Happy New Year

Have a happy and safe last day of 2010!

Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Anita Ritenour

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

Visualizing the year

Normally around this time of year I like to grab a big piece of paper and a pen and make a rambling list of everything I'd like to accomplish or do in the coming year. I refer to it for at least the first three months of the year, but as more and more things get crossed off, I put it away and rely more on short term to do lists. I also try to distill a few of my major goals into resolutions that I can also keep in the forefront of my mind so they don't fall between the cracks of every day life.

A portion from my vision board.

This year I will probably still make a large 2011 to-do list (I really can't help myself where lists are concerned), but in lieu of resolutions I sat down and made a vision board. Vision boards have been around for a long time; they are basically visual representations of our goals and dreams. Mine took the form of a colorful collage covered in pictures and words. I had no definite agenda when I was putting it together, I just selected items that I felt were right to have on there. I have heard over and over again from others who have made vision boards in the past that they didn't always know why they put a certain image or idea onto their board, but it would always come into their lives in some way or another afterward.

I like the idea of visualizing a year that is abundant with things that will make us healthy and happy, but I also like the fact that things will happen that we cannot foresee and yet will enrich out lives even more than the things we plan out to the letter.

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

End of the year reading list

I've got a few books piling up to read. I'm in the middle of The Great Reset by Richard Florida. It's about the current recession and recent financial crash and how it sets us up as a society to make big changes to our economic way of life. Apparently the times after the similar financial crashes of the 1870s and 1930s were periods of huge advances and growth. It's interesting to think about the low points as enabling us to actually reboot our entire system.

The PR people promoting the book Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider sent me a review copy, so I'm looking forward to reading that and sharing my thoughts on it. I received as a Christmas gift the last book in the Nora Roberts Bride Quartet called Happy Ever After, which will be a fun treat. My bookclub is reading and watching The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in January, so I will try to fit that in as well. I hear it's great, but I'm going to keep my expectations low.

What's on your reading list?

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

Get GOing

Did you know that January is Get Organized Month? The National Association of Professional Organizers started GO Month several years ago to start off the year with a positive way to explain to the general public what services professional organizers provide and to suggest a way for organizers to give back to their communities by holding events and service projects related to organizing.

January is a natural time for people to think about organizing some part of their lives that hasn't been working well for them. The excesses of December are fun, but one of my favorite parts of the holiday season is when we put away for another year the decorations and lights, and we shed the skin of the old year entirely. The shiny new toys and clothes we might have received as presents become a way for us to reinvent ourselves a bit in the new year, and everything seems clean and bright as we face the rest of the winter refreshed.

This week between Christmas and New Year's is a time of transition. We can't yet open up our 2011 calendars and enjoy the clean, crisp, empty pages, but I can't help but want to think ahead to all the amazing things I want to attempt in the coming months. For now, I will wrap up the loose ends of the year and get ready for the next wonderful phase of life.

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

2010 resolutions in review

Last year at this time I made four resolutions for the new year. Here's what they were and how I did. 

• Refresh my apartment by de-cluttering and rearranging the space (even professionals have to make a point to do this once in while). I definitely did this quite a bit in my old apartment early on in the year. Then my husband and I took it once step further by moving in September to an entirely new space, which was really wonderful from a decluttering and use of space standpoint. Not only do we have more room in the new place, but more storage area and I no longer feel like we live in a closet, as in, living side by side with all our stuff all day. Here, we can put our stuff in drawers and cupboards and just live in the space. Plus, we got rid of tons of stuff during the move, which always feels nice.
• Learn about and use more of the features of my digital camera and look into editing the images in some kind of effects program. I did learn to use my digital camera quite a bit better, but I haven't experimented with editing my photos.
• Revise a piece of writing to a point where I'd let other people besides my sister read it. I did this, sort of. I finished and revised the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year, and let a few people (including my sister) read it. But, I have yet to revise a second time incorporating the readers' notes. But I still plan to...in 2011!
• Buy more produce from the farmer's market and less from Ralphs. This goal was successfully completed in the first half of the year, when I bought most of my produce from the farmer's market. After we moved, however, the fact that the closest farmer's market is on Thursday mornings, and the fact that we live very close to Whole Foods, with its expensive but gorgeous produce, has meant less farmer's market shopping for me.

Last year I wrote, "Even if we plan out the year and what we want to get done in it, there are still surprises along the way, and we may end up in a place in December that we couldn't have imagined in January." That is definitely true, as the year end finds me in a new apartment, with new goals for my business and wonderful new clients. I can't wait to see what next year brings.


Creative Commons photo posted to Flickr by Masahiro Ihara

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