How to choose a purse

If you want to be organized, choosing the right purse is a very important thing. After all, you take it everywhere. You have things in there that you use the most.

Here's what I have in my purse:

• money
• checkbook
  
• credit cards
• drivers license
• loyalty cards
• keys
• sunglasses
• cell phone
• Palm pilot
• pad of paper and pencil
• mints
• swiss army knife
• chapstick
• nail clippers
• earplugs
• asperin

Having an organized purse will save you time when you have to find something in it. The faster you can lay your fingers on what you are looking for, the more time you will save yourself.

Think about it. If you access your purse 5 times a day and it takes you 30 seconds to find something (when it should only take you 2 seconds), that can add up to 15 hours a year spent searching through your purse! It’s the pawing around, picking up the wrong thing, and feeling for the right thing that takes so long. The more objects rattling around together in a compartment, the longer it can take.

How do you choose a purse that will help you stay organized? It all comes down to one word—POCKETS. You want a purse with as many pockets as you can find.

I’ve found that if I have more than three items in a single pocket, it starts to be hard for me to dig things out. So for me it becomes like a mathematical equation. If I have 27 things that I carry around with me, then I know that I need…

27 divided by 3 = 9

…..nine pockets.

Now, do I actually go around and count all the pockets in the purses at the store? No. But you can bet that I don’t get the typical purse that only has three compartments. (Those three-pocket monstrosities are WRETCHED for organization.) No, I simply look for the purse that has oodles and oodles of pockets and compartments and zippers.

Yes, those purses can be a little confusing to use the first three days. All those pockets take some getting used to. But once you’re used to them, you know exactly where EVERYTHING is.

If you absolutely can’t resist a three-compartment beast of a purse, then do yourself a favor and get a purse insert that has plenty of pockets.

What are your criteria for choosing a good purse to keep you organized?

Image: http://www.petproducts5.com/2012/01/an-essential-fashion-accessory-purses/

What to do with greeting cards?

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what to do with greeting cards if you tend to get sentimental.

When I got married, everyone who gave me a wedding gift also included a greeting card. Some of them were really pretty. And of course, I was just plain starry-eyed about my wedding and so I wanted to save things that reminded me of that special time.

How did I deal with all those greeting cards? It took time--at least a year. I went through several stages, and I did different things with the cards at each stage.

Stage #1 For the first six months after my wedding, I wanted to keep ALL the greeting cards. So I did. And, to make sure that I continued to appreciate them, I taped them all up on the wall of our study in a big greeting-card-collage. I thought of it as our “wedding shrine.”

Eventually I got to the point when the greeting cards weren’t giving me the same happy emotional jolt of remembering my wedding as they first did. (I realized this wasn’t because anything was wrong with me, it was just that I had emotionally moved on to other things, like our actual marriage.) So, it was time to get a little more selective.

Stage #2. I decided I would take down any cards that didn’t fill at least one of the following criteria:

• They had to be pretty. Like knock-your-socks-off pretty.
• They had to have something meaningfully personal written to us. (“Meaningful” being defined as something that would not also apply to any other newly wedded couple.)

Cards that I took down were sufficiently boring to me by that time that I was able to just put them in the recycling bin without a pang.

Stage #3. After another few months, I was ready to decorate some other way, so I took down those greeting cards, recycled the pretty ones, and put the meaningful ones in a box. This reduced the stack substantially.

Stage #4. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what happened at stage 4, but I have a vague idea that I decided to recycle all the rest of the greeting cards. Knowing me, I told myself that I probably wouldn’t read them over again and I wanted the space to be free for other things. The shrine stage (stage 1) had already validated my sentimentality all that I needed.

So that’s how I dealt with the highly emotionally charged wedding day greeting cards. It’s about giving yourself time to savor them by display, and then getting more selective when you start to take them for granted.

How about letters from friends and family?

About a year ago, I went through a box of letters that I saved from back in high school from old friends. (Ahh, the good old days when people still wrote letters and put them in the mail!) I read through them all and looked for the extra witty or interesting ones to keep. Then I tossed the others.

The blog Small Notebook in the post “Organize greeting cards: the stack method” has some good suggestions for how to deal with greeting cards:

Once you’ve built up a stack, separate them into little piles according to who gave them to you. It’s easier to throw away a few Easter cards from your granny when you can see that you have six of them, and then you can pick your favorite.

Save the cards from the people who are closest to you, not every acquaintance who ever sent you a thank you note.

Image: http://enjoylifeandlove.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-card-saver.html

De-clutter by putting yourself back at the moment of purchase

I stumbled upon a blog called “Clutter Busting with Brooks Palmer”.

One fabulous technique I got from this site was from the post “Hanging on to Something that Hurts.”

In a nutshell, this technique for de-cluttering is simply to pretend that you are at the store trying to decide whether to buy the thing you are looking at. Brooks uses the example of a pair of high heels. If you wouldn’t buy those high heels again now, you can let them go. I love this paragraph from the post:

I remember working with a client in her clothes closet. She was complaining about how certain of her shoes were painful to wear, at the same time she said she liked how good they looked on her. Rather than say she should just get rid of them, I asked her to try them on. She did. She put on a pair. She stood up. She grimaced. I said, "We're in a shoe store. Take a walk around and see if you'd like to buy them." I kept it neutral because I wanted her to be as open as she could be. She walked a few steps and said, "I can't wear these anymore." She did the same with the other shoes that hurt her and she let them go too.

