Organizing Solutions for Your Struggling Student
Check out my blog post at Organize to Revitalize ~
http://dallisonlee.com/blog/2013/03/04/3-simple-organizing-solutions-for-your-struggling-student/
Work at Home: Apps and More
Our world is filled with organizing automation and technology. Work at home requires effectiveness and efficiency. These apps can help you make a difference.
Below are a few of my favorite apps for making life easier and more organized.
Evernote~ Use this app to consolidate ideas, makes notes to remember things like books or websites, and help keep infomation easy to access.
CardStar~ Use this app to keep up with all those store loyalty cards.
MomMaps~ Families want to know places to go and activities to do and this app finds them for you.
OurGroceries~ The nightmare of grocery shopping made easier with a list that multiple people can access and shop.
ScanBizCards~ This app is a great way to eliminate all those biz cards floating around your house and keeps them in your phone.
Shoeboxed~ This app is an easy way to keep up with receipts, either for your home or office.
Mint.com~ This app and computer accessed program helps you gather data for budgeting, keep a record of what you are spending your money on and even suggests improvements.
Aboutone.com~Consolidate your calendar, contacts, health information and home inventory in one spot!
List type apps including Ziplist, Wunderlist, Things, Toodledo. No need for a paper list to lose! These apps help you stay up on what you need to do, buy, and more!
What apps are your favorites?
Work at Home: Organizing your technology
Working from home is what we do! Whether it is a part time second income or an extension of what you do every day, we add on worktime through out the day. Being organized to work at home makes a difference in productivity and efficiency. To do both, we need great technology tools! Here are a few suggestions to make your work more successful.
- Log Me In. This is a service that logs you in to your base computer. Easy to use and free, you can do your work remotely on your base computer.
- Dropbox. This is a service that permits file sharing. You create an account and save your files to Dropbox to use remotely, share with others while working on a project, or save as a backup for files in the cloud.
- GoogleDrive. This is one of the many free google products for you to use saving and sharing files. It can be accessed by logging into google from anywhere.
- Skype. This free service is for free phone and video services between users. Download it on your computer and choose the skype phone number to call and see others.
- Task list. There are many to choose from, including ziplist, toodle doo, wunderlist, and remember the milk. A task list helps you prioritize and keep all your lists in one spot!
- Evernote. This free app for computer and smart phone allows you to capture and organize notes, audio clips, photos, and more.
What tech tools help you be more organized to work at home?
Work at Home: Organizing Your Home Office
Working at home requires setting up a space that will work for you! It can be a challenge to carve out a spot to get your work done, just because there are lots of distractions.
- Decide on what works best for you! Some families relinquish the dining room to become an office, some families work well in the midst of the media area. Decide if you need quiet or not, paper management and printing capability, and what tools you will use to work. You are ready to set up your space after thinking this through.
- Set up office hours. With a start and end time, your time will be most productive.
- Paper and work go hand in hand. For portability from the office, there are products suited just for this! You can also set up a command center for work at home and work at the office with the same tabs keeping paperwork consistently. A file cart is a great option to slot papers in, keep them close by, and keep them organized.
- Decide on a time you will shut down for the evening. Working at home can interfere with a good night’s sleep. Sleep is the best way to work efficiently and effectively!
Check out my Work At Home pinterest board! http://pinterest.com/EllenDelap/work-at-home/
Send One Suit and Make a Difference!
Join me in participating in this year’s Dress For Success Houston’s S.O.S. (Send One Suit) Drive. The effort, formerly known as Clean Out Your Closet Week, provides interview suits, confidence boosts and career development to more than 45,000 women in over 75 cities each year. Dress for Success is a not-for-profit organization that helps low-income women make tailored transitions into the workforce. Each Dress for Success client receives one suit when she has a job interview and a second suit when she gets the job.
If you would like to contribute, please bring your interview appropriate suit in excellent condition, cleaned, pressed and on a hanger to Kingwood Country Club on March 6, 2013 from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. Matching jacket and pants or skirt are excellent donations. Don’t have suit to donate? Dress For Success Houston suggests donating $75 toward the cost of a suit for clients over size 14. Receipts for donations will be sent directly by Dress For Success Houston. For more information call 281-360-3928 or email edelap@professional-organizer.com.
