If you have school-aged children, you are probably starting to plan for the coming school year.  Maybe you were not happy with the organization of scheduling, homework, equipment, papers, work-spaces, or anything else that, when running smoothly, makes life less hectic.  What if you are now working more to try and make ends meet in this difficult economy?

    This is the time to plan for creating a more organized environment at home, so that the new school year may be successful and enlightening for your children, and positive for the whole family.  If you can create a plan, and have the family’s cooperation, then your entire life can benefit, and you can concentrate on things other than trying to keep life organized.

    What you should try to examine first is the greatest stressors from the previous school year.  Then, look deeper to determine the reason for the stressors.  That is what needs to get fixed.

    Let’s say your child did not do his/her studying or homework without constant prodding, and even then, you know things did not get done to their full potential.  That is the stressor.  But the causes could be numerous.  Of course, there are the serious reasons that could be causing difficulties, including learning difficulties that should be addressed through professionals.  But, there are things that could be causing disorganization that are easy to fix, and could even help in improving learning difficulties.

    Questions to ask yourself:

1)    Does my child have a formal place to study, that is set up away from all kinds of distractions, but that can have parental/guardian supervision?  This supervision can be simply seeing that the child is studying, or being able to notice when he is getting sidetracked.  It also can be as simple as the child’s knowing an adult is aware of what he is doing, to keep himself on track.
2)    Is my child surrounded by electronic distractions?  Maybe you need to come up with a way to formally disengage the student from the cell-phone, i-pod, computer, and whatever else they can think to play with, during the specific time that studying should be happening.
3)    Maybe creating a specific schedule of study and break needs to be delineated.
4)    What kind of input is my child offering to help himself stay on-track, and be the best learner he can be?  Maybe his studying style is different from yours, but also maybe he is deceiving himself.  There is no one right answer necessarily, but definitely if you know something was not working well last year, a new plan needs to be explored and tried.

Comment (0)

    Is this the first question on your mind when you hear about professional organizers?  Hiring a professional organizer does not mean that you are necessarily totally lost about strategizing a clean-up project or de-cluttering job.  You might have the greatest organizational skills, but your major project might be easier to start, or more realistic to complete, if you have the help of an unbiased person who is not a relative or friend.

    First of all, asking a professional to help you with your project gives you the advantage of an objective perspective.  This person can ask you the right questions to lead you in your decisions about keeping things, donating items, or throwing out useless materials.

    Hiring a professional will also force you to move forward with your project.  It is often easy to get sidetracked with other activities, especially if you have internal barriers about attacking certain organizational disasters.  But, if you have someone coming on a schedule to help you, you force yourself into a commitment to the job.

    When economic times were great, many of us liked to use shopping as a pastime, hobby, or way to perk ourselves up.  This did not stop at window-shopping, but a lot of things were bought that were not really needed.  Although this was good for the merchants, so many people are looking at all of the things that they have accumulated with a different eye.  Now that there is less money to spend, not only are folks stopping the shopping sprees, but the trend is to rid ourselves of unnecessary things, clear out the space around us, and surround ourselves only with what is beautiful and essential.

    In trying to embrace this new philosophy, working with a professional organizer is helpful, because he or she generally has a collection of ideas for determining how to pare down, contacts for donating items, and resources for organizing tools.

    And, last but not least, a professional is non-judgmental and loves organizing.  The more chaotic something seems, the more fun a professional will see in the work.  This way, you can share the work without worrying what the other person thinks.

Comment (0)

Getting rid of clutter – by the time you finally have had enough of things collecting around you, these things probably have been accumulating for many years.  Deciding to rid yourself of too many possessions is one thing, but actually going through the process can be a very traumatic some other thing.

There are many reasons we hold on to things: they bring back good memories, we might need them, we might miss them, they’re still good…

Comment (0) Read More...

How many of us get paralyzed with the thought of tackling a project, because we do not have the perfect scheme, perfect supplies, perfect know-how.      My philosophy is: Excellence, not Perfection.

Perfection is usually quite unattainable, but excellence, doing the best you can with the tools you have, is doable for everyone to their own degree.
When you are trying to organize your home and family, there is not necessarily a correct way of doing this.  You have to figure out what works for your family, and you might even have to stumble through a few tries before you find the “perfect” solution.

Here are a few thoughts about finding what works for you:

Comment (0) Read More...

How many of us feel that we could accomplish so much more, if we only had enough energy.  Did you ever notice, that when you are not surrounded by clutter, and your belongings are organized, you have more energy?

Here are 6 ideas to get more energy by having less clutter…

1.  Things have a way of piling up around us.  To enable you to organize your clutter, first you need to purge what is not necessary.  Easier said than done. 
a.  Decide what must go – what would you do if you were moving?  Would you take this or not?  If not, out it goes.
b.  What if it’s still good and useful, but not to you?  Donate.  Goodwill is a good starting point, but also think of friends, friends’ kids, schools, organizations holding rummage sales…
c.  What if it’s sentimental – decide whether it’s so important to your soul that you should put it in a safe memento-keeping spot.  If it’s somewhat sentimental, maybe the realization that it will bring true joy to another person will make a parting decision for you.  If you’re not sure, keep it, and see what you think next year.  Don’t forget, once you give away that memento, you can’t get it back.

Comment (0) Read More...