The two minute rule

My clients are familiar with the two minute rule, as it is one of my favorite ways to describe to them how to know when to do something now and when to save something for later. When processing an inbox (physical or email), an action pile, a box of random things from around your house, or even your entire garage, the two minute rule can save you a lot of decision making hassle. In order to make progress, my rule of thumb is if you can do the action associated with the item in two minutes or less, then do it right then. If not, then save it for a time when you can spend longer on completing the project (this is time you would want to schedule in your calendar).

Some examples:

• You are going through your physical inbox and see a card from the dentist reminding you that you need to schedule a cleaning. Two-minutes or less? Yes! Pick up the phone and make the appointment, then put it in your calendar and recycle the card.
• You are going through your physical inbox and see a stack of insurance reimbursement forms you need to fill out and mail. Two minutes or less? No! Schedule a half hour or however long you think it will take you on your calendar for a day when you can spend some time in your office taking care of it, and move on.
• You are going through your garage, trying to make room for your car to actually park in it. You find a rake that you borrowed from your next door neighbor a while ago. Will it take you two minutes or less to return it? Yes! (Unless your neighbor is really chatty, in which case you might just want to leave it by their garage door.)
• You are going through your closet, paring down your wardrobe by pulling out anything you haven't worn in a year. You come across a couple of nice items that need mending. Can you fix them or have them fixed in two minutes or less? No! Put them by the front door to take to the dry cleaners next time you are running errands, or put them in a place where you will sit to do your mending, and mark off some time on your calendar to do so.

The two minute rule is a bit subjective; what takes you two minutes to do might take someone else five. But it's simple and effective for making progress when you have a lot of processing to do. 

Making do and making organized

While on my summer vacation I went up to Conrad and Brady, Montana, where I'm related to a sizable chunk of the population. At my cousins' farm I took some photos that illustrate how even when you have all the space in the world, you still have to organize in order to find stuff, and reusing things is a way of life.

Big sky country.

5 gallon buckets become parts holders in the garage.

Cubbyholes built in to the back wall of the garage contain small parts.

Old fence poles make perfect fireplace logs.

 

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.

Don't go it alone

Leading an organized life is usually an individual activity - we rely on ourselves to make decisions about how to spend our time and coexist with our stuff. (Those of us who live with others must negotiate when it comes to shared space.) When you're in the groove at work, dashing through your inbox, calendering your to do list, filing away your documents, you're usually alone and those tasks are (hopefully) habitual and manageable. But sometimes there are more intermittent organizing projects that just don't make sense to do alone, even if you feel like you couldn't possibly ask someone to spend time to help you. You can, and you should, because certain things can be tough to face alone. Some examples:

Garages. The sheer scale of a garage can be daunting. Enlist your family, your siblings, your friends to help you move bulky items and sort things into donate and trash piles. Even if it's only for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning, it helps to have another pair of hands around. And it's a lot less work than asking them to help you move!

Clothes closets. Do not attempt to do a major overhaul of a clothes closet alone. If you can actually make yourself start the project along it will quickly get overwhelming when everything you own is sitting on your bed in a giant mountain. It helps to have someone there giving you a second opinion about that lime green sweater you were never sure about.

Going through possessions of passed away loved ones. This is a personal and difficult thing to do and most of us have to do it at one point in our lives. Having a neutral party there while you sort and make decisions about things can help keep things moving and keep things in perspective.

Of course, you can always hire a professional organizer to help you with all of the above projects, and I highly recommend that you do if you want to make sure the time you spend on them is used in the most efficient way. But at the very least, call a friend and get them to give you a pep talk. You can do it, and you don't have to do it alone!

Creative Commons photo posted to flickr by MelvinSchlubman

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 

Rumination: Regional Organizing-LA

The more I learn about organizing techniques, practices and theories, the more I’ve come to realize that there are definitely region-specific organizing problems and solutions. For instance, here in Los Angeles homeowners are likely to have a garage stuffed to the gills with bikes, skis, one or more cars and about a million other kinds of outdoors sporting equipment, but few of us have basements to hide paint cans, outdated computers and old refrigerators. Those of us who work in the entertainment industry might have massive DVD collections and a need to store electronics from high tech cameras to hard drives. Our homes have no such a thing as a mudroom. Spring cleaning doesn’t come naturally, since the weather is nice year round and we don’t have the disappearing snow to remind us to air out the linen closet. Beach dwellers deal with sand, corrosion and tar on a regular basis. Maintaining our cars and gardens means finding room for endless bottles, bags and tools. Apartment dwellers might have plenty of space for their stuff inside and nowhere to park outside, or they often live so far from where they work they spend hours out of their day in a car, a home away from home that can get cluttered fast.

Angelinos face unique organizing challenges and we’d do well to remember that when we’re attempting a home makeover or just trying to straighten our desks. The realities of our city and environment affect our organizational needs as much as our jobs, living situation and personal style.