Contagious Clutter

Have you ever heard of kipple? “When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.” Philip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was made into the movie Blade Runner) said this. Sometimes I feel like this is not some futuristic possibility, but the reality we all face today.

It’s not independent of our behavior though. When I was in my first apartment, I would often need to spend a day or more picking it up and cleaning to be ready for my dad to visit. (See, I wasn’t always an organized person!) I’d plan that it’d never get that bad again, yet in that tiny studio apartment, one area would slowly start to collect clutter. Before I knew it, the other areas would be infected with other clutter.

Some of that was that there was nowhere in there that you could not see the rest of the space. When just a little bit of clutter starts to accumulate and you let it sit there, you are less likely to avoid dropping more clutter around. Just the sight of a little clutter lowers your response to adding to it. “It’s just a little more – and I’ll deal with it quickly later.”

And so it starts.

On some level this is unavoidable. We all have the pending stuff we’re trying to deal with – it can’t get put away completely yet, so you set it off to the side.

Do you then see the piles begin to build up? Whether it is from yourself or others in your home, it’s human nature to get a little “lazy” about adding to the piles. Some of the most organized people I know struggle with this phenomenon – and often they berate themselves for it.

The multiplying kipple can be that much worse for those who share their home, with a spouse, children, even a roommate! We all organize and manage our things differently, these differences can lure us into allowing the clutter to accumulate before our eyes and before we recognize it.

It comes down to maintainence. I’ve accepted that a certain number of piles will appear over the course of a week – though the sizes vary. What matters is what I do about it and what I tell my clients to do – make time weekly or even daily to deal with it. I also make a point to evaluate what is getting piled – What types of things are there? Do they have a home? Do they need a home? Am I frustrated with the things (and therefore not dealing with them)? Is there a better way?

Do I wish that there were never any piles? YES! We are not perfect, and at least according to Philip K. Dick, kipple is unavoidable. Therefore, I’m determined to limit the kipple and encourage others to keep their own kipple under manageable levels. ☺ Good Luck – don’t look away for too long since it does multiply when you’re not looking!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cloud

Several years ago, I had a client who used her computer to schedule our appointments. Ok, that wasn’t too exciting – I’ve looked at the calendar apps on computers, but they weren’t really for me. Then she told me that she was using something different: Google calendar. What she loved about it was that her son also used Google calendar – it came with each of their gmail accounts – and they had linked their calendars together. He could see when she was on a business trip and needed his help taking care of her dog, and she could see when her grandson’s birthday party was and not forget the date. I wasn’t sure what I made of this at the time – I was still lugging around my large planner and using a pencil to mark appointments!

Then I got a smart phone where I had a calendar and could put my appointments in that. My shoulder certainly appreciated not lugging that planner around, yet accessing the calendar on the phone was not always convenient. If I was talking to someone and needed to consult my schedule, I either needed to put on the headset or use the speaker and hope that as I navigated this new device I would not inadvertently hang-up on the person.

This is when I started using Google calendar for myself. I could still use my phone to put appointments in, but I could also open up my computer, take the same information, and put in what I needed. Truthfully using the computer for Google calendar is easier – I have access to a full keyboard and scheduling repeating events is simpler. My husband started using Google calendar at the same time, and it provides an easy way for he and I to share our schedules with each other. If one of us wants to make plans for the night, we can check the other’s schedule to see if they’re available or not.

Google calendar was my first foray into cloud computing. The calendar is stored out on the Internet on a secure server, where it is backed up regularly. This is what is called the cloud. To access it, all I need is access to the Internet. All I need to do is log into Google with my e-mail user name and password, go to the calendar, and all my information is there. This is great because if I was visiting my mom and didn’t want to boot up my computer, I could just use hers. It is also wonderfully free and I’m actually saving money since I no longer need to buy a paper calendar for my purse.

