I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the second person who was selected to win Clutter Rehab has also not contacted me.

I think both of the winners just saw the giveaway and came over to enter but don’t actually follow my blog.

The good news is that YOU have another chance to win this fabulous book.

Let’s try again.

Here are the rules:

1. You must be a follower of this blog either in your Google Reader or by email so that you can see if you win!
2. Leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite organising question or what you want to know about how I organise things. (These will be answered in October as part of my 31 days series)
3. If you tweet or share this on FB, you have to come back to leave a new comment.
4. I can’t accept email entries so if you read through Feedburner, please click through and comment.
5. I will leave this open for 48 hours only and the winner MUST contact me within 48 hours.

Fair?

Inspiring (head) spaces

Now on another note, I was SO inspired the other day when I read this post by Chloe.

If you’ve ever bought any of my products or coached with me, you’ll know how much I emphasise that we are all unique individuals and our organising or time management solutions need to reflect that.

And something I posted recently resonated with Chloe so much that she wrote a truly inspiring post.

Why I loved it so much

• she’s accepted who she is and who she’s not (the type of scrapper she is)
• As a result, she can let go not only of physical stuff (and already she lives very minimally) but more importantly of expectations of herself.
• she is very clear on her goals and going after them (you know how much I love a person who pursues things passionately)

Chloe gets a big thumbs up from me and no, I don’t have a pretty picture this week (aside from her header) but in this case, her changed expectations of herself are worth far more and are priceless.

Go read her post and tell me what resonated with you.

And of course, don’t forget to enter the giveaway.

I have so many questions for the ask the organiser category that I wonder if the people are still reading!!!

Anyway, my friend Roz asked me this a few months ago and I answered very briefly in an email but then she texted me again a few weeks ago and so I thought I’d better answer properly

What do you do with articles from magazines that you want to keep for reference at a later stage?

In days past (I went back to check on my blog – 2007!) I used to keep a lot of magazine clippings, like this.

Here’s the blog post I wrote 4 years ago.

And now, my honest-to-goodness answer is … I’ve stopped keeping articles as they were too much of a schlep to file and my current style is to google anything and everything.

Doctor says something… I google.

Someone argues with me about something… I google

I don’t know what to do about toddlers and discipline… I google

You get the picture.

I don’t experience something and think, “hmmm, now where is that article I pulled out of Your Baby magazine 3 years ago?”

It just never happens.

BUT I do pull inspirational pics from magazines for my vision boards (I always have one in the making) and for my Good Ideas file.

So I’ll talk about my Good Ideas file.

This is very simply a 30-page flip file where I put things I like.

Kind-of the old-fashioned version of Pinterest.

I have lots of beautiful spaces in there – things I could do and things that are just nice to look at.

My key is I restrict all my magazine ripping out to this one 30-page flipfile.

When the file gets full, I go through it and take out things that are no longer my style or things I’ve actually tried to create.

Roz, hope this helped you.

For the rest of you, do you pull articles from magazines? How do you organise yours? Please share your ideas in the comments and feel free to link to your blog post if you’ve ever posted on this.

I’ve got two sheds that need tackling so any outhouse tips would be good
Carl Wokingham, Berkshire, United Kingdom

This is some of what I wrote to Carl…

Sheds is where I draw the line – I don’t even go into mine! I told my husband that dirty, outside work is for him

But let’s ask the readers and see what they come up with.

So readers, over to you. Today YOU are all the organisers!

Please share your best garage/ shed organising tips with Carl

Thanks to all of you for coming out of lurkdom by commenting and sending me emails

I am energised and ready to blog again!

I’ll be tackling all the questions I’ve got so far but don’t stop, please continue to ask away.

Talk to you tomorrow

Hello…

Is anyone still reading?

I feel like I’m talking to myself….

Right, so if you’re still reading, leave a comment and tell me who you are and where you live (Susan from Sydney, or Jane from Durban, etc.).

I’d also love it if you’ll ask me anything – about organising, my life, etc. as I’m fresh out of ideas for blog posts.

P.S. The babies are 16 weeks old today!

Happy Monday everybody!

I work off of “To Do” lists and I prioritize all my projects ABCD… using the system from Swallow that Frog. My to do list keeps getting invaded with other projects and requests.

How do I maintain my lists so that they are effective? Everyone and everything wants to be in my A file and I can’t find my balance. Do you have any suggestions?

Marcie Rowan

Hi Marcie

Yes, I have some suggestions.

1. Get really clear on your main purpose/ focus for your life at this point
This purpose may change from time to time, or it may not, but it’s still a good idea to check in with yourself regularly to make sure you still know what that purpose is.

E.g. this year my main purpose has been to have a healthy pregnancy and birth two live babies.

2. Use only one to-do list
When you use multiple lists, it’s very easy to forget about some things on “the other list”. I understand about different categories of things so what I do is I have one list with sub-headings like Personal, Business and Household. I can still see it all but it is ordered on paper and therefore in my mind.

3. Only put things on your to-do list that support your purpose
If your purpose is to create a loving, clean, organised home for your family, then you can’t be serving on every committee in sight and never spend time taking care of your home.

4. Once things are on your list, eat your frog or, as you call it, swallow your frog
This is where your ABCD system comes in. Or what I use with my clients, the time-value matrix where you focus on urgent and important tasks only.

