Room switching and life changes

A little over two years ago, when my husband and I were still living in our previous apartment, we spent a couple of days switching most of the furniture between our upstairs and downstairs rooms and changing the configuration of my desk area and some of our other spaces. We did this a couple of months before we got married, and I documented it with this blog post.

A few weeks ago, shortly before the birth of our son, we did something similar in our current apartment. We moved my husband's office configuration to a different part of the house and moved a bunch of furniture around, repurposing some of it. The result is a dedicated baby room and a new set up in our living room/dining room area. 

Empty bookcases -- look familiar?

Books everywhere during the move.

The resulting baby room. Pretty cute!

New bookcase configuration.

One of my favorite observations about organizing is by Julie Morgenstern who says, "Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems." Last time that change was marriage, this time it was a baby, and each time reorganizing our space and shedding some of our stuff was a huge help in preparing us for those major life changes.

 

Puzzles and patterns

I've been working on a puzzle. It's a 1000 piece panoramic puzzle of the Louvre museum, and as I've gone through the steps to complete it, it has occurred to me how very much putting together a puzzle has in common with organizing. Perhaps that's why I enjoy puzzles so much.

The first step I always take is to separate the edges from the rest of the pieces and assemble the outside edge of the picture. This is usually the easiest way to get started, as the edges are easily recognizable and it gives you a feeling of accomplishment to get the border complete. In organizing, sometimes going after low hanging fruit (maybe purging all those old newspapers and magazines or socks with holes in them) is the best way to start, so you can get your energy up and be ready to tackle the big picture.

Next, I generally spend some time sorting the pieces, putting broad categories of pieces together in individual boxes, such as all the sky pieces, all the browns, all the pieces that look like they belong to a certain building. I find sorting to be an immensely comforting task. I like finding patterns in objects and deciding how best to group them. With a puzzle, this is enacted at a very basic, soothing level. Because you can't look at any one piece too closely, you have to make quick judgements about color or pattern.

At the 2011 NAPO National Conference, Julie Morgenstern gave one of the keynote speeches. She said at one point that what differentiates organizers from other people is our ability to see patterns where others cannot. I think that is a key trait that organizers possess, and it is a valuable tool in so many situations.

Assembling a puzzle is often as much trial and error than anything else. When trying to find organizing solutions that work, trial and error is a well-used method. We also break down organizing projects into managable chunks, rather than trying to solve everything at once. A puzzle can only be put together one piece at a time. I'm going to stop with the analogy, as I think I've made my point. Plus, I have the rest of the sky to finish!

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.

NAPO Conference Recap 2011

Last week I attended the 23rd annual National Association of Professional Organizers conference in San Diego, California. This was my first opportunity to attend conference, and I had high expectations for it. Not only was it voted the most valuable educational resource at the Los Angeles Organizing Awards two years in a row, but every single organizer I ever spoke with about conference always said it was one of the best, if not the best, things they did to support their business. So, I went it with high hopes for learning and getting inspired, and I can say that my hopes were met and exceeded.

There's really too much information about the event to write a detailed recap of everything I managed to pack in to a few days, so I want to give you a few highlights.

First, I want to extend a thank you to the NAPO members who volunteer their time to make conference happen. In particular I want to mention Scott Roewer, a Washington D.C.-based organizer who I had the pleasure of talking with at lunch one day, co-chair of the conference committee and chair the conference once again next year. Scott did so much to make the event memorable and his dedication really shows. He also brought the NAPO membership to tears on the last day of conference, when he spoke about his involvement with Soles4Souls, a non-profit dedicated to collecting used shoes and re-distributing to those around the world in need. You'll be hearing more about Soles4Souls from me over the next year as NAPO has been challenged as a group with collecting and donating as many shoes as we can between June 2011 and next year's conference in March.

More highlights:

Of the six educational sessions I attended, my favorite was probably Working with the Media presented by Jodie Watson, a NAPO-LA member with extensive media experience. She was highly encouraging and informative and made working with the media, from print to television, to promote our businesses seem manageable.

Of the three keynote speeches, superstar organizer Julie Morgenstern's was certainly inspiring, as she talked about the future of the organizing industry and how it is becoming more global every day. I also really liked Collette Carlson's keynote on sales being about truth and a state of mind.

I was thrilled to meet in person some organizers who I have read and interacted with online, including Janine Adams, who was even a NaNoWriMo buddy of mine one year, and Linda Samuels, the author of The Other Side of Organized, a great meditation on an organized life.

The Expo Hall had a plethora of booths for products and services germane to an organizer's practice. I really loved getting to see the Planetsafe Planners in person...for some reason I though they were paper day-minder type things, but they are actually large-format dry-erase wall calendars with lots of neat little features. I got a kick out of the StowNSee, a permanent glasses case for people who lose their glasses a lot, and I bought myself a Pouchee (review to come later).

Next year's conference will be in Baltimore and I plan to be there!

