Читать книгу Get It! - Jacqueline Laurita - Страница 12
ОглавлениеIf you are a busy woman who wears many hats throughout the day (the mom hat, the wife hat, the friend hat, the chef hat, the chauffeur hat, the worker hat, the nurse hat—you get the idea!), you know how quickly life can become overwhelming. You’re bombarded with nagging thoughts and constant reminders of things you’ve yet to accomplish, and endless demands waiting impatiently to be addressed.
There are days when there don’t seem to be enough hours to get everything done that you need to get done. And when you feel overburdened, you may shut down. When you shut down, you don’t complete your daily tasks and you can end up feeling even more overwhelmed, inadequate, and discouraged. An unfinished workload can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. And if you’re always playing catch-up, it’s impossible to move ahead.
That’s why it’s so important to get organized—in your thoughts and in your environment. It’s the key to becoming more productive and more effective, in all areas of your life. Getting organized means having the peace of mind that your life is under your control. It means knowing when you can fit in a workout and where you put that bok choy you bought for dinner. It means it will be easier and faster to find that outfit you wanted to wear and the right makeup tools. Organization is essential to really get what you want and need out of life, whatever that might be.
We know it’s not an easy task—but it is well worth the effort!
D.R.O.P. Everything and Refocus!
It’s hard to clearly focus on one task when you are fixated on and stressed about others. Sometimes there are just too many thoughts going on inside your head about what you need to do for you to focus on any one thing, making it impossible to actually get things done.
There’s a tool we like to use when this happens to us to help us think and work more effectively: we D.R.O.P. everything—download, rearrange, organize, and proceed—and refocus!
Download
When you start feeling overwhelmed by your thoughts, stop and physically “download” them, whether on paper (a pocket-size notebook works well for this) or digitally (into a smartphone app or text document). Get them out of your mind, before you lose your mind! Physically being able to see your thoughts lets you process them more effectively.
Rearrange
Once you have your thoughts on paper (or screen), rearrange them into categories: home, work, family, and personal, for example. Then use this to turn those thoughts into specific tasks, projects, and goals.
Let’s say that under the home category, you’ve added—based on your download—things like “clean closet,” “clean out pantry,” and “buy groceries.” Under each of these, write a step-by-step list of how you will accomplish the task. For example, under “clean closet,” your list might look like this: (1) Separate clothes into keep, give away/donate, trash, alter, dry-clean, and wash piles. (2) Put keep pile back in the closet. (3) Wash clothes. And so on.
On Jené and Jacqueline’s Smartphones
We use apps like OmniFocus, a task management platform for Mac, iPad, or iPhone, and Evernote, a digital workspace productivity app where you can write, collect, discuss, and present your ideas, to keep each key area of our lives in order. We also use Fantastical 2, a calendar app for OS X, to manage and organize our calendars, events, and reminders.
“Get Organized and you’ll have Order. Have Order and you’ll maintain Control. Stay in Control and you’ll have unlocked Freedom.”
Organize
After you’ve placed your thoughts in category sections, organize them in order of priority. Then move those items, in priority order, onto a to-do list and add a time frame or deadline for each task or project, where applicable. You want to be able to look at this list throughout the day to remind yourself to stay on task. You can even send reminder alarms to your phone for the most urgent action items, so they stay on your mind until you can cross them off your list.
Proceed
Review your to-do list daily and take action! Here are some tips for knocking out items on your list as efficiently as possible:
Don’t procrastinate. If a task can be done in five minutes or less, do it immediately!
Do what you can get done based on where you are. What can you do while on the road? At home? At work? Lying in bed? Waiting in line somewhere?
Break bigger tasks into smaller increments that allow you to make progress on them daily.
Finding the Time
We used to constantly find ourselves saying “I don’t have time to ______,” but when we really thought about it, we realized that we actually did have pockets of time throughout our day we could use to do more things. We just weren’t choosing to use that time wisely.
