Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year

Have a happy and safe last day of 2010!


Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Anita Ritenour

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Visualizing the year

Normally around this time of year I like to grab a big piece of paper and a pen and make a rambling list of everything I'd like to accomplish or do in the coming year. I refer to it for at least the first three months of the year, but as more and more things get crossed off, I put it away and rely more on short term to do lists. I also try to distill a few of my major goals into resolutions that I can also keep in the forefront of my mind so they don't fall between the cracks of every day life.

A portion from my vision board.
This year I will probably still make a large 2011 to-do list (I really can't help myself where lists are concerned), but in lieu of resolutions I sat down and made a vision board. Vision boards have been around for a long time; they are basically visual representations of our goals and dreams. Mine took the form of a colorful collage covered in pictures and words. I had no definite agenda when I was putting it together, I just selected items that I felt were right to have on there. I have heard over and over again from others who have made vision boards in the past that they didn't always know why they put a certain image or idea onto their board, but it would always come into their lives in some way or another afterward.

I like the idea of visualizing a year that is abundant with things that will make us healthy and happy, but I also like the fact that things will happen that we cannot foresee and yet will enrich out lives even more than the things we plan out to the letter.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

End of the year reading list

I've got a few books piling up to read. I'm in the middle of The Great Reset by Richard Florida. It's about the current recession and recent financial crash and how it sets us up as a society to make big changes to our economic way of life. Apparently the times after the similar financial crashes of the 1870s and 1930s were periods of huge advances and growth. It's interesting to think about the low points as enabling us to actually reboot our entire system.

The PR people promoting the book Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider sent me a review copy, so I'm looking forward to reading that and sharing my thoughts on it. I received as a Christmas gift the last book in the Nora Roberts Bride Quartet called Happy Ever After, which will be a fun treat. My bookclub is reading and watching The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in January, so I will try to fit that in as well. I hear it's great, but I'm going to keep my expectations low.

What's on your reading list?

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com


Monday, December 27, 2010

Get GOing

Did you know that January is Get Organized Month? The National Association of Professional Organizers started GO Month several years ago to start off the year with a positive way to explain to the general public what services professional organizers provide and to suggest a way for organizers to give back to their communities by holding events and service projects related to organizing.


January is a natural time for people to think about organizing some part of their lives that hasn't been working well for them. The excesses of December are fun, but one of my favorite parts of the holiday season is when we put away for another year the decorations and lights, and we shed the skin of the old year entirely. The shiny new toys and clothes we might have received as presents become a way for us to reinvent ourselves a bit in the new year, and everything seems clean and bright as we face the rest of the winter refreshed.

This week between Christmas and New Year's is a time of transition. We can't yet open up our 2011 calendars and enjoy the clean, crisp, empty pages, but I can't help but want to think ahead to all the amazing things I want to attempt in the coming months. For now, I will wrap up the loose ends of the year and get ready for the next wonderful phase of life.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Monday, December 20, 2010

2010 resolutions in review

Last year at this time I made four resolutions for the new year. Here's what they were and how I did. 


  • Refresh my apartment by de-cluttering and rearranging the space (even professionals have to make a point to do this once in while). I definitely did this quite a bit in my old apartment early on in the year. Then my husband and I took it once step further by moving in September to an entirely new space, which was really wonderful from a decluttering and use of space standpoint. Not only do we have more room in the new place, but more storage area and I no longer feel like we live in a closet, as in, living side by side with all our stuff all day. Here, we can put our stuff in drawers and cupboards and just live in the space. Plus, we got rid of tons of stuff during the move, which always feels nice.
  • Learn about and use more of the features of my digital camera and look into editing the images in some kind of effects program. I did learn to use my digital camera quite a bit better, but I haven't experimented with editing my photos.
  • Revise a piece of writing to a point where I'd let other people besides my sister read it. I did this, sort of. I finished and revised the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year, and let a few people (including my sister) read it. But, I have yet to revise a second time incorporating the readers' notes. But I still plan to...in 2011!
  • Buy more produce from the farmer's market and less from Ralphs. This goal was successfully completed in the first half of the year, when I bought most of my produce from the farmer's market. After we moved, however, the fact that the closest farmer's market is on Thursday mornings, and the fact that we live very close to Whole Foods, with its expensive but gorgeous produce, has meant less farmer's market shopping for me.
Last year I wrote, "Even if we plan out the year and what we want to get done in it, there are still surprises along the way, and we may end up in a place in December that we couldn't have imagined in January." That is definitely true, as the year end finds me in a new apartment, with new goals for my business and wonderful new clients. I can't wait to see what next year brings.


Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Masahiro Ihara

Lelah Baker-
Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Gifts for someone who "wants to get organized"

Occasionally, you'll hear a friend or relative say that they've had enough with the chaos of their life and they "want to get organized." But what does getting organized mean to that person? They might mean they'd like to put all their stuff in a dumpster and start over, or they might mean they'd like to be able to find their keys in the morning on their way out the door.


So, here are some gift ideas for folks who've expressed the urge to get organized.

For the self motivated person, I recommend the book Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. This is the book that got me into organizing in the first place and I'm a pretty self motivated person. It's inspiring and sensible and can help them really get the energy moving.

For the visual person who loves color and texture, colorful boxes or folders can be a fun way to inspire some office organization.

For the tech-savvy friend, gifting a year's pro account on Evernote might be much appreciated.

For parents whose kids' toys are driving them crazy, I recommend soft bins like these to contain toys and stuffed animals.

