Organizing For Dummies Read online

  Chapter 10: Organizing for Fun: The Playroom

  Positioning the Play Centers

  How to Be a Senior Toy Manager

  The Reading Center: Children’s Books

  The Art of Organizing Arts ’n’ Crafts

  Rec Room and Playroom Combo: All-Ages Fun!

  Part III : Organizing Storage Spaces and Other Secret Places

  Chapter 11: Lightening Your Load: The Laundry and Utility Room

  Doing the Laundry Where You Live

  Sorting Systems

  Drying without Crying

  Getting It Straight: Ironing

  Scheduling Your Laundry Day

  Utility or Mudroom

  Chapter 12: Where Clutter Clones Itself: The Basement and Attic

  Down in the Depths: Functional Concerns

  Storage Made Simple

  Basement Activity Centers

  The Attic

  Chapter 13: Patrolling the Borderlands: The Garage, Patio, and Shed

  Getting a Ground Plan: The Garage

  Dealing with Your Wheels: The Car Center

  Fixing It Neatly: The Tool Center

  Maintaining the Great Outdoors: Lawn, Garden, and Snow Centers

  Winning Ways to Play: Sports and Game Center

  The Trash and Recycling Center

  Staying Cool in the Hot Zone: The Pool Center

  The Patio or Deck

  The Storage Shed

  Part IV : Professionally Organized: Your Office

  Chapter 14: Making Your Work Space Work

  Do Less, Achieve More: The Zen of Organized Work

  Focusing on Furniture and Equipment

  Peak Productivity Placement

  Cubes without Clutter

  The Home Office

  Household Information Center

  Chapter 15: Command Central: The Desk

  The Desk Is a Place to Do Work

  Designating Your Drawers as Work Centers

  The Computer Workstation

  Chapter 16: Managing Your Information Flow

  The ABCs of Filing

  Mastering Your Mail

  The Take Action File ‰ : The Tickler Turns Proactive

  Chapter 17: Cyberorganization: The Next Frontier

  Choosing Your Communication Mode

  Maximizing Wired Efficiency

  Paper or Electronic: A File Is a File

  Wired: Phone, Fax, and the Internet

  Learning Control: The Computer

  Making Data Management Easy

  Balancing Personal or Business Finances

  Part V : Time Management Strategies for Home, Office, and Travel

  Chapter 18: Planning Your Day and Your Life Like a Pro

  Preparing for Your Future

  Lists You Can Live By

  Acting with Rhythms and Routines

  Noticing and Rewarding Your Accomplishments

  Chapter 19: Scheduling Skills for Maximum Productivity

  Going with the Flow: The Time Log

  Fixing Your Flow: The Busters

  It’s How You Do It: Strategic Tasking

  Pro Communications

  Chapter 20: Maximizing Your Personal Time

  If You’re Overwhelmed, Read This First

  Getting Out of the House

  Shopping and Errands

  Cleaning and Chores

  Handling and Moving Your Money

  Making Time for Your Family

  Managing Your Health

  Scheduling Physical Fitness

  Entertainment and Recreation

  Finding a Special Someone

  Chapter 21: Going Mobile: Trips Near and Far

  The Power Briefcase and Purse

  Taking Control of Your Commute

  Working and Playing from the Car

  Trips for Business or Pleasure

  Part VI : The Part of Tens

  Chapter 22: Storage for Small Spaces: Apartments, Condos, and Compact Houses

  Purging Like You Mean Business

  Stacking and Tiering

  Shelving It

  Tucking Under: Space Beneath the Bed

  Using Countertops Constructively

  Containing with Cabinets

  Hanging with Hooks

  Behind Closed Doors

  Carting and Rolling

  Double-Duty Furniture

  Chapter 23: Ten Moves to Make Your Move Hassle-Free

  Making a Plan

  Choosing a Mover

  Closing the Old Place

  Getting Insurance

  Planning Ahead for Travel

  Covering Your Financial Assets

  Collecting Personal Records

  Purging Before You Pack

  Packing What You Need

  Preparing the New Place

  Chapter 24: Ten Tips for Great Garage Sales

  Scheduling Your Sale

  Advertising

  Being Neighborly

  Bagging and Boxing

  Collecting and Marking

  Setting Up

  Changing Money

  Selling Toys

  Involving the Kids

  Making Items Sell

  Chapter 25: Ten Pointers about Pets

  Time

  Space

  Cost

  Family Harmony

  Records

  Training

  Pet Supplies

  Grooming and Cleaning

  Feeding Time

  Travel

  Chapter 26: 911! Emergency Strategies

  Money

  Medical

  Communication

  Car

  Fire

  Children’s Safety

  Power Failures

  Snow Emergencies

  Valuables

  Insurance

  End User License Agreement

  Introduction

  Organizing for the Millennium

  What’s the favorite four-letter word of less-than-fully organized people? “Help!” Answering that call has given me a satisfying career and my 15 minutes on the Today show and Oprah. In case you missed the shows or absorbing life-changing information takes you more than 15 minutes, I’m here to answer the call for you with Organizing For Dummies.

