Product Analysis for ADD: The hanging toiletry bag

http://www.ikou.com.au/contents/en-us/p784_Product_510.html

Hanging toiletry bags like this one from iKOU seem to promise us AD/HD people that we can attain organization.  After all, look at all those pockets!  This is when we dearly need to analyze the product to see if it really will work with our unique needs.  One of the best ways to do this is to actually go through the motions of using the product and notice where you start to get annoyed with it and notice where you begin to think of avoiding using part of it.  (Playing with it requires that you be at a store, rather than buying it online.)  Here's what I found when I analyzed a folding travel bag that was very similar to this one.

Good points

• The pockets are see-through.  AD/HD people are very visual, so we need to be able to see what we have.  

Bad points

• It takes more effort to put toiletries back into its bag than it does to just leave toiletries on the bathroom counter.  
• You have to remember which pocket each toiletry goes in once you take it out.
• No matter where you hang this in the bathroom, some part of it will be awkward to get to.  Hanging it from the shower bar (up high) will make it awkward to reach into the top compartments.  Hanging it from the towel bar (chest level) will require you to stoop to reach the bottom compartments.  This ensures putting toiletries back every day will hassle an AD/HD person.

 With more bad points than good points, this product will probably not serve an AD/HD person as well as, say, something with one compartment that you can just throw things in.  

The only time this might actually be a good idea is if you travel a lot and change hotels every night.  Another situation in which it might be helpful is if you share a bathroom with a lot of people and there's not room for everyone to store their toiletries there. (But in that situation a caddy would probably work better than this.)

Thinking about what you will have to do to use an organizing product is an important part of shopping for organizing supplies.  A product can look like the coolest thing in the world, but if it doesn't make life easier for you and doesn't fit into the way you do things, it's just a waste of money.

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

Strategies to see through the marketing in magazines

Magazine marketers love to show their products in the most favorable and attractive context.  They know that consumers aren’t just buying a product, they are trying to buy a “vision” of what they want their lives to be.     Just remember, every vision is made up of individual elements, and if you were to consider the individual pieces alone, you might not care so much about certain parts, and appreciate other parts more. 

When you see a beautiful picture and you want that for yourself, try using your imagination to eliminate elements from the picture in order to discover what about it excites you.  Imagine the walls a different color.  Imagine the piece of furniture without anything on it.  Imagine how your stuff would look there.   Doing this exercise helps you narrow down what exactly you like about the picture.  Incorporate only what excites you and nothing else. 

I was looking at the Container Store’s website and happened to look at their desks.  Their desks were very appealing.  They showed them with magazine storage boxes, little sculptures, a pretty wall color behind them, a laptop open on the working surface, and little flat file boxes in coordinated colors arranged on the shelves above.   I found these pictures so attractive, that I knew it was important to me to figure out what exactly I liked about them because if I was to go ahead and buy any of those desks, if I was buying the vision and not the product, I would be disappointed if I didn’t end up with a setup that looked just like those pictures.  So I used my imagination and pretended that everything on the desks were gone. 

Guess what? Looking at those totally bare desks, I could see they were completely boring!  If I had only bought a desk, I would be disappointed that it didn’t look like the pictures when I got it put together.   If looking at the empty desk was boring, then that meant that I found the stuff on the desk the attractive thing.  But this I found to be completely silly.  After all, it wasn’t my stuff arranged or organized according to my needs, so if I bought that stuff for myself and merged it what I already had, it wouldn’t look anything like that picture at all.  (And I could tell that based on the way I organize stuff, the color-coordinated flat file boxes would be completely useless!) 

