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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'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

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

Streamlining holiday cards

Over the years, the way I've done holiday cards has changed a bit. When I was a kid, my mother would design a handmade card and employ my brother and sister and me to help decorate them. These were small-batch artisanal cards, in today's parlance. When I got older and I started wanting to send my own holiday cards, I'd find cards I liked at Barnes and Noble, or, one year, Harrods, and spend Thanksgiving weekend writing unique messages to twenty or so families and friends. Now, as a business owner and married person, the list of recipients for my holiday greetings has grown somewhat, and hand writing messages, while a lovely thing to be able to do, isn't quite as practical or necessary as it once was. (In today's Facebook age, most of my relatives and friends can easily see what I've been up to over the year, should they care to.)

Our family's Christmas card from 1984.

This year I started using Send Out Cards, and I've been really happy with the product and the service. I'll be using Send Out Cards to create personalized holiday cards for everyone on my list, and it will take me probably half the time shopping for, writing, addressing and mailing cards would have.

Real Simple magazine had a great feature in the November issue regarding other online card services (unfortunately, the feature is not available online.) Send Out Cards is great, but it's fairly expensive to get started, as it is a subscription based service, with cards and postage extra. The sites Real Simple mentions just charge you for the cards you want to make. Not all of them also send the cards, like Send Out Cards does, and that's what makes a huge time difference in my opinion. Paper Culture is one that does provide this service. Among their other suggestions: Paperless Post (ecards), Shutterfly, and Tiny Prints.

Whether you are sending one holiday card or 500, it's worth looking into some of these new services.

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

Technology I'm thankful for

Thanksgiving is this Thursday. I'm thankful for so much great stuff in my life, it would take a really long blog post to document them all. So here are a few techy things that I'm thankful for that make my life and my work simpler.

• Gmail. I manage several email accounts and Gmail makes it easy to do it all from one portal. I love the labels and filters features, but most of all, I love the search function and the enormous amount of space I can take up, all for free. Gmail Labs also has some awesome add-ons that really enhance my use of basic Gmail.
• Goodreads. I really like being able to keep track of which books I've read by updating my Goodreads profile whenever I finish a book. It's a great holding place for books I want to read as well.
• Bento and Pages. These two Mac programs are a joy to use. Bento makes my financial and business tracking simple and easy to search, modify and combine. Pages makes any word processing document a pleasure to create.
• Evernote. Evernote creates searchable pdfs out of almost anything that you can look at on your computer. The free version has plenty of functionality for me, but the paid version is great, too. 

What are you thankful for this 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

How to fold a fitted sheet

One of the most clutter-heavy and messy parts of many people's homes is their linen closet. I avoid this clutter-trap in my own home by only having one set of sheets for each bed. You really need no more than two, so if you have more than that, consider donating some. You can save room by folding your sheets neatly and if you have no linen closet, you can store them between the mattress and box spring, just put your fitted sheet on one side and your top sheet and pillow cases on the other. I could never understand how to fold fitted sheets until I saw a demonstration of it. Here's a really good video that shows you how.



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

DIY desk

I have a much bigger space for my desk area in my new place than in my old. The desk I've been using for over five years swims in this space, and I have plastic file boxes just hanging out beside it, looking ugly, that hold the majority of my business papers and office supplies. I also have a lot of books that became homeless when the most of the bookshelves landed in my husband's office, and he decided, quite understandably, that he didn't want a ton of romance novels in his work area. 

I decided I wanted to upgrade my desk and incorporate bookshelves. I've often wanted just a simple large surface for my computer, inbox and printer with some space for writing or other small projects. I sketched a design and ran it by my dad and my brother, who are pretty handy. They also have saws and other tools and a workspace; I have a semester of woodshop under my belt. Granted, that was in 1996, but I think the principles still hold. By the way, practical classes in junior high and high school are not always required, but they are really invaluable, especially for kids who read a lot. Anyway. Here's my sketch of the bookshelves, which will support desk surface. We're going to take a team approach to building this thing when I'm home for Thanksgiving. I'll let you know how it turns out!

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

Organizer's Blog Digest: Thanksgiving 2010

Here are some excellent posts from around the web that might help you as you plan and execute this year's Thanksgiving day.