It does not matter whether you use a PC or a Mac, Droid or iPhone, Google calendar will function with whatever you use it with. Some devices – like my phone – will even access it with their own calendar app. I helped a client learn about Google calendar recently – it will sync with her new smart phone and we set up her schedules, with a reminder beep to keep her on track. That ability to set an alarm, at the time you want, is another feature I really appreciate.

Too often, I’m a little paranoid about losing data. That is another reason I appreciate cloud computing, although there is always a risk of losing information – the information “living” out in the cloud means that it’s more likely to be accessible. In this case, if something were to happen to my phone, my appointments are available by using another device to access the Internet.

In my blog, I’ll be exploring a different cloud computing app each month. Here are a couple of the ones I’ll talk about fairly soon:

Delicious
Dropbox
Evernote

Soon, hopefully you, too, will learn to stop worrying (about your data) and love the cloud (computing). 🙂

Schedule Your Resolutions

Picture this: me, as a young girl, I’m sitting down to make a list. No, I’m not an organized child – it’s New Year’s and I’m writing my resolutions for the coming year. Fortunately, I was not encouraged to make a huge list, though often had around a dozen items. I had big dreams for all the things that I could change in that year. If only making the list made it happen. We all have faced the reality – it’s not that simple.

Creating new habits – changing our behavior – is difficult. We’re creatures of habit, and cannot decide on a “complete overhaul” and expect that we’ll pull it off. We need to train ourselves. That means that we need to start simply – with a very limited number of things. I’d even say that maybe even only one thing at a time. You can work on multiple things; though try to make it for different times during the day. If you want to try changing three things – choose things that are done throughout the day – one thing for the morning, one thing for the afternoon, and one thing for the evening.

Like any skill you want to have, you need to practice. You cannot learn to play an instrument overnight; you need to start with something relatively simple and then practice. And practice and continue to practice. Then you can move on to the next step in the process – and then practice some more. Eventually you’ll have the skills. It takes time and work to cement those skills for yourself.

Don’t become a nagging parent to yourself to practice whatever you’ve decided to work on. Hopefully you’re setting goals that you’re passionate about, and therefore want to succeed with. Yet, you’ll need to figure out when it makes sense to practice them. Put them into your schedule. It’s quite a phenomenon that when we put something into our schedule that we want to do, we more often actually do it.

If you’ve decided to make time to exercise, look at the next week (or two weeks or month) and decide when you’ll do it. The frequency is up to you, maybe you want to start slowly, and two days a week is all you can manage. If you have a schedule that allows you to block the same time on the same days, it makes it easier. If you have a more erratic schedule, just make sure you put time into the schedule. Don’t “play it by ear” waiting for the time to appear for your exercise, doing that just makes it more likely this goal will fall by the wayside.

Ideally, you’ll want to make time to review how you’re coming on your goals. If you’ve faltered along the way, you can consider what went wrong, make some adjustments, and begin again. On the other hand, if you’ve made good progress, you can think about whether you want to add some new goals.

It’s remarkably easy to dream big – you’re determined that you want to do this and that, ad infinitum. We want to stay on top of those regular tasks and have time to also do much more. At this time of year specifically, it’s traditional to evaluate the things we want to change and make resolutions for the transformative powers of the New Year.

When you examine your goals and priorities, don’t overwhelm yourself by a long list – whether you think about it once a year or many times. If you want to succeed, limit the goals to a small number. Then the challenge is – you need to put concrete steps into your schedule. You need to plan specifically what you are going to do. This applies to everything you decide to work on, at any time of year. ☺

Making Time Means Setting Priorities

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who thought they had enough time – at least at sometimes. It often feels like it just disappears. You’re working on something and think it will only take 20 minutes and before you know it, an hour has gone by. Often it’s just that there are many demands on your time – you have a family, a job, a home, and any number of other responsibilities. There just does not seem to be enough time in a day to do everything you want to do. We all have the same amount of time to manage and the bottom line is making priorities that fit your values.

First, a story about time that I really like and which has circulated the Internet.

