Marilyn Bohn | Creative Organizer

Do you do things out of habit even if the end result isn’t getting you what you want? I am sure we all do this. My daughter shared with me the following experiences which all occurred to her within the last three weeks.

She has a favorite chain restaurant where she likes to eat. The food is good, the service is tops and it has a fun atmosphere. Things have been happening to cause her to evaluate her decision to keep eating at this restaurant.

The first problem was a long black hair sticking out from the bun of her chicken sandwich. The next week it was a curly black hair in her rice bowl and the third week it was salmon in her cheese in her chicken sandwich.

She starts thinking, “This is not working for me, this is three times in the same restaurant that something has been wrong with my meal”. She either needs to stop going to this particular place, eat at home or eat at a different place.

How many times in our lives do we do the same thing over and over and expect different results while not changing what we are doing?

It is no different with organizing. If you have made up your mind that your drawers and closets are going to be organized and stay that way but you don’t change anything chances are they won’t be organized. Perhaps something as simple as getting rid of the extras that are never used or using a container is all it would take to accomplish your goal.

Time management may be a struggle as you race around in the morning looking for keys, shoes and the children’s backpacks. Adding a hook inside the cupboard for keys, putting shoes back on the shoe rack (buying a shoe rack) every night, having a designated place for the kids to toss or hang their back packs could make all the difference from having a stressful morning to turning it into a peaceful one.

Office organization may mean changing your filing system to a color coded system, alphabetized files or a vertical filing system to get you where you want to be.
If something isn’t working for you, then change it, get others to support you and encourage you in your decision to get what you want with just a few simple adjustments.

What have you changed in your life to get different and better results as you have worked towards an organized life?

As a kid did you love to play a game where you would all pile on top of each other and the bottom person would be yelling, “Get off, I can’t breathe”?

Do you ever feel like the paper in your home is making it so you can’t breathe? Paper piles in homes and offices can become a heavy weight if not contained. How to organize an office is easy by following rules to breathe by:

•Do not let junk mail live in your home. Open mail over a trash (recycle) can. Do not entertain it.

•Set up a filing system with tabs on the hanging files for every kind of paper you have to keep. IE: To Read, Bills To Pay, Coupons, Receipts, Auto information, Household tips. I could go on and on but you get the idea, have a place for every piece of paper. You don’t have to file every time you touch a piece of paper. Place it in a basket and once a week file. Yes, it does take some self control but the benefits are marvelous on you and your home.

•Do you like to say, “I am a piler,”? As long as that works for you it is okay. 1) Try a vertical file rather than laying the paper down. You can label the side of the file and it is easier to see and you can organize and separate by topics or need. 2) If you want to have horizontal files place a manila folder on top of a pile (you could cut it and have two from one). Write on the top of the folder saying what the pile is. Or you can buy folders that have tabs so you can slip several piles into one folder. This keeps your desk neat and tidy and you can find what is in your pile when you need it.

What cool trick have you used to tame paper in your home?

A reader from Australia said her biggest problem in her office is knowing what to keep and what to get rid of. As I organize for women I find this is a big problem in the majority of homes. It is important to keep documents needed for taxes. Here in the U.S. we have been told that we need to keep our tax related documents for 7 years. For further information on records keeping and the real requirements visit www.irs.gov.

I recommend paying as many bills on line as possible. Banks and Credit Unions can pay most all bills electronically; you just have to set up the information for them to be able to do the transfer. Notify the utility and credit companies you want electronic bills, to discontinue sending paper bills.

When you get a paper bill put them in a hanging file labeled Bills To Pay. Decide on one or two days a month to pay bills, pull out the file and pay them. Because they are contained you don’t have to wonder where you put the bill. If you absolutely must, only keep one past months paid bill at any given time. After paying a bill you can shred or recycle the paper.

I recommend this as a way to keep a home office organized as it does away with tons of paper. If you can verify two different ways that you paid the bill there is no reason for you to keep the paper.

•One way to verify is with the new monthly bill it will show you paid the previous month.

•You will have record of how you paid it—credit card, debit card, check, or electronically.

