Tag Archives | clutter
Confetti.

Are You Drowning in Paper?

By on October 31, 2011 in Simple Steps

Simple StepsConfetti.

Challenge for this week – Attack the print clutter. This works both at home and at the office.

  • Toss old Magazines that you either never got around to reading or were saving to re-read, but never did.
  • Take a look at your bookshelf – Are the titles still relevant, entertaining or useful?
  • Attack those piles – Mail, loose papers, clippings, files, recipes, etc. Look around – on your desk, your kitchen counter, your dresser, maybe even on the front seat of your car. Just choose one and get rid of it.
Once you get going you won’t want to stop… Recycle, shred, bu
rn and have a blast!
Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.
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What are You Tolerating?

By on June 24, 2011 in Life Balance

Everything you tolerate saps your energy and prevents you from moving forward effectively.

Most people tolerate more than 50 small, petty things in their life on a regular basis. It’s just ridiculous what we are willing to put up with and what we allow to hang over our heads.

Take 10 minutes to sit down and make a list of all of the annoying, nagging nuisances in your life, both at home and at work.

Then choose how you will eliminate them. Either set aside one  block of time (a mid-week afternoon or perhaps time on the weekend) to “attack” these annoyances that are hanging over your head and get rid of as many of them as possible; or choose to tackle one each day and slowly make your way down the list. Choose whichever strategy will work best for you.

You’ll find that the more annoyances you get rid of the more peaceful and energetic you’ll become.

So go ahead—make that phone call you’ve been putting off, clean out your desk, drop off your dry cleaning, call the plumber to fix that slow drain, purge some of your old clothes, buy a frame for that picture you have been meaning to hang for six months, fix the wobbling chair leg, fire that ineffective employee or let that time-eating client go; the list is seemingly endless –then go out and celebrate with all the extra energy you’ll have!

 

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Housekeeping Routines: How to Improve Your Routine

By on January 6, 2011 in Life Balance

From time to time I like to feature guest posts by other contributors. If you’re interested in guest posting on this blog please contact me. James has some tips for helping you organize your space.

Housekeeping Routines: How to Improve Your Routine

Keeping your home clean, tidy and organized is a task that most people put off for another day, which is only serves to make cleaning up even more time-consuming when you finally do bite the bullet. It doesn’t need to be that way. With an optimized routine when you know exactly what to do, where to do it and when, you can turn an unwieldy and stressful chore into a lightweight point cheerfully ticked off your to do list.

  1. Tackle one room or area at a time. If your schedule is already hectic, the idea of cleaning the whole house from top to bottom is likely to send you into a panic. However, you do not have to feel this way as long as you break it down into digestible parts. For instance, one day of the week you could handle the kitchen, then the next day scrub down at least one bathroom, and so on. In this way it is easier to get things done, and you will not need to rush just to finish and move on.
  2. Keep the house free of clutter – Do not let a pile of magazines overcome your coffee table, and avoid letting the children leave their toys all over the yard. When the time comes to clean you are only adding extra work; after all, you cannot wipe the coffee table if it is covered in personal possessions. Put things away when you are not using them. If something is old and you do not even look at or wear it anymore, toss it or give it away. Should the item prove to be worth something, there is nothing wrong with selling it to bring in a little extra money. This not only helps speed up the cleaning process, but you will feel more at ease with less mess to deal with.
  3. Get the whole family involved in the house cleaning process – Assign the children to vacuuming and emptying the dishwasher on certain days of the week. Have the spouse wash the windows and take out the trash when needed. The more people that are involved with the routine, the easier it will be to get it all done.
  4. Keep a calendar of chores that need to be completed – Choose a place in the home where it will be displayed; a wall in the kitchen, your room, or next to the front door is all good locations. It does not really matter what you go with, as long as it is in plain sight and hard to overlook. By keeping track of what needs to get done, you are less likely to forget something, leading to a lot more cleaning than you anticipated or wanted.
  5. Do certain chores at certain times of the year – In the winter season, known for its chilly weather and onslaught of snow, it would be unreasonable to leave rugs outside to dry. Removing leaves and debris from the pool is not critical. Nobody would expect you to clean out the garage during such weather, either. These housekeeping routines are not absolutely necessary, and can wait for warmer weather. By taking these chores off the list, you will be able to tackle what matters the most, rather than focusing on things outside of the months where they are appropriate. Keep in mind that some things can and should be done all year.
  6. Do not ignore the hidden issues – In other words, though you may have wiped away the food stains in the kitchen, you may not have completely removed the germs from the area. Be sure to add disinfectant wipes and other cleaning solutions to your shopping list; when you make sure that your home is clean when it comes to both visible and invisible issues, it will become a safer place. For a house with children, this is something that will be especially prevalent. It does not take too long to do, however, and can make all the difference in the world.
  7. Clean for only a few minutes a day – On top of taking care of one room at a time, another way to help prevent the feeling of panic is by spending only a few to fifteen minutes on each project. Should you attempt to clean for longer, you may become tired, and thus not want to do it anymore. Then the next day you are liable to be lazy about it, believing that it is not worth the work involved. Unless it is an emergency, such as an unexpected guest coming for a visit, excess cleaning should be avoided. Take it slow, and do not act is if you are being graded on the results. As long as you do your best, that is all that matters.

