Get Oranized Month 2009 - Update Your Addresses

I don't know about you, but it takes us a while to read all our Christmas cards. On some days, I only have time to put them in our designated Christmas card basket. Other days I have time to read them.

After Christmas every year, we go through our Christmas cards and update our address list. Remember my Palm problems last month and how they assured me that my address list would not be erased when they transferred my data to my new smart phone? Well ...... my phone numbers stayed in tact, but the addresses disappeared. Since I had not been able to sync my Palm to either computer, I had no way to save my list. Ugh!

So my job will be a little harder this year. I do have a hard copy from years gone by, but it is sadly lacking. I think I'll make hard copies more often now!

The easiest way I have found to update our address list is to have my husband read me the addresses from the Christmas cards, and I check them against our list. Then I can just type and he can just read. I'll also add notes about our friends to help us remember what has been happening in their lives.

Have a cup of tea and enjoy visiting with your friends indirectly through their cards. We joke about the ones we receive that just have a signature - at least we know they're alive!

If you have a lot of Christmas cards to go through as we do, know what you can handle. If you break it up into small segments, you won't be as likely to put it off. I can handle anything for a short duration! So we might decide to tackle Christmas cards for 30 minutes and see how we feel - are we done or can we manage more?

Since my phone contains both my phone list and my address list, I'll update both lists at once. If your cell phone does not contain your address list, I'd suggest looking over the phone numbers and removing the ones you no longer use. Occasionally I find a number on my phone and I can't even remember who it is!

Use waiting time - when you are waiting at a doctor's appointment, waiting to pick your child up, or another such time to decluter your phone list. I'm not a very good waiter, and I start twitching if I don't have something to do. :-)

Don't let me overwhelm you with both jobs - pace yourself and put it on your schedule or to do list. Then you can mark it off and congratulate yourself!

More Ideas for Get Organized Month: Get Organized Month - Organize Your Shoes, Get Organized Month - Decluttering Your Underwear Drawer, Get Organized Month - Decluttering Your Sock Drawer


What do you feel is your most urgent organizing task?

Happy Get Organized Month!

January is Get Organized Month as declared by the National Association of Professional Organizers. I think we all feel like getting organized, getting rid of stuff, making a new start. We'll take some time during January to organize several areas to help us get started!

If you haven't taken down your Christmas decorations yet, let that be your first organizing project. Get rid of anything in your Christmas boxes that you haven't used for the last couple of years and that you don't love.

As you are replacing your Christmas decorations with your regular decor, do the same thing. Get rid of anything that you don't love or is extraneous. Take the moment to look at your decor with a fresh eye:

Is it too much?

Is there something you need to make it complete?

Is anything faded or worn?

Is there something in another part of the house that would brighten up your look?

Is your room functional and efficient?

It's invigorating to pare down your stuff and take a new look at things. Have fun! When you finish, take a moment and come back to report your accomplishments.


More on Get Organized Month: Get Organized Month - Declutter Your Catalogs, Get Organized Month - Declutter Under Your Sink, Get Organized Month - Declutter Your Pantry, Get Organized Month - Clean out the Freezer, Get Organized Month - Declutter the Laundry Area


If you need help organizing your time or space, see my 1-2-3...Get Organized series, books and workbooks for the organizationally overwhelmed.

Speaking Engagements: What to Consider When Contemplating Downsizing

Just wanted to let you know of a couple of local speaking engagements for those of you in the area. I'll be speaking on What to Consider When Contemplating Downsizing at two different locations:

Saturday, January 3 - Borders in Cuyahoga Falls on Howe Avenue, 1 pm., lecture and book signing

Thursday, January 8 - Cuyahoga Falls Library on 2nd Street, 7 pm, lecture with books available for sale

Drop by if the topic is of interest to you!

Link for College Tools Now Working

I discovered that the link for the Step By Step College Planning Guide (blog on December 29, 2008) was not working. I edited my
blog and it is fixed. Sorry about that!

Why Throw Shallow New Years' Resolutions at Yourself When You Really Need to Rethink Life?

Happy New Year! We had a party with our foster daughters last night and stayed up watching movies. My body woke up at 5:30 this morning as usual, which I'm not appreciating! May be naptime at the Coggins' house later on. :-)

I wish for you a wonderful 2009. I hope it's the best year ever in your life!

Here's my blog for New Year's Day:

January is a wonderful time to take stock, evaluate, and realign yourself. Do your activities reflect your passions and priorities? Do your work and leisure capitalize on your gifts? Are you being intentional about the legacy you want to leave your children and/or future generations?

Or are you bouncing through life like a pinball – rebounding off other people’s goals and ambitions, unclear about your own missions in life?