The beauty of this technique is that it helps you realize that you still have the same power now over your stuff to accept it or reject it as you did when you first decided to buy it. It is as if you turn back the clock to the moment of purchase and make the decision again, knowing what you know now after having owned it for _____ years. It helps you realize that you can make different decisions.

To return or not to return?

One of my friends asked me how to deal with the sheer number of receipts that she accumulates and keeps just in case she has to return one of her purchases. I have several thoughts on this.

First, if there are a lot of things that a person plans to return, I would be inclined to stop blaming the store for bad merchandise and start honing decision-making ability to make wise purchases.

Returns happen for one of two reasons, (besides wanting one’s money back):

--The merchandise is defective

--The purchaser changed their mind and doesn’t want the merchandise because they were uninformed as to how it would fit their needs or they were misled as to how it would fit their needs.

Having a large amount of merchandise that one wants to return is a drag because it uses time and energy that could have been used on other more productive pursuits. It gets in the way of actually living life.

In an ideal world, we would not need to keep any receipts because all our purchases would be so thoughtfully made that bad purchases would be avoided. However, occasionally products are defective and sometimes we change our mind, so this isn’t quite practical. So instead, the goal is for us to hone our decision-making and information-gathering abilities so that we will learn before making a purchase that the new gizmo really is going to meet our needs. Good businesses try to make it easier for us to make good decisions by providing products for us to test ahead of time so we can see how it works. It is to our advantage to use testers so that we avoid wasting our own time and energy returning what we could have avoided buying in the first place. It is to our advantage to do some prep work before we purchase.

Purchasing prep work includes:

· Measuring dimensions to make sure there is room for our purchase to fit. (For example, before I bought a new fridge for our home, you can be sure I measured the space in the kitchen so that I would not buy something too big to fit. I was able to find a fridge that fit perfectly.)

· Scanning the internet for possibilities. (It’s no fun to buy something and then find something better later that you could have found with just a little research.)

· Calling stores ahead of time to make sure they have items in stock. (It’s no fun to go on the hunt for something specific and then have the energy sucked from your body gradually when you have to visit four more stores to find what you want because no one has it.)

· Experiment with in-store testers. Try the clothes on. Try using the computer. Use software trial periods. Sit on the furniture. If possible, play with the toys. Listen to the music.

Second, it is helpful to set an arbitrary dollar cost below which we will not bother to return a product. (If your time is worth $30/hour, it is not worth it to take 30 minutes to drive to a store, stand in the customer service line, and drive home just to return a $5 purchase. It’s like spending $15 to get back $5.)

What kind of receipts are worth keeping?

• Furniture purchases
• Software purchases
• Technology purchases
• Expensive repairs (car, house, computer)
• Gift receipts (usually without dollar amounts)
• Business expense receipts (These should have their own file folder)

Where should these important receipts be kept?  How about in a file folder called "Important Receipts!"   (Yes, brilliant, I know!)  You can also make it easy to remember what each receipt is for by writing what it is for clearly at the top, rather than having to decode store-receipt-ese.  (Store-receipt-ese is their abbreviated codes of what things are, which requires you to stare at it for a minute before you realize what they mean.)

How to conserve your emotional-mental energy when de-cluttering

De-cluttering takes up a lot of emotional-mental energy. Why? Because of all the decisions that have to be made about what to keep and what to let go of. One way I’ve found that can help conserve emotional-mental energy is to try to deal with the same category of things all at one time. For instance, if you have to de-clutter your closet, focus all your energy on your clothes and don’t get distracted by anything else that happens to be there.

The goal when focusing on one category at a time is to come up with some quick and easy criteria by which to decide whether to keep or get rid of something. Making up good rules make it so that you don’t have to consult your feelings and memories and agonize for 5 minutes over every little thing.

If you can’t keep focused on one category, it makes it hard to come up with hard-and-fast rules by which to make decisions to keep or give away. Going from a pair of jeans, to a basket, to a piece of paper, to a Christmas ornament, to a kitchen utinsel, to a piece of jewelry would be hard for ANYONE to make decisions about. Every decision becomes harder and slower because you have to make up new rules over and over and over again!

When I was helping my mom de-clutter, we focused on the boxes and boxes of clothes that she had stored away. Previous to this, my mom’s rule had been “keep everything,” so she had to come up with new rules by which she could sort through all those clothes.

The first rule my mom made for herself was: I will keep my favorite clothes. So, she was able to discard a lot of clothes that were not her favorites.

She made piles of different sizes and different seasons of her favorite clothes so that she would be better able to find clothes that fit.

Other rules that my mom came up with were:

• I will keep favorites that are also in fashion. (This meant that she let go a lot of clothes that were not timeless classics.)
• I will keep favorites that are in good repair. (This meant that she let go of clothes that had holes, were frayed, or mildewy.)
• I will keep favorites that look good on me. (This meant that if she didn’t like how she looked when wearing them, out they went.)

When you go to the trouble to make up good rules that help you de-clutter a certain category of stuff, it is to your advantage to make all those similar decisions at the same time. It really IS easier that way. When my mom finished with the clothes in the basement, she went through the clothes in two other closets as well. She was able to make a lot of progress very quickly and easily because most of the hard work happened at the beginning when making her rules.

Image: http://www.tw3ptheclan.com/tw3p-clan-rules/

Prevent clutter by FINISHING

Never underestimate the power of FINISHING as a means to prevent clutter.