I looked at some decorating blogs because I was trying to figure out how to decorate my fireplace mantel.  I saw this one picture that had a really artistic-looking fireplace—it had candles, some plants and topiaries, some pictures, some little knickknacks on pedestals.. I thought, “Now that is cute.”  But then when I started looking at each individual thing, I discovered that not a single one of those things would have been something I would have picked up excitedly in a store and bought.  Not one single thing was cool enough in and of itself to justify my buying it; it was only the artistic arrangement of all the elements that was attractive.   But that’s not the way to buy stuff!  You don’t buy stuff all at once because you have a vision of exactly how you’re going to arrange it (at least I’m not that skilled.  Usually you buy things one thing at a time because each little thing appeals to you somehow.  I still don’t have a decorated mantel, but I expect someday

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

Coping with the rise of materialism

In our efforts to de-clutter, it can help us to recognize how the rise of materialism occurred in the first place.   If we can learn the causes of materialism and the forces that set it in motion, we will be better equipped to resist it.  If we can resist it, instead of purchasing impulsively and finding ourselves dissatisfied, we will be able to purchase more rationally and enjoy more satisfaction.

Our society is structured around free enterprise.  That means there is a lot of competition for dollars, for resources, and for competitive advantage of any kind.  When factory production first began, it was found that goods could be created faster, cheaper, and better on an assembly line (or with machine labor) than by individuals.  But when a factory can create lots of goods very quickly, that means they also have to find more buyers, otherwise the factory must be closed and workers have no job for a while.  (Can’t have that, can we?)

To solve the “problem” of factory oversupply, it became necessary to create demand.  How do you create demand?  With all kinds of marketing.  In short, the object of marketing became to find all kinds of ways to get the potential buyer to feel that they needed and wanted and could not exist another moment without buying the product, whether it was a new washer, a new car, a new bobble-head doll, or a new pencil.

Thus, to avoid materialism, we must become savvy to as many marketing tricks as we can.  It is those marketing tricks that we fall for.

Today marketing is so pervasive we sometimes have a hard time recognizing it for what it is. 

TV commercials do much these days to make their marketing not so obvious, by making it seem cool with humor or an appeal to our values.  They use emotion to persuade, going to the root of our deepest hopes and fears.  Here’s a list of common emotional triggers they will try to hit:  

• fear --- “you will be unsafe until you buy our product”; “our product can prevent loss”; “without our product you might lose_____”
• lust --- “you will get lots of attention from the opposite sex if you buy our product”
• desire for respect --- “you will impress people if you buy our luxury product”
• desire for belonging ---“you will not be cool or liked unless you use our product”;  “you will be able to communicate and connect with people and make friends better if you buy our product”
• desire for fun --- “you will have the time of your life if you buy our product”
• dislike of difficulty --- “you will have an easier life if you buy our product”
• self-interest --- “buy one and get two!”

I remember watching TV as a kid and seeing all those toy commercials.  The commercials always made the toys look really fun.  I noticed the toy packaging always made the toys look really fun too.  But when the toy came out of the package, fun didn’t magically appear; I had to create it myself with my imagination.  I also began to notice my actual fun never looked like the fun shown on the commercials.  I started to notice the techniques commercials used to make the toy seem extra fun--lots of close-ups and titled camera shots and motion and kids giggling and happy music, but none of that was anywhere to be found when I actually was playing with the toy itself.  I tried to increase my fun by imagining I was in a toy commercial as I was playing, but after a while I started to feel like I was tying my play to a commercial.  That seemed lame to me, so I stopped, and started looking for toys that were inherently fun.

Catalogue pictures show us a picture of a person using a new product and smiling happily.  We are to conclude that all their problems are over.  The text underneath those pictures is artfully written to describe just how wonderfully the product works and how well it is made (of the finest materials) and how much fun you will have using it.   There is no one around to critique the product you and point out just how unnecessary it really is, how rarely you will ever use it, how expensive it really is, and how little room you have to store it.  (Ramps for your dog to get into your car?  Long-armed extension pole for changing light bulbs in a vaulted ceiling?  Seriously?!)

If you ever find yourself thinking that your problems will be over if you buy something, that’s when you’ve been snookered by marketing.  You have fallen in love with an image.  Image is not substance and reality.  We want it to be reality (and marketers want us to think it is reality), but it is not.

