Summer Bucket List

I don’t know about you, but at the end of the school year the last thing I want to think about before summer is another to do list!  I mean really, May seems as busy as December! After the long, structured school year filled with managing work, homework, household duties, volunteering tasks, and after-school activities who wants to plan another thing?  I just want to soak up the sun and wing it for awhile! But we all know how long that really lasts don’t we? About one day. That is when the Summer Bucket List can really come in handy.

This year I have asked each member of my family to come up with ten items for our list.  After nine months of being on auto-pilot with our fast paced schedules this exercise was just the ticket to slow down, change gears and sit down to really tune in to each other’s interests – and honestly to reconnect again on a deeper level. Here is what we all came up with:

I now have our list handy on the magnetic board in the kitchen ready for the quickly approaching lazy days of summer. (We may even have it laminated so we can check things off as we do them)!  So on the days when we are tired of the pool or we don’t have VBS or a camp to attend, we can help keep our summer calm by going to our list to pick an activity for the day if and when boredom should arise.

While planning ahead and making lists isn’t always fun, it is a necessary part of maintaining a more simple and calm existence for all.  What’s on your bucket list for the summer?

Written By: Katie Puckett, Simplicity Organizer

Organizing for College 

Thursday June 6th 

Presented by Catie Eller, Simplicity Organizer

 Yes, summer’s just begun, but mid-August will be here before you know it.   Start your preparations now to avoid any last minute hassles.   Emphasis will be on both organizing for academic success and for peace and harmony in the dorm.  If you have packing lists and suggestions from college, please bring them along.  This session is geared for both students and parents alike but either can attend solo. 

Cost:$25 per person (student and parent count as one person) if you register on-line, $30 at the door. 

Click Here to Register

What to bring: A salad topping to share. 

                Free for all Junior League members who register on-line. 

*Junior League Members, Click Here to Register

The transition from high school to college brings many exciting changes, such as new friends, unlimited social events and the freedom that many teens crave. But with such freedom comes responsibility, and many teenagers find themselves struggling with this balance within the first few weeks of college.

The key to helping teenagers shift from a supportive, structured environment in high school to a mostly unstructured environment is to develop a proactive organizational plan. Although a parent may be tempted to rush out to Bed, Bath and Beyond, armed with 20% off coupons to buy everything their child may need, this strategy is missing a key component – the teenager’s input. To best prepare your teen for the transition, it is vital for parents and teens to intentionally talk through the pending changes and develop a plan and strategy for helping the teen assume these responsibilities.

A comprehensive organizational plan will touch on four areas of a college student’s life: personal care, rest, play and study. From developing valuable time management strategies to implementing practical organizational strategies, discussing these four areas will prepare a teen for any challenges that college may bring.

As you develop the overall plan, here are some quick strategies to simplify and streamline their space.

Personal Care: Avoiding bringing all of your clothes to college. Select versatile pieces for the current season and leave the rest at home. Utilize slimline hangars to maximize hanging space.

Rest: Wake up at the same time every day, regardless of when you have class. This will prevent rushing and give you extra time to complete tasks in your room.

Play: If bringing a TV or video games to your room, coordinate with your roommate so nothing is duplicated. Make sure your furniture also provides extra storage space or pick up a storage ottoman.

Study: Designate daily study hours to prevent procrastination. Use either a paper or digital calendar to remind yourself of both homework and social obligations so that you can plan ahead.

To help your college bound student prepare their own organizational plan, join us for the Organizing for College Lunch and Learn on June 6^th. We will share many practical tips and make sure your teenager is well prepared!

Organizing for College 

Thursday June 6th 

Presented by Catie Eller, Simplicity Organizer

 Yes, summer’s just begun, but mid-August will be here before you know it.   Start your preparations now to avoid any last minute hassles.   Emphasis will be on both organizing for academic success and for peace and harmony in the dorm.  If you have packing lists and suggestions from college, please bring them along.  This session is geared for both students and parents alike but either can attend solo. 

