Gift card bonanza

It's been six months since Christmas, but I bet more than a few of you out there have at least one gift card that you got as a present still sitting in your wallet, or in your desk drawer, or maybe in that bowl of junk by the phone. Gift cards, unlike cash, seem to be more easily lost and forgotten about. I've come across hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars in gift cards over the years with my clients that they've forgotten about, which is a shame, because it can be really fun to buy something for yourself without actually spending money.

Well, if you have trouble keeping track of your gift cards, the easiest way to alleviate that is to the spend them.

If you have quite a few saved up, set aside a weekend day in the next month and make it the goal of the day to use up each and every gift card in that single day. If you don't live near the store in question, see if they have an online store.

Don't be afraid to use up your gift cards! You will enjoy the product or service so much more than having to keep track of the card and keep reminding yourself to use it.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Kerry Woo

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Having versus using

I had a Bon Appetit subscription for a year in 2007. I enjoyed reading the magazine, but never seemed to actually make any of the recipes. I collected each issue and put them in a cute magazine holder from Ikea. And there they sat, alongside my cookbooks and Cooks Illustrateds (which I use regularly). I think something about the glossy pages and not being able to quickly find a recipe that had any resemblance to something I had in mind to make prevented me from every consulting them.

A few weeks ago I realized that these magazines were not doing me any good sitting prettily in a box. I decided to take them apart, the way I do with my Real Simple every month after reading it. It took a few days, stealing snatches of time before bed or while watching 30 Rock on Netflix Instant, but I went through each one and cut out (well, tore out) any recipe that looked like I might actually make one day. I then filed each one in my recipe binders, which I video blogged about here.

Since then, I've made two recipes from those magazines and they both came out amazingly. I know it's easy to find a recipe for almost anything you want online, and I do that often, but making a recipe that I saved out of a magazine is somehow more of an adventure for me. Now I have more room on my bookshelf and it gives me pleasure to know I'm using the Bon Appetits instead of just having them.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

 

 

Who doesn't love Anne Taintor?

Here are two of my favorite organizing related products, from Anne Taintor's Modern Office Revisited line:

These come as magnets, notepads and notecases. Check out all of her hilarious, funny-because-it's-true caption art.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Quote: Life is constant change

Karen Kingston's book Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui was the reason I got interested in organizing professionally. Here's one of my favorite quotes from that book:

Life is constant change. So when something comes into your life enjoy it, use it well, and when it is time, let it go. It is that simple. Just because you own something, it doesn't mean that you have to keep it forever. You are just a temporary custodian of many things as they pass through your life...

Everything material is merely energy in transition.

 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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

 

Reviewed: Organized Simplicity

**Note: I was sent the book by the publisher I don't know how many months ago and I am just now reviewing it.

The author of Organized Simplicity, The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living is Tsh Oxenreider and she has a blog network that offers great content. This book was published last year and I want to go over how it is different from other organizing books out there.

Tsh Oxenreider. Photo from http://tshoxenreider.com/organized-simplicity/ 

Oxenreider comes at organization from the point of view of a working mother who puts her family values ahead of everything else. It's a powerful place to be, as it causes all of your choices to flow from a single purpose. It makes something as simple as clearing out the refrigerator an intentional act that reinforces your worldview and supports the way you want to live your life. Though that might seem paralyzing - how can I get anything accomplished if I have to have a philosophy about it? - it is actually liberating. The author takes you through the steps of figuring out what your family's purpose statement is and then everything that follows, from clearing out your commitments so you have more time to play with your kids, or clearing out the garage so you can actually park a car inside, makes sense. You know why you are doing it. It's liberating, because you can easily see what serves your family's purpose statement and what doesn't.

I went through the process outlined in the book to create a purpose statement with my family. It was a wonderful process, and I recommend it as a way to slow down and reflect on what's important to you, not as an individual, but as a member of a family unit.

The rest of the book sets forth in detail how to empty, clean and organizing each room of your house. This is always great information, and Oxenreider adds value by including lots of recipes for homemade cleaning products and templates to help you organize inventories, to-do lists and schedules.