Not only do marketers use emotion, they use lighting, packaging, pricing, location in the store, sales promotions, coupons, affiliate offers, and more to try to get you to buy.

But let’s talk about strategies that can help you see through marketing ploys. 

Don’t go to a store unless you have a list of things to buy that you know you need.  This is supposed to help you keep from buying impulsively.  If you do not find what you want, don’t buy something else; keep looking elsewhere.

Once you have found what you need and have bought it, stop looking.  Allow yourself to feel satisfied with filling your need.

Do not look at catalogs that come in the mail.  Do not look at ads that come in the mail.  Try to avoid watching commercials on TV.  Avoid window shopping.  Use great caution on Pinterest.  This works because often merely seeing something new and fancy makes us start wanting it.  Not seeing stuff that we might want will help us be content with what we have.

If you are an avid couponer, do not save coupons for things you don’t use, and don’t buy things you don’t use with your coupons.  Coupons are designed to encourage more buying. 

Sellers really like to price their products ending with 99.   Like $5.99  or 12.99.  Your mind tends to tune out the end number and only read the first number.  To overcome this marketing trick, you have to consciously remind yourself that the $5.99 is actually $6 + (because of tax).  Tell yourself the truth about the price.

The racks of candy and magazines and little toys and tools in the checkout aisle are there because they are IMPULSE items.  When you are standing in line at the store you are a captive audience and sellers take advantage of this by placing small, inexpensive items nearby that you can look at and think about and then (hopefully) decide you want.  And if you manage to resist, then your kids will still usually get entranced and want something, whine for it, and you’ll be more likely to get it for them to get them to be quiet.   Those impulse items are cheap so that you’ll be more likely to think to yourself, “Oh, it won’t add too much to my total.”  And when you are standing in line, you don’t know your total yet, so you are more likely to underestimate it and decide that you can afford a little extra something.  The strategy to get around this is to make the decision that you will never buy anything that is in the checkout aisle.   Stick to your list like a champ and you’ll beat the marketers.

Be aware of the packaging.  Or perhaps I should say “Beware of the packaging.”  Packaging doesn’t just protect the product, it also markets it.   The graphics on the box, the printing, even the shape and colors all is part of the marketing.  The graphics may show you pictures of happy people using the product.  The text may tell you all the neat things you can do with the product and all the things you get as a package deal.  The people who designed the packaging hope to generate excitement with lush language that gets you imagining the benefits. 

How do you keep your feet firmly on the ground when you find yourself getting excited about something?   You have to think about

·      whether you need it,

·      how often you’d really use it,

·      where you’ll store it

and you have to imagine yourself in a realistic scenario as you use the product.  Don’t imagine yourself in the ideal environment pictured on the box or in the marketing literature; imagine yourself in the midst of your usual crazy life.   Try to articulate to yourself exactly why you are attracted to it and why you find it appealing.   And then try this one: imagine what it will look like when it is dirty and old and think about whether you would still want it then or whether you’d find yourself just getting a new one. 

Remember that just because a new model has been released doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the older models.  Changing a product’s look every few years is a strategy marketers use to try to make us think that what we have is too old to use anymore.  Buying a new one just because of the new look is the equivalent of saying, “Style matters more than function.” 

Hopefully you will be more aware of the subtle marketing tricks used on you to try to make you spend your money on what you don’t need. 

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

What should I make for dinner tonight?

Lorenzo Serafini Boni, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorenzo_serafini_boni/6441999729/ 

Every night the same thing happens.   You stand in front of the refrigerator for 10 minutes wondering what to make for dinner and often give up in disgust by ordering pizza.  You have a vague feeling that you should eat better, but you’re not sure what to do to change.

The problem is that you are forcing yourself to be inventive at a time when it is difficult to think (when you are hungry).  A much better method is to create a Weekly Meal Plan that you post near your refrigerator.  When dinnertime comes around, you will choose from the list what you are in the mood to make and eat.