Want to find a local donation location? Visit Dress for Success! Many donation drives will be held March 4 – 8, 2013.
E- Books that Make Organizing Happen
E-books are one of the many resources I use to help my clients move forward with organizing. These help my clients make decisions, find ways to make clutter disappear and help create baby steps in organizing.
How to De-clutter and Make Money Now: Turn Clutter Into Cash with The One-Minute Organizer by Donna Smallin
- Donna offers us many different ways to make money from decluttering. Her various strategies work for each of us.
- http://www.amazon.com/How-De-clutter-Make-Money-ebook/dp/B007SQVGF2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362855724&sr=8-1&keywords=clutter+for+your+cash+donna+smallin
How to Organize (Just About) Anything by Peter Walsh.
- Peter helps us create a vision of what we want and follow through on making systems and routines that work.
- http://www.amazon.com/Organize-Just-About-Everything-ebook/dp/B00304XCPS/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1362855820&sr=1-8&keywords=ebooks+about+organizing
What ebooks help you organize?
Organize to Revitalize Blog: Yours, Mine and Ours: Tips to Communicate with Your Blended Family and Stay Organized
Connecting, collaborating and consolidating with a blended family can be a challenge! Check out my guest blog post on Organize to Revitalize
Yours, Mine, and Ours: Tips on How to Communicate With Your Blended Family and Stay Organized
Plentiful Powerful Productivity= Success
Powerful productivity come when we create an environment that works with our strengths. Improve your effectiveness and efficiency with these tips.
- Your planner is the visual guide to your productivity. Use it like a map, writing in what your destination is for your day, your week and longer. When you write tasks and projects into your planner, you are making yourself accountable and breaking the job into smaller, manageable pieces.
- Use paper management skills to go from overwhelmed to in control. Break down the flood of paper by eliminating first what is junk and recycle this. Create a command center where you drop recycling in and separate the paper into actions. Your command center should be at the spot where paper comes to you and you drop it in a pile. Create a fun and inviting command center using color! Not sure what decisions to make about paper? Be brutal and just keep what you absolutely need to work on, not maybe, someday projects.
- Turn overwhelming email into 10 in your inbox by taking time three times a day to sort and clear email. Color code your email and important email stands out. Designate a power period to work on email that needs lengthy responses and relates to projects. Your paper and email folders should be named the same to keep consistent and find what you need.
- Add routines to your week to consolidate activities. Even grocery shopping is less stressful if you tack it on to an existing weekly activity.
- Too much to do and too much on the brain? Use a notebook to capture your lists, dating the top of the list. Then choose 3 – 7 tasks to do that day.
- Use technology to help you increase your productivity. Turn off alarms, email, texting and more when you really want to focus on a project.
What success tips do you have for plentiful productivity?
More ideas on powerful productivity here!
Double Up
What makes you spring into action? For me, I will be assured of starting and finishing a project when I double up.
- I link two activities back to back that I love. (Or at least love one of them!) I will file when I watch foodtv.
- I will support a cause when I add in another team member that I work well with. I have joined committees and become a board member because it was fun, easy and rewarding to be a valuable team member.
- No one wants to be left in the kitchen alone. My DH and I partner to unload the dishwasher, fold the sheets, and make dinner. You can create all different partners in your family to get this done.
- Double up dinner recipes! Freeze part of the recipe for another week.
What is one way you get the little stuff done? What organizing strategy works best for you?
Less IS more!
Over and over we hear this phrase. What does it really mean?
- Less mail is less overwhelming. Take 5 minutes every day to recycle and review your mail. Keep what remains in your command center to work on during admin time.
- Less to do means you are doing what you love. Our biggest burdens are our time commitments. We say yes and then feel completely overwhelmed. Commit to less to do and feel the serenity.
- Less stuff is less to take care of and more energy to do what we love. Is your stuff becoming a burden? Its time to let it go and have less in your space.
For me I am using this mantra every week to decide how much time and energy I use in projects, with people and my own stuff. It shapes how I think and what I do. My goal this year is to do less and accomplish more.
What do you want to do less of or have less of and feel more energy?
We specialize in working with ADD/ADHD clients. Whether in your home or your office, we motivate, empower and affirm our clients in their quest for organizing and productivity! 
