Going Green by being organized…and the Living Green Expo

Yesterday I spent the day at The Factory in Franklin (an awesome collection of shops, restaurants & event space in an old factory – they also hold the Farmer’s Market there on Saturday mornings & Tuesday afternoons) at the Living Green Expo.

At the Living Green Expo

Excellent event – and got to meet all sorts of businesses that help people and other businesses go green.  Spray on foams, energy efficient windows, natural products (trying out some all natural bug spray this week – we’ll see how it works), and our family favorite, the electric scooters.  They were super cute retro looking bikes that run on electricity. My point of being there was how being organizing can help you go green.  It’s hard to be conscious of green options when it isn’t convenient or easily accessible.  One of the things I work on with my clients who want to be green is to make it easy. Some tips on being organized and green:

• Plan your routes when heading out for the day.  Map out your farthest point and make your stops accordingly.  Determine what tasks need to be done, and which stops are near each other.  I even go so far as to plot which stops are the same side of the road so I don’t have make left turns (my friends do give me a bit of grief about this but, hey, it works!).  Combine errands with trips you are already making, saving gas and time.
• Set up a cabinet or drawer in your kitchen for re-usable containers for lunchboxes, storage and more.  Get away from plastic bags and disposable items.
• Have a designated location for re-usable grocery bags, like my favorite ChicoBags, in a drawer or hanging on a hook.  Keep some in your car for unplanned stops at the store.  If you know right where they are and they are easily accessible, you will be much more likely to use them.
• Use Re-usable Water Bottles, and keep them near the water you drink (mine are in a cabinet right next to the fridge where the filtered water is).  Every plastic bottle you don’t buy is helping the earth – and saving you money.
• Go paperless in your kitchen with rags for cleaning, dish towels for drying hands and cloth napkins.  We haven’t gone as far as going toilet paper-less as in No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal.  Actually don’t think we’ll ever go quite this green!
• Reduce paper from coming into the house by unsubscribing from unread magazines, and removing yourself from junk mail lists and catalogs.
• Set up your recycling center to not only be easy to use but in a convenient location.  No one is going to regularly walk out to the garage for every plastic container.  Trust me on this.

Be mindful of how you want to go green.  What are your goals?  Then look at how you actually live and the setup of your home.  Creating a system that works for you and your family will help you be as green as you want to be.  I can help if you need it.  As your green organizing questions in the comments – and I’ll post an answer – it’s as easy as that!

Using ‘Notes’, or, “I have a lead on a client but can’t remember their name!”

One of the main issues I run across when working with both business and residential clients is how to keep track of all the people they meet. For residential – it’s often the soccer coach, the new teacher at school, the parent they met at the school play or the plumber their neighbor recommended. For business clients, it’s the lead on a prospective client, a great website designer or the person who promised to put them in touch with someone who could help them land a grant.

This is what I recommend:

First, have one landing spot for all of your contacts. It could be a small basket, a business card holder, a folder – doesn’t really matter as long as all of the business cards/scribbled notes/post-it all goes there.

Second, use a system such as Outlook on your computer to keep all of your contacts. Paper systems can work well, usually, for someone who doesn’t have a lot of contacts but if you are a busy person or have a business – an electronic system is key. The main reason is … searchability.
But here is the key: Use the notes section for key words so you can actually find that contact again. After all, the best thing about being organized is finding what you need – when you need it.

Say you get a business card from a potential client at a networking lunch. The woman you met has red hair, her kids go to the same pre-school yours did and you talked about both having labrador retrievers. She also knows another client of yours who had said good things about you and your business. Definitely a warm lead. You enter in her information in your contacts database. A week later, you want to follow up with her but can’t for the life of you remember her name. No worries. If your notes section said . . .

• met at NAWBO luncheon May 2010
• red hair/kid at Waldorf/chocolate lab named Chuck
• in book club with Sue Smith

. . . then you could simply type in the “search” box … ‘lab’ or ‘red hair’ or ‘Sue Smith’.

Every contact you have that has that key word will pop up so you can find her, and hopefully land her as a client.  She’ll be pretty impressed that you not only followed up but remembered the name of her dog.

Organizing lessons From The Nashville Flood of 2010

my town May 2010

Many of you may have heard of the “great Nashville flood” we had in our area recently.  While I was personally very lucky (only lost some plants and had some water in the crawl space), there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Middle Tennessee that lost possessions, houses, and in some cases, their lives.

This community came out in force to help those affected by the flood – it shows what a great area this is and how good people really are.

Out of this tragedy, though, come a few lessons on organizing .  I’ve been thinking about this for a while, even before this happened, but this really clarified it.  I realized that if we had lost everything – would I be able to recreate my life fairly easily or would it be extremely difficult?  And the answer was, somewhere in between.  So in the interest of being able to recover from this sort of disastrous event, here’s some thoughts:

