I used to measure the success of my holidays by how full my calendar was. The above image is from a holiday journal from about 10 years when my kids were younger. Cookie exchanges, white elephant gift exchanges and neighborhood gatherings filled the blocks on my calendar, but did little to fill my heart with holiday cheer. Instead they brought on the stress of having one more thing to do, at a time of year that … Read More
Today we will focus on Editing your gift giving. One facet of my life that has changed significantly since becoming a professional organizer is how many gifts I give. I spend many hours each week working with people who have accumulated way too many things. Two categories if things that pop up at house after house are: unused gifts received and ungiven gifts. I’m guessing the number of ungiven gifts I’ve encountered in my six years of … Read More
Here we are back for day three of my edit your holidays series, where we’ll discuss editing your holiday meals. In our home the holidays have always been about food. Up until a few years ago, it was typical for our small gathering of 8-10 people to sit down to a meal that would have easily fed 20. Our collective girths were proof that food was an important component of the holidays. A couple of years ago though … Read More
When I was first married I loved decorating for the holidays, probably because I didn’t have that many decorations. As timed marched on though and our family and house grew, the number of decorations grew too. This has resulted in my getting much more selective about what I want to put out for the holidays, as I don’t want to spend more than a day decorating the house, or more than a day packing things up in … Read More
Editing Traditions: Just because your family has myriad holiday traditions, doesn’t mean all of them need to be rolled out every year. Growing up, my family had lots of traditions, like opening an advent calendar and making cookies. I especially recall Christmas Eve traditions – going to church, opening one present each and completing a 500 piece holiday themed puzzle. My husband’s family had their own traditions that were very different from those of my family. While … Read More
There are a lot of pessimistic people in this world. I know, I used to be one of them. Ok, I wasn’t pessimistic all of the time, but when confronted with a challenge, I found my mind would typically focus on the negative. Or when I had a bad day, I would lie in bed that night and ruminate on what went wrong and worry about everything else that might go wrong as a result. I started … Read More
I’ve shared with you before that the area where I struggle most with organization is my desk. In particular, I’ve talked about using desk dumps to bring my desk back to ready. I had most of last Friday off and my plan was to spend at least part of the morning clearing my desk and preparing for next week, before heading off to get my hair colored. Unfortunately I found myself motivated to do just about anything other … Read More
I’m making a commitment to mindfulness in my life. For me, this means I’m spending more time being present and single tasking, as opposed to multitasking. Mindfulness is challenging for anyone, but especiallly those of us with ADHD. Studies are showing mindfulness can benefit those with ADHD and books like The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD by Lidia Zylowska, MD explain how. When I find myself getting worked up about something (i.e. less mindful), I’m learning to take … Read More
My preferred way for disposing of stuff that’s too good to throw away, such as the items in this photo, is to pass it on to friends or family, or to donate it to charity. Yes, I could possibly sell some of this stuff, like the nearly new purse, but selling it means I first need to identify a place to sell it such as a consignment shop, ebay, Craig’s list or a garage sale. Then I … Read More
I’m a big fan of mind mapping tools. Mind mapping is a way for relational thinkers such as myself, to build structure around an idea or ideas. A mind mapping tool, such as iThoughts HD, which I blogged about earlier this year is a great tool for creating a list of things to pack for a trip. The first step when using a mind map to pack is to figure out how many bottoms (pants or skirts) … Read More