Better in theory

Here are some organizing purchases you think will be great, until you get them home:

• Colorful cord labels. If only you could figure out how to get them on the cords and look nice. Use a silver Sharpie and write directly on the cord instead.
• (Gasp!) A label maker. Label makers are awesome if you have a thing about neatness. Otherwise, they just cause you to lose time making the label, lose space by having to store it, and lose money to buy incredibly expensive label tape.
• Fancy storage boxes with pretty designs. It's one thing to get a nice looking box for a desk top or open shelf. It's another to spend money getting perfectly matched boxes just to store things in your garage or attic. For utilitarian storage needs, get something basic - a clear, sturdy, stackable plastic box.
• Almost anything in the checkout line at The Container Store. They have tons of cute little products beckoning you from your place in line, but it's all clutter.

Storage box from organize.com

David Allen's desk

I saw this posted on the GTD (Getting Things Done) Twitter feed, and loved seeing David Allen's workspace. It shows how simple a desk configuration can be, and I love how it's not completely minimalistic. It actually shares many elements that make up my desk area, down to the inbox and project support vertical file holder, with different aesthetics. Here are the two for comparison. Click an image to see it larger.

Labeling the salt

Last night my husband and I went through our apartment doing a basic de-clutter. We were looking at all of our possessions and asking ourselves if they still held a purpose in our lives. If they didn't, we put them in a bag to give away. A good by-product of de-cluttering with the person you share your living space with is that you learn things about each other and your space. For instance, I do most of the cooking, and it never occurred to me that some basic ingredients were invisible to my husband. He asked me, "So if I need salt, where is that?"

I pointed silently to the container of salt that sits next to the pepper and olive oil right next to the stove.

"That's the salt?" he clarified. Apparently it was hiding in plain sight.

"That's the salt," I assured him. Then I asked, "Would it help if I labeled it?"

He said yes. So I labeled the salt.

Need a professional to help you label your salt?

Call Lelah at 818.269.6671

or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com

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Spring organizing

In preparation for my in-laws' spring visit, I did a fair bit of spring cleaning and some organizing, too, of course. I decluttered a bunch and also took the opportunity to spruce up my hall closet. Here are the before and after pictures. As you can see, I love labels and Really Useful Boxes. Not necessarily in that order.

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.

Tips and Tools: Sharpies

Sharpies are quite possibly my favorite organizing tool. And by Sharpies, I mean any sturdy permanent marker, I just happen to like and use the Sharpie brand, made by Sanford. I keep at least two in my purse at all times - a fine point and an ultra fine point. What can you do with a Sharpie?

• Label the leftover chili you're sticking in the freezer with the name and date you put it in there - no more wondering if your leftovers are still good.
• Write people's initials on their water bottles during car trips, cuts down on squabbles.
• Instantly make file folder labels that are easy to read - no label maker necessary.
• Silver Sharpies are great for labeling black cords and electronics accessories.
• They're best way to make readable name tags at functions.
• Quickly put your name and/or phone number on property that might get mixed up with others' or lost, like coolers, sports equipment, camping gear.
• There's also quite a bit of Sharpie art out there.

What do you use your Sharpies for?

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by JonDissed

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

When cleaning contributes to clutter

One of the best reasons to get your home organized is that it makes it easier to clean. Without piles of stuff on the floor and on your surfaces, it's simply easier to do routine maintenance and keep a clean home.

Some people hire help to clean their living space. Whether you have a one bedroom apartment or a five bedroom house, if you have a regular (or not so regular) cleaning person or cleaning team in your home, they may get the floors, windows and surfaces clean, but they often contribute to disorganization and clutter. How can this be? Well, unless they live with you and are intimately acquainted with all your drawers, cupboards and storage spaces, they aren't going to know where things live. They are going to see a pile of objects on your dining room table and instead of finding the specific home for each item (assuming you actually have a designated home for each item), they'll sweep them all up and stick them in the nearest cabinet for you to sort out later. Your dining room table will gleam, but you'll be frustrated when you are trying to find the scissors and they are not in the pencil box by the phone but somewhere your cleaning person stashed them.

 

I see this all the time in clients' homes. They will often have specific spaces for their things, but if they haven't communicated those spaces to the person putting the things away, they inevitably end up someplace else. This doesn't apply just to cleaning people. It's all well and good if you know where to find things and put them away, but what if your spouse needs the label maker and you aren't around? Plus, you don't want to be a position of having to tell people where things are all the time, or worse yet, getting things for them. Speaking of label makers, the solution to both the cleaning person problem and making it easier for everyone in the family to coexist with an organizational system is labels.

If you label where things go, it makes it much simpler for everyone to find things and put them away. Your cleaning person will thank you, and your time can be spent on other things beside locating items for your family members.


Creative Commons Old Hi-8 Tapes by bredgur, on Flickr.

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 

Improvised nametags

I don’t often use label makers or computers to create labels or signs. A lot of my clients do as they like the uniform look it gives to their files or other organizing projects. Fair enough. I simply don’t have the patience for it, when I could hand write a label in less time and move on. (Luckily, I have neat handwriting.) However, sometimes it does pay to use these aids when creating a large file system or many duplicates of the same thing. On Tuesday, I’m hosting a business mixer through the site Biznik, of which I am a member. As the host, I provide nametags, and Biznik provides a handy nametag template, which I downloaded with the intention of printing out some easy nametags. However, when I went to Office Depot and found that their selection of printable nametags is limited to packs that cost upwards of 50 dollars, and since I only needed about 25, I decided to improvise. I chose 2''x4''  Avery Multi-Use Labels; I’ll be able to use the extras with my clients and they happen to be almost the exact same size as standard nametags. I downloaded the template that goes with the labels from the Avery website in about three seconds, had the Biznik logo pasted in after 30 seconds more. I was a bit doubtful that the entire thing was actually going to print properly, but, to my surprise, they came out exactly as promised. The entire thing was done in a few minutes and I had a low cost nametag that I’m sure the guests at my mixer won’t mind not comming on a large sheet.

Technology wins this round. Of course, we’ll hand write our names on the tags at the event. My trusty Sharpies are at the ready!

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 Great Label Maker Search of 2009

I'm a professional organizer. I don't have a label maker. Those two sentences may seem like an impossible contradiction, but it's true. I've never owned a label maker. The experience I have with them was from the year I worked at a bakery in West Hollywood and had to label the little plaques that advertised what those yummy looking treats were, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. (The treats, yes, the label making, no.) We used an old, clunky machine that tended to spit out tape whenever it felt like it and get jammed and in the end, it always took several tries before we got it right. Then came the task of putting the label on the plaque straight!

Creative Commons line drawing from Flickr posted by bradley j

Anyway, I think it's time to bite bullet and get a label maker. Or at least think about getting one. I figure I'll start the process now, do some research, get some recommendations, and then find the one that works for me.

My hesitation up to this point on getting a label maker is partly the expense. I've heard that the label makers themselves aren't such a big investment, but you have to keep buying the tape and that adds up. Also, I think it's faster to handwrite labels, and sometimes it's reassuring to know that you can just change a label as fast as you can write one, rather than programming it in. Homemade labels can also turn into mini areas to express your creativity, with color and design choices, if you are into that sort of thing.

On the pro-label maker side, there is definitely the neatness factor. Many people's handwriting is barely legible to themselves, which is where the uniformity of label maker labels would be nice. Also, in an office environment machine-made labels look more professional. If you have to program the label in and wait for it to spit out, then you'll likely think harder about the label you really want, and your filing system will benefit from the extra thought.

So if you have any label maker opinions, recommendations or stories, please share them in the comments. I will keep you posted on any progress I make!