The issue is almost never that we don’t have the time, but that we don’t choose to make the time. It’s so easy to get distracted! If you block time on your calendar, time becomes available.
Take notice of when during the day you have peak energy and low energy, and organize your day accordingly. Schedule tasks that don’t require as much brainpower for lower-energy periods.
Organizing Your Home
No matter how organized your to-do list is, it’s hard to get anything done when the space around you is in chaos.
Here are our tips for creating a beautiful, peaceful, organized living space—quickly and simply!
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
—William Morris
Declutter Your Space
Decluttering your mind starts with decluttering your environment. Clutter makes your home not only harder to organize, but also harder to keep tidy.
To get started decluttering, follow these tips:
Work on just one room—or one section of a room—at a time to keep the process from feeling too overwhelming.
Break the room or room section down further into smaller ten-minute projects to tackle during minibreaks during your day.
For decluttering that needs to be done regularly, assign those projects a day of the week—for example, clean out the fruit drawer of the fridge every Monday.
When evaluating items while decluttering:
For each item, decide whether to trash it, recycle it, fix it, donate it, save it, or sell it.
If you haven’t used it in a long time, don’t use it frequently, don’t like it anymore, or don’t need it—get rid of it!
When in doubt, throw it out!
Find a Place for Everything
Once you’ve busted all of the clutter in your home, it’s time to get things organized!
Make sure everything has a place, designating certain rooms or drawers or storage bins for certain objects. It makes it much easier to put things away when you’ve already decided where they go!
10-Minute Decluttering Project Ideas
Clean under a sink.
Clean out a junk drawer.
Get rid of all single socks or socks with holes.
Clean off one shelf in the pantry, checking for expired items to toss.
Clean off one shelf in the refrigerator.
Go through one section of your closet looking to throw away, give away, or donate.
Gather and start a single load of laundry.
Wash or put away dishes.
Throw away old, expired, or unwanted toiletries and makeup.
Make the beds.
Gather all your knickknacks on a table and get rid of what you don’t want anymore.
Check for any kids’ toys you can throw away, give away, or donate.
Label, label, label. Label storage bins and other containers. Label cords and chargers with what they belong to. Labeling things will help you find what you need, when you need it, more easily.
Get creative! Find new purposes for old or throwaway items, such as rolling up panty hose into cardboard toilet paper rolls and labeling with a Sharpie. (As a bonus, this also keeps panty hose from snagging in drawers!)
TIPS FOR TACKLING A FEW COMMON TROUBLE SPOTS
Warranty Booklets, Appliance Manuals, and Service Receipts
Buy a file box and file folders.
Group manuals into file folders by room or other category (kitchen appliances, toys, warranties, service records from household maintenance, etc.).
Label and alphabetize.
Periodically, perhaps once a year, review the box contents and throw away any warranties that have expired and manuals for appliances you no longer have.
Kitchen Pantry
After taking everything out and wiping down shelves and surfaces:
Check expiration dates and throw away expired food items.
Group like items together. Put beans with other beans in a canned vegetable section; put pasta with other pasta, cereals with other cereals, snacks with other snacks, etc.
Buy containers for bulk items (cereal, pasta, nuts, seeds, etc.) and label them. Transfer foods from original packaging into the new bulk containers.
Buy can stackers for canned food items.
Keep labels—of bulk containers or canned foods—facing forward so you can find everything quickly and easily.
Holiday and Gift-Wrap Storage
Buy big bins and label each one by holiday. Fill the bin with its corresponding holiday items. Be sure to also label the specific contents in each bin (holiday stuffed animals, Christmas lights, Christmas ornaments, Halloween costumes, Easter baskets and plastic eggs, winter clothes, etc.).
Buy a wrapping-paper bin. Along with wrapping paper, it can hold scissors, tape, and gift labels and tags for easy access come present-wrapping time.
