I’ve blogged about all these before so today I’m just linking up

• Ila from South Dakota asked for suggestions on keeping a clean desk.
• Nicole from France wanted to know how she could deal better with her mail.

and last but not least

• Jessica from Missouri just moved into a smaller place and wants some help on how to make the most of small spaces.

My desk at work gets a quick tidy at the end of every day and a nice detailed throwing-out-of-papers once a week.

How often do you tidy your desk?

P.S. That’s not my desk. I go around with my camera taking pics of unsuspecting colleagues

Today I want to talk about an area of the office that may just be one of my favourite things to organise – your computer!

Because we can’t SEE computer clutter as obviously as we can see physical clutter, we often don’t realise it’s there but believe me, it’s still affecting you.

How does it affect you?

When you open your Inbox and feel drained at the sight of all your emails, when your computer runs slow because there are so many photos on there and when you click into your Google Reader and can’t BELIEVE how much some people post because you went through your blogs for 3 hours yesterday and now there are 127 unread items yet again!

Sound familiar?

Let’s look at 4 places where you can declutter electronically:

Free downloads

We (especially women) like fr.ee things, don’t we? Buy one, get one free sales come to mind… As a result, we download anything and everything we can find that’s for fr.ee.

If it’s fr.ee, it’s got to be good, right?

No, actually, it’s not all good. Not only are you cluttering up your computer but you can’t possibly use all the things that are out there because we live in an information-overload society.

I wish I could say that I”m immune to the addiction to FREE stuff but I’m not!

At one point I had about 6 different grocery shopping lists on my computer (all fr.ee downloads) and 10 different versions of a to-do list. None of them quite worked for me so I made my own.

Email

Mmmm, email. My clients need help with email more than any other thing in their office, and paper’s a close second. That’s because email’s so fast and because we don’t use it correctly.

Did you know that for every email you send out, you get at least two emails back?

Get familiar with the delete key (my favourite key on the keyboard) and start deleting. Delete immediately once you’ve replied to an email and don’t file unless you absolutely have to.

Disable all the notifications from social networking sites like Facebook. I only get friend requests, messages and notes on my wall in my inbox. The rest I’ll see when I get a chance to log on.

Here again, decide on your comfort level for emails and make sure you work your system until you can breathe again.

Personally, I set a daily goal of deleting at least 50 items so once I’m done with my inbox, I go through my Sent Items and delete, delete, delete

It’s this weird game I play – anybody have some other weird email games?

As a matter of interest, how many emails are in your inbox right now?

Look out next week for part 2 of decluttering your computer



This is my colleague’s notebook that I’ve been threatening to blog about for months.

I love the way she organises her notes – hopefully this will work for some of you too.

• She uses yellow post-it flags to highlight pages where there are still outstanding actions. This means she doesn’t have to page through the whole notebook to find her place.
• She also writes the client/ product name on those flags to help keep her place.
• When she has a list of personal to-dos, she folds the page in half to help categorise those tasks separately. Can you see the page on the left is folded over?

I like to start a new page for each client meeting and for each day’s work.

Of course I always use a spiral-bound notebook!

I write down my action items either in the meeting, or at my desk as I take calls or think of things to do. When I’ve done them, I highlight them in pink so I can still read them but they don’t “bother” me anymore.

I don’t use my work notebook for personal things unless they have to be done on that particular day, e.g. paying the doctor before I go to my appointments

How do you organise your notebook?

We’re decluttering and organising our home offices this month.

Last week your challenge was to declutter at least 5 books or magazines. And boy, that wasn’t a very popular challenge

It’s not too late if you didn’t get around to it – I just want you to get used to the idea that not everything you ever bought is sacred You CAN let go of some of your books.

Now today, we’re going to do something that may be a bit more fun for some of you – weeding through files.