Rethinking life is something you can do once every few years, once a year, or several times a year – depending upon how often your life has significant change or needs significant change. I like to get away to a place where I won’t be disturbed. Sometimes I have gone to a friend’s cabin, or to a hotel, or just isolated myself at home. Sometimes I go alone and other times my husband and I go together. We’ll work separately, but then come together to work on those things we are committed to jointly.

If getting away or even carving out a chunk of time isn't a possibility, set aside a few minutes each day.

However you do it, how often you do it – the important things is to do it! We don’t want to echo Yogi Berra, “We’re lost, but we’re making great time!”

During these “rethinking times” I like to look at my passions, my priorities, my gifts and the legacy I want to leave my children and generations to come. I then compare my activities to see if they reflect these things that are most significant in my life. I make long-term and short-term goals in various areas of my life and schedule them into my life.

It is an appropriate time to eliminate activities I am no longer passionate about or that don’t rank high enough on my priority list. It’s a reality check if I discover I’m expecting myself to cram 30 hours into a 24-hour day!

The result? I’m intentionally spending my time doing those things that are most significant to me. I’m not at the mercy of others’ agendas. And I’m living in reality. I only have so much time each day. I want to be intentional about the way I spend it.

An important key to maintaining your priorities: build in time each week to evaluate your schedule, tweak it if necessary and plan for next week. I like to create a master weekly plan that I can refer to each week when planning my week so I don’t inadvertently leave something out.

Life can be busy and hectic, but you can have a sense of peace because you are living out your priorities and leaving an intentional legacy!

What legacy do you want to leave?

More on this subject: Announcing My New Coaching Package - Rethinking Life, Keeping First Things First, To Do List or Not To Do List - That is the Question!, Getting Organized for School (and life!) - Determining The Legacy You Want to Leave Your Children, Feeling Overwhelmed? Organize Your Priorities, Get Organized for School (or life!) - A Family Calendar, Getting Organized for School (and life!) - Getting Enough Sleep, Refill Time

Each time management book in the 1-2-3...Get Organized series guides you through a step-by-step process of determining your passions, priorities, gifts, and legacy and aligning your schedule and activities accordingly. If the thought of doing this alone is overwhelming, a coaching package is available as well.

Clever Organizing Tips from Better Homes and Gardens

Better Homes and Garden's January 2009 organizing issue has several clever organizing tips I thought I'd pass on to you:

- Carry a digital recorder with you and record reminders to yourself. When you get back to your office or home, record your reminders on your calendar or to do list.

- Attach a bathroom toothbrush and tumbler holder to the side of your desk. Store pens, scissors, etc. in the tumbler and hang s-hooks from the toothbrush slots for keys, etc.

- Attach a robe hook (like the ones on the back of your bathroom door) on the side of your desk to hang your purse.

- Hang your purses and bags from shower curtain rings on a closet rod.

- Velcro a gardening belt (with pockets) onto your child's desk or art table to hold art supplies.

What clever organizing tips do you have for us?

Announcing My New Coaching Package - Rethinking Life

Just wanted to let you know about a new coaching package I've added to my organizing products and services. It's called Rethinking Life.

Rethinking Life is for those who need to rethink priorities, passions, gifts and the legacy they want to leave to their children and/or future generations. We will use one of the time management books of your choice from my 1-2-3...Get Organized series, and we will come up with a schedule that reflects those things that are significant to you.

The package includes two 30-minute coaching sessions with me via telephone and one of my time management books in a downloadable form so you can re-use critical pages in the future. You will have homework to do before our sessions. The final result will be an intentional life in which you are leaving a meaningful legacy!

Tools to Help Make the College Search/Prep Easier

I'd like to pass on a couple of helpful websites to help make that trek through the college search/prep a litle easier for your high school student.

Next Step Magazine provides a Step by Step College Planning Guide with 22 steps for planning for college. I would suggest looking over all the steps, as Step 14 talks about getting involved in high school extra curricular activities, which would be helpful as your child enters high school.

College Bound helps your student find colleges that fit his/her interests and criteria. It also offers a plethora of other helpful information for the college bound student.

What information have you found to be helpful as you or your high school student has travelled this complicated road?

If you or your high school or college student needs help thinking through priorities and time while in college, see Three Steps to Time Management for the College Student, part of the 1-2-3...Get Organized series.

Another Review of my Books

Just wanted you to know that Sandy Jenney has been kind enough to review my books. Remember, she sells The Pouchee organizing bag. Take a look around her blog!

My Husband's Quick and Easy Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken

Hope you had a nice Christmas. Ours was very quiet. My husband decided to cook dinner for us, as I have another bug (hmph!). He came up with this recipe on his own, and it was delicious! Isn't he amazing?

He sauteed boneless chicken breasts, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes in a little olive oil. When it was almost done, he threw in some baby spinach. It was fabulous! The tomatoes added enough salt so he didn't have to add any.

