Preventing the Paper Pile from E-mail

Do you find that e-mail is just another way for your paper to grow each day? This could be because you are too quick to print out every e-mail or attachment that is sent to you. Here are some tips to deal with e-mail more efficiently and preventthe paper pile up.
1. Immediately delete e-mails that are junk, spam or un-important.
2. Create folders within your e-mail program for frequently used topics to get them out of your inbox. For instance, “Family”, “John”, “Project X”.
3. Place e-mails in these folders for quick retrieval and searchability when you are looking to work on the project or refer back to the person.
4. Only print e-mails that require your immediate action or are necessary for a reminder. If you print every one you will start to become inundated with paper and lose track of important ones.
5. If you print e-mails have a designated folder on your desk related to the general topics of the e-mail. That way you can pull the folder when you need it quickly and easily.
6. Only keep the e-mails you must act in your immediate inbox. Otherwise your inbox will get just as confusing as a paper pile.
7. Immediately download pictures, documents etc. attached in emails to your computer. Then you can delete the e-mail and place items in their proper location on your computer. For instance, photos in your photo folders or a work document in the work folder on your desktop.
8. Use search tools like Google Desktop www.google.com to quickly find e-mails through keyword searches. You will find this much quicker for retrieval than sorting through papers when you need to get your hands on a document.
With these quick implementations you will save money on ink and paper, help the environment and feel a little less frantic looking for correspondence.

10 Things You Can do To Organize This Snow Day

1. Clean out a junk drawer in your kitchen
2. Pull out 10 items from your closet that you know don't fit any more.
3. Match all of your Tupperware lids to their corresponding containers. Toss the mismatched items.
4. Match all of your pairs of socks. Pull aside the mismatches and toss after all of your laundry loads are complete.
5. Throw away expired condiments and old leftovers from your firdge.
6. Read one magazine that has been sitting in a pile on your coffee table.
7. Find three books to donate to your local library.
8. Clean out your medicine cabinet.
9. Sort through your pile of mail.
10. Relax because you have done more than enough!
We want to hear what you are doing to organize this snowy day.

The Fifteen Minute Pick-Up

Taking care of a household is a never-ending job. There are always chores that pile up, messes that get worse with time and millions of other things in life that keep household chores low on your list of priorities. Avoiding regular upkeep on these household tasks will surely allow them to spiral out of control. However, gaining control over household tasks and staying on top of them can be simpler than it seems! Taking fifteen minutes out of your day to spend on these tasks can produce remarkable results with a low sacrifice.
At first you will need to catch up with the clutter, repairs and cleaning that have begun to get out of hand. This means you will have to choose one room per day or even per week that you will spend your fifteen minutes on each day. Anything from getting trash thrown away and clutter organized to changing light bulbs and dusting surfaces. Once you have caught up with the household you can now begin your Fifteen Minute Pick Up! Spend your fifteen minutes each day to get ahead of the game. You can choose to set up a schedule for yourself each week, i.e. Monday is laundry day, Tuesday is dishes, Wednesday is vacuuming, etc. Or you can choose to tackle tasks spontaneously as needed. Either way, by making a habit of taking only 15 minutes out of each day you will get ahead of your household tasks. You may even find you have more time to do the things you truly enjoy now that your household duties are out of the way!

Photo Organization After the Holidays

After the holiday season many people end up with a lot of great pictures of family and friends. However, not many people take the next step: organizing these great photos!
If you have digital photos stored on your camera and/or computer you should start by determining what you wish to do with these photos. The best thing to do first is save all your digital pictures in the same place on your computer for easy access. Use some sort of system to organize the different photos in specified folders on your computer. For example, photos from your Thanksgiving meal should be saved in one particular folder named Thanksgiving and Christmas photos in another labeled folder. This will help you to maintain a system of organization for your digital pictures and make looking at your photos in the future a pleasant experience instead of a chore! If you decide you wish to print these photos, the next step would be to look through your pictures and choose the ones you wish to develop. Then, save those digital photos to a CD that you can easily grab and develop at your leisure.

Organizing Tips for Stress-Free Holidays

The thought of getting ready for the holidays can be enough to take the joy out of what is supposed to be a time for family, friends, for some, spirituality and of course great food! But, getting everything off of the to do list in time can be a daunting task as it seems the stores and our peers start preparing earlier and earlier each year.