The goal this week is to go through at least 5 files. While you’re doing that, ask yourself these four questions:

1. why am I keeping all these papers?
2. what’s the worst thing that will happen if I toss it and I need it again?
3. do I really need to keep this?
4. am I keeping it because it’s a habit?
5. is this working for me? (a la Dr Phil)

(if you don’t want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering this week

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is my contribution for this week…

I have one household file, one for the cars, one for medical and one personal. That’s it.

I keep my filing streamlined in these 5 ways:

• I only keep 3 months’ worth of most statements, except for our water and electricity (I have everything since we moved into this house) because things go wrong on that account from one month to the next. The Jhb residents understand this all too well
• I refuse to expand to more files so the paper is contained to just the 4 mentioned above.
• When my files get too full, I take 5 minutes and quickly declutter a couple of sections.
• I really hate filing so I only keep what I absolutely have to keep.
• When I change insurance companies, I get rid of everything from the old company after a month with the new underwriter.

So, are you up for today’s decluttering challenge?

7 easy steps to organise your office MP3 and ebook system will help you get your home office organised and in tip-top shape. By the way, you get this entire system FREE when you sign up for the Virtual Organising Seminar on Tuesday 24 Feb.

This week’s challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don’t have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything – physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism!

How many files did you declutter this week?

Anne here.

Confession time: I quit. I am a quitter.

It isn’t any of the self-justifying excuses I could throw out at you, it is just that I quit.

I did Steps 1-4. I had already done step 5 last fall so I limped through that one by just updating and decluttering. And I quit before I got to steps 6 and 7.

I know what you are thinking. What a loser! Way to go Anne!

I know, I know.

And the guilt is killing me.

I am so close to being finished that it is just insane to stop now. But that is how I operate. Oh, I might call it something else, but it is quitting none-the-less.

• I have plastic-canvas coasters that are 45% completed… from Christmas 7 years ago.
• I have 20% of a baby blanket started in 2000.
• I have thousands of dollars in scrapbook supplies that will *eventually* get mated with photos and stuck into albums.
• I have thrown away so much food because I got through 2 days of Freezer cooking and gave up before I got to the chicken day.
• I clean the entire kitchen and ignore the crumbs on the table.

Yep, I quit a lot.

But that is part of what this is helping me with…. the new system is so easy that I feel stupid for not using it.

And I already identified that it is easy that makes me use things, so what more excuse is there?

Loss of interest?

Could be… but no, I have enjoyed this process.

And you have all been so incredibly supportive.

So I quit quitting.

ANYWAY… I am working beyond belief to catch up and have a post for you all.

I need to share with you how I got off my butt and out of my own rut and completed all 7 steps and blogged about it. (that was a run-on sentence, I am pretty sure about that.)

Look for my final post next week with all the details.

Thanks for understanding!

Hi everyone, Marcia here

I love Anne’s honesty in this post; don’t you?

But more importantly, I want to use this as an organising lesson so we can all benefit.

The truth is that we ALL face obstacles in life when we try to do worthwhile things, whether they’re organising projects, getting fit, eating more nutritious food or just improving our relationships.

That’s life.

The way to overcome those obstacles is to realise that it’s normal and brainstorm ways to navigate those obstacles.

Think about it like this – when you’re getting your house painted, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s going to be messy and smelly while you’re painting but afterwards, you’re going to have a gorgeous, fresh room/house.

In the same way, the road to our dreams always has an obstacle or eleven

A couple of ways you can navigate those obstacles is:

1. realise that obstacles happen to everybody - it’s not because you’re a bad person, lack discipline, etc.
   
2. get some help (if you can) just to get you over the hump – even someone just sitting there and encouraging you is help
   
3. make yourself accountable to someone (I have the utmost faith in Anne and I know she will finish, and she will finish strong, but I do know that part of it is because she’s made herself accountable to 600-odd of my blog readers. There’s something about that accountability that propels you forward toward your goals)

Now, over to you.

Post about any project you’ve started where you’ve encountered obstacles

Remember that we’re decluttering and organising our home offices this month. Today your challenge is to declutter at least 5 books or magazines.

