“I’m responsible, honest and hard working, but I just can’t seem to get myself together.  I’m always late, tired and frustrated.  I try so hard, yet get so little done.  Not only are my time and schedule out of whack, but my house is a constant mess.  The ironing piles to the ceiling, the laundry’s never folded and the closets are stuffed with clutter.  To top it all off, my office is in chaos with the paperwork strewn and the phone is a constant source of irritation.”

Does this sound familiar?  If so, help is on the way.  These next few months, you will learn the why’s and wherefores of organizing your home, paperwork and life.

By applying some basic principles and techniques, your life can be changed.  And that’s exactly what I am proposing here.  These next few blogs on organizing your home will not only offer a set of principles and specific actions but it will represent a whole process of change.  Whether you use these techniques or not, to become more organized you must be willing to change.  After all, if you can find a better and quicker way of doing things, won’t changing your patterns be worth it?

These next few blogs on organizing the home do not prescribe rigid rules for you to follow, but they do offer fun, stimulating ideas to help you develop your own personal style of organizing.  I provide the ideas and techniques.  You design your own system according to your goals and lifestyle.

Becoming organized has wonderful benefits.  It brings a sense of stability and peace.  Where there is order, there is peace; and real order liberates rather than confines.  Your children are more secure, and your spouse finds the order and peace something to look forward to after a hard day at work.  People are attracted to you, your home and your office because of the warm, relaxed feeling they get when they visit.  Accomplishments increase and all of a sudden you feel good about yourself.  Your productivity on the job increases as does your sense of well-being and self-worth.  Guilt subsides, along with procrastination and worry.  Perhaps most importantly, you have more free time for you.  The more efficient and effective you become, the easier things are to get done.  Therefore, you have more time to pursue other goals and interests.

For the next few months, I will be offering ideas on how to organize your home!

Happy Organizing

I am never too busy for a referral. If you know anyone in a company or an individual that might benefit from my services-let me know-I love helping people bring order to their working environment!

Sue McMillin

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

]]> http://www.withtimetospare.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=276 0 http://www.withtimetospare.com/blog/?p=271 http://www.withtimetospare.com/blog/?p=271#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:06:45 +0000 Sue http://www.withtimetospare.com/blog/?p=271  This month is full of tips and techniques to keep your office organized.  They are energy-givers.  If you do them you will gain energy.  However, you must do them or your office will slowly slip back into chaos.  Here are the ideas.

• Worst first.  Anytime of the day when you have the choice of three to nine things to do, choose the worst first.  That way, you get the worst over first and then you can look forward to doing all those things you enjoy.
• Enjoy first.  The only exception to the idea above is first thing in the morning.  To get energy and look forward to getting up in the morning, spend the first 30 minutes each day doing what you enjoy first (except sleep).  Jog, shower, read, or walk.  As you get in the habit, your body will start adapting and you will find your early morning a delight.
• Clear off your desk at the end of each day.  This gives you a feeling of finishing out your day and helps you in the transition to home.  It gives you immediate energy when you come into the office in the morning.
• Work on one project at a time on the top of your desk.  Working on more than one project will distract you and you will lose papers more easily.  Before starting the second project, put away the first.
• Put things away, not down.  Did you ever watch the mailman at the post office? Does he take your package and just set it aside to rush on to the next customer? No. First he stamps and then places each package where it is supposed to go. Then he serves the next customer. He is stopping work long enough to put things in their place before he moves on to another customer.
• Plan and lay out each night what you will wear the next day.  This leaves no room for errors. You get up the next day and you don’t have to think, it’s all laid out for you.
• Take one to two solid days to completely organize your office before you start work.  Whatever time you invest in organizing you will get back in time saved.
• Organizing is sharpening your ax and continuously refining your system.  To organize properly, you must stop your normal work routine to do it.
• End your day on a note of accomplishment.  Don’t fire an employee or reprimand anyone at the end of the day.  Also, work on the most enjoyable project at the very end of the day.
• Running errands. Always plan your route and while driving try to take only right turns.  Left turns will take an extra 3 minutes per turn.  Plan your route and save time and money.
• When you travel. Try to return the end of the day or leave at least one-half day to answer your calls, do your paperwork, write expense reports, answer your mail and do your laundry.
• Eat nutritionally.  Eat light lunches, avoid alcohol.
• Exercise. Briskly walk, jog, bicycle, or do some type of exercise every day that works your heart up to a fast pace for 15 minutes.
• Keep your family life and work life balanced. Remember, if it’s not working at home, eventually it will fall apart at work.  Make it a rule to take off one whole day out of every seven days. This is a fantastic time management trick that literally will save you money, energy and time.