Cost:$25 per person (student and parent count as one person) if you register on-line, $30 at the door. 

What to bring: A salad topping to share. 

                Free for all Junior League members who register on-line. 

*Junior League Members, Click Here to Register

Helpful Ideas

Send along a couple of small backpacks or drawstring bags. Fill the first backpack with items like a water bottle, sunscreen, camera, and lip balm and have your child use it for time away from the bunk. Use the second drawstring bag as a “bunktime” bag for nighttime and rest time supplies such as writing and reading supplies, a clipboard, a flashlight, and other nighttime essentials.  Send along a camera and tell your child to hand it over to friends! It will be a great way for your child to remember his/her time at camp and these photos will help you put faces to all the new names you’ll be hearing as your child shares camp stories with you.

Letter Writing TO Camp

Keep in touch. Find out your camp’s policy on keeping in touch with your camper such as via letters, email or phone/text messages. Notes from home make everyone feel better—the camper and mom and dad. Also check to see if your child’s camp will be posting photos of campers on the camp website or a photo sharing site. Seeing photos of your child having fun while they’re away will put your mind at ease, especially if your camp doesn’t allow for direct communication with your camper.  Helpful Hint:  Start sending letters to camp before your child leaves to go to camp.  This way there will be mail waiting for them on the first day!

PROCESSING AND ORGANIZING CHILDREN’S KEEPSAKES

Most mothers consider themselves the family historian and memory-keeper. A large part of that job involves processing mountains of school papers, preschool and camp creations, artwork and the like. If you don’t have systems in place for how to handle these items as they come into your home, they will quickly pile up and become stacks you dread facing. Postponed decisions become clutter. The school year will soon be wrapping up and kids will be bringing home giant shopping bags stuffed full of workbooks, projects, notebooks, crafts and masterpieces created in art class.

Before we discuss how to organize what you keep, let’s first address what and how much you should keep. Ask yourself-Why am I saving it? Is it so you or your child can look back on his progress or enjoy that funny story your daughter wrote about her sister in 2^nd grade?  Those are great reasons to archive keepsakes, but you do not have to save everything. Be picky about what you keep.  Only the best and most personal things should make the cut. Set a limit on the number of things you will keep from each school year. Five to ten items per year should be sufficient for reminiscing. When your children are old enough, invite them into the process and allow them to decide what to keep.

Here are a few suggestions for ways to organize and honor their keepsakes:

SCHOOL WORK

Set up a document box with hanging files labeled K-12. You can pick up everything you need at a discount retailer or office supply store.  This is the best place to put special projects, research papers, creative writing and report cards from each year. Keep the box in a place that is easily accessible.

Photo: www.iheartorganizing.blogspot.com

CRAFTS AND ARTWORK

If crafts and artwork are bulky and oversized they can be stored in a clear lidded plastic container labeled with your child’s name.  Be sure each piece indicates the child’s name and the year or grade when it was done.  You think it won’t happen, but contents of one child’s box have a way of getting mixed with that of a sibling. Children love seeing their artwork on display.  The internet is full of ideas for ways to creatively display their masterpieces so they can be enjoyed.

Flat pieces of artwork can also be kept in a portfolio. You can easily flip through and see each piece. Container Store offers various sizes that are perfect for items large and small.

http://www.containerstore.com/shop?productId=10004277&N=&Ntt=photo

Remember that the systems you set up should be easy to maintain. Hopefully they will also eliminate the anxiety you may feel when you see them hop off the bus with a big smile and a bag full of treasures!  Remember, “A place for everything, and everything it its place!”

Simplicity’s “Clutter Back Guarantee”

Really?  Yes, really.  This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for a company dedicated to helping you organize your home and your life.  But here’s how it works.

Simplicity works alongside of you, teaching you how to build systems and structures.  They help you organize one space at a time.  Simplicity leaves you with a beautiful home-and everything is in its place.  All is good…and then life happens.

Months and years later…

The pantry that was perfectly organized to accommodate baby food isn’t so perfect for preschool snacks.