FINISH the task of bringing in the mail by:

• Sorting out the junk mail and putting it immediately in the trash (or recycling).
• Paying bills or putting them in a spot just for bills.
• Filing correspondence

FINISH the meal by:

· Clearing the table

· Doing the dishes

· Putting leftovers in the refrigerator

· Cleaning the kitchen counters

· Cleaning the kitchen sink

· Sweeping/vacuming the floor

FINISH the laundry by:

• Folding it
• Handing it up
• Putting the laundry hamper in its place
• Putting the laundry baskets in the laundry room
• Doing any mending

FINISH the project you are working on when you have reached a stopping point by:

• Putting away the materials/tools
• Throwing away the waste material generated
• Putting away the project

FINISH your shopping trip by:

• Recording your purchase amount in your checkbook register or budgeting software
• Cutting off tags
• Filing the receipt (if item is returnable)
• Putting the purchased goods away where they belong
• Throwing away (or recycling) shopping bags
• Putting your purse/wallet where it usually goes
• If purchases are replacing something, put the old item immediately in a give-away box in the garage
  

FINISH your pleasure trip or vacation by:

• Unloading the car
• Unpacking your suitcase and putting clothes in laundry
• Putting away travel gear and suitcases
• Cleaning the car

FINISH a day of school by:

• Hanging up coat
• Doing homework
• Putting books and papers back in backpack
• Putting backpack away

Why toss out expired items?

I’m one of those weird people who likes to read organizing books and one thing that I noticed a number of organizing books consistently say across the board is to throw out stuff that is past its expiration date. This always puzzled me. I thought it was wasteful. The organizing books never give any reasons for this seemingly arbitrary rule.

I am happy to report that I now can give the reason behind that bit of advice.

“Throw away everything past its expiration date” sounds arbitrary because it IS arbitrary. But it serves several useful purposes. Organizing experts have dealt with many people who have farrrrrrr too many of everything that they have been holding on to for farrrrrrr too long, and it would simply take too much time and emotional-mental energy for their clients to painstakingly determine what stuff was still good and what stuff isn’t. In these situations, you draw an arbitrary line in the sand and just say, “Everything that doesn’t fit these requirements must go, no matter what.” This allows you to make lots of progress de-cluttering with little emotional-mental work needed to make decisions.

When I helped my mom de-clutter her medicine cabinet, we adopted this rule of tossing everything expired. De-cluttering then became a matter of checking the expiration date on the bottle. Too old, out you go. Easy-peasy, mac-‘n-cheesey.

This expiration date rule can also be used for make-up too.

What kind of steward am I?

If you are just learning about the principle of stewardship in order to try to improve, it is helpful to ask yourself the following questions that may help you pinpoint where you need to focus your efforts.

What kind of steward am I?

1. Am I in a hurry to get what I want?
2. Am I extravagant?
3. Do I waste?
4. Do I try to ignore what’s wrong?
5. Do I put off fixing things?
6. Am I ignorant of how to take care of anything I own?
7. Do I have lots of things in storage? Can I remember what exactly I am storing?
8. Do I have a hard time letting go?

If you are in a hurry to get what you want, then you will know that you need to focus your efforts on improving impulse control and purchasing according to plan.

If you are extravagant, then you will know that you need to focus on identifying your spending priorities. If you know what is most important to you, then you will gain reasons to save in areas that are less important to you. Just remember, if EVERYTHING is important, then NOTHING is.

If you waste, then you will know that you need to focus on finding ways to plan your usage better so that things get used up. There are two ways to do this. You can find ways for yourself to use things, or you can give to others so they can use it up.

If you know that you try to ignore what's wrong, it helps to look at things as if you had a guest coming to visit in order to try to see things as an outsider would. Then, in order to not get overwhelmed, it helps to make a list of issues that need attention and put them in order of priority.

If you put off fixing things, realize that when too many expensive issues pile up, it makes it very expensive to take care of them all at once. This is why it is preferable to deal with breakage when it happens, rather than putting off fixing it. If you have already put off fixing things, it may be easiest to let things go rather than fix them. Or, you can make a list of problems, prioritize them, and start working through them starting from the highest priority.

If you are ignorant of how to take care of your things, seek out training and information.

If you have lots of things in storage and you don't know what you have, you'll know that you need to work on labeling and listing, if only for insurance reasons.

Gauge your faithfulness as a steward

Sometimes it is useful to measure ourselves to see how well we are doing as a steward of all that we’ve been given. I’ve made this questionnaire up to do just that.

Instructions: Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best

Education

How well have you taken advantage of your educational opportunities?

How well have you used the chance to learn in each class in school?

Talents and skills

List your talents that you are aware of.

Rate yourself on your efforts to expand your talents.

Rate yourself on how well you use your talents for the kingdom of God.

Your space

Rate the orderliness and cleanliness of your room.

Rate your ability to pick up after yourself.

Rate your consistency of keeping your space orderly.

Life skills

Rate your ability to do what needs to be done without being asked.

Rate your ability to do laundry.

Rate your ability to cook.

Rate your ability to clean.

Rate your ability to provide for your needs.

Time

List the main activities that take up your time for productivity, worship, and leisure.

Rate yourself on how appropriately you balance your time between these activities.

Rate yourself on your ability to remember (or use tools to remember) your appointments, assignments, tests, and other important events.

Rate your ability to avoid procrastination.

Health

Rate yourself on how healthy your eating habits are.

Rate yourself on how much exercise you get.

Rate yourself on how often you exercise.

Rate yourself on how well you avoid addictive and harmful substances.

Money

How well do you save for short-term goals?

How well do you save for long-term goals? (college, retirement, mortgage, ect.)

