Ann Arbor Book Fesitval

For two years, I served on the Ann Arbor Book Festival's planning committee as Volunteer Coordinator. I stepped down last fall to focus more time on my family and my business, but am happy to announce that Lucy White is doing a great job as this year's Volunteer Coordinator.

If you will be in Ann Arbor, Michigan from Thursday, May 15th to Saturday, May 17th be sure to check out the festival and maybe even volunteer. If you would like to volunteer send an email to: aabf@aabookfestival.org or call 734-369-3366.

Kosher Kitchens

I love to read, but due to limited time I am quite selective about what I spend my time reading. Just yesterday I recently finished reading a mini-book (24 pages) titled "How to Organize the Kosher Kitchen" by California based organizer, Lisa Mark.

Lisa's guide is great for professional organizers of any faith, for Jewish people who keep Kosher or for folks who just want to learn more about Kosher Kitchens. I particularly liked her personal story at the end of how she went from being a non-practicing Jew to spending hours preparing her Kosher kitchen. Lisa also lists a great resource for color coded labels and utensils. Something that seems essential if you want to keep Kosher in a small space.

Garage Sale Season

If you read my post from last week, you know we are still waiting for spring here in Michigan. When the warm weather comes, garage sale season also begins. While I do not recommend my clients hold garage sales themselves (it just doesn't pay off for most people), I am a fan of donating good used items to local charities for annual rummage sales in the community. For most folks the tax deduction is well worth it.

At the end of this week, the Dexter, Michigan Knights of Columbus will be gathering good used clothing and household items for their annual rummage sale to be held April 10~12. They are not accepting any furniture, computers or exercise equipment. If you live in the area and have such items to donate, the Knights of Columbus will be accepting donations April 3rd through 6th. Check out their website at www.dexterkofc.org for more information.

Waiting for Spring

I am probably one of those rare folks that actually enjoys winter. But...now that the first day of spring and Easter have passed, not to mention that it is late March, I feel like telling Mother Nature "enough already". Here in Michigan, we still have a few piles of snow on the ground.

However, weather is an unpredictable thing, so I am hoping for winter to pass and preparing for spring. Here are five things to do now to get organized for spring:

1. If you have a lawn mower, tune it up now or hire someone to do it for you.
2. If you have a lawn service provider, contact them for the upcoming season.
3. On those warm days spend 15 minutes or so removing the dried remains from last year's flowers. Warm is relative, so my neighbors have seen me out with my trusty pruners in hand on a few 45 degree F days.
4. Spend 5 or 10 minutes to sweep off the salt and other "gunk" that fell of your car in the winter.
5. Wash the windows in your home one room at a time.

When the warm weather does come, hopefully you will have accomplished a few jobs that will allow you the time to just sit and soak up the warmth. In the meantime, I will enjoy my garden photos from last summer (the flower above is a peony, one of my favorites).

Baby and Toddler Stuff

My general philosophy toward "stuff" of any kind is less is more. This is especially true when it comes to baby and toddler stuff (how come such little people "need" so much stuff?!). As a parent, I try to practice what I preach by buying clothing for my child only when needed and only what will fit into a small dresser. The other household rule is to only purchase toys for birthdays or special holidays. My husband likes to break this rule occationally and we have also been blessed with a lot of great hand me downs from friends, family and neighbors.

For my household the whole idea is fewer, higher quality items. That being said, I always like to find a good bargain, especially for truely needed items. So, this morning we went to our first "Mom to Mom Sale" at the St. Joseph's Parish in Dexter. My husband convinced me to buy 2 books and 2 toys (including a loud police car toy that I think he really wanted for himself!). I found 5 clothing items that our child can use. All together, we spent a little more than $10 including $1 per person entry fee. It was also a nice little outing for us (we really do not get out much!).