• Back up everything digital in an offsite/cloud format.  I recommend using Carbonite for a full backup of your computer(s).  Carbonite regularly backs up to a secure location so if you lost your computer, you could recreate all of your data quickly and easily.  Another great way to store data is Dropbox.  This is a cloud storage as well that you can put pictures, documents and any other information out there so not only can you have it secure but you can access it at any time from any internet connection.
• Secure your passwords to everything.  If all of your passwords are written down on a piece of paper and you have a flood or fire – how are you going to virtually access your bank accounts, online payments, etc?   Keep your passwords in a digital format and be able to access them through Evernote,  Dropbox or Carbonite or some other method.  If you need to keep things in a paper format, use a waterproof, fire safe or an off site safety deposit box.
• Make sure your wills, power of attorney, social security cards, living wills, home inventory, etc. are up to date and secure.  Scan all of your documents and make them available digitally to those who need to have them or keep them in the secure off site storage.  For home inventory (all your physical stuff), consider Collectify (that’s what I use).  It also can’t hurt to have valuable items appraised.  In the Nashville area, contact Connie Sue Davenport, my favorite antiques and collectibles appraiser.  For scanning, I use Neat Company’s Neat Receipts Mobile Scanner.  Stores all of your information and will convert it to PDF.  Don’t forget about your credit cards, passports and keeping a list of important contacts somewhere you can access them if you lose your phone.
• Consider having your photos scanned by Scan Digital.  Not only will they scan them for you, they will send them to you in a CD or DVD format and keep them on a server for you.  While most of our current photos are digital these days, it’s the older ones that worry me.  I realized that I have wedding photos, pictures of my early childhood and family that would have been destroyed if we had been flooded.  I have all of my photos packed up right now to send to Scan Digital this week.
• If you had to leave your house in a hurry (think 5 minutes or under), could you easily grab the important stuff?  Do you know where it is – and do you know what is important?  Give this some thought and make a plan.  If I had to leave the house, here’s what I could take in under 5 minutes: 1 child, 3 cats, 1 dog, 4 chickens, my purse (wallet, iphone, camera, notepad & other misc. items) and my laptop.  All of my documents are backed up on my laptop and with Carbonite & Dropbox so even if I don’t have the originals, I can recreate with the backups.  If I had a few more minutes, I would grab all of the original artwork and family heirlooms we have and maybe my favorite boots.
• On that note, take a serious look around your home at your possessions.  Could you actually determine what was the “good stuff”?  The stuff that would truly be worth saving.  Consider using that as a guide when deciding what to keep and what can be “de-cluttered”.  There’s always the stuff you need, like toilet paper and ziploc bags – but these are easily replaced.  It’s the baggage you’ve been carrying around for years that doesn’t enhance your life – just weighs you down.  When you look around your home – what are the things in it that really MAKE it a home – and what are the things that just fill it up?

Nashville flood May 2010

Having a plan is key but if you don’t prepare for an emergency, then you will be caught flat out when one happens.  The flood here taught me a good lesson – even though we were lucky this time – we may not be next time.  I’m spending this summer preparing – just in case.  Contact me if you have any questions about the services I reference OR if you have any other great ones to share.  This is not a definitive list by any means – but take the time to do what you need to so you can recover your life.

Organizing Tools On The Web

Allen from Jibidee did a great presentation at the NAPO 2010 Conference about organizing tools on the web. Thought I’d share his tips here:

Anyone who knows me knows I love me some tech stuff but even I learned some new things at this session – many that I’m going to incorporate into my own business but even better – several that I can use with my clients (yes, you!).

Follow Allen on Twitter @jibidee

Embrace Your Clutter. . .Release The Guilt

A lot of my clients have a lot of stuff. Some are really motivated to let things go and lighten up their life. They see the benefits in having fewer possessions weighing them down – less to maintain – less to clean. But some of my clients really do love their stuff.

And frequently what they feel is shame. This shame comes from those around them criticizing their decision to hang on to their stuff or picking on them for not having surfaces free of perceived clutter or harping on them that their garage is full of “junk”.

Sometimes I find fear from my clients. Fear that I’m going to “make” them get rid of things. Fear that they will have to change everything about their space. Fear of “forgetting” things because the memory triggers of the possessions aren’t there in their sight anymore.  Fear that others won’t like them if they don’t change.

This fear and shame often results in guilt.  Guilt about not making the right decisions.  Guilt about not living up to expectations.  Guilt about not being perfect.
So I tell them . . . these are YOUR things. It’s your decision whether to keep them or not.

But here are the questions I ask:

• Does all of this stuff around you make you truly happy?
• Is everything here important or are there some things that are more important than others?
• Can you find what you need when you need it or do you spin your wheels trying to get things done?
• Does your space reflect who you are now, at this time in your life?
• Are your possessions holding you back or guiding you forward in your life?
• Are these things around you causing you problems in your life – with your family, work or relaxation?

Depending on the answers, it may not be a case of getting rid of a lot of stuff.  It may simply be a case of creating a system of storage for those important items so that they are accessible or visible depending on the client’s needs.

In that case, please release the shame.  Release the fear.  Release the guilt.  Keep your stuff.  I know this sounds counter-intuitive to my profession but once you let that go, you can look at things more objectively.  When people are pushed, the natural inclination is to push back.

By setting free the fear and shame, it often becomes easier to acknowledge the real reasons for hanging on to things from the past or continual purchasing of new items.  I encourage my clients to look within themselves and determine what THEY want to do.  Not what others tell them they should.  When they can do some internal examination of their feelings, thoughts and beliefs – it’s amazing what progress can be made.  I’m not trying to be a therapist but to help them figure out what is really important to them so we can make progress towards whatever the end result may be.

My goal when organizing is to create a space that my client is happy, content and productive within.  If that means storing & displaying 400 Russian Nesting dolls, well, so be it.  But what I find is that when some inner peace is found, those Russian Nesting dolls don’t have quite a strong of a hold as they may have once had.