Rate yourself on your ability to spend wisely in the following areas:

• Finding the best price
• Finding the best product to fit your needs.
• Spending to increase your talents.

How well do you keep track of how much you spend and on what?

How well do you find ways to make money honestly?

Rate yourself on how well you contribute to charity.

Relationships

Rate your relationship with your parents.

Rate your relationship with and treatment of your siblings.

Rate your relationship with your spouse or significant other.

Rate your relationship with your coworkers.

Rate your relationship with your friends.

Rate your relationship with your children

Rate your relationship with your extended family.

Rate your relationship with your in-laws.

Religious

Rate your testimony of the following:

• The Godhead
• Christ’s atonement and role as Savior
• Restoration of the gospel
• Prophets

Rate your efforts to strengthen your commitment and testimony of the gospel

Rate your efforts to communicate consistently and sincerely with the Lord.

Rate your efforts to communicate your testimony to others.

Rate yourself on how well you are keeping your baptismal covenants.

Rate yourself on your efforts to read and understand the scriptures.

Rate yourself on your efforts in your calling.

Rate yourself on your efforts to follow counsel from the prophet.

Rate yourself on how well you’ve stood steadfast while being persecuted for your beliefs.

How well are you doing at staying temple-worthy?

This questionnaire is not all-encompassing, but it can give us a good idea of places to focus on for improvement.

The importance of a good file cabinet

I have a good friend who told me she had trouble dealing with her papers. She said that she considers herself a paper hoarder, hanging onto papers for far too long. She said she also tends to bury them somewhere until they no longer are valid. She saves receipts in a box and doesn’t know what to do with them. Because she doesn’t know what to do with her papers, she boxes them up and stacks those boxes in growing piles.

I went over to visit her and help her with organization and while there, I noticed that she didn’t have a file cabinet. All of a sudden, the problem came into focus. She had a paper problem because there was no good place to put the papers that she needed!

Everyone is going to have important papers they have to save and reference from time to time, and a file cabinet is the most efficient way to do that.

How to choose a file cabinet in the right size

When I was a college student, I kept my important papers in a plastic accordion file. I really didn’t have many important papers to keep. I had some bills, bank statements, check stubs, resumes, rental agreements, my car title, and novelty items (like directions for how to play a diatonic harmonica and an application from the Treeclimbers Association). I have this tendency to give things pretentious names, so I labeled my accordian file, “FilE 4 tHe puRsuiT & cAptUre (not to mention AbDuctTiOn) of TriViA & otHeR niTpiCkY dEtAilS.”

When I got married, my husband had his important papers and we merged them together, though not completely at first. They no longer fit in my accordion file, so we got two mobile file boxes. His papers went into blue hanging files, and mine went into red hanging files. In time, we outgrew those two mobile boxes and this was when we bought our first metal file cabinet with two drawers. We kept the file boxes, and they held all the papers associated with our computers as well as instruction manuals for all the technology we owned.

I tell this story not to bore you but to show you that our file containers grew as our needs grew. The amount of important papers in one’s life grows and changes with our circumstances.

My friend decided to take my advice and she bought herself a filing cabinet. (I have yet to see what it looks like.) Although she was a novice to the experience of creating files and filing, she went at it full tilt and called me to tell me about her progress in this and her other organizing efforts. She was using a label maker to label her files and going through her boxes. I commended her aesthetic approach, but let her know that she should never allow herself to feel unable to create files if her label maker ever breaks down. Large, neatly written labels are just as functional as beautiful ones printed by a $100 labeling machine. The important thing is to have labels, period.

For any of you who have never used a file cabinet and who may be wondering in what circumstances it can be useful, I will share times when have a file has been handy.

Example #1: I file my paid bills. Every year or so, I go through my file, and file a spreadsheet with dollar amounts and usage amounts for the year. This helps me keep an eye on the amounts in our budget. If unexpectedly high bills come in, I can refer to my files and compare it to the past to see what the problem is. Every year I purge my files of the previous year’s bills.

Example #2: I keep my resume and job search materials in a file folder. When I have to go looking for a job, I use that information often. When I get a new job, I add information to my file on where my job is, who my supervisor is and how they can be reached, what my wage is, and what my duties are. During the course of each job, I try to add to my file accounts of special projects I completed and skills I used and acquired, and any quantifiable data about my achievements. (For instance, when I worked as a writing tutor for ASU, I was able to gather data from ASU’s computers that over the course of three years, I had tutored over 400 students on their writing!) When leaving a job, I try to get a letter of recommendation from my supervisor, and I add that letter to my file. Information from my file helps me craft my resumes, cover letters, and even my thank you letters.

Example #3: We make charitable contributions to our church throughout the year and also contribute to a few other charities. Any time we get a receipt for those, they go in a file folder. Around the beginning of the year, all our W-2s and 1099s and interest statements are filed in the same folder. When tax time arrives, I pull out that folder and start adding up how much our charitable deductions will be. The file steadily accumulates all the paperwork that we need to do our taxes. Why use a shoebox for receipts when a file folder will take up so much less space?