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


      

Resolution in progress

One of my 2010 resolutions was to "refresh my apartment by de-cluttering and rearranging the space." As a professional organizer, I naturally go through my life enacting those organizing principles that I find to be the most helpful, so my apartment wasn't a complete disaster area, but, after having lived in the same one bedroom townhouse for four and half years without significantly changing the layout of the furniture or the storage spaces, it was time to shuffle things around to refresh the space and the energy within it. Luckily, my fiance was even more gung-ho about this project than I was (always good to have help keeping you on track), and we spent a good portion of each night of the last week taking things off of shelves and out of closets, vacuuming and cleaning an embarrassing amount of dust, dragging furniture up and down the stairs, and then putting everything back together again. We still have some refining to do; for instance, there's a large pile of stuff to be gotten rid of in the new space between the car collection case and the coffee table, but we've made a lot of progress. Here's a few photos to show you the before and after:

The plan.

Where did all the books go?

Oh. There.

And there.

The new space under the stairs.

What's awesome about this process is we knew that if we changed our spaces, purged them of stuff we didn't need, cleaned them up, set them up in a new configuration, that we'd be giving ourselves a new way to live our lives. (Moving the television set from across from our bed upstairs to across from our couch downstairs was a big change.) But I didn't count on how much just sitting down at my desk, which is now across from the kitchen and gets tons of natural light from our main window, would feel completely different, as if I'd not only changed the direction my computer faces, but I'd changed the direction of my entire life. 


I suppose in a time of a transition (I'm getting married in a few weeks), things can feel somehow more difficult and more important. As Julie Morgenstern says, "Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems." I'm hoping to ease that breakdown by navigating this time in my life with the knowledge that my systems are flexible, and change is good.

Change and organizing

Here's one of my favorite quotes about organizing, from the veteran organizer Julie Morgenstern's book Organizing From the Inside Out:

“Every time we go through a major change, we experience a breakdown in our organizational systems.”

This is really true, and it means that when you know a big change is coming, you can anticipate the havoc it is going to wreak on your systems and plan for that. Expecting this can make it so that when the change and the disorganization happens, you don't feel so out of control and you can get back into the swing of things, or adapt to your changed circumstances more easily.

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

Creativity and organization

One of my favorite books about organization is Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern. In it, she talks about how simple changes and solutions add up to big organizational payoff. I love the part of the book where she talks about what holds people back from organization. One of these is "Fear of Losing Creativity."

Morgenstern argues that instead of choking creativity with structure and order, "Being organized releases rather than restricts creativity." This is something I wholeheartedly believe. It is impossible to be as effective in any area of one's life, including creative work, when one is disorganized. As she says, "[organization] gives you immediate access to all the materials you need to do your work more effectively."

I think a lot of the same mental blocks that prevent people from being organized are the same as those that keep people from expressing themselves creatively. A person afraid of being creative might say, "I don't have the right environment to be creative. My desk is too organized/too messy/too small/too precious." A person afraid of being organized might say, "I need chaos and mess in order to create. My work space can't be rigid/clean/compartmentalized." Neither of these people has an attitude that will enable them to create to the fullest of their potential. Creativity can happen in any setting. Setting limits on what you must have in order to create is an artificial barrier protecting you from your fear of failing at your creative endeavors. However, as a professional organizer (and a creative person), I think being organized can only help, not hinder, the creative process.

Concrete examples of creative work spaces that can benefit from organization to follow.

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 2

It’s time to take a look at some of the other great stuff being written about organizing. I use Google Reader to organize all of my blog subscriptions. Here’s some of the best stuff that was posted this week:

From Pigpen To Paradise highlights the Hipster PDA, by reprinting Wikipedia’s surprisingly witty entry (Wikipedia is usually irony-free in my experience) and posting a list of templates you could use with your own hPDA. I posted a picture of one of these tools last week.

Abbie Park at Organizing-Life posts about Summer Organizing Reminders, including ordering sunscreen and summer clothes online and getting a family pool pass at your community pool. Abbie also had a great series of posts about when to throw out stuff like food, makeup and paper. Check out her guidelines!

At organize.com, Mrs. Organized interviews Julie Morgenstern, the organization expert who talks about her Organizing from the Inside Out and SHED Your Stuff philosophies. There’s a lot to learn here. I especially liked the distinction she made between shedding stuff, which is “what you do when you don’t know where to go, but where you are isn’t it,” and organizing, which is “what you do when you know where you want to go but don’t know how to get there.” Good stuff.

And finally, Lorie Marrero at The Clutter Diet Blog talks about a new idea of hers that she first called Simultasking but now is calling Duotasking—the idea that you set a task in motion that goes on while you are doing other tasks, such as installing software while you are doing something away from the computer, or having laundry going while you do the dishes. This is something that we all do naturally sometimes, but perhaps trying to employ it more mindfully could increase our productivity.

Mrs. Organized screenshot from the organize.com website.