One day off totally refreshes you for the following week, increasing energy and productivity as well as enhancing your family life.

Keep your office a model for others to copy.  You are in control and have extra time to spend on the most important areas of your life, your family.  Take some time to reassess what is your top priority and I am quite sure that you will realize that the reason you need to become more organized is because you value your time and want to spend it with those that mean the most to you.

When your life is about to end and you look back on all your accomplishments and failures, the one thing you will wish for is that you had spent more time with your family and closest loved ones.  Make today the first day of the rest of your life – make that commitment to take the extra time that you have gained and invest that time in your family and friends.

I guarantee you will not regret it.

Remember: You will never have time to organize, you organize to have time.

Have a great month!

Sue McMillin-Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

He said, “I just stand up.”

I asked, “Where’s your phone?”

He replied, “Lady, I just wait for it to ring.”

As I began to analyze his situation, I observed something over his lap that was covered with papers. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought maybe it was a new type of desk. Much to my amazement, I found out it was his lap drawer. “Don’t you need your lap desk drawer?”

“Well, I haven’t yet.”

“When was the last time you saw that drawer?” I asked.

“Seven years ago,” he replied.

We began digging out, and after four hours I was one-quarter finished and had uncovered papers from 1978. This was 1987. This man was in serious trouble and couldn’t effectively function in his job.

Going back to the 5-Step Procedure,

1) Remove every-thing from all your small drawers.  Use the floor and

2) Sort all items.  Simply lay out all your stationery, Xerox paper, clips, pens, pencils, notebook paper, umbrella, keys, McDonald’s ketchup and mustard packets, etc. into their proper groups.

3) Eliminate, put those items that go someplace else in a box, take them back to the supply cabinet and throw away all those extras you don’t need.

4) Contain all supplies.  Use small drawer dividers or baskets.

5) Assign those supplies a particular drawer, one drawer for stationery, one drawer for pads, one drawer for utensils, etc.  The large supplies, like Xerox paper or big boxes of stationery, go on your shelving.  (Refer to Books/Resources/Large Supplies.)

That’s my easy 5-Step Procedure for not only organizing your supplies in your desk drawers but organizing any area of your office and home.

Have a great month!

Sue McMillin-Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

There are two ways you can organize your papers.  I will offer both ideas, you can choose which best suits your needs. The first way to organize your avalanche of loose papers is to use my simple, succinct 3D Process using stackables:

 1)
Do Now

2)
Do Later

3)
Delegate

Do Now is this week
- all papers you know you will have to do this week go into that stackable.

Do Later is this month
- You need to do this, but it probably won’t get done this week but needs to be looked at this month.

Delegate is this person – Whoever you consistently delegate work to needs a stackable.  The delegate stackable can also hold papers that you need to discuss with your co-workers.

This is a very simple system that you can use especially if you have a small to medium amount of loose papers on your desk.  For those of you who have to mount an expedition to find your desk because of the mountains of paperwork, you can use the same system but expand it. This is the 3D Expanded Process:

Do Now might be expanded to be To Do, To Call, To Pay, etc.

Do Later could be expanded to be To Read, To Order, To Fax, etc.

Delegate would be expanded to be To Tim, To John, To Karen, etc.

In other words, the Do Now, Do Later, Delegate stackables are not enough division for you – you need more stackables than just the three.  You have several types of Do Now and you need to subdivide them or you delegate to three people and you want all those papers to go into their individual stackable, not just piled into one stackable. These categories are based on the action you will be taking on each of these pieces of paper.

Let’s review each of these categories:

Do Now – This stack consist of papers you will need to work on this week. It includes projects, reports, or memos you must complete this week.   These are papers not files.

Do Later – For projects or reports that are due next month.

Delegate/secretary – If you have a secretary and you are constantly giving her work, then there will be a stack of papers somewhere on your desk that will need to get to her quickly. If you delegate to other co-workers, each of them need their own stackable.