How to organize your files

Hanging files usually come with several sheets of cardstock labels that one can tear out as needed. The labels are usually printed on one side with letters of the alphabet or months of year, just in case that happens to be your filing scheme. However, these pre-printed labels are more misleading than useful to the filing novice, who may make the unwarranted assumption that everyone must file their papers in alphabetical order or by the months of the year. * The reality is, you would be best served by ignoring the alphabet and the months and making your own categories that make sense to you. If you go by the alphabet, you’ll get confused about whether to file your car’s title under A (for “auto”) or C (for “car”) or T (for “transportation” or "title") and then it will be even harder to find it when you want it again. Instead, just make a label for “car” and put everything relating to your car in there. For another example, you wouldn’t want to file all your bills by month because if you wanted to look at pattern of charges on a single utility, you would have to open twelve folders instead of just one to get to what you needed, and then you’d have to put them back in twelve folders instead of just one, which means there are twelve chances of mis-filing something in the wrong folder! Having to open only one folder is much more efficient than opening twelve folders.

File subdivisions

Hanging folders should be for only the most general of categories. Then, manila folders can be used within that folder to get better organization.

Car (hanging file)

• Title
  
• Insurance policy (manila folder)
  
• Repair records (manila folder)
  

You can file bills for car payments there too, but I personally think it is easier to put all regular bills in their own manila folder in a larger hanging folder marked “Bills.” If all bills are together, it is easier to file them after paying them because they will all go to the same hanging folder.

Bills (hanging file)

• Electrical (manila folder)
  
• City/water (manila folder)
• Phone (manila folder)
• Credit card (manila folder)
• Car payment (manila folder)
• Car insurance payment (manila folder)
• TV (manila folder)

Yes, the Bills hanging file can become large over the year, but that makes it fun to purge it every twelve months.

Finally, put the hanging folders in an order such that the files that you access most often are easiest to get to. For instance, the folder you put tax deductible receipts in should be more accessible because you’ll likely add to it throughout the year, but the folder that holds your past year tax returns can be in a much less accessible spot (i.e., the back) because you only open it once a year.

For more detailed information about filing, you can read Sally Allen's article "Organize Your Filing Systems: A Four-Step Formula That Really Works."

Happy filing!

* If you wonder why folder manufacturers provide alphabet labels and month labels, my best guess is that they are for businesses who have to keep a folder for each of their clients. Alphabetizing would make sense in that context. Or, if they may want to collect all their receipts and invoices from a single month together, having labels with the months already on them would make sense. But for us, they are useless.

Image: Overstock.com, http://www.overstock.com/Office-Supplies/Office-Designs-Metallic-Charcoal-colored-2-drawer-Steel-File-Cabinet/5853265/product.html

Review of basic money management

I had never realized how much trouble a person can get themselves into if they own a business and don’t keep track of their finances. Business owners can be turned off by paperwork, but paperwork is what helps them make sure they aren’t cheating someone else or being cheated.

A business that deals with the same customers over and over and the same vendors over and over will have many bills and many invoices to keep track of. Invoice numbers make it so that you know you aren’t being billed for the same thing twice or billing someone else for the same thing twice. Check numbers make it so that you know you don’t pay for the same thing twice.

I know a business owner who uses software for invoicing his customers and tracking his expenses, but unfortunately he hasn’t mastered the personal management skills that will allow him to make full use of it. The consequences make it difficult for both him and his employees.

Let’s review some basic habits that everyone must have in order to manage their money at a fundamental level.

1) Carry a checkbook with you, along with your debit and credit cards.

2) Carry a check register of some sort. (You can use a paper one that is provided in every box of new checks, or you can use mobile software of some sort.)

3) When you buy something, IMMEDIATELY record the date of a purchase, (the check number, if applicable), the person you paid, the amount you paid, and what it was for. (Recording what the purchase was for can help you track your spending, when you are prepared to make a budget.)

4) Subtract out the total in your check register. This means that you should always know exactly how much money is in your account at any time. It prevents you from incurring bank fees for overdrawing your account.

5) Reconcile your accounts every month. This is nothing more than making sure that every purchase on your bank statement is represented on your check register for the same amount. The more careful you are to record your purchases, the higher the chances that any unexpected charges on your bank statement mean someone has gained unauthorized access to your bank account. Reconciling carefully allow you to find irregularities and mistakes and even dishonesty.

What are the consequences of ignoring these rules? Let’s think about them.

What happens if you don’t carry a checkbook with you? You tend to depend on your debit card or credit card or cash. In my opinion, none of those have a built-in transaction record like checkbooks do, since checkbooks can have a register attached to them.

What happens if you don’t carry a check register with you? You tend to accumulate receipts, and then you have to find some time to enter them into your check register at home. That means that your mental notion of your account balance will grow fuzzier and fuzzier and more inaccurate over time, leading to higher chances that you will overdraft your account without knowing it. It also means that if you lose a receipt or crumple it up so it becomes melted in the sun and illegible, you will lose your record of the transaction and your accounts will be thrown off until you reconcile your accounts at the end of the month. (This happens far more often than people realize.)

What happens if you don’t even keep a check register? In order to know the balance on your account you have to check your bank’s website every so often, and even then it may not be completely accurate if purchases take time to show up on it. The risk of over-estimating how much money you have increases. The importance of keeping a sizeable cushion in your account to prevent overdrafts increases.

What happens if you don’t reconcile your accounts? If someone were to highjack your bank account, you wouldn’t know it until terrible damage was done.

Just because we live in the age of the debit card and credit card does not mean that it we shouldn’t be recording our purchases and keeping track of our spending. If anything, it means we need to be even more careful and methodical.

The ten commandments as a guide for organizing and decluttering

2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:2-3)

From the perspective of trying to get organized and de-cluttered, these verses can give us both hope and direction.

