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

A "helping you organize" story

Last Monday I posted about counting how many you have of something to put in perspective your things and maybe feel inspired to let go of duplicates.

A few days after that I received an email from a reader of helping you organize who had taken the suggestion to heart and shared with me a 37 bullet point list of everything she'd de-cluttered from her kitchen. Here's a selection of items (I'm sharing with her permission.):

• a small rubber spatula (turns out we had 8 spatulas)
• a metal bread loaf pan (we have three more loaf pans)
• a can opener (we had 2)
• 3 sets of chopsticks (we have a matching set of 4)
• a pot holder - we have two, which i think suffices
• three cookie sheets (we had 5)
• laminated placemat with the presidents of the united states on it

This list warms my heart, first because it's a neatly documented list full of precise numbers, second because it shows that a simple idea (count how many you have of something) can make a big difference. This reader was happy to shed her duplicates to make room for new, greater things to come into her life.

You can do it, too.

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by 0streussel

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