A Weekly Meal Plan may sound like you have to list out 21 separate meals, which is a very intimidating prospect.  Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that involved.  First, you can take it for granted that breakfast will be cereal (or some other breakfast food that you make).  Second, you can also assume that lunch will be something very simple like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or leftovers from last night’s dinner.   That will leave only seven meals to choose and plan.  Depending on how big the meal is and how willing you are to eat leftovers, you may only have to plan three or four meals.   Planning 4-7 meals sounds a lot more doable, doesn’t it?  You will use your Weekly Meal Plan to build your grocery list.

To make it easier for you to create a Weekly Meal Plan, you can make a Master Meal List.  This is a list of all your favorite foods that you like to make.  You keep this list with your recipe books and you will consult it weekly when it is time to create your Weekly Meal Plan.

A fast way to create your Master Meal List is to:

1.     Look through your recipes and write down all favorite main dishes

2.     Walk down the frozen food aisle at the grocery store and write down everything that looks good

You can also make master lists of favorite veggie dishes and fruit dishes to help your family get adequate nutritional intake.  You may choose to rotate according to schedule if routines help you, or you may pick and choose according to mood.   When you try out new recipes, decide whether it is good enough to be put on the Master Meal List or whether it can be consigned to oblivion.

Having a Master Meal List and a Weekly Meal Plan has been a big help to us.

·      The Master Meal List makes it much faster to plan meals for a week.  No more straining the brain to make something up.  Instead, you choose from a list.

·      Having a Weekly Meal Plan makes it really easy and fast to create our grocery list.  You only put on the list what is needed to make the menu.

·      Buying only what is needed to make the menu means you don’t waste money on impulse buying.  

·      You won’t waste food, since everything you buy is needed for the menu.

·      No more standing hungry in front of the fridge trying to think of something to make for dinner.  You have a meal plan to guide you!

 Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

De-cluttering and the parable of the duplicate employees

A certain CEO was visiting his employees and chatting with them and happened to ask three of them what they did. 

The first employee, Alex, said, “I am in charge of creating our sales campaigns.”

“Good, you are very important to our business,” said the CEO.  He then turned to the second employee, Bob.

“What do you do?”

“I do nothing.  But I create our sales campaigns in case Alex is gone, ” said Bob.

“Hmm,” said the CEO, his eyebrows narrowing a bit.  He turned to the third employee, Casper.  “What do you do?”

“I do nothing too.  But I create our sales campaigns in case Bob and Alex are both gone,” said Casper, cheerily.

“Hmmmm,” said the CEO.  He turned back to Alex. 

“How often are you gone, Alex?” he asked.

“I have perfect attendance!” said Alex proudly.

What should the CEO do?  Should he keep Bob and Casper "just in case" or should he do some downsizing? 

If we think of duplicate things that we have "just in case" as if they were duplicate employees, it seems like a no-brainer to let them go, especially if our favorite is tried and true and always there.

Now, I know there are people who advocate having duplicates of small cheap things like scissors or reading glasses or tape just in case one gets misplaced or broken.   Sure, the smaller and cheaper the object, the less it seems to matter, but if so, it makes me wonder to myself, where is the line that separates the cheap and duplicable from the things that I consider expensive enough that I will put effort into not losing it?  Is it $3?  Or $5?  Or $20?  

When I got interested in rollerblading, I was able to find a second-hand pair of rollerblades.  All I had to do was replace the wheels that were worn down.  When I replaced the wheels, I considered keeping the old ones around "just in case the new ones had a problem," but I realized after a day or so that the new wheels were so much better than the old ones, that there was no way I'd want to reuse the old ones in any circumstance!   So I got rid of those old wheels.

How about you?  What items do you have duplicates of and why?  Was there something you decided to cut down to just one of?  Why?  Please share your reasons, since others will benefit from it.

Do you need extra help with organizing and de-cluttering? Hire me! Go to www.phoenixhomeorganizing.com for more information about my services! Did this article help you? Be sure to share it with your friends!

A post on false projects

On my other blog Scriptorium Blogorium, I just put up a post called "Projects like ravening wolves" in which I discuss how to tell if you have taken on a "false project," or a project that has little chance of benefiting you.