If you absolutely can’t let go of the paid bill instead of keeping clutter around I recommend a wonderful scanning device called Neat Receipts. It scans receipts, business cards and documents of any size. It reads and converts scan to editable text then it identifies and digitally files your papers for easy access and you can quickly access them when you need them. Check out www.neatreceipts.com

To have an organized office we need a system of dealing with all the paper work and other things that make their way into our offices. Start organizing from the inside out. If you have drawers, containers, a cupboard or closet that you use for your pens, paper, stapler, hole punch and other necessary office supplies start organizing there. Even if your desk is a mess, remember it will get worse during the organizing phase before it gets better. But it will get better.

The reason to start in the drawers, container or cupboards is:
•You will know how much space you have available to put the things away that are out on your desk.
•You can de-junk a lot of things that have been hidden in your drawers or in the closet thus creating more space.
•You won’t be wasting time putting things away into these places from other parts of your office only to have to go back and organize those spaces when your desk is unburied.

I was organizing the office of a woman who has a successful business and we started in her desk drawer. That had been the catch all for everything she didn’t know what to do with. (Actually going back six years). Her drawers were unusable to her. Things had been just stuck in the drawers—out of mind out of site. When we were done she even had one drawer that was empty. Before we started every drawer had been chuck full of ‘stuff’.

What is the most unique, fun, or great find that you have uncovered in your office?

As promised this week we are going to be talking about offices and how to organize them.

First of all decide on a place for our office, if you have the luxury of having a room for an office, great. But if you don’t you can still have a nontraditional office. Some things to consider when selecting your place:
•Convenience
•Accessibility
•Appearance
•Personal preference—does it make you feel good to be working in this area?
•Practicality

For small spaces an office armoire that can hold a computer, paper, accessories (pens, pencils etc), and a printer work very well. This is ideal for a living room, family room or even in the bedroom. There are beautiful ones on the market that come in all colors and wood grain.

You need a flat surface to be able to work on. There are many types and sizes of desks. Look for one that fits your space. A table can be designated for a desk. Small desks built in a kitchen area can work well with organization.

Pick your spot and we will chat about how to organize it this week. Do you have a unique place you call your office?

Do you have a gift closet? My daughters used to ask, “Mom do you have a present I can give to…..” Even when they went to college they would sometimes come home and ask me. You probably know how poor college students are. It was nice that I had a little stash of gifts so I could help them out. (They still had to buy them, but I would give them a good deal).
When I teach others how to organize I encourage them to have a designated place in their home for gifts, whether it is a closet, under the bed in a rolling bin, in a container in the garage or in a cupboard. As a professional organizer I recommend having a gift ‘closet’ for four reasons:
•You know where to find gifts you’ve purchased when you need them.
•By keeping gifts on hand you can save money as you can buy gifts ahead that are on sale.
•You have a gift on hand when you need it.
•Because they are contained in one place you can take a quick inventory of what you have.
Keep wrapping paper, tape; gift and all occasion cards on hand. Have them conveniently located to make gift wrapping fast and fun.
Where is the most unique place you have kept extra gifts?

“Asking for help does not mean that we are weak or incompetent. It usually indicates an advanced level of honesty and intelligence”.—Anne Wilson Schaef By this definition I must be very honest and very intelligence as I am constantly asking for help.

Do you need to reclaim your office space? Help has come in the form of an eBook written by my friend Adriane Benefit of Neat and Simple. She wrote this book to help people achieve a LASTING change by using a cognitive-behavioral approach to getting organized.

She has a ton of advice and practical solutions for organizing offices. She has several different systems depending on your organizational style. The entire book is a treasure of organizing ideas; here are a few of the gems:

•Different organizational styles are explained in depth.
•A Self-check list: How do you know when you have too much clutter?
•Explaining the payoffs of clearing clutter, it’s not magic…it’s energy.
•She explains how to let go of clutter and creating spaces you love.
•There are plans to make clearing clutter more fun. (How awesome is that)?
•There are pages of references: how to get rid of the things you want to sell or donate; how and where to recycle computers & electronics; how to protect your passwords and how to set up a productive and efficient work space.

She has left out nothing; this is a comprehensive hands on guide to organizing an office. This book is for everyone.

What is your biggest challenge in your office?

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There have been so many disasters happening around the globe I have wondered when we will have a disaster here where I live. We live on a major fault line in Utah. Our home is literally on the line. I have thought,”am I ready if a disaster were to strike our home?”