The matching hangers that held toddler clothes are way too small for your growing middle schooler.

The warranties and manuals notebook or container is crammed to overflowing with information that relates to appliances and equipment you no longer own.

The playroom cabinets labeled and organized for Legos and dress up clothes are totally wasted now that your “little one” has her driver’s license.

Voila!  Clutter Back, Guaranteed!

The solution is simple.  Organizing isn’t a one-time fix.   Staying organized is an on-going effort.  Maintenance is the key to organizing success.  Having systems in place facilitates that effort but only so long as the systems continue to make sense for where your family is in its life cycle.  Change is inevitable.  It is important to recognize that systems aren’t carved in stone.  Systems are created for what is important to your life right now.  When one has outlived its useful life, it’s time to move on to another one.  This is not a failure.  It’s life.

So, the only way you’ll ever cash in on Simplicity’s Clutter Back Guarantee is if you let yourself get stuck with an outgrown, outdated system.  Be open to new ways of organizing and utilizing your space and you’ll be clutter- free.  Guaranteed!

Rightsizing Your Life

Thursday April 18th from 11:30-1pm

Presented by Robin McCoy, Simplicity Organizer

Have you had a shift in your family or living situation? Do you anticipate a major life event- retirement, becoming an empty nester, welcoming home a boomeranger, selling the big house?  If so, this session is designed for you.   The emotional and psychological challenges of major life changes will be our focus but plenty of practical suggestions and strategies for weathering such a change will also be discussed.

Cost:$25 per person if you register on-line, $30 at the door.

What to bring: A salad topping to share.

                Free for all Junior League members who register on-line.

*Junior League Members, Click Here to Register

Need a real life example?? Graham Hill made millions when he sold his tech start-up, but eventually he felt his swanky lifestyle was wasteful and made a drastic change, moving into a 420-foot home and scrapping the excesses. Watch more at the link below.

 Living with Less-Tech Millionaire downsizes to 420 Square Feet

Whether it’s time to downsize, upsize or simply reconfigure the way you live in your current house, it’s all about rightsizing.  How do you decide what to keep and what to purge?  How do you cope with not only the physical, but also the emotional and psychological aspects of this major life change?  And what are the processes that will help ensure that your new environment best suits your new life?  In short, how do you see the promise, not just the problems, in moving forward?

“Rightsizing is a conscious, practical, and psychological evolution in the way one lives one’s life, a process that enables people to create new surroundings that will profoundly impact the way they feel and behave.  It leads to simplifying, decluttering, perhaps even redesigning one’s environment.  It may even prompt a move- either to smaller, more practical quarters or to a home that could be larger, but more suited to your needs.  The transition will, if executed properly, liberate you from many real-life burdens and free you in ways you cannot now imagine.”

All of this will be discussed in Simplicity’s next Lunch and Learn on Thursday, April 18^th.   This session will use Rightsizing Your Life, by Ciji Ware, as our springboard.  The book is full of thoughtful and practical information but you do not need to buy or read in advance.  While our focus will be overcoming the emotional obstacles to rightsizing, Simplicity will offer plenty of practical suggestions for weathering such a change.

Rightsizing requires a good deal of introspections and honesty.  Questions are hard and answers might not come easily:

-Have you accepted that the living arrangement that worked in the past might not best the best for the future?

-How does your family really need to live now?

-How invested in this change are your significant others (spouse, partner, children)?

-Are you ready to let go of possessions that no longer serve you and how exactly do you accomplish that in a rational and orderly fashion?

If you’ve pondered questions like these, and answers point to a need for change, you’re ready to rightsize. A great first step is to join Simplicity and others on the rightsizing path  at Lunch and Learn.

Rightsizing Your Life

Thursday April 18th

Presented by Robin McCoy, Simplicity Organizer

Have you had a shift in your family or living situation? Do you anticipate a major life event- retirement, becoming an empty nester, welcoming home a boomeranger, selling the big house?  If so, this session is designed for you.   The emotional and psychological challenges of major life changes will be our focus but plenty of practical suggestions and strategies for weathering such a change will also be discussed.