Come to find out, almost every weekend you can find these mom's sales all throughout the Detroit area and Southeast Michigan. There is even a website called Mom2MomList.com that compiles all of the local sales, which are usually organized by churches, like St. Joes, or parent groups. If you need stuff, or more likely, need to get rid of stuff this can be a great way to recycle your abundance.

No Water! (Storing Manuals)

My family and I live in a semi-rural community and we depend upon our own well for water. This morning while I was taking a shower, I noticed that the water pressure was not at its usual level. Then, after a bit, it just stopped. There was no more water.

I called my husband (who already had his shower!) and he checked our tank in the basement. The pressure gauge showed zero (not that I needed confirmation). We had no water.

Fortunately, by 10 a.m. this morning Cribley Drilling came to the rescue. Unfortunately, we needed a new pump and tank ($$$!). The guys from Cribley installed the new equipment and after writing a large check, we now have water again.

I was also left with the manual for the pump, which is outside in the ground, in our well. Being a professional organizing consultant, I do have a file for manuals, but know that if the water ever goes out again we would first go to the basement (not to my office) and if we ever moved the manual should stay with the house.

My solution was to put the manual for the pump in a plastic sleeve, use packaging tape and tape it to the basement wall near the water tank. Now it is there for me if I ever need it. I also wrote the date, company name and years of warranty on the manual for future reference.

Now, I just need to get back to my normal routine for the day!

Carlos Ghosn's Calendar

The Wall Street Journal has an occasional feature called "Boss Talk" where they typically interview CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Today's Journal featured an interview with Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault. This article was of interest to me having spent nearly 10 years working in the automotive industry and nearly all of my life in Michigan, where our economy has been hit hard due to our strong ties to this industry.

What I didn't expect to find in this article is confirmation of something I often teach in my seminars. The "5 Tips from Carlos Ghosn on Managing a Global Workforce" included using one calendar (or time manager) for keeping track of all appointments. My seminar attendees as well as my clients often hear that one calendar is better than two. If this tip is good enough for a CEO that splits his time between Tokyo and Paris, it should be one that the rest of us can follow as well.

Packing Decorations

In the January 2008 edition of "Your Simply Organized Life" I answered a reader's question regarding packing holiday decorations.

Since quite a lot of you probably still have your holiday decorations up (over the last few years as a professional organizer I have seen quite a lot of holiday decorations well into February and March) I thought I would revisit the packing of holiday items here.

In the e-newsletter I recommended using 66 qt. or smaller totes for storing holiday decorations. The photo above shows the totes I use for my own holiday decorations. They are labeled on the ends and stack nicely on my basement shelves.

Sane Living

Chris Wucherer, a colleague of mine in Ann Arbor, Michigan just started a new blog called "A Woman's Guide to Saner Living." Since most of my clients are busy, high achieving women---with a bit of disorganization---I thought this new blog would be of interest to all of you.

In addition to my life as a professional organizing consultant and business owner; I also have one small child, one large dog, one great husband and a household to manage. As a result, my life isn't always sane or "perfectly" organized. My life is organized well enough for us to live a healthy well balanced life (and invite unexpected visitors in), but I am sure I can learn a few things from Chris.

Organizing for Health

A friend of mine send me a link to a great article in The New York Times on clutter and health. Click here to read it. It is written by Tara Parker-Pope, who recently left The Wall Street Journal. I often enjoyed reading her health column in The Journal. This article and a related blog entry also on January 1, 2008 is valuable as it focuses on changing habits (not bins and boxes) as a way to get organized. The researchers mentioned have been studying the links between being organized and healthy living.

Tooting My Own Horn

Okay, it may not be polite to toot my own horn, but I was so excited when I noticed that this very blog was listed on Organize Magazine's Community Page AND the OrganizingLA website.

Organize Magazine is a new magazine dedicated solely to organizing topics. Admittedly, I am not currently a subscriber (although I can get a discount as a NAPO member), but I did purchase my first copy while at CVS in November. Even organizing consultants need to buy stuff once in a while.