If you feel like you’re drowning in your stuff, then you know you have a “house of bondage.” Verse 2 above gives us hope to know that if we succeed in getting organized and de-cluttered, it is the Lord that has brought us out of our “house of bondage.” It takes a miracle, but the Lord can do miracles.

Verse 3 can give us excellent direction. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is a simple statement about what our top priority should be. If you are determined to keep the Lord as your top priority, then your stuff is a lower priority and you will be able to conquer it.

Ultimately, keeping priorities straight is KEY to conquering clutter. In terms of organizing, priorities are the little invisible rules we have at the back of our minds by which we determine what stuff we buy, what we let go of, what goes where, and more.

Needs are higher priorities than wants. For instance, food, clothing, and shelter are higher priorities than decorations, conveniences, pleasures, or tools. That is pretty well understood, but when it gets down to specifics, it gets trickier. Sometimes the only way we can discover what our priorities really are is to compare them.

What gets higher priority in your house—decorations or tools you use often?
What gets higher priority—the tools you use often or the tools you might use someday?
What gets higher priority—your memories of the past or the things you are involved in now?

Let me give you an example of something I’ve had trouble letting go of. I’ve been hanging on to my college textbooks for years.

• As books, they are low on my priority list of things to read; I prefer reading other books more.
• As sources of knowledge, they are also low on my priority list because lately I go to the internet first when I have questions.
• If I’ve been keeping them because they represent a memory of who I am and what I did, they are also rather low priorities because my journals—I am a copious journal writer—are a much better store of my memory and identity.

Someday I will figure out the priority that is out-of-whack with those textbooks so I can let go of them.

Prayer: the powerful tool for overcoming the fear of de-cluttering

This was a discovery I made in the beginning of October 2011 when I went home to visit my mom and dad, specifically to help my mom de-clutter.

My mom was very motivated to de-clutter, and that is saying a lot. Growing up from time to time she would let me organize a closet or a cabinet or a desk, but it was hard for her to let go of anything. This time, she felt she was drowning in her stuff, and all the fun things she hoped to do and wanted to do had ground to a halt because of all the stuff she had to sift through.

When I finally got home, of course I was excited to get started. I started on the kitchen desk, going through the drawers, sorting the pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips, rubber bands, and so on. I started asking her questions about the collection of flower vases and medicines.. We started making progress, but my mother, who is very articulate and aware of her feelings, began to feel a great sense of loss as we were getting rid of stuff. It brought her to tears. She was grieving over the things we were tossing that really needed to be discarded.

I could see that the decision-making process was becoming very difficult for her. The trouble was, in order to make progress, she had to make lots and lots of decisions. And those decisions needed to be mostly in favor of discarding stuff instead of keeping stuff.

My mother and I are very religious. We both have a firm belief in the power of prayer. We both have had many experiences of praying and having our prayers answered. We both know we can ask for God to help us do things that we have trouble doing on our own.

It was at this point that I realized we needed to pray.

But I didn’t suggest it yet.

My mom pushed through her emotional difficulties and then we started on organizing and de-cluttering the game closet.

Once again, we ran into the barrier of my mom’s emotions. She felt guilt because of the number of games we had that we had never tried to play. She felt loss because the prospect of letting go of so many games meant that opportunities for play and bonding as a family were being lost (even though it is only her, dad, her mother, and my youngest brother (a 20-year-old) were at home). Her distress may sound silly, but it was HER distress.

If there is one thing I know now, it is this—you can’t argue with emotions. Feelings are just as real as thoughts and they are a part of us. Emotions must be validated before they are dealt with. I let my mom explain why she felt distress. I listened to her, trying to understand her.

Mom is not just a bundle of emotions, though; she is also a very thoughtful person and she tries to make very rational decisions. It was a pleasure to listen to her reason over what kind of games were worth keeping and which were not. Perhaps you didn’t know that it was possible to evaluate a game, but let me assure you, I learned from my mom that it is. She could categorize games pretty well by looking at the rules and the boards and the cards. We both liked games that had an ingredient of unpredictability to them. We favored games that manipulated words. Since our family is large and most of the kids are grown, we kept games that were best for older players. But she also had a number of Bible games and games that taught morality. These games were geared toward young children and she kept these for the sake of visiting grandchildren.

Still, there were some games that were very difficult to evaluate because it was hard to tell whether they were something that would be appreciated in the future or something that would never be thought of. We discovered that to make a good decision, she needed to have the gift of prophesy and discernment.

This is when I finally suggested that we pray.

We both prayed. Mom prayed for prophecy and discernment to make good decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. I prayed to be supportive and encouraging and to not be manipulative or coercive. I also prayed for my mom to have emotional and mental stamina so that she could make all the decisions she would have to make.

After that, we went back to work and she was able to let go more easily and with less emotional loss. She stayed focused and she was able to make so many decisions that I was starting to get tired before she was!

Each day after that, we made sure to pray for help before starting to de-clutter. We tried to pray very specifically for the skills that we needed to work together and to make good decisions. Altogether, mom sent about 28 large black trash bags of stuff to the Salvation Army. For her, that was absolutely miraculous.

Now, I realize that not all of you may be comfortable with praying for help while de-cluttering. Some of you may not believe in God. Some of you may believe in God, but may be unsure as to how to pray for help with de-cluttering. Let me say a few words to address both these concerns.

To those of you who don’t believe in God or don’t know if there is a God, I can tell you that I know there is a God, on the basis of years of answered prayers. He knows the nature of your belief or nonbelief, your questions, your skepticism, your incredulity. He knows all about it. You are His child. He wants you to not only progress, but to become more acquainted with Him. Try an experiment prayer. Tell Him how weird you feel praying. Tell Him about your feelings about de-cluttering and what you want to get done. Ask for help. Then get started.