  If you think of yourself as an organizational dummy, don’t feel bad; everybody is born that way. Organization isn’t inherited. With the human genome decoded, the evidence is clear: DNA strings dedicated to putting things into place and managing your time like a pro are nonexistent. Instead, organization is a learned skill set, just like driving a car. In fact that’s a pretty good analogy. If you think back, learning to drive probably seemed pretty daunting at first, but driving may now be so automatic that you can practically drive in your sleep (though national safety experts don’t recommend this). Organization is acquired, and as in any learning process, you need help. This book offers you that help.

  I learned how to be organized through a combination of luck and sheer force of will. The lucky part is that I was born with organized parents. My mother and father taught me to clean up my toys, put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and make my bed every day. They showed me that everything had a place, and that some things should be put away before others came out. Lucky me; I learned all this before I even learned to read. (Organizing for Dummies didn’t exist at that time, so being able to read wouldn’t have helped anyway.)

  After college, I landed my first job as a typist. That was fine, especially back then, before the days of career women, but I wanted more, so I decided to come up with better ways to do things to build my own rungs up the corporate ladder. I learned office organizing skills to add value to my work, and soon I’d moved from typist to secretary. The next stop was as an office administrator and eventually I ended up in association administration, juggling the workings of huge organizations, honing the systems that made events and processes run smoothly, and accomplishing my company’s strategic goals. I discovered organization by doing in my office career because otherwise all the exec
utives I worked with never would have made it through the day, let alone reached the company’s bottom-line objectives.

  Then things really got complicated: I became a mom. Determined to spend as much time as possible with my two daughters but committed to working and staying involved, I left the office and became a Tupperware rep. Yep, parties and all. Tupperware soon had me organizing kitchens all over the city of Chicago, coming in with my containers and leaving the place completely transformed. Being organized is a great way to win friends and influence people when you sell Tupperware. Meanwhile, I was busy with my family, attending all the girls’ school and sporting events, acting as a teacher’s aide and Girl Scout leader, washing a million loads of laundry, and racking up miles in the carpool lane. I discovered efficient ways to work and live because I had to. I couldn’t be in two places at one time but my organizing systems were in place everywhere, 24/7, and I was supermom. (Sorry about the bragging, but they say it’s okay for the Introduction.)

  As my daughters grew old enough to need me less, I reassessed, set some goals (you can find out how in Part V), and became a professional organizer and trainer. Boy, was there a need out there! Today, through my company, Everything in its Place™, I help clients from Fortune 500 companies as well as trade associations, entrepreneurs, and busy individuals and families get organized. What I learned in the process is that anyone can learn organizing skills and put them into practice. So if you feel like an organizational dummy now, just open up your eyes and read, open up your mind and do, and you can create an organized you. All the pieces of your personality can remain in place, even as each element of your life and work finds its place too.

  Being Busy versus Being Productive

  So many technological, social, and economic changes impact your life every year that you probably need organization just to keep up, let alone advance. Many people have two jobs, one at the office and one taking care of things at home. If you have a family, you may have a third. Elderly relatives or community commitments? You can count off four, five, and keep right on going. No matter what life stage you’re in, getting organized can make every day better and help you achieve your long-term goals.

  Read this book if you’d like to have

  More time

  Less stress

  Greater productivity

  Fit finances

  Better relationships

  An improved professional reputation

  Space to live, work, breathe, and be

  Don’t have time to get organized? All the more reason to read this book. I can make the time for you and deliver the goods, and you may wonder how you ever had time to be any other way.