CREATE HOUSEHOLD KITS
Create household kits to group together related items. Keep the kits in labeled stackable plastic bins, decorated cardboard boxes, or shoeboxes. Get creative! Besides the obvious sewing and first-aid kits, here are just a few ideas of kit types and what they might contain:
Manicure/pedicure kit: supplies needed for manis/pedis, such as foot soak, foot scrub, lotion, cuticle oil, callus remover, cuticle pusher, nail file, nail clippers, baby power, foot spray, etc.
Cords and chargers kit: labeled cords and chargers to phones, computers, cameras, etc.
Bill-pay kit: envelopes, stamps, pens, checkbook, list of monthly bills and debt, etc. You can even put each item in a file folder and put these in a filing box with your bills.
Eyebrow grooming kit: eyebrow brushes, stencils, pencils, powder, gel, tweezers, baby tooth-numbing gel, small scissors, waxing kit, etc.
Tooth fairy kit: tooth holder, labeled baby teeth in baggies, tooth fairy diary, etc.
Thank-you card kit: thank-you notes, envelopes, mailing and/or decorative stamps, stickers, etc.
Create an Order for Quick Cleaning
Once everything in your house is organized, cleaning should be much easier because everything now has a place. If you’re still overwhelmed with where to start, however, try these steps for a quick tidy that makes a big difference!
1. Throw away all the trash you can find in your house.
2. Collect dirty laundry, sort it, and start a load.
3. Collect and clean dirty dishes, pots, and pans.
4. Make the bed or beds.
5. Put loose shoes back in their appropriate place.
6. For households with kids: Put toys in their toy bins.
7. Clean up counters and other surfaces where mail and extraneous papers seem to collect.
8. Notice what still needs cleaning, and add that to your to-do list for later!
Make a Chore Jar
Making a chore jar is fun for everyone in your household. It gives you a specific task to do, which eliminates the feeling of being overwhelmed by where to start. You pick it, you do it!
Make your own house rules on how many chores must be picked from the jar each day—but a reward system is also always a good idea. For your kids, try a small, set amount of money or some other concrete reward, like getting to do a preferred activity. For yourself, try a sweet treat or a facial. Everyone loves positive reinforcement!
Here’s how to do it:
Make a list of the rooms in your house and tasks associated with each room.
Create slips of paper labeled with one of the rooms in your house on one side and a chore associated with that room on the back.
Fold the paper slips with the chore on the inside and put them into a jar.
Have everyone in your household—including yourself—pick slips of paper from the jar and complete the tasks!
“You Gotta Know When to Fold ’Em”
You can take on the task of closet cleaning all at once if you have the time and are feeling inspired one day, or you can break this process down by working one section at a time, a little every day, until it is completed. You decide. There is no need to feel overwhelmed! Here’s a step-by-step list to guide you through the process:
Take everything out of your closet (or out of a section you can handle).
Wipe everything down, including the hangers, because they get dusty too. Baby wipes work pretty well!
Make five neat piles of clothes you will keep, give away/donate, throw away, dry-clean, alter, or wash.
Put all of the keep items back into your closet (see the following tips on closet organization), and then deal with the remaining piles accordingly.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you are cleaning out your closet and deciding whether or not to keep pieces of clothing.
Do I have something similar? Which is better? (And which should I get rid of?)
Do I have anywhere to wear this?
Have I worn this in the last two years?
Does this still fit?
Is this still in style?
Does this have holes or tears that aren’t worth repairing?
Is this right for my body type? (More on this in chapter 9.)
And remember: When in doubt, get it out!
Our Rules for Closet Organization
No wire hangers allowed! We all have them, but they don’t retain the shape of your clothes very well. The thin velvet-covered ones are the best, especially for fragile materials like silk—and for saving space in your closet!
All hangers and clothes should face the same direction for easy access.
Clothes should be grouped by color from dark to light (with the darkest colors at the bottom of a stack).