The only instances where giving a session with a professional organizer is appropriate, in my view, is when the person has expressly asked for it. If they say, "Gee, I'd really love to have a session with a professional organizer soon to help me organize my home office for the new year," then it would be okay to try to arrange for such a session. Otherwise, hiring a professional organizer is a personal thing, almost like finding a dentist or any other specialist that you would really trust and want to work with.

If you have a friend or family member who wants to get organized, and you want some more gift ideas, feel free to email me at lelah@lelahwithanh.com for a little free advice, or ask in the comments!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Lisa Clarke

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A year ago: a stocking filled to the brim with posts

Last year I blogged a lot in December, so here's a recap of the best posts from that time. The holiday-themed ones are useful once again this year.


Just after Monday's post on Google Reader I rediscovered this one about salting your feed reader with your favorite blogs as an incentive to get through them. Not sure if that is as relevant if you start to be picky about what feeds you include in your most-often read folders, but it's not a bad idea.

Here are nine things that should be in every gift wrapping station. Wrapping gifts is one of the highlights of the season for me, and I've wrapped almost everything there is to wrap this year already.

Some musings about the idea that simplicity is revolutionary.

A fantastic post (if I do say so myself) on managing your magazines. Best way to do that...don't subscribe to them.

Last year's Organizer's Blog Digest on Christmas prep. Lots of good tidbits of information. Plus, a post on what to do with the holiday cards you will be receiving this year. So far, I've only received one, which makes containing them pretty easy.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Randy Pertiet.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Monday, December 13, 2010

Paring down Google Reader

You all know how much I love Google Reader. I check it nearly every day to stay on top of my favorite blogs. I have a folder titled organizing that I use to compile the feeds to every regularly-updated organizing blog I come across. I know there are many more that I haven't seen and added yet, but so far the number of blogs in this folder is 154. That's a lot. It can take me quite a while to scroll through the dozens of additions every day. I do this because I like to stay on top of what's going on in my industry, and I learn something new from my colleagues all the time. Plus, since I have an organizing blog, I like to be involved in the larger online conversation by reading and commenting on other blogs.

However.

I do find myself skipping over posts more and more, trying to get to those blogs that reliably have the most relevant information for me, and trying to glean the best posts from usually at least 60 new posts a day is extremely time consuming. It's not a good use of my time. So, I've pared down, and shuttled the majority of the blogs in the organizing folder to a second folder. They are still there if I ever want access to them, and I can still add blogs to that folder just to keep track of them, but I'm putting only a few of my favorites in the primary folder which I will continue to check daily. I'm hoping this will keep my time focused on the high quality posts that are really valuable for me to read.

A few of the blogs staying in my organizing folder:

  • D.E.C.I.D.E. to be Organized! by Lisa Montanaro. Lisa Montanaro, a former lawyer, always has an interesting perspective on the organizing industry and approaches to organizing.
  • Jeri's Organizing & Decluttering News by Jeri Dansky. This blog has some of the most original organizing products out there, but I really love Jeri's book reviews and posts about organizing challenges.
  • Clutter Coach by Claire Tompkins. This blog always has well-written and interesting posts about everyday organizing problems and solutions.
Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Friday, December 10, 2010

DIY desk, completed

I wrote a few weeks ago about my reasons for wanting to build a new desk for my office in my new apartment. Over the Thanksgiving weekend my dad and my husband and I worked together to cut and build the two bookcases and desk top that make up the desk, then last week I painted it and transported it from our work area to my apartment.




I was so excited to install it, and was momentarily confused when the desktop didn't fit it into the space as planned. It was about two feet too short. Then I realized that when I went back to paint the pieces, I had inadvertently painted the wrong table top piece. There was an eight foot long piece (the correct one) and a shorter one that we had cut the ends off for a different part of the desk, and since I hadn't labeled them, I just picked up the first one, thinking it was the right one.

Oh well. It meant I had to wait another few days before I could go back and paint the correct piece and switch it in for the wrong one. But now the desk is in, it looks great and I'm about 80% done with putting away my belongings in the new space.




What's great about the long surface area is that is gives me so much more workspace than before, plus it hides the boxes and bins that I use to contain my files and supplies. The bookcases hold a ton of books, and I have space to stow my camera bag, purse and organizing work kit neatly, which I love. There's more refining I can do, and I have yet to hang a big piece of art on the wall above the desk, but I'm very happy with the results. What do you think?

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Monday, December 6, 2010

'Tis the season

Here are some photos to highlight the craziness that is December. I really get  into Christmas. I love preparing to celebrate with my family, decorating, cooking and doing all those sensory overload things like blazing Christmas lights, listening to Christmas carols on repeat and even burning a pine-scented candle to make Southern California seem a tad more "White Christmassy." It only comes once a year (though sometimes wouldn't it be nice to only have to do it every other year or so?), so I want to get my fill before we pack it all up again.

Our annual advent calendar and the aforementioned pine candle.

We just got our Christmas tree, but have yet to trim it. Why is  it necessary to wrestle with the Christmas tree stand every single year?

Ahh! Flashbacks to moving. Here's the contents of my desk as I'm in the middle of setting up my new one. More on that later...

I made a chart to gather all my ideas for Christmas gifts for my family this year. When I obtain a present, I add it to the chart in a different color so I can see which gifts I have yet to get.

The dregs of the first batch of Christmas cookies. Chewy gingerbread was a hit. I'm making sugar cookies next.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Christmas box

I have a simple method for keeping myself organized around Christmas. I store everything Christmas related, from wrapping paper to books in a single plastic storage box. Check it out:



This method works for any holiday you really get into celebrating. Keeping decorations limited to what you can fit in a box makes it easy to put up, take down, put away and store them year after year.

Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com