by admin | Nov 17, 2015 | Holiday organizing tips, Home Solutions Stuff, Money-Saving Tip
I don’t know how holiday meals work at your house, but around here we do NOT mess with tradition!
It actually makes things easier because I know exactly what we’ll be eating – no new recipes to learn, no new ingredients to buy – therefore, I computerize my shopping list for each holiday meal.
My lists are simple Word documents, nothing fancy. I keep notes about the size of the turkey/tenderloin/ham I need depending on the number of guests, and what time to put the pies in the oven.
My Thanksgiving list, in part, looks like this:
Stuffing:
- ___ 1 bag seasoned croutons
- ___ 1 carton chicken stock
- ___ Celery
- ___ Onion
- ___ Butter
- ___ Salt
- ___ Pepper
- ___ Sage
Squash:
- ___ 2 medium-sized butternut squash
- ___ Butter
- ___ Brown sugar
- ___ Nutmeg, cinnamon
Whipped Cream:
- ___ 2 cups heaving whipping cream
- ___ Sugar
- ___ Vanilla
You get the picture, right? Before I go shopping, I look in the pantry and refrigerator, putting a check mark next to items I already have. As I shop, I check things off the list since I usually spread the shopping out over a few trips.
It might seem silly, but it saves me time AND money. How?
- I, don’t forget anything, so there are no frantic, last minute trips to the store.
- I don’t buy items I already have. Spices are expensive, and I don’t need multiple containers of sage.
Speaking of spices, here’s a helpful chart regarding their shelf life.
I’m in favor of anything that makes life easier as we head into the busy holiday season, how about you?
by admin | Jun 1, 2015 | Clutter, Home Solutions Stuff, Keeping Stuff
Here’s an interesting NY Times article on clutter with a different spin on it.
Where’s the car?
I think the author has, to a degree, taken a tongue-in-cheek approach, but I get it. Clutter and “stuff” isn’t an issue… until it is; until the stuff accumulates to the degree and in a way that affects the quality of your life and your ability to function on a daily basis. Do you currently co-exist comfortably with your stuff, or does it cause you stress? Do you invite friends into your home, or are you embarrassed by your clutter? There is no one-size-fits-all rule for how much stuff we should have in our lives.
I love books and have lots of them. But they live on three bookshelves in our living room. Those shelves define how many books I get to keep. Books don’t earn a spot on the shelves until I’ve read them AND enjoyed them, (or disliked them so much, I must keep them for reference, should someone try to convince me of their goodness) so unread books live in the two beautiful baskets – my reading runway, so to speak – they’re waiting patiently to be chosen. In order to make room for newly-read books on the shelves, I periodically clear out a few and donate them to the library’s book sale. Some people like to get books from the library. Yay them. I don’t. I like – no, need – to own the books I read. Quirky? Maybe, but that’s how it is with me and books.
A simplified version of the criteria I suggest for assessing stuff when working with a client goes something like this:
- Do you love it?
- Do you use it?
- Do you have the space to keep it/properly store it?
If you love your stuff, if it brings you joy, if you come home at the end of a long, hard day and revel in the presence of your stuff, rock on. Don’t get rid of things just because a magazine article says you should. By the same token, don’t hang on to stuff that weighs you down, causes anxiety or guilt, or is preventing you from sitting on the comfortable chair you know is under there somewhere.
by admin | Mar 18, 2014 | Home Solutions Stuff
Does the idea of changing all your online passwords overwhelm you? Take a deep breath and remember my mantra: Baby steps.
If you have dozens and dozens of online accounts for things like banking, investing, shopping, playing, music, watching movies, social media… set a goal: change five or ten a day, a week…whatever works for you, but change them.
If you’ve got a cheat sheet for keeping them all straight, you should “password protect” that document if it’s stored on your computer. Don’t display your passwords on sticky notes stuck to your computer monitor or in a folder labeled, “COMPUTER PASSWORDS,” which is the equivalent of a flashing neon sign directing someone to your list.
Here is a link to an article from CBS News written in December 2013, offering some tips on how to create secure passwords. One suggestion that appears in just about every article I’ve read says do NOT reuse the same password over and over again, especially for email, banking, and social media accounts.
Microsoft used to offer a free site where you could test the strength of your password, but they charge for that service now. Kaspersky offers an educational option to test strength without typing in an actual password, just something that mimics the format you use.
The bottom line? The effort you put forth to protect yourself online will undoubtedly be time well spent.
by admin | Jan 26, 2014 | Home Solutions Stuff, Organizing
People sometimes assume that as a professional organizer, every aspect of my existence must be, well, organized. A lot of it is, but life happens and things fall through the cracks, even for me.
Right before the holidays, hubby went to the cabinet that houses our photo albums – one album per year – and couldn’t find anything more recent than mid-2009. “That’s not possible!” is what I wanted to say, but the albums didn’t lie. I hadn’t printed any photos since June 2009; that’s…holy cow, four and a half years of photos that needed to be uploaded to the computer and organized into folders, then uploaded again to Shutterfly, the online photo storage and printing site I use.