Tops should be hung in groups by sleeve length, from longest sleeves to shortest sleeves, so it’s quick and easy to take stock of what you have.
Fold sweaters, sweatshirts, sweatpants, jeans, leggings, T-shirts, and cotton tank tops.
Hang dresses, skirts, blouses, jackets, and zip-up hoodies.
Put jeans in stacks by color and style or brand, from darkest to lightest (with darkest on the bottom of the pile)—again, so it’s easy to take stock.
Separate undergarments (bras, underwear, fitted undergarments, panty hose and tights, socks) into drawers, baskets, or bins and group by color and style.
Clever Closet Storage Solutions
Hang flip-flops on skirt and pants hangers for easy access.
Store and display clutches in letter organizers.
Store bikini separates in bins in labeled zip-top bags. (You’ll never have to search for the matching bottoms again!)
Clip dollar-store plastic ring shower hooks on a hanger to store and display tank tops, scarves, or handbags, and use metal shower hooks to hang jeans (they stay wrinkle free, plus you can see what you have more easily!). Or simply put the metal hook right on the closet bar and hang your jeans by the belt loops.
Use old foam pool noodles or seltzer bottles to put into boots on the closet floor to help them retain their shape.
Jewelry Storage Solutions
Although a jewelry box is the most obvious place for your jewelry, there are also more creative storage solutions. Here are some ideas, broken down by jewelry type.
“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.”
—A. A. Milne
Earrings can be kept in egg trays, ice-cube trays, a tackle box, a weekly pill divider box, hanging on a dream catcher, or on a piece of screen with the edges framed.
Bracelets can be kept in a basket, divided or color coordinated in sheer bags, on a paper towel holder, or in an underwear divider in a drawer.
Necklaces can be kept tacked on a corkboard or screen divider, or hanging on a hanger in your closet.
Rings can be kept in egg trays, ice-cube trays, pencil baskets, or on a fake hand.
Setting Up Your Own Organized, Dedicated Workspace
Having a dedicated and organized home office can dramatically increase your productivity and ability to meet your goals, whether you’re running a company or just making sure your bills get paid. Here’s our plan for putting together a home office space that works for you!
Stock Up on Supplies
To get your workspace or home office organized, you may need to stock up on some supplies first. Here’s our list of organizational items to consider purchasing:
corkboard and/or magnetic board, plus tacks or magnets
wall calendar
filing cabinet or filing container, plus hanging file folders
flat open trays (“inbox,” “outbox,” “sort later”)
labeling tool
binders and dividers
small and large jars
Organize Your Office
Once you have your office supplies, it’s time to get your office organized!
Keep binders with labeled dividers or use filing boxes, drawers, or cabinets to organize loose papers and other important documents.
Group your pencils, pens, markers, highlighters, etc., together in one or multiple jars.
Put small items like magnets, paper clips, rubber bands, staples, tacks, etc., in containers, like spice or baby food jars to keep them separate and organized.
Use a corkboard above your desk to pin up ideas written on sticky notes or small slips of paper, for brainstorming thoughts or reminders, and to hang your calendar, so it’s somewhere you can always see it.
Organize Your Emails
In an office space, getting digital clutter under control is just as important as eliminating physical clutter.
Here’s how you can take charge of your email—business or personal:
Create categories of folders. These should include both action folders—like Immediate Response Required and Opportunities—and archive folders—Personal, School, Work, etc.
At least once a day, go through your inbox and classify each email: respond, print/scan, delete, or file. (You may need one day to go through all of your past emails to catch up before you can regularly start to maintain it.)
If a response is needed, put the email into the appropriate action folder. (Make sure you return to this folder after sorting through the rest of your new emails!)
If the email is something you need to print for future reference, print it right then, and file as needed.
Delete emails where action is no longer required.
If you need or want to keep a digital copy, file it in the right archive folder.
“Don’t agonize, organize.”
—Florynce Kennedy
“To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”
—Buddha