Even if something happened to destroy just one room in my home where my files, computer or important valuable records are kept that would be a disaster to me. I want to share with you what has brought me some peace of mind. I am using a product from Securita. It is a vital records PortaVault. It is an easy-to-use, comprehensive system which IDENTIFIES, ORGANIZES, STORES AND TRANSPORTS all of the important records and documents I need that are valuable to me. Some of the things it does is:

•Eliminates the guesswork in identifying important documents (I love this)
•Does not require filling out a lot of forms (What a bonus in my busy life)
•It is filled with helpful hints and guidance (Too many to mention)
•Ready when I am: just grab it & go (I hope it never comes to that, but one never knows, this is one of the big reasons I decided to buy it and use it).
•Prevents chaos in emergency situations (There is enough going on and gathering up without wondering where my important papers are to be located).

I am spending 15 minutes a day collecting my important papers to make my PortaVault complete. It was an eye opener when I discovered I didn’t know where my birth certificate was. If I hadn’t been filling my PortaVault I would never have even known.

Another way to store documents is the writable compact disk but that is a subject for another day. Are all of your important documents together? Where do you store them? What works for you?

I came back from Washington last week with a head full of memories, my trip journal and a camera full of photos of my family including the parents of the cute grandkids and photos of the beautiful tulips at the tulip festival in Skagit County.

Now what to do with them? I want to remember the trip, the fun and the beauty so I immediately set to work on sending my photos to Costco to have them developed. I like to crop my photos and take out the red eye and sometimes change the color to black and white or sepia. All of this takes time but I keep my eye on my goal and forge ahead. I believe in keeping photos in photo books so they can be looked at and keep the memories alive. By doing one trip at a time it doesn’t become overwhelming.

When I get my photos back in only one hour I slip them in a photo album behind plastic sleeves. I keep the book near my computer to remind me to journal them. I don’t like my hand writing so I type a page of what all the photos are about—where we went and what we did and the dates. Then I type up short blurbs that I insert by the photos. This is very easy and fast. Well fast is a relative word, but it is faster than scrapbooking.

I have to confess this part sometimes doesn’t get done for a few months. Life is just so busy. I have three albums I need to journal. Now I have confessed. Ahhh I will report back to you on my progress—this will give me a goal to work on and soon.

Speaking of scrapbooking I have a friend whose website is Organize 101 and she is passionate about scrapbooking. She has written a book with beautiful pictures and tons of information about scrapbooking. She has given me one of her books to give away free to one lucky reader of my blog. You know how writers foreshadow things that are going to happen in their books, this is what I am doing. Next week I will announce and open up a contest you can enter to win this book.

How do you store your photos and what tips and tricks do you use to keep your photos organized?

I just have to say I go all agog when I go to The Container Store. (We don’t have one here in Utah). I know, it’s sad but true. I use containers all the time in every room. Maybe I could go so far as to say I love containers. They are great to store things in, contain things in, make things get magically organized and stay that way.

Having said all of that here are two containers I suggest not buying:

This type of shoe rack—-

The reason is: the shoes just won’t stay on, I finally figured out by putting them on backwards they will stay. Even then they have to be placed gingerly on the rod for them to stay on. Everyone in my home finds that to be a bother. They just want to slap them down and be done. Don’t get me wrong—I like shoe racks of all kinds. I just found one in The Container Store catalog that holds 30 pair of shoes and fits on the back of a door. There are other over the door racks that hold fewer, there are free standing ones that work great as well as some that hang from the rod inside the closet.

Here is my other container I say not to waste your money on:

Now these look wonderful and you can sort and file by month, date and alphabetically but they are a pain. Why? Because they take two hands and the chin and shoulder to get anything in or out of them. Knowwhatimean? It is a waste of time to me and I don’t like wrestling my containers. If I need a wrestling fix I will turn on the T.V..

In the February/March 20089 issue of Shop Smart magazine they list four NOT SO HOT organizing tools that just add to the clutter.
1.Accordion files. (enough said)
2.Space bags. (I agree)
3.Cardboard Boxes. (not good in humid climates)
4.Plastic containers with rims (can take up valuable space)
5.There are a plethora of containers for all of our wants and needs. Buy what you need and what you like, don’t just buy to buy as then it becomes clutter rather than containers.

Do you have a container you would recommend NOT buying and why? We would love to hear from you.