Do your difficult but most important tasks first. If you hate doing the laundry (like me!), just do it to get it out of the way.

I can’t tell you what should be an A priority because we’re all different. But I can tell you that tasks which don’t support any of your goals are definitely not A priorities.

5. Don’t overload your lists
Pick a maximum of 6 tasks a day. When you sign up for the Organising Success Pack, you get a pack of organising forms. My Eat the Frog form only has space for 6 daily items for two very good reasons.

And that’s because

1. Most people can’t get more than 6 important tasks done daily (including me!)
2. I want you to feel good at the end of every day so rather putfewer tasks and actually get them done

Marcie, hope this helped!

Anybody have any more tips for Marcie? How do you manage your priorities on your own to-do lists?

Somebody asked a question – (sorry preggy brain) I can’t remember her name and I deleted the email too quickly

She is a short person and can’t access the top shelf in her pantry so she often has to throw expired items away.

Any ideas to get organised here?

Of course I do!

1. My suggestion is store surplus items here that you don’t need to access very often.

2. Then use see-through plastic baskets so that you can grab the front, pull towards you and see everything on the shelf.

3. I suggest that you keep like items together - for example, I have a big plastic basket with all my baking supplies, like cake and self-raising flour, coconut, yeast, bicarb of soda, baking powder, etc.

4. You could also keep a list of contents on the inside of your cupboard door with the contents of that top shelf, like 5 boxes cereal, 20 boxes milk, etc. and be sure to cross off as you use them.

5. I’m also short and I keep a cheap plastic stool nearby my pantry so when I want to get to the top shelf once or twice a month, I can quickly access it.

Hope these tips help you.

What other tips can you share with this reader?

This question came in from someone who is also pregnant with twins.

Seeing as you are the queen of de-clutter, I thought I would ask you where the best place to buy storage boxes is?

I need to start on my spare room cupboard (babies room) this weekend and have lots of files and papers that need to be sorted out.

My advice is actually contrary to what you’d expect – don’t buy a thing until AFTER the declutter is done. Just look at all the stuff I threw out here and what Anne, our makeover blogger, threw out here

I’d use the tops of photocopy paper boxes (or similar, like large shoeboxes) to sort the paper and once you decide how you want to store the paper, whether in files, plastic display folders, etc, then go out and buy just what you need.

When I’m organising people’s offices, all I take with me is a permanent marker and post-it notes and then only when it’s all done, we get the stuff if they don’t have it.

This post is about business filing but look at the pictures and apply the principles to your household stuff.

Some more posts on organising and storing paper

How to file

Different categories of paperwork

And more on paper organising

Hope this helps!

Any other tips for this pregnant mom?

Hi Marcia, My biggest organising challenge is trying to find a way to keep (and later find to use again without tearing the house apart) all my different teaching worksheets and the accompanying examples from arts and crafts and science things that I do. I teach several different classes that range from three-year-olds all the way up to teaching English to executives. Therefore I have a wide assortment of materials that I use, much of which I have made myself. Any ideas? I do not have an extra room or even a closet at home for all this. Besides private classes, I work in two schools, where in one I have no space to leave anything and in the other I have a small cupboard. So most of the stuff goes home to our three bedroom apartment – with nine people living in it! Susan

Here’s my answer.

Wow, Susan, that IS a challenge. Teaching all those classes with no storage space. And then having to bring it home to your apartment.

I have a couple of suggestions for you.

1. Go through everything you have and declutter as much as possible
It’s even more important to have only what you need when you have limited space.

You might find that you’ve been teaching a particular subject for years and you know it so well that you don’t need half the stuff you think you do. (I’ve found this to be true for my goal-setting and time management workshops)

2. Categorise and label
Now that you have less stuff, it’s going to be really easy to sort it all out into files and label it.

The better you label, the easier it will be to find.

I’d tend to sort first by subject, then by level. E.g. English – 3-year-olds, executives, etc.

3. Dedicate a place for all your teaching worksheets
You now have less stuff and it’s all organised. Now you know exactly how much you have to store.

Definitely use the small cupboard in the one school; if possible, I’d try to fit everything you need at that school into that cupboard.

Then dedicate a small space in your apartment (even if only a banker’s box) for the rest of the stuff.

By the way, there’s more on paper organising in 7 easy steps to organise your office.

Any other suggestions for Susan?

I still haven’t got myself a planner and I am still in the process of organising my stuff (schedules, tasks etc) but since i can’t seem to find a decent planner I’m opting to go electronic. I can’t use my outlook cause it’s very slow and i use just my gmail for the emails.

Do you have any suggestions on how I can organise my schedules electronically other than outlook?

Thanks!

–
Ella Pelayo
Virtual Assistant
www.epvirtualassistant.wordpress.com

Here’s my answer:

Hi Ella

I am no good with electronic tools because I’m a paper gal but I do use Outlook for my time-based appointments.

I would say gmail because I’ve heard such a lot of good things about it.

For tasks, there are a number of things I’ve played around with like http://simplegtd.com http://tadalist.com and http://rememberthemilk.com

For scheduling I still recommend Outlook but sync it to your phone too so it reminds you of appointments and then, I like to also print out the page for very busy days so I don’t forget anything.

Please help Ella and share your favourite online calendar.

(I’m particularly interested in hearing from Janet, Suzanne and Beth.)