Do you have some quick and easy recipes you'd like to share?

Merry Christmas!

I was going to wait until January to send this out, as our daughter Sara is coming home from Kazakhstan and I wanted to include a family picture. But I'll go sans picture today and you may see this again in January. :)

I've been thinking this year about how blessed I am and that I find myself content with my life right now. Not to say I have felt that way all year, as I have grappled with some questions I have had for God. Throughout the process, though, I have been deleriously happy that my children and husband seek to follow God and use the gifts He has given them. Everything else, in my opinion, pales by comparison. If we are doing what we are created to do, what can be better than that?

Sara continues to love adventure, kids, toys, serving others, teaching, and playing - a perfect fit in her work with orphans in Kazakhstan. The staff at the various orphanages have grown to trust and respect her, and the kids call out "Sara Mama" and run to her when they see her. She'll be home for four months starting in January. Visit her blog to follow her adventures and see her travel schedule.

Comfort's graphic design business is exploding through word-of-mouth referrals from her adoring clients. You can see some of her logos, websites, business cards and other creations on her website. She is also mentoring high school and college girls, and even some clients, using her incredible ability to encourage, exhort, and motivate. She co-leads a church college group with Steve.

Our son-in-law Steve is on the last leg of his pursuit of a doctorate in astrophysics. He has an amazing ability to take complex concepts and make them understandable, whether it's physics or biblical concepts. He's amazingly normal for being so brilliant, and doesn't make the rest of us feel dumb at all! He loves being physically active and plays the drums.

Bob is fabulous as a house parent for our teenage girls here at Shelter Care. He is endlessly patient as he helps with homework, teaches new skills, chauffers, encourages, and listens. His heart is reflected in his mentoring website and in the role of elder at our church. He is putting the finishing touches on his book about the future of Israel.

I love creating an atmosphere where our foster children can be successful, as I tried to do with our own girls. It's very fulfilling to help create peace out of chaos, whether it's with our girls or with clients or through my books or blog. My entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well and generating more ideas than I could ever accomplish.

My parents are doing well. We met for a delightful Champeau family vacation in Branson, Missouri this summer. Bob's parents are about the same and enjoy the wonderful care they get at Chapel Pointe.

So these are my musings for this year. None of us are rich or famous (yet - ha ha!). More importantly, we are doing what we were created to do. I feel very richly blessed and grateful for the wonderful gifts lavished upon us, especially the Gift we celebrate this season.

Wonderful blessings to you,

Bev

Inventorying Your Christmas Supplies

When you wrap up your Christmas wrapping, take a moment to inventory what you have left:

wrapping paper
tissue
gift bags and boxes
tape
gift tags
Christmas paper plates, napkins and cups
Christmas cards and stationery
Christmas craft supplies
Christmas gifts for teachers, etc.

You may even want to put your list on your computer or in a Christmas organizing notebook, so you know where it is. Then you can refer to it without having to get out all your Christmas stuff to remember what you have.

And if you do after-Christmas shopping, your inventory list will help you know what you need to replenish. It's a great time to stock up on Christmas, birthday, and miscellaneous gifts for next year! When my kids were growing up, it was wonderful to look through the "goodie box" for a gift rather than have to make a special trip. And it was nice to have a stash when I needed a gift for something.

What's on your inventory list?

Storing Christmas Lights

I shared this hint last year, but it's worth repeating. Real Simple Magazine suggests storing your Christmas lights on a garden hose holder - the kind you crank. No knots or tangles! Cover it with a trash bag and you're ready for next year.

More on Anti-Spyware from My Favorite Technical Guru

So what am I doing up at 5 am this morning when we don't get girls until after school today? Maybe it's because I can hear the freezing rain outside and I'm wondering if there's going to be school. If there's no school, then we can get the girls any time after 8 am, when we are officially responsible for them.

And maybe it's because I'm wondering how much freezing rain we'll get, if we'll lose power, yada yada yada. Oh, to have the underground utility wires we had in Maryland! But, I'm prepared whatever comes, thanks to my handy dandy Preparedness Kit - my land line phone, my emergency radio, flashlights, water! Bring it on!

So, with the possibility of losing contact with the world, I'll write my blog since I'm awake anyway. I'm happy to report that my computer didn't freeze once yesterday, so I'm hoping it is healed. And it seems to have stopped its new whirring noises coming from the hard drive (argh - it's only two years old!).

But I digress.

My technical guru nephew Jeff wrote me yesterday to clarify some information about anti-spyware. So I'll copy his email and let him be our guest blogger today. He has owned his own computer company and is now an IT guru for Sonic.

