO Conference this past May. He featured his services at the expo, then delivered the best presentation I saw all week: How To Work “On,” Not “In,” Your Business.
Each year, over a million people in America relocate from their current residents or place of birth to relocate within the same town, out of the state, or even the country. In 2013, over 35 million Americans moved around the country or out of the country, with the average American moving once every 5 years. Although there has been a slight decrease over the years in mobility, people are still moving around in the United States. Here are some of the major reasons for moving in America.
The VersaPlus Clip Dispenser is a great product for organizing a limited number of office supplies in one convenient accessory.
When you want to get organized, do you run out and buy organizing supplies? If so, odds are good, your organizing process is like an upside down funnel. The best way to get organized, is to work from general to specific, in stages, as if you were filtering all your excess stuff through an imaginary funnel. When you’ve bought your organizing supplies first, however, it’s a bit like a doctor giving you a prescription without a diagnosis. You’re going from specific to general, down an upside-down funnel.
Overwhelmed with too much stuff to do? Get rid of some stuff you own! Why? It comes down to this very simple rule: The more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to do. Here are five examples:
Are you ready for now? Usually our ideas of being ready are directed toward the future. Will I be ready to retire (in the future)? Will I be ready in an emergency (in the future)? Being organized means being ready, not just for things that will happen in the future, but for things are happening NOW. Summertime brings many sudden moments that spark stress. Here are three of them and how to get ready for now.
I have spoken before about rethinking the need for a junk drawer, but today I want to address perhaps the most important thing you can put in any drawer: open space.
A good organizing system is like a perfect piece of toast. You have to set the right compulsion level for your system, just as you have to set the right heat for your toast.