John Trosko of OrganizingLA calls himself an "Organizing Evangelist" and has been featured on Daily Candy as well as with several LA media outposts. If you have lots of time and want to learn more about how "the other half" organizes out on the West Coast, be sure to check out the OrganizingLA blog. In the meantime, we will keep living our Simply Organized Life here in the Midwest.

Holiday Hubbub

The last few months have been extremely busy for myself and Simply Organized Life. Hence, it has been almost a month since updating this blog. Since we are now in the midst of all the "holiday hubbub" I thought I would give you all an update and some tips for staying grounded at this time of year.

In early November I attended the Professional Organizers of Canada (POC) annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (see photo at left). This was a great opportunity for me to take a step back and evaluate how I can better serve my clients.

Likewise, the holidays and the new year are great times to slow down (even just a little bit) and evaluate how you can better serve yourself, your family and your clients, if applicable. This holiday season I am taking some time off to spend with my family, tackle some household projects and maybe sneak in some time for the business as well.

The biggest challenge for me (and for many of you too!) will be not to over schedule myself so I have time to step back and reflect on the many blessings in my life. Happy Holidays!

Cost of Disorganization

It has been over a month since my last post, as things have been busy with Simply Organized Life. Most notably, in early November I attended the annual conference for Professional Organizers in Canada (POC) which was held this year in Vancouver. I look forward to sharing the new things I learned at the conference with all of you.

In the meantime, I came across an interesting internet resource that will help you calculate your cost of disorganization. Smead (the company that makes file folders) has a section on their website called "Organomics" which includes a calculator for the cost of disorganization.

The calculator is geared toward corporations, but if you want to calculate your individual cost of disorganization just type in 1 person, your hourly rate and the amount of time you think you waste daily due to disorganization.

Hint: Newsweek Magazine reported in 2004 that most Americans waste 55 minutes a day looking for things they know they own but cannot finds. So 1 hour is a good starting point for most people.

Green Organizing

If you are an avid reader of this blog and subscriber to Simply Organized Life's e-newsletter, you know that Carolyn is a huge fan of green organizing. Carolyn also is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers' (NAPO) special interest group for Simple and Sustainable Organizers.

A fellow member of the Simple and Sustainable group was recently interviewed by the Toronto, Canada's Vitality Magazine. In its October edition, Vitality featured a great article on "The Green Approach to Organizing and Decluttering." The article is well worth a read.

Children of Hoarders

The OCD Foundation of Michigan is sponsoring an event this Saturday, October 6, 2007 in Warren, Michigan featuring a speaker from the organization Children of Hoarders. For more information on how to register click here.

Until this week, I was unaware of the Children of Hoarders organization, but am happy that such resources exist. Occasionally, I will receive telephone calls from adult children of hoarders and unfortunately, I cannot help their parent(s) if the parent is unwilling to get help. In the most extreme cases it is imperative that the hoarder also be receiving the help of a qualified therapist.

Computer Back Up

It was about a year ago now that my computer crashed on me. I was fortunate that I didn't need to buy a new computer and am still using the same one that suits me fine (at least for the time being), but I spent hours on the telephone with someone in India reinstalling everything. It was a real waste of time.

I was also fortunate that all of my important files with the exception of a few e-mails were backed up. Funny thing is that I have referred to very few of those important files in the time since, which gets me thinking about how we hang onto things thinking that they will be useful in the future.

Experts in the organizing industry say we really only use 20% of the stuff we own 80% of the time. So rather than buying another bin or putting up an elaborate system to store the 80% that we don't use, perhaps we should take a cold hard look at that 80% and see what we can share with others less fortunate.

We Caved!

Two weeks ago today I posted a short essay titled "Free from TV" and promised to let you all know how it goes. I even received a great comment from fellow Professional Organizer, Jeri Dansky, who incidentally posted an interesting essay on her blog yesterday about the various organizing shows on television.