Check it out.

Dealing with de-cluttering fear

I ran across the Blog “Be More with Less” with the post “Busting Your Biggest Clutter Fears” and thought I would give my take on some of the fears discussed and add a few tips of my own. So.. what are your biggest clutter fears?

I’m afraid I’ll have to buy it again

Are you one of those people who are reluctant to get rid of things you don’t use because you are afraid you’ll only have to buy it again later?

The best way to overcome this fear is to think about how many times you have used it so far, and then make a projection based upon how you live your life now how much you will have occasion to use it in the future. If you live life in the future very much like you live life today, what are the chances that you will use this object?

One of the mistakes we often make is to think that we HAVE to own and keep everything we use, even if we only used it once. A better way is to own and keep things that we have a very high probability of needing and using OFTEN.

Let me give you an example. I bought a crowbar a few months ago because I thought I was going to need to use it to change out some cement tiles on my roof. In the end, I didn’t really need to use it because a fellow from my church was kind enough to do the job for me. Yet I have been hanging on to the crowbar out of worry that if I let go of it, I will only need to buy it again later.

Yet, if I try to determine the probability of me having a need to use the crowbar, I find that I shouldn’t worry about it. Crowbars are used for prying things. Our house is pretty nice the way it is and I don’t have any project that I’d need a crowbar for. Neither I or my husband are into carpentry. The claw on our claw hammer is a pretty good tool for prying if we ever need it. If life continues as it is into the future for at least ten years, the probability of an occasion to use the crowbar is very very low. Probably near .25%. I can now put the crowbar in our discard box.

I’m afraid my stuff won’t go to the right place.

Let’s put this fear in perspective. When a young girl puts her newborn baby up for adoption, she would be justified in her concern that her baby will go to the right place. In comparison to this, inanimate objects deserve much less worry.

It is good to put some effort into making sure the stuff that you get rid of goes to the right place, but you have to know where to draw the line. Too much concern for everything means that the burden of de-cluttering anything becomes prohibitively heavy.

One of the fastest, easiest methods of getting your stuff to the “right place” is to drop it off at the donation center of the nearest thrift store. The economic value of thrift stores is that they are an aggregation of many different types of objects that would be difficult to find homes for individually. They are a place that many people can come and pick out what they want and like. There is a higher probability that your precious whatsit will find a buyer there than if you were to take all your time and ask all your friends if they need it. The advantage to you is that while your whatsit is waiting for a buyer, it is not taking up space in your house any more, and you get a tax deduction for a charitable contribution.

Your main two concerns should be getting lightly used articles to a place where they can be used, and getting recyclables where they should go. But some stuff is going to have to go to the landfill. Accept that you’ve done your best and let go.

I’m afraid I won’t have anything left to give my children.

The best thing besides your love and attention that you can give your children is to keep a journal. Journals are like a piece of yourself; they communicate all the stories and memories you choose to record. When you are gone from the earth, your children will appreciate having your journals the most, perhaps even more than having many photos of you.

I’m afraid that if I let go of something sentimental, I’ll forget the memory.

Many organizing professionals advocate taking a picture of your sentimental items. My problem with this advice is that it doesn’t fully seem to deal with the difficulty. The difficulty is caused because there are good memories and feelings associated with the item and those feelings have to be honored and validated in a way that is as satisfying and long-lasting as keeping the item would be.

A better way to honor those memories is to write about them in a journal. By writing about the feelings, they are preserved for the future. The triumphs, dreams, and all the pleasant feelings can be communicated to others, which is part of the fun of remembering.

“I’m afraid that I wasted money on things and giving stuff away is like money down the drain.”

Time to confront that fear…ask yourself: how much money are you going to have to pay to get rid of your stuff? If the answer is what I think it is, you don’t have to pay anything. If you have to pay to let go, only then can you really say that giving stuff away is “money down the drain.”