Cost:$25 per person if you register on-line, $30 at the door.

What to bring: A salad topping to share.

                Free for all Junior League members who register on-line.

*Junior League Members, Click Here to Register

Need a real life example?? Graham Hill made millions when he sold his tech start-up, but eventually he felt his swanky lifestyle was wasteful and made a drastic change, moving into a 420-foot home and scrapping the excesses. Watch more at the link below. 

 Living with Less-Tech Millionaire downsizes to 420 Square Feet

Statistics on Paper and Filing

•  The average American gets 49,060 pieces of mail in a lifetime, one third of it is junk mail·
•  There are thirty-seven hours of unfinished work on your desk at any given time.
• 90% of all documents handled each day are merely shuffled.
• Over 800 million pages are created from computer printouts per day, enough to fill a file drawer 225 miles long.
• 80% of filed papers are never referenced again. 50% of all filed materials are duplicates or expired information.
• Experience continues to show that 30%-40% of all recorded information can be immediately deleted from electronic systems or paper systems.
• Studies show that some executives will pick up a single piece of paper from their desk thirty or forty times before acting on it.-Michael F. Woolery, Seize the Day
• By switching to electronic bills, statements and payments, the study (commissioned by the non profit Pay It Green Alliance) found, the average US household could save 6.6 pounds of paper and reduce greenhouse gases by 171 pounds per year.  According to the alliance, you could save up to $100 on postage, $50 on checks per year-and whatever you would have spend on late fees. -Ilyce Glink, Tribune Media Services.
• The average American business person loses an hour a half a day, or 40 hours a year, in lost productivity, searching for lost and misplaced items from messy desks and files. - Wall Street Journal

Struggling to find ways to let go of some of your belongings?  Below we have complied a list of non-profits and vendors in Charlotte that can help simplify your life and clear the clutter!

If you don’t see what you need on the list below check out our resource page at: http://www.simplicity-organizers.com/diy-resources/where-to-donate-donations.html

Books, CD’s, DVD’S, VHS Tapes

Mecklenburg Library Book Drive

http://www.cmlibraryfriends.org/

Furniture and Beds

Beds for Kids

http://www.bedsforkids.org/items-we-take/

Newborn Clothes & Blankets

Baby Bundles

http://babybundlesnc.org/donate-now/

Art & Crafts and Gardening Supplies

LifeSpan Services

http://www.lifespanservices.org/donate/ways-to-help-wish-list/

Stuffed Animals

Stuffed Animals for Emergencies

http://www.stuffedanimalsforemergencies.org/Home.php

Old Electronics

Donate Games

http://www.donategames.org/donate/

Building Materials and Home Fixtures

Habitat for Humanity

http://www.charlotterestore.org

Shoes

Soles for Souls

http://www.soles4souls.org

Wine Corks

ReCork

http://www.recork.org

Bulk Trash/Junk Removal & Donation Drop Off Services

Captain Clutter, Alan Womack

http://www.captaincluttercharlotte.com

Old Paint Removal/Disposal

Trinity Painters, Vincent McCullough

704.582.2827

Papers

Shred-It

www.shredit.com

Come and shred your papers for free at the Simplicity Lunch and Learn.  For more details, visit: www.simplicitylunchandlearn.eventbrite.com

Can’t make it to lunch? Come from 1-2pm and shred up to 3 bags for $25!

WHO’S REALLY THE BOSS?

We think we own our stuff but often times it really owns us.

If you’ve got plenty of space for all your things, this might not be obvious.  But as soon as you find yourself pinched for space, this reality rears its ugly head.  And thus begins the conflict between what we want or need to do with all the excess and what we think we ought to do.
There are many reasons we hold on to things we know we’d be better off without. These things are clutter.