To those of you who believe in God, but are unsure about how to pray for help with de-cluttering, here are some things that you can pray about. Tell God about how you’ve tried to de-clutter and get organized in the past. Tell Him why you feel it hasn’t worked. Tell Him about your emotional attachments to your stuff and how hard it is for you to let go. Ask for help with dealing with the emotions and ask to find ways of validating the emotions and memories and preserving them in such a way that you don’t have to keep stuff so much. Ask for help making decisions to let go. Ask for help to discover what habits might be keeping you from de-cluttering. Ask for emotional and mental stamina to make the decisions you know have to be made. Ask for the physical strength to carry out your decisions. Ask for the proper perspective about your stuff.

Prayer is tool to help us organize and de-clutter because it gives us access to the power of God on our behalf in order to conquer our weaknesses. It works. I've seen it work.

Students: How to keep track of your assignments

If you find yourself having difficulty remembering all you have to do and feeling a vague discomfort at times because you feel like there is something due soon that you are forgetting, it is time to start using a planner of some kind. Again, this will cut down on cognitive load so that precious thought cycles can be used on studying and class work instead of worrying about forgetting an important date.

In college, on the first day, all classes will hand out a class syllabus, which lists reading material, dates assignments are due, and dates tests will happen. The first thing any smart student will do is consolidate all due dates and readings and assignments and tests from all their class syllabi onto one calendar/planner. It is much more efficient to look at assignments in only one place every day than to have to look at four or five different places every day. Yes, it takes time, but it is worth it to stay on track.

The best type of calendar for Melanie and Robert is the type that shows every hour of the day. This may seem excessive, but it is meant to help Melanie and Robert learn to manage their time. Melanie and Robert have two types of time—time that is spent in class, and time that is spent out of class. With a calendar that lists every hour of the day, Melanie will be able to block out the times that she is in class. She will then be able to see at a glance how much time is available for all the other things that need to be done, like work or church or play or doctor’s appointments, or anything else that will need to be scheduled. She can then be able to estimate how much time is available for her in which to study. If she can SEE that she only has a three-hour block in which to read her history book and write a report, she will be much more likely to spend that time doing on history homework than surfing the internet.

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.

Carol for decluttering your house

I wrote this a few years ago and it is time to post it for all to enjoy. It is sung to the tune of the Christmas Song "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow."

“Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go”

Well the piles inside are frightful
Acquiring was so delightful
No place for the chi to flow
Let it go, let it go, let it go

I’ve squirreled away so much it’s scary
Now I want a home that’s airy
I’ll have to train myself to throw
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Bridge:
When I’ve finally gotten rid
Of the things kept since I was a kid
There is plenty of open space
Room if I wanted to pace

Emotional attachment is clinging
But I’ve set myself to flinging
There someone who needs it mo’
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

My memory’s not eternal
So I wrote it in my journal
My keepsake pile is dropping low
Let it go, let it go, let it go

Bridge:
I’m afraid I have been obtuse
I thought someday this might find a use
Embarrassing, it appears
That was thought twenty-some years!

There’s stuff I’d thought I’d try repairing
There’s so much, I’m despairing
It’d stretch out in a mile-long row
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

I’ve finally stopped delaying
I’ll stand no more “some-day-ing”
Stop shifting stuff to and fro
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Bridge:
There are projects I just might do
Talents in me I just might pursue.
Just because I give this away
Won’t mean I’m blocked from essay

These knickknacks sure were pretty
Before they broke and got dirty
There’s just too many to show
Let ‘em go, let ‘em go, let ‘em go.

Bridge:
When I toss a gift from a friend
I’m afraid that they’ll note and contend
But it’s not like it’s theirs, it’s mine
If they’re kind, they won’t malign

Well, the heirlooms that I inherit,
Unused, they lose their merit
Antiques they are, but even so
Let ‘em go, let ‘em go, let ‘em go.

Bridge:
When I come to what I collect
I must pause for a sec’ to reflect,
“Discarding it all’s a beast;
I’ll part with what I like least!”

We’ve finally cut the clutter
And put it out by the gutter
If it happens again I’ll know
Let it go, let it go, let it go!

The charity box in the garage

When professional organizers work with people to help them declutter and get organized, a very common practice is to keep a box nearby in which to put things that will be donated to charity. The problem is that once the job is done, the now decluttered customers tend to think that there is no longer a need for a charity box. They think the charity box is a tool used only while decluttering with a professional organizer. But it isn't. It is one of the best tools for staying decluttered in the long term after the professional organizer has left. In short, every household needs to have a charity box.

Now, allow me to digress just a little bit with a story...

When I was going to BYU, it fascinated me that every dorm laundry room on campus had what was called a D.I. box. (D.I. is short for Desert Industries, which is the Latter-day-Saint-run second-hand thrift store.) When students wanted to get rid of perfectly good clothing, they could put it in the D.I. box, and every so often, the box's contents were taken to D.I., donated to charity. I made use of that box, and I came to consider it a convenience.

When I got married and established my own household, I found that I still needed something to store items that I intended to take to charity. It would be silly to make a trip just to donate one thing, so I began using a cardboard box as the D.I. box for our family. When it got full, then it was time to make the trip to donate it. I kept it in the garage so that when it was full, it was very convenient to just put it in the car trunk. (And then I put "Donate stuff to charity" on my list of errands.)