"It’s probably worth noting that “real” anti-spyware programs typically won’t fight with each other. (Anti-virus programs will, however.) The Dell tech may have misled you slightly – if you’d only had real anti-spyware programs, they likely wouldn’t have been fighting with each other. I run two anti-spyware programs on my home computer all the time. Here’s an incomplete list of real anti-spyware programs:

AVG (also anti-virus) (This one’s free and it’s what I use on my home computer)
Adaware
Spybot Search & Destroy
Windows Defender (free download from Microsoft, built into Windows Vista – I use this one too)
Malwarebytes
SpySweeper

McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro, eSet, and most other anti-virus software vendors also have their own anti-spyware products.

What you likely clicked on is “Anti-spyware 2009” or something similar. It’s a fake (but very real-loooking) spyware removal program that claims to clean your computer but in fact does just the opposite. I’ve cleaned it off three computers thus far – two friends and one at my church.

Unfortunately, there’s no golden rule to tell you what’s safe to click on and what’s not. :("

Thanks, Jeff!

Jeff and I played around with some new beta software from Microsoft yesterday, and Jeff will guest blog about that in the future.

Hopefully I'll be able to go back to sleep now. Don't hear the freezing rain, so maybe it's a false alarm. Mmmmm...warm cozy bed!

Related posts: Eliminating Irritations and Time-Wasters, National Preparedness Month - Making a Plan, National Preparedness Month - Determining Potential Emergencies, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #1: NOAA Radio, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #2: Landline Phone, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #3 - Water, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #4 - First Aid Kit, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #5 - Additional Supplies, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #6 - Food, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #7 - Medications and Medical Supplies, National Preparedness Month - Emergency Kit #8 - Emergency Documents, National Preparedness Month - Evacuation Plan, National Preparedness Month – Evacuation from Work, School, Daycare, and Neighborhood Communities, National Preparedness Month - Wrapping It Up: Surge Protectors, Utilities, and More

Eliminating Irritations and Time-Wasters

Yesterday I finally decide to spend some quality time with tech support again, as my computer issues have not healed themselves. As you may recall, the last time I spent time with tech support, they showed me how to clean up my computer. And it has been running more quickly.

However, it didn't solve the problem of my computer freezing up two or three times a day, which is a huge irritation and time waster. Each time it freezes, I have to manually turn off my computer and restart it. Tech support suggested we add more memory, which we did. But that didn't solve the problem. They said that if that didn't cure my computer, I may have to take it back to the original manufacturer's date, eliminating all my data.

No problem. I have Carbonite, which I have blogged about before. So I checked to make sure my files have all been backed up, and they are only 95% backed up. So I wrote a tech support ticket for Carbonite. When I follow their instructions, it doesn't solve that problem. Wrote another ticket to Carbonite and haven't gotten an answer.

In the meantime, my Palm Centro started freezing up when trying to hot sync it. Called Palm and they had me do a hard reset two or three times, which doesn't fix the problem. They also had me uninstall Palm, which erased all my data on my desktop.

So now my phone is the only device that has all my contacts and calendar information. I'm scared to death I'm going to lose it all. During the process the lady at Palm started yelling at me because I can't understand what she's telling me to do.

She gave me some instructions and told me to call tech support back when I'm finished. Her instructions don't fix the problem. Is my phone problem related to my computer problem, I wonder? Who knows?

To test it out, I installed Palm on my laptop and it does the same thing. So did my desktop corrupt my phone and transfer the corruption to the laptop? Or is it a problem with the phone? Who knows?

Can you see why I'm reluctant to call tech support?

So, that brings me up to yesterday, when I muster up my courage and call Dell tech support. He took one look at my computer and said he thought he knew the problem: too many anti-spyware programs. I don't know how they got there, but he said that they have pop-ups that threaten disaster if you don't allow their software to run. I probably clicked yes and ended up with anti-spyware programs that were fighting with each other.

He keeps what is necessary and takes off the rest. My computer immediately starts running faster. And whatever he did fixed my Carbonite problem. So the anti-spyware must have been fighting with Carbonite, too. So now my data is 100% backed up. It remains to be seen whether the freezing problem is solved. We'll find out today. But at least I can restore my computer if we have to start all over.

Tried my Palm hot sync, hoping it fixed that problem. No such luck. So after we drop off our foster daughter back at her regular foster home last night, we stop by the Verizon store to see what they could do. They couldn't get it to work, either. They call headquarters telling them it must be a hardware problem. Headquarters wants me to call Palm again - uh uh, no deal. So they are sending me a new phone, and I'll take it to the Verizon store so they can transfer all my data.

Did it take a lot of time to deal with these irritations? You betcha. But the alternative is continued irritation, inefficiency, and wasted time. So even though the thought of handling these problems was overwhelming to me, I'm so glad I took the plunge. Maybe soon I might actually have everything working properly! Won't that be a happy day!?!

Related posts: Protecting Your PC from a Crash, Save Time by Cleaning and Defragmenting Your Computer Disks