  How to Use This Book

  Did you notice I wrote how to use, not read, this book in the heading above? That’s because reading is only half the battle. To get organized, you have to act.

  I’m offering you a shortcut to my lifetime of learning. In these pages, you can have all my professional secrets. Still, all the organizing secrets in the world won’t do a thing for you if all you do is read them. You must put the principles into practice. This is not a novel or a book to read through and toss into one of your many piles. Organizing For Dummies is a reference book for real life, so you have to bring the pages to life by doing.

  Thinking of a task as a pie and taking just one slice at a time is a time- management trick. Do the same thing with this book, read just one part, chapter, or a section within a chapter — depending upon your attention span and reading speed — then act on what you just read. Don’t wait until you finish the whole book. That day may never come (I’m a realist), and furthermore, you’re sure to forget all kinds of good tips and tricks by then. So read, and then do, and then read some more, sort of like an organizing sandwich.

  First things first: Start with Part I. Chapters 1 to 3 contain the guideposts, the principles of organization that are key to understanding the rest, and they’re a pretty quick read.

  Next, go where you want to go. Perhaps you’re currently single and aren’t too concerned about what’s going on at home, but your office is a certifiable war zone; start with the office chapters in Part IV. You can always go back to the home when you get inspired or after you have children and need to organize their clothes and playthings. (It happens!) On the other hand, if your home is the war zone in your life, that part is your starting point. Pressed for time? Skip to the time-management section in Part V.

  When it’s time to tackle Part IV (office) or V (time management), you may ultimately save yourself some time by reading the whole part through first, and then going back and working on individual sections. You can get an edge by getting the big picture because the organizational ideas and skills you will gain can all work together to reinforce each other.

  Psychologists say it takes about 18 to 21 days to make or break a habit, so give yourself some time to absorb this information. Read a section over again. Three times if you like. No one will think less of you for it. At school, you wouldn’t read something once and then take the test. (Or if you did, you know what usually happens.)

  How This Book Is Organized

  I set up Organizing For Dummies to support the quick-hit reference process I just described, so you can skip around and easily find the organizing advice you need for any aspect of your life. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s where.

  Part I: Basic Organizational Tools and Tenets

  Chapters 1 through 3 give you the who, what, where, why, when, and how of getting organized by showing you the principles and systems that are used throughout the book. If you really want to get going, this is the beginning.

  Part II: Getting Organized at Home

  Here’s a room-by-room rundown of all the places you live in — the kitchen, living room, dining room, den, playroom, bedroom, and bathroom. The part opens with the front hall, because that’s the entrance to your home (very important in the ancient Asian tradition of feng shui that harmonizes the physical placement of objects in our daily surroundings for the sake of flow). Go where you want to get organized first, and learn how to apply the five principles of P-L-A-C-E™ to systematize each space: purging, placing like things together, accessibility, containing, and evaluating.

  Part III: Organizing Storage Spaces and Other Secret Places

  Part III takes a good look at many spaces of your home that you don’t live in and therefore may overlook. Hopefully you don’t live in the laundry room, which is included here. (If you do, read the chapter on how to do your laundry in two days so you can get the heck out of there!) The basement, attic, and garage are covered too, to help you organize your storage and secret places so that you can reclaim this real estate.

  Part IV: Professionally Organized: Your Office

  Turn here if your desk is a mess or your files have gone wild. Think you don’t need files when you have good piles? Do not pass go! Proceed directly to Part IV. The tricks and tips using W-A-S-T-E™, R-A-P-I-D™, and R-E-M-O-V-E™ will get you through your papers quickly and show you what you need to pitch, what to retain, and how to store and find things from your stapler to your strategic plan. My clients say that the Take Action File™ alone is worth the cost of this book.

  Part V: Time Management Strategies for Home, Office, and Travel

  Whether you wonder where the time goes, need to accomplish more at work, or simply want to make the most of your day and your life, this part can get you started and take you to the time-management finish line. From the new to the tried and true, here are all the time-management techniques that you need in one place, presented in systems that you can start using today. If all you get out of this section is “plan today for tomorrow,” I will have accomplished a great goal. (Planning today is easy when you follow the four steps of P-L-A-N™.) If you grasp all the other good stuff that’s there, I can die happy and you can squeeze in a lot more living before you go.