Organized Simplicity is an inspiring book full of useful content.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

A year ago: Carry-on, organizer.

Last year in June I shared all the various ways you can keep in touch with me online. I also wrote about my transition from a checked-bag-person to a carry-on-bag-person. I'm still exclusively carry-on, and the two trips I have planned this summer will be a great test to that. Heads-up readers, in July I'll be away for three whole weeks! I'm going to try to have some content scheduled, but for the most part I will be well and truly on vacation. And I'm only packing a carry-on. For three weeks. I'm pretty excited about the prospect, actually. I will be able to do laundry at almost every destination, so that helps a lot, but I'm also managing three fairly distinct climates, so that will be interesting. I'm thinking layering. Anyway.

This is a Zuca carry-on suitcase that I've been coveting for years. Photo from zuca.com

I love these next two posts. One is about seeing our living spaces with fresh eyes and figuring out how we can pare down. That feeling of possibility and freshness that you get when you first move in somewhere and it's completely empty is a feeling that I like to recapture every now and again in my own spaces. Try it out! The next post encourages you to get help when tackling difficult organizing tasks, particularly garages, clothes closets and going through a deceased person's stuff.

Lastly, here's a review of the book Organizing Outside the Box by Hellen Buttigieg and Sari Brandes.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Display what you love

One of the great side effects of decluttering and organizing is coming across things you love but forgot you had. These are things that might not be that useful, so they've been pushed to the bottom of drawers and the back of the cupboards. These particular items can be recognized by the big smile you get on your face when you uncover them. "So that's where that was!" you'll say. Don't put these found treasures back in the drawers or cupboards, find a place to display them, where you can enjoy them and gain energy from them.

I keep this whimsical ballerina cake-topper at my desk.

It might be a stone you brought back from your camping trip to the beach or it might be a particularly lovely framed photo that you took down to dust and never put back again. Don't be afraid to display and enjoy your possessions. By the way, if you aren't using or enjoying something you find pushed the back of a closet, perhaps it's a candidate for donation or recycling.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Organizing an aircraft carrier

Over the weekend I visited San Diego and the decommissioned aircraft carrier the USS Midway. It's now a museum and a pretty interesting place to explore. In addition to the top deck with its airplanes and helicopters on display, below decks are also open to the public and you can see everything from the sick bay to the laundry rooms. When active, this size of aircraft carrier holds about 4500 people. Imagine the systems that have to be in place to keep a city of people clothed, fed and well, in addition to all of the dangerous work they do of launching and landing planes from a relatively tiny speck in an ocean! Here are some of my favorite photos from the visit.

The bridge.

What every crew member was issued.

Always a good reminder.

Love the Plan Of The Day!

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Always be prepared

The Girl Scout motto has always loomed large for me, every since I was a Brownie. That's when I learned most of what I know about camping, including always wear a bandana, park your car nose out, and don't use random sticks you find to roast marshmallows, lest they be poison oak or something.

I followed those rules on a camping trip up to Sequoia National Park over Memorial Day weekend. As organized and prepared as I was for the trip

I didn't anticipate getting hail

or snow.

So it was a little cold and a little wet, but great fun nonetheless. Sometimes those unexpected events make a  run-of-the-mill camping trip more of an adventure. Which reminds of the time I dislocated my toe at this very same campground...

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Soles4Souls

I announced on my newsletter last week (you are signed up for my newsletter, aren't you?) that I'm participating in a service project with NAPO and Soles4Souls, a nonprofit organization that accepts donated shoes in any condition and then uses them to help people all over the world. For more info on the specifics of how they do it, see their FAQs.

The project officially starts today, June 1st, and so far I have collected 24 pairs of shoes. If you are in the LA area and have one or more pairs to donate, I'll be happy to pick them up from you and send them to Soles4Souls. If you don't live in the LA area and want to participate, send me an email and I'll let you know how you can help.

Hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes go to landfills every year in America. Shoes are something many of us take for granted. Most of us have multiple pairs we never wear. Lighten your closets and help someone in need by donating your unwanted pairs. Thank you.

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. Sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.