Often many professional organizers point out that the best way to get your house in order is to plan an event. If you are the sibling that has to host Thanksgiving at your house this season, don’t look at it as a ton of work, but a blessing to kick your family into gear to get everything in your home the way that you would ideally like it.

My first recommendation to lower holiday stress is to make lists. It seems very basic, but some people don’t look at the big picture early enough. I recommend taking a journal or a notebook and setting up a series of To Do lists on various topics surrounding the holiday season. For instance you may need a list of people you are buying gifts for, a list of people to send holiday cards to, a gift idea list, a party/holiday meal list for ingredients and supplies or a list of what gets done before guests arrive at the house. There are even online websites that can help provide templates to help you such as www.organizedchristmas.com. Products are also available which help you map out your holiday gift giving and ideas.

If you have trouble following lists, hand them off to someone who doesn’t. While this may seem like a luxury that many people don’t have, you may be surprised when you have mapped out a plan how easy it is to find people to help get parts of it done. Involving every family member in the planning will help everyone get on the same page to get the house prepared in time. Consider asking a loyal babysitter to do some errands for you this holiday season or hiring a professional like me who can quickly organize your holiday card contact list into printable labels.

In addition to delegating, I suggest trying to do as much as possible without leaving your house. Whether it is using a service like Stop & Shop’s Peapod to order the groceries you need for the holidays to be delivered right to your house or shopping online for your gifts, you can eliminate a lot of the frustration that holiday shopping can bring. Starting now is critical not only because you will be done earlier, but it will ensure that you don’t pay higher shipping costs to get packages delivered on time.

While being stressed is never pleasant, the good thing is that you are being signaled to act early. The most important organizational tip I can leave you with this holiday season is to plan now and get as much done as you can by early December. If you do you will be more relaxed and will be able to enjoy the most important times with your family.

Kristin Mastromarino is a professional organizer at Livable Solutions, LLC (www.livablesolutions.com), owner of The Organized Lifestyle retail store (www.theorganizedlifestylestore.com) and is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). You can email her your questions at kristin@livablesolutions.com.

Holiday Decorations -- Collecting and Organizing
The holiday decorating season well underway with Halloween, and I see a lot of my clients failing to utilize the decorations they already have in your house. Especially as the economy forces many of us to maintain tighter budgets, it is important to be even more aware of where we may be wasting money. Over buying decorations and losing them in your house can be a quick way to throw away money.
Over and over again I see people storing an abundance of holiday decorations with no clear system to find them. It is wonderful to be festive every year, but collecting the items and actually displaying the items are two different activities.
It is important to first evaluate what you actually have. Now is a great time to begin pulling out the seasonal items before the rush of the holidays overwhelms you. If you find you are wandering all over the house to uncover all of your holiday treasures, that may be the first signal you need a better system.
As you sort through the items you should note the following:
· Do you have each holiday separated by theme? (i.e. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, Easter.)
· Are there broken, torn or damaged items that just got shoved in a box at the end of last season?
· How many items still have price tags and were never used?
· How many decorations haven’t been used in years because they are outdated or don’t fit in with your home’s décor?
Once you have answered these questions you will have a good idea what should be purged and what should be kept.
Creating a system for storage during and after the season will also help you maximize your utility of these items. It is important to choose one area of your home whether it is a closet or a corner of your basement or attic to store your decorations so you always know where to go to find them. Choose containers that are clear or color coded for the holiday to easily find them next season. Stackable lidded containers will work well for most items. There are also specialty storage boxes, and bins on the market for wreathes, ornaments, and fake trees, which will provide the proper protection for off-season storage.
By clearly labeling and storing these items in one area you have much greater success of creating a go to spot when you are ready to decorate. But, it is also important to note, that while it is smart to shop at the end of the season for next year’s decorations, if you find yourself buying more than you use just because of the price tag, you are probably wasting your money and time. In addition, you are making the decorating process much more overwhelming and frustrating when you have too much to find.
Keep it simple this season by prioritizing your favorite pieces, only re-packing what you used in a clearly labeled storage system and limiting the shopping spree for new decorations.
Kristin Mastromarino is a professional organizer at Livable Solutions, LLC (www.livablesolutions.com), owner of The Organized Lifestyle retail store and is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). You can email her your questions at kristin@livablesolutions.com.