To Read – Most people’s to read extends to the ceiling. One dentist I worked with had stacks of magazines in his office.  He will never read these, but just in case he has the time, he’s kept them handy. There’s too much information coming into your office.  You cannot read it all so you need to face the fact and weed out all those articles, magazines, newsletters, and newspapers. Just think of the money you’ll be saving, not to mention the environment.  Paper comes from trees.  Trees grow slowly. Prioritize and decide what three subjects you are interested in and stop your subscriptions to all other magazines and journals. Make a to read stack of critical reading only.

To Pay – Every bill you receive should go in a to pay stack.  Mixing your bills with your to do’s will complicate matters and you may lose track of paying an important bill. One client put his parking ticket in with the rest of his to do’s and it grew from $35.00 to $140.00.

To Call – All those pink slips, messages that are scattered all over your desk and in your briefcase, need to
go into a small to call box on your desk.  If you have papers on your desk, and the next action is to make a phone call, then place these in the to call stackable.

To File — The rest of the papers that require no action but need to be saved, go into a to file stackable.  These will be filed in your filing cabinet.

In-box – An in-box is not your to do box.  An in-box is for papers that you have received, but have not opened nor looked at. Once you open a piece of mail, or touch a piece of paper in your in-box, you must not drop it back in your in-box.  It must go into one of the other stacks or files in your file drawers.

Out-box – This box is for paper that you will take out of your office or will go to someone else on your
staff.  This out-box can be your delegate box if you wish.

Now we have analyzed and defined the type of papers we deal with on a daily basis.  Try this 3D Process. I think you will like the fact that all your papers are not in 2 -3  18 inch stacks but are in 4-8 small manageable stacks based on the action that you are taking on each piece of paper.

Have a great month and a blessed Christmas Season.

Coming next month: The Step-By-Step Method to Organizing Your Files

Sue McMillin-Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

There are all sorts of desks, all shapes and sizes, and there are many types of offices, small, oblong and large. I’m not going to be able to draw your office but I can tell you the ideal desk and equipment to buy. You can arrange your bookshelf and computer accordingly.

How should an office look and what should it offer? I firmly believe you need a minimum of four file drawers, four small drawers in or near your desk and one bookshelf. If you have two saw horses and a door for a desk, somewhere near it you need a minimum of four file drawers and four small drawers and one bookshelf.

Now that you have a list of furniture that you need for your office, let’s start by defining each item in your office and giving it a place. Believe it or not, you only have four major items in your office (other than your computer):

• Files
• Small supplies that go into your desk drawers
• Loose papers
• Books/resources and larger supplies that go on shelves

The FileMAP^® System

Main.
These are the files that you are now working on, they are actively a part of your job. You may be working on one project, your budget, and three personal files.  These current working files go in your Main drawer.

Archive.
All other files that do not fit in your Main drawer, go into your Archive drawers. These files are the ones you’ve not looked at for 13 years, no one else has looked at them, you’ve never used them, you’re not going to use them, but you might need them some day.

Personal.
This drawer contains all your personal files, like your insurance papers, your pay stubs, or your 401K or evaluations. Some of my clients use this file drawer to house their purse or jogging shoes.

For those of you who have a home office, you would not need the Personal Drawer-all of your files at home are personal. If you like the FileMAP concept, you could designate the “P” to be Projects if you have them or People (kids, parents, etc.)

Now within the FileMAP^® System you can set up categories based on your work processes. Ask yourself what do I do, what are my work processes, what is my job function? Your work
processes or job function will define your file categories. In other words, perhaps you work with clients. If so, then one of your categories is Clients. Perhaps you are in the Human
Resources department and you work with compensation or benefits or recruiting. Those are your work processes and thus your file categories.

So for example you set up your 3-inch plastic file tab that reads Clients and behind the file tab you file all your client files — each file represents each client. Within each file are memos, letters, invoices, whatever transactions have transpired between you and your client. On the computer your categories will mirror your paper file categories. If you are in the HR Department, the 3-inch tab will read Compensation or Benefits, and behind each tab you will file all the benefits files or Compensation files.

The beauty of the FileMAP^® System is that as you are finishing work on a file in your Main
drawer you move it to the Archive drawer. Or as you need a file that is in the Archive drawer, you move it to the Main drawer until you are finished with it, then it goes back into the Archive drawer.