When I finish reading a book, I rate it out of 10. If the book is an 8 or higher, I may keep it.

Most of them get recycled to the secondhand bookshop so that my bookshelves always stay neat.

(if you don’t want to post on the theme, go right ahead and post on whatever you felt like decluttering

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is my contribution for this week…

3 packets of 3 books each… I find that they give me more money or credit for the books if there are smaller batches, so I take them back in threes.

Also, if you’re wondering about the business card…most times the book buyer isn’t there so this way it’s easy for them to phone me back and tell me how much they’ll give me. I’m all about making things easy!

I leave these packets in my launch pad so I can just grab and go when I run errands.

How many books did you declutter today?

7 easy steps to organise your office MP3 and ebook system will help you get your home office organised and in tip-top shape. By the way, you get this entire system FREE when you sign up for the Virtual Organising Seminar on Tuesday 24 Feb.

This week’s challenge

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures and talk about what you decluttered. If you don’t have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything – physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism!

How many books did you declutter this week?

So far I have 4 serious entrants to the competition and other “should I, shouldn’t I?” emails.

This is just a courtesy reminder that the disorganised office contest closes at 12PM EST today.

Get your entries in!

Okay, here’s the deal
I’m looking for someone who could use my 7 easy steps to organise your office MP3 and ebook pack.

I will donate a copy to someone free of charge and in exchange, you will guest blog (one post a week for about 4 – 6 weeks, depends how quickly you work through it) as you work through the system and organise your office.

The system covers organising your actual office space, desk, email, computer, etc. so you should have a more organised office than you had when you started

It doesn’t matter if one or two of your areas are already reasonably under control because even REALLY organised people have used just one or two tips and seen BIG results

This is how you enter

Send me an email to marcia AT organiseyourbusiness.com or leave a comment telling me

Entries close at midnight EST tonight (24 Dec).

I’ll let the winner know sometime over the weekend and everybody else will get another gift for being brave enough to step up

• Do you find yourself wasting time looking for files on your computer?
• Do you get frustrated because you just don’t know where to start?
• Do you know when and how often to do a back up?
• Has your computer ever crashed and you lost everything?
• Do you know how to organise and contain all those free things you keep downloading off the internet?
• Do you know how to name and store files so they’re easy to find?

Everything you EVER wanted to know about organising your computer is now ready for you.

On this 75-minute MP3, you’ll learn:

• Where to start organising your computer
• My DREAM method of organising your computer
• How to keep control of all the audios, PDFs and ebooks you get for free off the internet and how NOT to let it clutter up your hard drive
• Exactly how to label and store your documents and files so you can find them
• How to organise your contacts and all those business cards
• How to cut your computer time in half
• How to organise tasks and projects
• How and when to do a proper, thorough back up of your files and how to know when to do it so you don’t lose your work
• And much, much more

You’ll receive:

1. Recording of the live call as an MP3 audio download
2. Comprehensive handout

Organizing your home office can be easy and fun when you use things around your house, like shoe organisers.

I’ve been re-organising things so let me show you how I use them in my own home office.

If you’re in South Africa, I bought this one in the kids section at Mr Price Home Zone for R39,99 ($5). They come in purple, pink and blue. The beauty of this style is that there are another 12 pockets on the other side

First, I took some squares of jotter paper from my desk and folded them in half. I wrote down all the items I wanted to keep in the pockets and hung the labels from the pockets.

I’m just planning at this stage because I don’t know if I am 100% happy with where everything is. Then I started putting the items in the pockets. I then found that I had to move the labels around so that the heavier items didn’t make the whole organiser sway to one side.

When I was happy with the order and configuration of the labels, I stapled them to the material. I use the flat staples so that I can slip the staples out easily without ripping the fabric.

And there you have it – a beautifully organised system for all the bits and bobs that so often untidy your home office.

Have you used a shoe storage organiser in your home office? Share in the comments.

This is also my Works for me Wednesday post.

P.S. Join me for the Virtual Organising Seminar and let’s get that home office organised!