I'm excited to be attending a class this evening to learn how to make windchimes out of glass mosaic.

Organizing in times of Chaos

Having an organized home, office, car, purse or calendar is even more important in these times of such uncertainty. Be organized in your home so you can find what you need and don’t buy duplicates and triplicates. Be organized in your office, so you can efficiently and effectively be valuable in your job. Be organized in your schedule, so you can be efficient with your time and always keep track of your appointments and commitments. Having your spaces organized can give you a sense of peace, well being and stability when others around you emanate feelings of concern, chaos and sometimes even panic.

See my post on Organizing in times of Chaos
http://ping.fm/UuYDc

Busy week with clients, but taking time to enjoy 3 grandkids tonight.

Just joined Ping.fm and giving it a try.

Halloween

I just uploaded pictures of my grandchildren in their Halloween costumes to my Facebook page! Click here to see the little goblins http://tinyurl.com/6laxs2. We had so much fun on Halloween that we had them all over again on Saturday night for a bonfire in our backyard. We were so lucky that the weather was so beautiful.

What will you do with an extra hour?

Daylight Savings Time ends on November 2. If you have been looking for an extra hour to "get caught up" here's your chance. Is there a special project that you have been putting off or procrastinating on? Plan ahead of time what project you are going to work on during the extra hour of time you have.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Go through your closet or dresser and donate all of the clothing that is out of style, no longer fits, or you just don't wear.
• Knock several things off your To Do list.
• Grab a stack of old mail or piles of paper and go through it.
• Clean out the refrigerator and pantry and discard everything that has expired.
• Organize the linen closet.
• Go through that pile of magazines, cut out the special articles to read and recycle the rest.
• Go for a walk, call a friend, play a game with a special child.

What is your special project? Consider taking an hour every week, every month or just once in a while to focus on your special projects that tend to get put on the back burner. Most important of all, have a great weekend!

Laundry Systems

I received an email from a subscriber asking for some tips on setting up a laundry system for a large family. I suggest that you involved the entire family in the process. Consider their ages, but even a toddler can help sort the laundry, if you have the patience to work with them.

Give each family member their own basket; you can color code if you would like, to give each person a different color of laundry basket. Have each family member bring their own dirty clothes to the laundry room and sort them into larger bins. Each large bin is labeled with the category of clothing that you use for washing clothes - darks, colors, whites, etc. Once the basket is empty, it can be exchanged with another basket, sitting on a shelf in the laundry room that has clean folded laundry in it, waiting to be redistributed to the individual's dressing room. Once the clean clothes have been put away, the empty basket is ready to collect dirty laundry and the process repeats itself.

Each time you implement a new system for any organizing project, you want to remember that it takes time to develop new habits and your family may need to be reminded of how the process works a few times before the system moves smoothly. The key is consistency. The natural consequences are no clean clothes to wear if you haven't followed through with your part of the bargain.

Keep Breathing

I returned safely from the conference in St. Charles, Missouri and learned a lot of great information.

It was mere minutes after returning that I learned that my daughter and her fiance moved their wedding date up to March 2009 and she asked me to make her wedding dress. What an honor! This will be a very busy winter/spring for us - first the holidays are a few short weeks away, then my husband and I have a vacation planned for early February, followed by the wedding, and a combination conference and family vacation in Orlando the end of April - my first reaction was to go into panic mode. A couple of deep breathes and Ohms and I am back on track. My personal mantra is "keep breathing" and everything will be fine. A little time and focus management and it will all work out.

Take Time for Yourself

I tricked myself into a vacation!

Vacations take time and money and sometimes it's difficult to coordinate taking a vacation with all of our other responsibilities.

The NSGCD Conference was on Friday and Saturday of this past week. It would have cost me about the same amount of money to fly to St. Louis for the conference as it did to drive here. The drive meant gas, extra hotel nights, lost days of work AND a lot of fun with my colleagugues! We are heading back to the Twin Cities tomorrow morning and today is an entire day having nothing planned. We have decided to sleep in, relax a little, then take a 3 mile walk on this beautiful, sunny (but not too hot) day to St. Charles Main Street to explore. They have a festival in town and it is a historical site on the Lewis and Clark expedition. What a wonderful surprise vacation.

Organizing and ADD

It's been a while since I've posted. We all get too busy sometimes and need to prioritize. I guess my blog got pushed to the back burner for a while.

Today I am writing from St. Charles, MO where I am attending the NSGCD (National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization) Conference. I will be taking the ADD Specialist Exam on Friday morning. It will feel good to have that credential taken care of.

I love working with clients with ADD. They tend to be interesting and creative and I love being able to work with them to find an organizing solution that will work with their unique, individual, exciting personality.

Well, back to studying!

Incoming Mail

The mail is delivered six times a week and there is never a delivery day that you don't receive SOMETHING... bills, advertisements, cards and letters, news and information, credit card offers and more, and more, and more junk mail.

Set up a recycling center conveniently located on your way into your house from the mailbox. This should include a recycling bin, a trash bin, and a shredder and a letter opener.

First, if you aren't even considering purchasing something or applying for that credit card, you don't even have to open the envelope; just put it right through the shredder. You can open all of the other mail and put the envelopes and inserts into the recycling bin or shredder, these things don't even need to come into your house.

Now you have only the items that are worthy of your time and it probably amounts to a fraction of the original bundle that you pulled out of the mailbox in the first place.

Consider removing yourself from junk mail lists:

Register with the Direct Marketing Associations's Mail Preference Service: http://www.dmaconsumers.org/ or call 212-768-7277

Simply ask to be removed from each individual company by writing a note on the materials and mailing it back to them.

To be removed from receiving credit card offers: 1-800-567-8688 (the recording will ask for your social security number, full name, address and telephone number).

Mail list brokers:

Polk Company 1-800-464-7655 (ask for the Polk Opt-Out line)

Experiean 1-800-228-4571 ext. 4633

Getting Started

Well, this is an appropriate topic for my first blog post. Usually getting started is the most difficult part of any project, whether that is starting an organizing project or starting a blog. I have procrastinated on this long enough and finally someone told me to just sit down and start typing. So here it is, my first blog post.

I suggest you do the same thing if you have been putting off that organizing project. Just walk over to the that shelf or filing cabinet and pick up one item. Make a decision - file it or put it where it belongs, create a home for it, or release it. Then pick up another...

I want this blog to be a place where you can Ask the Organizer! If you have a question about anything organizing related, ask it here and I will post my response so everyone can learn. If you don't want to post directly to the blog, you can send me an email and I will post it for you (you remain annonymous). If you have something to add to someone elses organizing question, speak up. We can all learn from one another. kathy@ProjectPartnerServices.com