This system I have taught to literally hundreds of corporations across this USA and so far all my clients have raved about how simple it is to set up and easy to maintain.

Try it, you’ll be pleasantly pleased.

Have a great month!

Coming next month: Ideas on organizing your paperwork

Sue McMillin – Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

If you were to organize your lap drawer in your desk (the middle drawer that is over your knees), where would you start? I ask that question in every seminar I give across the country and invariably people say they take it all out and throw away what they don’t need.  Some may group items together, and then they put it all back.  This is not organizing, it is simply rearranging, and that is why it soon returns to chaos.  I’m finding that the main reason people are not organized is because they’ve never been trained. Business schools train managers to manage people but not how to manage their desks.  Secretarial schools teach secretaries how to type 140 wpm but no clue is offered as to how to organize their desks.  

Let me share with you my 5 simple steps to a more organized you:

1.  Remove

Suppose you were going to organize your lap drawer. What would be the first step you would have to do?  One woman in my seminar shouted, “I’d close the drawer and go have a sweet roll!”
Another woman said, “I can’t get my drawer open.”  Whatever your situation may be, the very
first step would be to remove all the stuff—take out all the pens, pencils, clips, rubber bands, twisties, packages of sugar, tea bags, McDonald’s mustard and ketchup packets, business cards, loose papers, 3×5 cards, photos, keys, Post-it notes, dried up sandwiches, caked on candy, toothbrushes.  Whatever lurks in the deep recesses of the drawer, take it out.  It probably hasn’t
seen light in seven years—it needs a breath of fresh air.

2.    Sort

As you are removing all items, sort according to like items.  Most people just take it all out and pile it on the top of the desk or on the floor.  It’s hard to see what you have if you do it that way.  Sorting like items will clue you to the fact that you have 87 pens and 830 clips.  You might ask yourself, “Do I need so many?” Also sorting helps you to …

3.   Eliminate

After you have sorted and you see that many of your pens are dried up or that the sugar packages have mated and grown exponentially, you can eliminate.  You either throw them directly into the trash or you have a box labeled “to go elsewhere.” Into that box goes any item that does not belong in your office.  After you have finished the drawer, take the “go elsewhere” box and distribute the stuff to where it goes.

4.  Contain

Now comes the most fabulous step, the one most people leave out.  For those of you who have gotten this far, stop and think.  If you just put all these groups of pens, pencils, ruler, stamps, and clips back in the drawer, in a few short days they will be a jumbled mess again.  How do you keep those groups sorted and separated at all times?  By first containing them.  Put each group in a
container, a drawer divider, or a shallow box before you place them back in the drawer, they will stay contained and not fly all over the drawer again.

5.  Assign a Place-Put it back

This step is the key.  Don’t just stick the containers in the drawer.  Assign them a place.  Anytime you say the word “stick-it”—“I’ll just stick it here” or “I’ll just put it in here for now” or “I’ll just lay it here until I need it,” you have just created clutter!  Don’t put things down, put them away.  However, to put them away, you must assign them a place. How do you know where to put things if you have never assigned them a place?  You may put them here one day or there the next.  The items have a tendency to float from place to place. Assign those containers a defined place in the drawer. 

You have done it!  These are the fabulous five steps that you can use to organize any area of your office or home.

Have a great month!

Coming next month: Ideas on organizing your office

Sue McMillin – Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

Here’s another shocking paradigm. I share in my seminars that after you have organized your office or home, it will only take you one minute of every hour to maintain the order. That’s right, spend only one minute every hour maintaining that order and you will never be disorganized again. People seem to think that getting organized takes a monumental amount of time, but that staying organized takes even more time. This is not true. Maintaining your organization is really quite easy once your paradigm has been shifted. Remember to allot one minute per hour for the upkeep, and you will be organized forever.

Maintaining is sharpening your axe, which reminds me of a story. There was this woodsman who was hired to cut down trees. He was paid by the tree. So early Monday morning, energized and excited, he cut down 20 trees. The next day, raring to go, he cut down another 20 trees. On Wednesday, he once again rose early and began the process, but this day he cut down only 10 trees. On Thursday, he cut down five trees, and on Friday, it looked like he was going to cut down five. What was his problem?