Clutter is …

Anything unused or unloved

Anything broken and unlikely to be fixed

Anything easily replaced if necessary

Anything that exceeds the space available

So what are the most common types and how can they be overcome?

Inherited Clutter

“It’s been in the family forever.”  That might be true, but if the items in question don’t fit your lifestyle or your taste, you can and should find another home for them.  Cast a wider net.  If immediate family members don’t want the things, see if cousins, nieces and nephews, or close friends do.  Beauty and utility are in the eyes of the beholder.  What is clutter to one person might be treasure to another.  It might sound like heresy, but family heirlooms can be sold or donated.

Gifted Clutter

A gift, once properly acknowledged, belongs to the recipient.  If you’ve been given something that you don’t want or need, you’re under no obligation to keep it.  After a proper thank you, thoughtful re-gifting or donating can keep this type of clutter at bay.

Buyers’ Remorse Clutter

I paid a lot of this item so I’d better keep it.  It seems wasteful to let it go.  The psychological cost of holding on to mistakes is often higher than the dollar cost.  Mistakes happen.  Every time you look at the misguided purchase (particularly if it was an expensive mistake), you’ll feel bad about it.  Let the item go and vow to not make that same mistake again.

Just In Case Clutter

This is closely related to buyers’ remorse clutter.  How often do you say, “I might need this someday so I’d better hold on to it.”  Or, “I’m not sure what this is or how it’s used, but I’d better save it, just in case.”

If “this” is something incredibly difficult to find and expensive to acquire, maybe you give yourself a pass.  Otherwise, give yourself permission to let it go.  The random hardware, key, computer cord etc are almost certainly clutter and can be discarded without any remorse.

Coming back to where we started, your stuff owns you, not the other way around.  And paradoxically, the more we surrender, the more in control of our homes and our lives we become.  Learning to let go of clutter is an acquired habit.  The more you practice letting go, the easier it will become.

We would love to also share with you a special sermon given by JoeB Martin in Atlanta, GA, in regards to clutter.  Click the link below to hear more about how to simplify your life!

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29359240/highlight/328064

Focus on freedom (through better organization)

By Angie Mattson, Your Organized Guide, Inc.

Freedom – it’s what many people really desire. It might be what you desire. Freedom from clutter. Freedom from confusion. Freedom to go, and do, and be and have anything you want. One of my clients really wanted it and finally discovered how to have it. Here’s how it went down:

We’d spent six months together working on his Five Essential Business Systems (TM), creating checklists, flowcharts, and delegation documents and more in order to help him grow his business sustainably.

When met for a follow up session, he said, “Angie, last week I had two entire days with almost nothing to do. Work was being done, but I wasn’t having to do it.”

In a word: he had discovered true FREEDOM!

I asked him what he did with some of the free time and he said, “I went home and had lunch with my girls.” Three precious girls and his wife. Lunch at home in the middle of the week. It was marvelous to hear.

So many people (you?) become an entrepreneur in order to have more freedom, flexibility and variety. To make more money. To stop working for the not-so-great boss or the company that doesn’t nurture your creative side. To actually do work you’ve always dreamed of.

Instead, the vision of self-employment can become a reality gone terribly wrong:

• You’re working 24/7

• Weekends and vacations – what are those?

• Dinner at home with family just doesn’t happen anymore

• Your hobbies – not touch in months (or years…)

• Working on the fly isn’t working anymore. Balls are being dropped, clients are getting frustrated, money is being lost (or never collected in the first place…)

After working with more than a hundred small business owners, I am convinced the key to discovering real freedom is getting your business and your life organized.

And I know it’s something you really want.

Create and use systems – these are just organized sets of instructions, steps, or how to’s. Get yourself organized. Good, consistent habits grow a business, support your success, and your freedom.

Angie Mattson is Chief Efficiency Officer with Your Organized Guide, Inc. She’ll be presenting The Five Essential Business Systems ™ on Thursday, February 14, 2013 as part of Simplicity Organizers’ Lunch and Learn Series. Come find out how easy it is to put the power of systems to work in your small business.