The Bank Account of Time: Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!!!! Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow”. You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today. (I took the wording from here.)

In the previous blog, Take Time to Plan, I talked some about the importance of making time to plan and schedule things. This is an important part of the process of setting priorities since we all have limited time – and we need to try to be realistic about what we can accomplish.

The other part of this process is actually figuring out what your priorities are – and this means being aware of what your deep down values are. We need to align our priorities around the values we hold. Stephen R. Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says, “Organize and execute around priorities.”

We all have many priorities – you cannot just focus on one thing and ignore everything else. All the time you spend with family at the expense of your job is not realistic or even desirable! When you make time to consider your schedule and set some realistic plans, you’re aiming to make the most of the time you have. You’ll know that where you spend your time is where it’s best spent.

Often this requires that you alter some of your choices and often avoid immediate gratification. It also means thinking about the long-term and figuring out how to focus on the important things amidst all the demands that seem critical along the way. There are things that you will need to set aside, as you – or anyone – can do it all!

You’ll need to consider a chunk of time – this very day is too limited and this month is too large – so examine this week. Don’t over-schedule, this is not about filling every moment with an activity – but about setting aside to work on things that matter to you, to help you reach goals. You also want to make sure you include yourself in the plans – time for rejuvenation and growth. Most importantly, you need to make time to do this each week.

As such a complex topic, this is only the tip of the iceberg, yet starting even with this, you can take control of your time and spend it in meaningful ways. Each week offers you another opportunity to improve and learn more what you need and want from your life.

Stop Inadvertent Multitasking

We’ve all done it. We may not even really been aware that we’re doing it. Or we might be aware, yet keep doing it, unsure of how to stop.

Are you wondering what I’m referring to?

We have a box, drawer, or some container filled with random stuff and we decide it’s time to deal with it. We reach in and pull something out – sometimes we even shuffle the stuff around first, reaching for something “easy.” We look at it.

At this point, one of two things often happen after we look at that chosen item –
1. We put that very thing we pulled out – back into the container or next to us with no clear intention for it or
2. We hold that item in one hand while we use the other hand to shuffle items in that container, looking for something else to deal with

This can lead to putting the item down just to get it out of our hands, yet not where it needs to go and easy to forget where it ended up.

This is a hard habit to break; it’s frequently unconscious so we’re not even aware when we’re doing it. Which just takes me back to the idea of trying to “be in the moment” while you’re working. We can all work to catch ourselves when we’re doing it and stop. Then we make efforts to avoid continuing those behaviors.

Shuffling items just makes more work for you. You will have to try to deal with the items over and over again. It will make it feel that much more tedious, and it is already probably a tedious task! Then the idea of multi-tasking – it takes time for our brain to switch from processing one thing to another and one study says we lose 20-40% of our productivity when we do.

Ideally you want to just grab the first item, regardless of what it is. If you grab something that is supposed to be easy, make sure you then follow the steps too. Look at it and decide what you want to do with it. Unfortunately some things are challenging and you might be unsure what you want to do with it. Putting it back in the container does not actually solve the dilemma; it just reminds you that you feel stuck about what to do with that item.

This is a great place to use the O.H.I.O. principle I’ve talked about before. Handle the item only once – by making a decision about the item: loose category or place it belongs. Therefore you aim to make a decision about each item you handle and deal with it, even if it means putting it into another pile!

One way to handle these “loose” items is to have multiple containers to sort into, and then when you are finished with that area you can see what needs a specific home. Yet, it requires making decisions – both in the moment of picking it up and categorizing it and then later figuring out where it needs to live.

As usual, I think there are times for “pending” items. For instance with papers, many people believe that there needs to be a minimum of 3-5 papers before it’s worth making a designated file for an item. You cannot always know whether you have enough of a thing to make a special place for them until you can see everything you are dealing with.