It is with a little embarrassment that I post this message. After I cancelled my cable service the cable company contacted me with a new "offer" for really bare bones cable service. Basically, my husband and I caved in taking the cable company up on the offer for $5/month cable service that includes the basic local channels, PBS and a smattering of other channels. Interestingly enough this bare bones service still includes about 20 channels, which seems like a lot to me.

My reasoning for keeping the cable is that I still like to be able to check the local channels for weather (and somehow protect my family from Mother Nature?). Earlier this summer I heard the tornado warning sirens screaming from town and was able to see on the local channel exactly where the storm was, while www.weather.com didn't give me that type of up to date information.

My husband's reasoning is that he likes to keep up on football and catch the tail end of the golf tournaments on Sunday. I suppose I couldn't step on such manly pursuits.

In a nutshell, we are less than perfect beings that do like a few minutes of television now and again. I guess $5/month is the value that I put on that bit of leisure. And without HGTV or TLC, I am certainly watching a lot less TV.

Lead Paint in Toys

As a parent the recent repeated news of lead paint contamination in children's products terrifies me. As a consumer I wish I had more options to purchase safe products made domestically for my child. However, economic and social factors (namely our thirst for lots of cheap "stuff") have made that nearly impossible. So what is a parent to do?

In my opinion, the first thing to do is to consume consciously. Buy less and seek out products that promote high standards. My family has been blessed to have been given a few Haba wooden toys manufactured in Germany, which I hope has higher safety standards as a fully developed nation. These types of toys can be more difficult to find and more expensive; however, I am a firm believer in buying fewer higher quality items (this can be applied to almost any consumer good).

Even if you are already a conscience consumer, your child (like mine) probably has also been given many plastic or metal toys manufactured in China and other developing nations. For these toys, you can check the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's website at http://www.cpsc.gov/ for recent recalls. You can also purchase an at home lead testing kit at your local hardware store or on-line. I have decided to try LeadCheck Swabs for their ease of use.

As for the contaminated toys, I am at a real loss as to what to do and would love to know of recycling options (please share your comments). I hate to see the toys end up in a landfill and donating them clearly is unethical.

Free from TV

I finally did it. I just called to cancel our cable television service. Over the years as our local cable company kept raising their monthly rates, I kept downgrading our channel lineup. Not once did we regret this decision.

After reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about the potential links between television viewing and autism in children (which the organization Autism Speaks disagrees with) my husband encouraged me to get rid of the cable service completely. In theory, I agreed and dreamed of an even more simplified life without television. However, I must admit that I enjoy watching television and was quite happy with our basic service at $22 a month.

Then last week when the cable company messed with our channel line-up and I found my beloved Home and Garden Television replaced with the Sci-fi channel, that was it. So, today I did it. On Friday, September 7th our cable will be disconnected and I will find out if life free from TV brings our family more simplicity. I will keep you posted.

College Shopping

I happened to stop by the Target store in Ann Arbor, Michigan yesterday to pick up a few mundane things for our household (toilet paper, plastic wrap, that sort of stuff).

It hit me in the face that the University of Michigan students are back, along with their parents and the parents' wallets. It seems that this sort of shopping voyage is a part of going away to college these days. Target even had their own college marketing materials throughout the store.

When I ventured off to Michigan State University at the end of the '80s, I remember my mom purchasing some sheets and towels as they appeared on sale throughout the summer and then simply dropping me off at the dorm. There was no shopping trip to Target or any other store. Call me old fashioned.

The families I saw yesterday seemed to be in a buying frenzy purchasing things like hangers, electronics, hairdryers and let's not forget the containers to store all of this "stuff." What struck me as strange is that the type of items being purchased seemed to be things that any high school student would have. I wonder if the families checked their "inventories" at home before venturing out to Target.

I am not sure if it is the kids or the parents or the stores pushing this type of college consumerism, but what I know for sure is that if people continue to consume excessively, my job should be secure.