I like to think of a few small things I want to do around the house every month.

I thought it would inspire and motivate you to also think up a few things and tackle one small task every weekend.

Let’s hold each other accountable and do this together.

For March my tasks are mostly photo-related:

1. Print 12 pics of Connor and 12 of Kendra for their first year frames (yip, 8 months later )
2. Do the “Dion and Marcia” wall of photos in the passage outside our bedroom.
3. Decide where “friends” wall will be and start planning configuration
4. Two months’ filing

What are your 4 organising to-dos for March?

Be gentle with me.

I have another confession.

Of all the aspects of my life, after the library books (since I wrote that post, I’ve actually been very good about returning them on time. Who knew that airing my dirty laundry would fix my issues???), the next area that is most disorganised is my photos.

Strangely, they probably don’t seem disorganised to the majority of the population but to me, they’re desperately disorganised.

Also, I don’t seem to have a system for printing and displaying photos.

The only time I print some is if either I buy a beautiful photo frame or I’m given one as a gift.

The other day at work someone suggested I get a digital photo frame to display pics of my gorgeous babies (yes, I’m biased).

Immediately I jumped to conclusions and said, “oh, that’s way too expensive” until I heard what it cost – between R500 and R700.

My word, that’s almost nothing when you consider the cost of printing!

I felt like such an idiot though for simply assuming it was out of my budget.

I am now the very proud owner of a digital photo frame and I’m pleased that I (almost) never have to print photos again

How often do you print photos? What do you do with them?

Last week we spoke about decluttering all those f-r-e-e downloads (including mine!) and all the email. I always try to play along with you so I also decluttered some downloads (4 MP3 audios and 5 PDF e-books).

How did you do?

I must also apologise – I forgot to mention that as part of the Office Organising Bundle, you get Conquer your Email which will definitely help you if email’s your problem.

So how do you know if email’s a problem?

The quick answer is if you spend more than 30 minutes a day on email … but why don’t you take the assessment below this article.

90% of people waste an extra hour a day on email that they don’t have to. That hour translates to SIX WEEKS a year. You read that right – six weeks!

Now onto the rest of the computer decluttering.

Photos

Now that we’ve all gone digital, it’s so easy to snap, snap, snap and then snap some more.

Download pictures regularly, delete the bad ones there and then, and save the rest to CD or DVD regularly to fr.ee up some space on your computer.

I only print beautiful shots (because printing is so expensive here) so if I wouldn’t want to print it, I don’t keep it on my computer. If I want to use pics on the blog, I compress them immediately so that they take up 50KB as opposed to 1MB. And I name them meaningfully so I can find them afterwards with just a few clicks.

Blogs

How many blogs are you following in your Google Reader, Bloglines or other feed reader?

Do you know how long you take to read all of those blogs every day? Take some time to go through your feeds and declutter those you tend to skim over, especially if you do this 3 or more times every week.

Get to know your comfort number. Mine is around 42 – 45 and I know when I start adding more and more blogs without deleting any, I start feeling more and more overwhelmed at the sight of all those unread items!

My coaching challenge to you

1. Print out this post.
2. Tackle one of these sections every week until they’re all done.
3. Let me know when you do them.

Happy Organising.



This week I decided to do something that’s been bugging me for a long time – picture and photo frames!

Our friends from Melbourne, Australia gave this photo to us about 4 years ago and it has been without a frame for all this time – shocking, I know. Anyway, I got my act together and just went to buy a frame to put it in. One down!

Next… we needed to print 6 photos for a big frame and one other. Then my sister-in-law gave me the bamboo frame for Christmas (but I only got it on Saturday 17th Feb! – long story, don’t ask) so now we needed 7 pics.

Well, I got that done and I am soooo happy. I feel great that this is finally done. The one extra pic is for me to put up by my desk.

Week 1 – Organise your cleaning supplies.
This week, we’re going to sort out all the cleaning supplies. Throw away ugly sponges and cloths in your kitchen and bathroom, and use up all those near-empty bottles. The aim is to reduce the number of cleaning products you use. If you don’t enjoy using something, use it for everything in one week and get it done. Then don’t buy it again. Last month, I mentioned that you can use one multi-purpose cleaner for almost everything.

***My challenge to you – I use dishwashing liquid, Handy Andy, Jeyes Gel (for toilets) and Teepol gel for everything else – showers, windows, car, etc. How many products do you use? Post your answers in the comments below.

Week 2 – Organise your photo albums or digital photos.
This week we are going to organise our photo albums or digital photos. This might take 15 minutes every day if you haven’t done this for a while, or it might take just 30 minutes.

We have ours organised by periods in our lives, if that makes any sense. I have a set of 4 albums for baby & school years, university pictures, wedding and friends. Then we generally have an album for each holiday… but you know how it goes? Sometimes you really get into the whole picture thing and other times, you just can’t be bothered.

If you take digital photos, use this time to sort those out too. Delete any pictures you hate, decide which you want to print and maybe burn some to CD.

Don’t get overwhelmed – just do 15 minutes a day. You are going to be sohappy when it’s all sorted out.

Week 3 – Tidy and organise all your jewellery.
For the guys, use this opportunity to sort cufflinks, belts, male accessories.

1. Firstly, throw away everything you don’t love or use. Is there some item someone else will love or can use? Give it away.
2. Gather all the jewellery that needs to be fixed and diarise when you will take it to a jewellery store. If there are watches that need batteries, this is the time to schedule when you’re going to get those attended to.
3. Now organise. You can use plastic ice cube trays to keep your things neat and tidy. Or stick a couple of hooks on the inside of your wardrobe (just underneath your goals list!) and hang your necklaces there.

Week 4 – Declutter and organise your document folders in Word and Excel.
This is something you have to do properly once and then maintain on a monthly basis. Remember the definition of organised is being able to find something in one minute or less (some people say 30 seconds but I know from personal experience it sometimes takes a few seconds just to focus!).

First step, open all the documents (I find that doing this 10 at a time works best). Delete those you no longer use. For the rest, keep a notebook next to you and start jotting down broad categories for your subfolders. You can then create subfolders and file.

Don’t just file all your documents in My Documents. Name your subfolders the same way you think.

For example, in My Documents, I have a folder called Coaching. Subfolders in there are called Clients, and then the subfolders in there are my individual client names. Another subfolder is called Agreements for the different versions of contract I have, and still another is called Tools. In this one I have things like the Find your Mission worksheet, my Debt Reduction worksheet, Time log, etc (tools I designed to help my clients). I also have a subfolder called Coaching Programmes, and mini subfolders for Love 101, Clean Sweep, Creating Reserves, etc.

I have another main folder called Organising tools. In there I have subfolders called Household (which has my menu planner, cleaning lists, shopping lists, etc), Work (which has my daily planner and follow-up list) and Personal (which has my travel checklist {Dion and I each have our own customised lists}, weekly goals, health chart , etc. Now you get the picture.

One thing I want to mention – this filing system might not necessarily work for you and that’s fine. Find something that works for you and organise according to that. You will only keep something up that gels with your style. If you’re not sure, email me and I’ll help you find categories.

Tip – when I buy e-courses, I paste each day’s lesson into a Word document, so at the end of the course, I can delete the 10 emails and have one Word document for reference.