It’s not easy to stop these unconscious habits, yet it serves us well if we can – whether we stop it entirely or just improve how frequently we slip into it. It’d make your life so much simpler and the more you can practice this, the easier it becomes each time you need to handle a similar task.

Make It Fun

Is fun missing from your life? I know I feel sometimes that life has become more drudgery than anything else. And the truth is that you need to find ways to bring real fun back into your life. Although I might be able to help inspire you to find some fun in general, right now, I want to talk about bringing a little fun to the various things that we need to do in our homes. If we can make our chores less tedious, we’ll be more likely to get them done.

I encourage you to brainstorm your own ideas for making things more fun. Therefore, to help get those creative juices flowing, I’ll share some of the ideas I’ve used and ones that have worked for others. Use them for yourself if they interest you.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not an avid cleaner. I also record TV shows to watch at a later point, often enjoying the ability to fast-forward through commercials. I now use those commercials as a perfect time to get some vacuuming done. I look up periodically to see when the show starts again. That is my cue to stop for the moment. I then use that time to move things either out of the way, or back into place. Our rooms are small, so the whole room is easily vacuumed within two commercial breaks. It doesn’t necessarily make it fun, but it does help it feel less tedious. It also stops the task from feeling overwhelming; I work at it for a limited amount of time and then stop for while.

Teamwork is a great way to make tasks more fun – even having company can help tasks feel more fun. This can work in several different ways – from the actually doing the work with someone else to simply working in the same area on different tasks. Another way to apply this idea is to have a phone buddy. Before starting anything, you talk on the phone, sharing what you’re each going to tackle and agree on a time to call back. You then hang up and begin your tasks. You can imagine what they are doing and can look forward to talking later. The key here is that if one of you doesn’t actually work on those tasks, you wait to talk.

I often play music while working on the various things around the house. I’ve heard back from clients that this has helped them as well. (It of course varies depending on the person.) Going through papers are one of the most tedious tasks, and surprisingly draining. One woman found that if she had music playing, she could sort papers for longer periods of time as it made it more enjoyable. As my music tastes are quite eclectic, I vary the type of music – considering my mood as well as my task.

Be sure to have different tools for bringing fun to your tasks, so that our fun things don’t become routine! Then it’s not fun anymore. Mix it up, have alternatives, and explore what works for you.

Of course, anytime we can make our tasks enjoyable, the more likely we are to get them done and feel good about it. I hope you will find ways to make your tasks fun – let your creative juices flow in finding ways that work for you. The holidays are here, and if we can employ ways to make the things we do more fun, it can only help us enjoy the holidays even more.

Only Handle It Once

I’ve spent time cringing at promoting this to most people! If we take the idea literally – when you grab the mail, you will spend time attending to each bill and making separate trips to the filing cabinet or shredder each day as you deal with each piece of mail. Doing a web search on those terms several hits talk about the myth of Only Handle It Once (O.H.I.O) while others talk about how helpful and important it is. Yet all of these articles, whether “debunking a myth” or using the system, really boil down to the same thing – it’s really about your level of efficiency.

It requires that you don’t try to apply this literally to every situation. There are times to handle something only one – junk mail and spam e-mails are good examples. Is there really any reason to have this cluttering up your space and not getting it into the trash (physical or electronic) quickly? It does also rely on your definition of junk and spam – for example, if you are in the market for a new credit card, those offers might be worth examining.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of things you aren’t going to handle only once, at least in the literal sense. If we think about “handle” more loosely, as in moving the item to a temporary “home” until it is time to attend to it, you can eliminate any worries it could cause by knowing you will complete later. You are handling it once – in that you are moving it along in your system.

Therefore the key piece here is to have some systems that work for you, where you’ll put the things in the meantime. It needs to be the same place each time and not cluttered with unrelated items. This means that you can create different areas for phone calls, bills, scheduling (parties, social events, etc.) and focus on each one independently of the others, or if it works for you, keeping this all together. Regardless of how you choose to set it up, you need to use it and make time to deal with those items.