If you are have a sneaking suspicion that you wasted your money on buying something, it isn’t going to do you any good to hang on to it. Repent and get rid of it! Confess that you have wasted your money, and then resolve that you will stop wasting your space. As commenter Rita@thissortaoldlife wrote on http://www.bemorewithless.com/2012/busting-your-biggest-clutter-fears/, “keeping the clothes I never wore would not get me the money back or justify the expenitures—and once the truth of their value (not much) was seen, I could not un-see it. Getting rid of them did remove the constant-visual reminder of the choices I regretted. It was much easier to move on and leave them in the past…”

If I let go of ______, someone in my family will be mad.

Is it your stuff or their stuff? If they have given it to you, then YOU are the one who gets to choose what to do with it, not them. If you are worried about them getting mad at you if you get rid of it, ask them if they want it. If they don’t want it, then you can get rid of it without fear. If they get mad after that, remind them that you have a right to do what you want with the stuff that belongs to you and remind them that you offered it to them beforehand.

Prevent school supply waste and save money

One thing that makes it difficult for a student to get organized is that teachers require assignments to be handed in different ways, and it is hard to anticipate what they will want (and thus what supplies to get) without talking to them before school starts. If you buy school supplies without knowing what will actually be used, there is a high chance that you will waste money when you have buy school supplies a second time when you REALLY know what you need.

Some teachers insist upon seeing a whole notebook of a student’s work. But if Melanie keeps all her schoolwork for all her classes in a binder with different subdivisions, she can’t give the whole binder to the Mr. Smith because then Melanie won’t have her other papers for her other classes. Other times, the teacher might ask the student to hand in a paper. If Robert is using a notebook, he can tear out the sheet of paper the Miss Jones wants, but once the assignment is returned, it can’t be magically un-torn back into Robert’s notebook. All of a sudden, Robert needs a folder to keep his loose papers in.

With all this confusion, Melanie and Robert may throw up their hands in disgust and put everything in folders. Unfortunately, when it comes time to review for Mr. Black’s test, they have to sift through a pile of papers and assignments that have accumulated in their two-pocket folders. Where does the material covered in the test start and end in their notes? Should the returned assignments be kept mingled among class notes, or should it be kept separate? Where do they put sheets of extra blank paper? Where do they put notes in their folders when class is over? Where do they put assignments not yet turned in so they don’t lose them? Where do they put handouts that the teacher gives them or practice tests or syllabi?

When I was a student, I eventually learned that if I bought my notebooks and binders and folders before school started, I would find that I had gotten the wrong thing and some of my teachers wanted something different. So I had to learn to refrain from getting those things until I had gone to at least one class with all my teachers to find out what they wanted.

When money is tight, it is tempting to put several subjects in one notebook, especially if it becomes obvious that not all the paper will get used in one year or one semester. This can cause problems if the subjects are not separated in some way. When test time comes, Melanie will want to consolidate her notes together, and running across history notes in the middle of geometry notes gets distracting. If the same notebook must be used, it is helpful to start one subject from the front and another subject from the back, then work toward the middle.

Another way to improve organization is to use a portable accordion file instead of folders. In this way, papers can remain loose and a class can have a multiple pockets, one for notes, one for assignments, one for tests, one for handouts, one for projects, and so on. Accordion files come with little tabs at the top of each divider that can be nicely labeled in any way a student needs or wishes. As papers are added to the accordion folder, it will expand to hold them and there is usually no need to worry about exceeding its holding capacity. (This is great compared to binders, which come in certain sizes that can get overfull.)

I think it is kind of silly that folders are limited to only two pockets. They should have at least four. With only two pockets, a person has to create mental divisions inside each folder. That’s like living with a refrigerator with only two shelves, or living with a closet with only two hangers. It adds to the cognitive load on the student mind, which is already trying to remember how to balance an oxidation-reduction reaction or how to compute the greatest height reached by a launched projectile, or how to compute the midpoint of a line on the Cartesian plane, not to mention how to get through the day without being made fun of by that group. Yes. Only two pockets in folders adds to student cognitive load.