Lelah's 2009 Thanksgiving dinner plate before.

Lelah's 2009 Thanksgiving dinner plate after.

Real Simple magazine had a great recipe section devoted to Thanksgiving recipes in November's issue. Here is their comprehensive timeline/checklist for planning for the holiday.

The New York Times has a beautiful spread of vegetarian and vegan dishes that would be fantastic additions to any Thanksgiving table.

Lauri Ward, of Use What You Have decorating, posted about the benefits of cleaning out your kitchen clutter before Thanksgiving dinner. Her point that "if you haven’t put the stuff to use in half a decade do you think you’re going to start on November 25th?" is well taken. I say, don't stop there. If you decided to keep it because you thought you might use it for holiday prep or presentation, and you didn't, then let it go without a second thought.

Last year's blog digest on this same topic is evergreen. Here it is for more links.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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

A year ago: clutter-free gifts revisited

Last year I wrote no less than nine separately themed clutter-free gift idea posts. I have linked to them all below. Why is it nice to consider going clutter-free when giving gifts? Quite simply, though we all like receiving and giving gifts as a way to signify many complex social relationships, things do not make people happy.  For the receiver, the experience of anticipating and opening a gift is sometimes more pleasurable than the gift itself. For the giver, selecting, wrapping and watching the gift being opening is more enjoyable than the knowledge that whatever was given is being used or appreciated. So, if the thing is not that important, why give something practically guaranteed to end up in a landfill one day? Contribute to a rich life experience and consider your alternatives. Many clutter-free gifts are also low-waste gifts as they get used up or are intangibles like memberships or experiences that create memories instead of trash.

Also, if you are starting to plan for winter holiday gift giving, take note that the number of shopping days between now and Christmas is 42 and Hanukkah is right around the corner - only 19 shopping days there.

Clutter-free gifts:

Financial and charitable gifts

Gifts of experiences

Consumable gifts

Romantic gifts

Gifts of education

Service-related gifts

Meaningful gifts

Technology-related gifts

Gifts of memberships

About clutter-free gifts

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

My egg-breaking moment

My friend Susan Baker, aka The Escape Hatcher, has a wonderful series on her website where she profiles local business people and asks them to share either an "egg breaking" or "lemonade making" moment from their business lives, so others can learn from the tough decisions that they had to make. I shared one of my early egg breaking moments with Susan last summer, but never posted the video here, so here it is.



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

NaNoWriMo Survival Tip

We're one week into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are still writing, congratulations! I was on track until yesterday, when I didn't write at all and now I'm suddenly a day behind. But, there are still 22 days left to get to 50,000 words and I know I can do it. Here is one of my personal favorite tips for getting through the month with your word count high.

To stay focused while writing, I have a specific writing playlist in my iTunes. The value of this is fourfold:

1. When I hear the songs (always played in the same order) I know it is writing time, and Pavlov's dog-like, I want to write. 
2. They length of the playlist helps me keep track of how much, or how little, time I've spent writing and I can tell myself I'll keep going just through the next Broken Bells track.
3. If I need a little extra motivation, I'll buy a new song I like on iTunes, and put it in my writing playlist. The only way I'll let myself listen to it is on the playlist, and I don't listen to the playlist when I'm not writing, so it's like a little reward.
4. I'll add certain songs to my playlist if I think they will help inspire some part of the writing process, so if I character mentions a certain song, I'll do my best to add it. The playlist becomes tailored the novel I'm writing, and I get to start over again when I start a new one.

What strategies do you have to keep focused when you are doing a task that takes time and energy, that perhaps you don't always want to do?

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

A year ago: unholidays and clutter-free gifting

November is zooming along and many of us have started to let the idea of the winter holidays creep into our consciousnesses. Thanksgiving is a mere three weeks away. Last year at this time I wrote about the fun you can have by creating your own holiday, or choosing a less widely celebrated one to be your annual entertaining ritual as a way to spread out the fun (and stress) of the holiday season.