Most people in my seminars don’t get the right answer. They suggest that all the trees are gone, that the other trees are in his way, or that he has lost energy, he is tired, or whatever. Rarely do they guess the real reason: His axe is dull. To return to cutting down 20 trees, he must take the time to sharpen his axe. But to sharpen his axe, he must stop his producing and maintain good equipment. The problem is, he says, that he doesn’t have time, so he continues to work with a dull axe and continues to cut down only five trees a day.

Organizing is investing the time on the front end to reap the time on the back end. Whatever time you spend organizing and maintaining that order, you will get all of that time back!

Is that fabulous, or what?

I hope you have enjoyed these ideas and paradigms. As you begin the process in changing your thought patterns, you will reap the benefits everyday.

If you get a chance, let me know how these ideas have helped you. I would love to hear from you.

God bless you in your endeavor to organize your thinking.

Coming next week: ideas on organizing your office

Have a great week!

Sue McMillin

Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

WithTimeToSpare.com

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

I once had a roommate from California. She was a neat gal with many talents, and I cared for her as a friend. Being from California, she loved parties and was the life of every one she went to. While I moved over to the side of the room and had a deep conversation with just one of the party attendees, she covered the whole room. Flitting like a butterfly from one person to another, she thrived on meeting everyone she could. She once told me that she didn’t want to be organized, because she felt that getting organized would constrain her and tie her down.

I, of course, told her that it did just the opposite. It liberates. When you are organized, you can go to the party and not feel guilty that the dishes are not done and that you will have to face them when you get home. When you are organized, you have more time to spend with loved ones. When you are organized, you have more time, so you can enjoy when people drop by or attend a party. You are not constantly thinking about your chores left undone.

Order liberates, and as Jack Welch, past CEO of General Electric, once said, “Eliminating clutter allows faster decision-making.”

Coming next week: Paradigm # 21: “Getting organized doesn’t help, cause I will never stay organized. I will just mess it up, and it will fall back into chaos.”

Have a great week!

Sue McMillin

Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

WithTimeToSpare.com

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

In my seminars, every time I show a before and after picture of an office that I have organized, some of the attendees comment that the after picture looks like the guy doesn’t have any work to do. I share with them that their thought about the after picture is actually their paradigm or mindset about an organized desk. I tell them that to organize their lives, they will have to begin changing their thinking as well as their offices and homes. Of course this whole book is about changing your thinking about order and your concept of what order is and is not. You must begin to see that a cleared-off counter in your home or an empty desktop does not signify that you do little or no work. Have we ever once thought when we see a completely cleared desk at our worksite that, just maybe, that person is efficient or effective? We usually think just the opposite. I once worked with a client who told me that a cluttered desk was a sign that he was busy and important to his company. He equated clutter on top of his desk with busyness, which translated to “I will keep my job because I am a busy man.”

Start thinking that putting things away is a sign of organization and competency. Begin thinking that orderliness is next to godliness, and you will begin to make changes in your environment as well.

Coming next week: Paradigm # 20: “Getting organized will constrain me or confine me.”

Have a great week!

Sue McMillin

Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

WithTimeToSpare.com

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

You know what I have discovered while working with families all over this great country as I organize their homes and offices? Almost everywhere I go, I see moms and dads struggling and muddling through mountains of toys that they have worked to supply their kids with, and few kids appreciate it. Parents think that if they don’t get their kids all these toys, educational games, and computer programs, they are depriving them of much needed intelligence. Here’s a novel idea. Instead of giving your kids something that is perishable and will just add to the junk heap in some landfill, try giving them the following: Take them to the zoo; start taking them on walks in the park; get them off the computer and out into nature; teach them how to serve by requiring them to take a few hours each month and visit a hospital or work with Habitat For Humanity; start having just plain good family time once a week at home without turning on the TV. Sit around the fireplace and begin developing family rituals that they will remember for years to come. You can find all kinds of things to do with your kids that are free. I’ve just given you a few ideas to spur your imagination. More than anything that my dad bought for me, all I wanted when I was growing up was for him to come out and play ball with me and the neighborhood kids. That’s all I remember that I wanted.

Have a great week!

Sue McMillin

Professional Organizer and Trainer

719-495-7626

WithTimeToSpare.com

Sue@WithTimeToSpare.com

Give me a call today if you would like an hour consultation free and of course, know that I am never too busy for a referral.

Coming next week: Paradigm # 19: “But if I clear off my desk, it will look like I don’t have any work.”