If you are able to make a specific home for things and when the time is right, focus on them, you are still handling it only once since your brain is not continuing to “handle” it between when you got it and the time when you need to deal with it. Sometimes this is where things break down for people; they don’t have working systems. This is a different issue, as it isn’t handled only once.

This applies to e-mails as well, if you deal with it promptly, you will not keep re-reading them over and save yourself time. In truth, it applies to many things. If your dishwasher is not actually getting your dishes clean the first time through, you have to handle them repeatedly – hence why some people will almost wash the dishes before putting them in. If we can streamline the laundry and get it put away, we’re not handling our clothes over and over again.

The truth is that even I still struggle some with thinking about this phrase as not literal – when I hear it, when I talk about it – I still cringe inside. I’m afraid people cannot take it more figuratively – and from much of what I’ve seen and heard, when people talk about it, they use it literally. Yet, if we can shift our thinking about the term handling to being about moving things along in the process, we’ll become more efficient. As well as we’re simplifying things in our lives.

Find Your Curiosity

I’ve talked before about dealing with that other person or persons in the home that just can’t seem to be organized. It is naturally a complex issue and I’ve written some on this already in “Help, My Partner is a Slob.” Since this isn’t simple enough to be covered in one sitting, here is another piece of the puzzle. Can you get to a place of curiosity? Really curious, not pretending so you can complain and dictate how things need to be?

If you’ve recently been frustrated with how “they” don’t actually put things away, this is not the time to do anything other than process the feelings. After some time has passed though, you might think about asking some questions as long as you are approaching it from sincere curiosity. Do they know why they don’t put those things away? Can you brainstorm together to see if there is a solution that would work for both of you?

I worked with a woman who was annoyed about how things did not get dealt with by others in the home. As we worked on an area, there was a place I mentioned we could leave empty, with the idea that she could observe what ended up there. Knowing what items were problematic would help start a talk about what the struggles were. Was it that the item had a “bad” home for that person? Was it just sloppiness, it was easy to drop it there, so it was thoughtless? Was it a reminder for them that they wanted to act soon? Her response was “nope,” and she piled some items up there so nothing could be put there at all.

If you can actually find a way to be curious about what is going on for that other person, you might discover that there is a simple solution that works for both of you. Or you might find some additional compassion for that person and be willing to step up and do certain things. It can be amazing what a difference understanding what happens for the other person can make in how you feel and react.

I’ve applauded the book, Crucial Conversations before, and they spend some talking about curiosity also. There are challenges and when we can be and stay curious, we might find out what is at the bottom of things. The key is that we need to be genuinely curious. Approaching things with that sincere curiosity, it lessens the possibility the other person will respond defensively, and therefore that understanding can be achieved!

This can apply for us as well. Do you ever stop to wonder why you do something in that particular way? If you avoid the place of blaming yourself, and approach even yourself with curiosity, you might find answers. Just like with dealing with others, if you are berating yourself, you’ll likely struggle to find why those challenges exist.

As I stated above, dealing with others, whether they are our spouses or our children (or even our parents!), is a complex issue. I’ll probably be writing more about this again! In the meantime, if you can find genuine curiosity for why the other person is that way, you might be able to start a dialogue and make some discoveries that can lead to less frustration. It can be extremely challenging to find that curiosity – especially if it’s been building for years – yet if you can, you’ll be open to hearing about them, and that can lead to solutions and that is always a good thing!

Evaluate While In the Moment

I recently visited Concord, Massachusetts where the Transcendentalist movement took off. Many places had merchandise with the words “simplify” and other variations. I could not help but smile. Yes, simplify! One of the things that I find myself looking at is how efficient things work – is there a way to make it easier? And who doesn’t want things to be easier? As technology tempts us more and our time feels so fleeting, there are steps we can take to be more effective in how we use our time and energy – to simplify.