I also posted the first of what seemed like endless entries about clutter-free gifts. These ideas, broken down into general categories, are good year round for any gift-giving situation. I'll be reposting them in one giant roundup later in the month, but you can check out the full list of them here, if you want to get a jump-start on brainstorming.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to throw out a few things you might not want to get the clutter-conscious person (unless they expressly ask for such items):

• Magazine subscriptions will add to their reading pile and keep coming every month
• Live plants create work and possible stress if they are not good at taking care of living things
• Fancy foodstuffs or alcohol if they are not foodies or drinkers, they will just gather dust or be regifted

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by chatirygirl

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

Shortcuts

If you are on your computer a lot (and who among us isn't?) you can use keyboard and mouse shortcuts to streamline repetitive tasks and save yourself a few seconds here or there. These conveniences really add up to time and energy saved.

There are lots and lots of these, plus ones you can customize for yourself. Here are the ones I use most frequently on my Mac:

• Middle mouse button: click on a link and it opens in a new tab. Click the tab and it closes. Huge timesaver! (If you do not have an external mouse or a mouse with three buttons, get one immediately.)
• Command L: selects whatever is in your url bar. I use this in combination with copy (command c)  and paste (command v) all the time.
• Command R: refreshes the browser page you are on, much easier than getting your mouse up the refresh button on the toolbar.
• Command M: minimizes your browser window. If I have a lot of open windows, this one saves me from having to click in the little x at the top left.
• Command S: always a good one when you are in a word processing document. Even though most programs automatically save frequently now, you can avoid trouble by assiduously saving your work.
• Command Z: undo! This is one of the most important shortcuts there is, and it works in a variety of situations. I love using it when I'm composing an email in Gmail. It also astounds me how many people are not aware of it! Learn it, use it, love it. 

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

Converting memories

Last week I helped a client convert  a bunch of old 8mm reels to a digital format. I took them to a post house in Hollywood called Visual Image and they did a fantastic job of converting the old format into digital files which they put right on my client's hard drive, as well as burning a DVD with all the files. Each 50-foot reel translates into about 3 minutes of video. The price was fair and the quality of the work was great.

What was so fun about this process is that after very little effort (driving to Hollywood twice to drop off and pick up the reels) my client had a simple way to view the memories captured on the film. She was delighted with the results, and she felt like she had accomplished something with a box of film that had been just sitting on a shelf for years.

Sometimes it's quite simple to take something causing you stress (however low level it might be) and turn into a source of pleasure and satisfaction.

Another reputable source for turning 8mm into DVDs is just8mm.com, though I haven't used them myself.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Bev Sykes

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

Vote now for the winners of the LA Organizing Awards

This week the finalists for the the Los Angeles Organizing Awards were announced! Voting has commenced and is open to the public through December 24, 2010. I'm excited that many of the people, businesses and products that I nominated have made it to the next round. I'm also tremendously excited to be a part of the planning process for this event.

Since I joined NAPO-LA this spring, I've had a chance to work with some amazing people on the Awards Task Force. I encourage you to check out the finalists and vote. In order to do so, you will have to create an account, but the process is simple and quick.

I also encourage you to stay tuned as more details of the Awards are announced. We're so pleased to have Office Max as our presenting sponsor! Office Max's spokesperson for workplace organization, Peter Walsh, will be a presenter at the Awards. Remember, the Awards are Saturday, January 29, 2011, at the Sheraton Universal Hotel at Universal City, Los Angeles. You'll be able to buy tickets soon if you want to be there when the winners are announced!

In addition to the Awards show, we're having a special event earlier in the evening. The Gala Industry Exchange is going to be a one-of-a-kind event where attendees will be able to browse booths and mingle with the foremost members of the professional organizing and productivity industry.

If you want more information on the Awards, the Gala or are interested in becoming a sponsor or placing an ad in the program, please contact me at lelah@lelahwithanh.com.

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

A year ago: NaNoWriMo, change and Halloween

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, starts November 1, and I'm participating for the third year in a row. (If you are attempting it, too, friend me!) Last year I wrote about balancing the hours it takes to actually write about 2,000 words of fiction a day with all the other things that a person has to do.

Change affects us all, practically all the time, and I love Julie Morgenstern's take on change and organization: “Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems.”

This time last year I also wrote about the benefits of a paperless, automatic billing. It really does help to stem the paper tide and keep things simpler and cleaner if you can switch most of your bills to this format. Try it, and see what a difference it makes.

Regarding organizing for Halloween, I put together a holiday-themed Organizer's Blog Digest. Check it out.

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