Instead of letting the magnitude of the job overwhelm me, I tried to mentally break it down into manageable segments:
Part 1: upload everything from the camera and cell phone to the computer
Part 2: sort the uploaded photos into half-year folders for easier handling and identification
Part 3: upload the contents of those folders to Shutterfly
Part 4: order a copy of each photo (minus the duds that got deleted, of course!)
Right after the holidays, I got started. In less than a week, spending an hour or so at a time, I completed all four parts.
When the order arrived from Shutterfly, there were more than 500 pictures in one very fat envelope. BUT! Thankfully, they were in chronological order so we simply had to slide them into a slot in the appropriate photo album. Hubby and I tackled that job together as we watched Discovery Channel’s mini series, “Klondike.” A glass of wine, a roaring fire, an interesting TV show and a partner to work with turned what initially felt like a monumental undertaking into a fun project.
I just put the finishing touches on the albums, labeling each by year with my label maker. And now, taking my own advice about developing new habits to maintain something that’s recently been organized, I hope to tend to this task twice a year moving forward.
Many of my clients have good intentions of creating the perfect family photo archive by scrapbooking, which adds a whole other dimension to things. However, very few seem to get beyond the point where they spend hundreds of dollars on the scrapbooking supplies. My advice? If there’s a backlog of photos looming in your life, cut yourself a break and just get them organized into albums or boxes with some sort of identifier – either the year, the event, the person or place – and move on. Someday, perhaps you’ll go back and create the scrapbook of your dreams; until then, you’ll at least be able to enjoy the photos and the memories they invoke.
I will spare you the humorous horror of my online search results for an image of “a pile of photos” to use with this blog post. In its misguided eagerness to please, google gave me “photos of piles” – and when I say “piles” – think in medical terms.
by admin | Nov 20, 2013 | Home Solutions Stuff, Organizing, Paperwork
I recently posted this tip on the Home Solutions facebook page:
Here’s an idea: before you file something away, ask yourself, “Why am I filing this? Do I actually need to keep it for anything?” If the answer is no, work on breaking that habit. It’ll save you time, and it’ll save space in the file cabinet. One good example for many folks is utility bills. Everyone files them, but nobody knows why.
When I present an organizing seminar, I ask folks in the audience, “How many of you file your utility bills after you’ve paid them?” and invariably, hands shoot up all over the room. When I ask them, “Why?” I am routinely met with a roomful of shrugs and quizzical looks.
Sometimes we do things out of habit without re-examining the reason, and the reason for keeping certain papers in our file drawers may be overdue for review.
Perhaps you keep utility bills because you take a home office deduction on your income taxes. However, you can see an on-line history of utility bills paid, so again, why keep the monthly statements?
I stopped getting utility bills, bank and investment statements, and car loan statements in the mail and instead, receive them all online. I reconcile my accounts and pay my bills online, too, so there’s no need for me to print these statements.
If that’s too far out of your comfort zone, how about keeping one year’s worth and shredding with the start of a new year?
When your year-end investment account statement arrives, it has all the information for the year and you no longer need the monthly or quarterly statements, right?
Once you see the transactions on your bank statement, you can shred ATM slips and deposit receipts.
At the end of the year when you get your W-2, you can shred your paystubs.
In my July 23rd blog post, I talk about receipts – which ones to keep and which to toss.
We are inundated with an onslaught of papers on a daily basis. If we reduce the quantity of what we get and what we file by eliminating things we’re keeping out of habit rather than actual need, it’s another small step towards organizing and simplifying our daily lives.
by admin | Oct 24, 2013 | Home Solutions Stuff, Organizing
My clients hear that question all the time.
When they complain about the backpacks plopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, or the car keys that are never found when needed, or the pile of missing mail from two days ago…whether its backpacks, keys, or the incoming mail – whatever it is – I ask, “Where should that item live? Where is its home? We know where it doesn’t belong – where does it belong?”
This question is usually met with an eerie silence. That’s the problem in a nutshell, folks: you can’t put something away if it doesn’t have a home.
So: establishing a home is step one. The right spot should be logical, practical, and doable. Your child can’t slide a backpack into a cubby that’s four feet above her head, and it doesn’t make sense to walk through three rooms of the house to put away your car keys. Remember: logical, practical, and doable.
Step two is developing the habit of actually putting the item where it belongs, and that takes time. Have faith – we humans are smart cookies. We can be trained to establish new routines so that, over time, hanging keys on a hook by the garage door will become a habit. Teach your child that the backpack goes on a reachable peg every day when she comes in from school. Put the incoming mail in that one designated spot so you can find it when you’re ready to process it, and in a matter of weeks, maybe even days, some common daily frustrations will actually be eliminated by answering that one simple question: Where should it live?