In a previous post I talked about being “in the moment” as we do things. As we do our dishes, we can focus our mind on what we are doing. It forces us to do a good job and save us time by not needing to do it again. Yet there can be more to this process, as we focus on the task we’re doing, we can think about whether there is another approach that might move it along more smoothly.

We’ve probably all seen the commercials that talk about washing the pots and pans last. This makes sense from more than one perspective, not just from dirty water. Those pots and pans are larger and often can rest easily on top of other dishes as the last things to get washed. In loading the dish rack, making it easy just helps the whole process along. There is no need to take time to rearrange things or throw things in haphazardly.

Each dish rack is different, as are your needs and situation. Making an evaluation of how smoothly things work as you are working in it can be a sort of meditation on the very task. In many ways it becomes systematized, you get into a “flow” and it all happens easily and with little thought, yet it’s done well.

I’ve applied this to mowing the lawn as well. I focus on what I am doing – mowing the lawn, in this case, and find the rhythm of it. As I follow that rhythm, I consider if there would be a more efficient approach. When we first moved into the house and I started mowing for the first time in my life, my energy was a big factor. I noticed that my energy changed depending on whether I started with the front or back yard, so I made sure to start with the back yard since I had more energy when I was done. These days energy is less of an issue, yet I’m still evaluating if there are ways to be more efficient. Am I backtracking to get at that weird area off to the side? Or when I mow in that direction, cut grass does not cover the sidewalk, so it looks nice and doesn’t take more time.

This can be applied to any activity you do – from the routine tasks to those you do infrequently – and it will help you be in the moment while you’re doing them. You can save yourself time, energy, and increase your productivity! All these tasks, which we all have, can become easier – and we can all appreciate that. 🙂 It might sound too simplistic, yet each small step we take can help us.

What can you do with your tasks to simplify them?

Tweaking Systems for Yourself

Is there a “right” way to organize something? If you’ve been reading my blog for any time, you’ll know that my answer to that is a passionate NO! The most important question is whether it actually works for you. If you and the people who need to use it are successful, that is all that matters. Often it is challenging to find the systems that will work for you. Goodness knows there are so many “solutions” offered – from books to the Internet, maybe even your mother!

As people promote their solutions, it frequently falls into two categories: the direct outlining of a “do it this way” approach or the more vague “figure out how to do it your way.” Of the two, I’m certainly more of a fan of the later, though this can leave the person searching for those solutions feeling no better off than when they started looking.

Yet we can use those “do it this way” approaches as a place to start. If there is one that draws you – for its simplicity or its logic, whatever it might be, begin thinking about how this would apply in your situation. Then alter it to fit you and your situation better. One of the keys to doing this is to keep it as simple as possible. The more complex we make things, the more likely they are to break down.

I was working with a woman who had found a system for paperwork – break everything down into five categories. I’ll admit this was one system that I’d never heard of and the categories suggested did not completely make sense to me. In my mind I saw a fair amount of possibility of overlap and hence potential trouble in retrieving papers.

Yet the question is not whether this system made sense to me (never mind that I was unfamiliar with it!), it was about whether it worked for that individual. When I talked about setting up filing systems, I’ve been a fan of having some broad categories. What those specific categories are can vary from person to person. If you liked four of those five broad categories, go with only those four. Or even change the fifth to something entirely different that applies to you.

I mention FlyLady to clients sometimes. They come back and talk to me about this or that part of it. They find parts irrelevant or even dislike parts. When we are looking at ways of handling things, from cleaning the house to getting organized, we need to feel like we can follow our own path. FlyLady stresses many different aspects of things: from shining your sink to wearing your shoes to routines for parts of your day. If some don’t make sense for you, ignore them or alter them to mesh with your life.

As you search for the solutions to your organizational challenges, make sure first and foremost that you don’t overwhelm yourself searching through all that’s out there! You could do that for a long time while getting no closer to your own solutions. Next, embrace the idea that you take those specific solutions others’ promote and change them to fit you. There is truly no one right way of being organized and tweak systems until they work for you.