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Welcome!
Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you find some helpful hints for organizing your time and space. My passions are to help you make home a refuge instead of a crisis center, and to help you function in peace rather than chaos - at home or at work. I have switched my main blog to 1-2-3 ... Get Organized on WordPress, so please visit me there.
As the school year closes, it's a good time to wrap up end-of-year activities. Even if you don't have kids in school, many activities take a break for the summer - a perfect time to put closure on those activities.
If you volunteer, declutter and organize any paperwork for your position. If you are passing that position on to someone else, hand off that paperwork so the transition goes smoothly.
If you've taken a class, organize your class notes and related material. Look over your notes for action points you want to take away from the class.
If you have school-age children, sit down together and look over school papers, projects and artwork you have saved. Determine an acceptable amount to save and work with your child to determine which masterpieces to keep. If you wish, make a scrapbook of the year.
If there are too keepsakes many for your comfort, take pictures of the rest and put them in a photo album. Or send them to relatives or soldiers. Or create placemats, lamp shades, collages, etc. with them.
Print photos you want to keep from this year and divide into categories. Or copy to CDs or DVDs or another medium. Organize according to activities. Remove these pictures from your camera to make room for your summer fun.
If you haven't done so already, evaluate summer clothes for the family. Get rid of those that don't work and fill in the blanks with new ones. While you're at it, if other clothes are outgrown, get rid of those also. Donate, hand them down - whatever, but get them out of the house!
Finally, celebrate the end of school! Make something special, decorate, do something silly, make certificates to celebrate milestones. Whatever you do, celebrate all the work each of you has accomplished during the school year.
More on wrapping up:
Planning an Intentional Summer for Your Child
Managing Paper, Part 2
Organize a Fun Activity List
Happy Monday! Hope you had a nice weekend. I had some free time, so I worked on an iPhone app I'm writing called Upscale Express Dinners - upscale meals at fast food prices in 30 minutes or less. I'm almost finished, and I'll let you know more about it soon. On to our topic of the day ...
As we do spring cleaning (or not), it's an ideal time to update insurance photos - those photos that prove what you own should disaster strike, and you need to file an insurance claim.
I've found that the easiest way to document our possessions is to take pictures or a movie. Take them of the obvious - furniture, appliances, electronics, etc. But also open drawers, doors, and containers while you shoot.
Can you imagine having to remember everything in your house in the midst of a crisis? Make a copy of your photos/movie and store in your safe deposit box, fireproof safe or in the cloud, away from your house. Your information is protected and available should you need it.
Hopefully, we will never need this information, but it will give you peace of mind to have it.
More on security/safety:
It's easy to end up with a massive sorting and purging job with digital photos - they accumulate so quickly! Here are a few tips to make it easier:
- Delete pictures on your camera you don't like. Do it immediately after each picture-taking session. You can determine which pictures are best, which are duplicates, etc.
- Use these filters:
- Is it blurry?
- Do you love it?
- Will you want it in five years?
- And my favorite - do I look better that I do in real life? LOL! I do NOT want to keep pictures of myself for posterity in which I look terrible!
- When going through old pictures, use the same filters. In addition, get rid of photos of people and places you don't remember or that are no longer meaningful.
- Back up files in several places: internally on your computer, externally on a DVD or external hard drive, on online digital sharing services (iPhoto, Snapfish, Flickr, Picasa, etc.)
- Periodically, go through your photos to see if they have lost appeal over time. By being ruthless before saving your photos, it will make this job easier.
More on photos:
Photo Bug Baby has reviewed two of my books, Three Steps to Time Management for the College Student and Three Steps to Planning Your Child's Parties. If you're a photo bug, you must enter one of their numerous photo contests! What a fun place!
Liz Seymour, Home Deputy Editor of The Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com), has been running a series about organizing her attic. The eighth in her installment deals with her photographs. I thought you might enjoy her very helpful suggestions and insights as she goes through this process. Just click the title above to be directed to her article. I've enjoyed reading the other articles in her series as well.
What to do with all those digital pictures you've been taking? David Hutto has been working with digital media for 30 years and has written a very helpful article on how to organize your digital pictures. He shows you how to get them off your camera, get them onto your computer and what to do with them after that. He walks you through every step, so you don't have to be a techno-wiz to understand his directions. Just click the title to go to his article.
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