Keeping a charity box in your garage will do several things for you. 1) You can get an immediate lift by removing clutter from your living space, with a set place to put it. 2) It will help you become reconciled to letting go of things by giving you time to discover you don't miss it. 3) It institutionalizes charitable giving in your home, which builds the character trait of generosity little by little.

If you want to remain decluttered over the long term, keep a charity box around and add things to it from time to time when you find they aren't being used.

Towels – How Much is Enough?

The number of towels you should have is dictated by several factors:

• The number of people in the household. (Each person should have their own bath towel.)
• The number of bathrooms in the household. (Each bathroom should have its own towel for drying washed hands. It could even be one person’s bath towel.)
• The number of times each person feels comfortable using their bath towel before laundering it. (If everyone can tolerate using one towel a week, then the amount of laundry will be decreased.)
• The frequency of laundering loads of towels.
  

If you can restrict everyone in the house to using one bath towel for the whole week, then that will save someone (probably you) from having to do so much laundry in the form of towels.

While all the towels are in the laundry, there must be clean towels to put in their place. That means the number of bath towels should be at least double the number of people in the household. Two people, four towels minimum.

How about towels for guests? If you take the maximum number of people you have ever had stay overnight as guests at your house, that is probably the number of extra towels you need beyond the minimum. If you’ve never had overnight guests, then you probably don’t really need to have extra towels. In a pinch, an unexpected crasher can use a secondary towel.

There may be additional factors to consider. Add an extra set of towels for everybody if your family often goes swimming, or dances in the rain, or periodically bathes your pets.

The number of towels your household should have doesn’t have to be guesswork. It should be calculated based upon your family’s needs. Doing this ensures that your precious space will not be wasted on what is unnecessary.

What to do with all those magazines?

Many organizing books and professional organizers will tell you that you should deal with those stacks of magazines by going through them and tearing out the pages of the articles that you really want to save and then put those pages into binders.

I say something completely different.

DON’T DO IT.

Just DON’T.

TOSS them without looking at them.

Here’s why. First, magazine articles are so short and shallow these days that it is likely that any advice you find in a magazine will be common sense that you can find on the internet if you search for it. Yeah, magazine articles are fluff these days. Second, if the craft ideas don’t grab you in that intense “OH-MY-GOSH-I-MUST-MAKE-SOMETHING-LIKE-THAT-IMMEDIATELY-OR-I-WILL-DIE” way, you will never do it and you will likely never look at it again. Looking at it and thinking, “Oh, that’s cool” is not a strong enough reason to keep the craft idea. You’ll never get to it, with all the other important and urgent things of life. You just won’t, and it’s not because you’re a weak person. In fact, you won't get to them because you are a strong person; you will find other activities more important. And you’ll be perfectly right NOT to get to it, because IT ISN’T IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO YOU.

So dump those extra magazines in the recycling bin. Or blindfold yourself and do it. Or ask your Significant Other to do it at the dead of night while you are asleep so you won’t know of the deed until it is an accomplished fact.

Get rid of them.

Clean as you go

In our church we have a scripture that talks about not procrastinating the day of our repentance until it is everlastingly too late. The idea is that you are better off if you repent immediately after you discover you have sinned.

In the realms of home organization, this principle transfers over nicely into the principle of not procrastinating cleanup. Life is messy. Life is chaotic. You can keep it from getting out of hand if you build the habit of cleaning up after doing each thing. Work to train your family to do this too.

If you're a chronic leave-it-out-er, this will take a lot of effort until you realize that you can work cleaning-as-you-go into your life just by changing some really simple 5 second things.

Cleaning as you go means the clothes end up in the dirty hamper (if dirty) or back in the closet/dresser drawers (if not dirty) as soon as you take them off. The thing that you can change is to always stand next to your clothes hamper while taking off dirty clothes and then drop them in. And always stand next to your dresser or closet while taking of clean clothes and then put them away while you have them still in hand.

This practice is both efficient and organizing. It is efficient because you have just saved yourself the effort of having to pick your clothes up again later. It is organized because you have put something in the correct place. (Yes, that is what organizing is.)

We are all at various stages of development and it takes time to form new good habits. Even those of us who think of ourselves as organized are still trying to improve the way we do things.

One change I recently made in my own life on the cleaning-as-you-go front was to make the effort to keep my kitchen sink and counters clean of grime, stains, and crumbs. For me this meant that I had to add a few small steps to my cleanup after meals. I'm already in the habit of loading the dishwasher immediately after meals, so after I do that, I take about 3 minutes to wipe down the kitchen sink and the counters. So far I really like how this has saved me from mad scrubfests over a dingy sink to remove 3-month layers of grime. I like my clean sink and counters.

Some things to which we can apply clean-as-you-go:

• Pay bills as you get the mail
• Close all documents and windows as you leave your computer.
• Record all purchases and do the subtraction as soon as you complete a financial transaction.
• Put away the craft supplies when you are done with your craft for the day.
• Put the books back in the shelf when you stop reading.
• Put the newspapers in the recycling bin (or trash) when you are finished reading them.
• Put the tools back when you are finished working with them or when you stop working on a project for the day.
  
• Put the hose back when you are done watering the lawn or washing the car.
• Put the game away when you're finished playing.

A wonderful thing happens when you commit to cleaning-as-you-go. The more I clean-as-I-go, the easier it is for me to recognize how I can make storage more efficient. I hate having to go five different places to put something away. I start thinking of ways that I can store things together that get used together.