This is a guest post from James, a full time writer for Spares Next Day who specialize in hoover bags for vacuum cleaners.

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I love clutter

What Can You Eliminate?

By on January 5, 2011 in Success
I love clutter
Image by sindesign via Flickr

As the year is starting to wind down it’s time to think about pairing back and “living lean.” As you go through this month give thought to what you can eliminate to free up more time and energy for work, for family and well… for living.

What can I eliminate? Well, start with eliminating unnecessary tasks, processes, and all around clutter.

Here are some easy tips for “cleaning up” and finding room more productive activities:

  1. Clean your desk/work area. – Do this today.  Now.  You need a clean and more importantly, welcoming area to work.  I can’t produce any amount of work at my desk when it’s messy.  Why not clean it up and at least make your work area welcoming if you have to be there, all day.
  2. Eliminate huge to-do lists. – Don’t get bogged down in minutiae by scheduling 36 tasks for one day. Choose your top 3-5 depending on your system and concentrate on those.   If you can only get one thing done today, what one thing will make you satisfied with your day?  DO THAT, FIRST!
  3. What are you doing that someone else can get done? – Can you let go of control bit and ask for help?  What are some things that someone else could get done in half the time with twice the results for just a small amount of compensation?
  4. What can you automate? Have you automated your bills? How about your computer back-up? Do you check your feeds in a feed aggregator like Google Reader or are you still clogging up your inbox with daily emails? Are you visiting each social media site individually or are you using a dashboard like HootSuite or TweetDeck, or even better get email summaries from NutshellMail?
  5. Get rid of junk. – Opt out of all those email newsletters and daily alerts that you never read. Unsubscribe from magazines, newspapers and catalogs that you don’t look at. Aren’t you ordering online anyway? Use a service like catalog choice to help reduce your paper junk.
  6. How many projects are you working on? Are you spread too thin?  Too many irons on the fire? How many are really important? How about focusing on income producing activities and cutting the rest? Are you doing one thing well or 10 things with mediocrity?

With all these tips, the key is to really examine what is necessary.  What is productive, billable or critical?

Stop and think.  What can you eliminate? Not just “stuff,” but processes, tasks, and so on.

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How to Keep Your Printed Documents Organized

By on October 19, 2010 in Success

Today’s post is a guest post contributed by James Adams, a technology and productivity blogger.

 For those who work in a busy office, time-management is one of the most important things one can learn. After all, not being able to manage time effectively can lead to serious issues within an office, from missing meetings to just simply not getting enough work done in a day’s time.

One of the basic tenants of time management is organization. Learning how to organize one’s workstation is crucially important to getting a lot of work done throughout a day, and perhaps the most important aspect of this is keeping one’s printed documents organized at all times. While many people have immense problems learning how to organize their documents correctly, the fact is that once one learns just a few basic strategies, organization practically falls into place and can make the day far more productive.

Here are five great ways to get your documents organized, reduce clutter and be efficient and ultimately feel happier at work.

1. Set Up Your Office Strategically

One of the biggest hurdles for those who struggle with organization is directly related to the setup of the office. While most offices try to keep printers and copiers central to each workstation, others feel as if the dark corner at the back of the office is the best place to put their machines. This inevitably leads to issues, as employees don’t want to have to trek to the back of the building to pick up their printouts every ten minutes. By centralizing your copiers and printers, you’ll be making the situation far easier on your employees, and will ultimately be helping to improve organization throughout the office.

2. Keep Employees on the Same Track

Many offices fall prey to employees that print out documents, only to leave them sitting in the printer for half of the day before they pick them up. This is by far one of the worst organizational caveats, as it is close to impossible to stay organized when random printouts are hogging up the printer. By making it clear to your employees that this is not okay, you can minimize the potential for backup that might be affecting your office.

3. Only print what is Needed

Another issue that plagues many offices throughout the world is the employee that prints out absolutely everything – even emails! The fact is printing out every document that graces the computer screen is simply unnecessary. Not only does it lead to disorganization, it is frankly a huge waste of paper, ink and resources. By having a dialogue with your employees and stating that only necessary documents should be printed, you can put a halt on this issue before it gets out of hand. The more one is allowed to print anything they want, the worse the situation will get.

4. Reduce Stacks

Many people allow piles upon piles of printed documents to take ownership of their workstations, concluding that dealing with them at the end of the week is the best way to go about things. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, and often results in lost time and heavy disorganization. Instead of waiting until the end of the week to deal with stacks, make an effort to not allow them to accumulate at all. If you must use stacks (as this is simply how some people operate), be sure to deal with them before leaving work at the end of each day; otherwise, you’re bound to lose track of important documents.

5. Create a Filing System

One of the most important things you can do to prevent being disorganized is to create an extremely versatile filing system. Just as you wouldn’t place hundreds of documents on your computer’s desktop, you shouldn’t do so with your paper documents. By filing away your documents as soon as you are finished dealing with them, you’ll know exactly where everything is and will not have to deal with piles of random printouts. This is imperative for those who find that they often have to refer back to their documents at a later date, and is a crucial detail that should be learned early on in any career.

James Adams reviews ink supplies at Cartridge Save. He also writes for blogs around the web where he posts about the technology and productivity.

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