Hasta La Ideas

Businesses are working diligently to get consumers to spend money during the downturn in the economy, and are trying to lure them in with coupons and deals. As a result, clipping coupons has definitely become worth the time and effort.

Instead of using a traditional coupon organizer that requires you to pull out all of your coupons to see them, I’ve started using brag books (small photo albums) to manage my coupon collection. In addition to giving me a better view of my stash, brag books also let you have two to three times more categories than a regular organizers.

If you’re interested in creating a coupon organizer out of a brag book, follow these suggestions:

1. Track your coupon use for a few weeks without an organizer to see what types of categories you might want to create in your brag book.
2. When you make categories, label them with printed sticky labels or handwritten on masking tape. As you use your book, you may decide to move pages or rename categories — and removable labels will make this a simple task.
3. When you enter coupons into the pages, put the oldest at the front and the newest in the back. This way you won’t have to worry about coupons expiring.

The following are suggestions for ways in which you might set up your shopping categories:

• Review a map of your grocery store, and set up categories based on the layout of your market.
• Create large categories based on meal types (breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, parties, beverages, and condiments) and then subcategories within those types.
• Set up categories according to where you store items in your kitchen: pantry, refrigerator, deep freezer, etc.
• Use the good ol’ alphabetical system.

One coupon book might not fit all your needs, especially if you’re diligent about cutting coupons for non-food items. A second brag book is great for hardware, pharmacy, and other miscellaneous items.

How do you organize your coupons? Please tell us about your methods in the comments.

Regular readers of the website may have noticed that I use the words “terrific” and “wonderful” in almost every Workspace of the Week description. I didn’t realize I did this until a co-worker pointed it out to me, and now I cringe at the sight of those words in my writing. They’re stale and lack the punch of much more descriptive choices. Terrific! Wonderful! Ugh.

The more I think about these vocabulary crutches, the more I realize I have similar crutches in other areas of my life. Some of these crutches are good — like when I need a friend to listen, I turn to the same trusted people again and again — but others aren’t so positive. In fact, most of my crutches create clutter in my life.

For example, when I am really busy at work, the first thing I cut out of my day are magazine and newspaper reading. All incoming magazines are stored in a “to read” Stockholm project case and hang out with the idea that I’ll read them when things calm down. Except, when things calm down, I have that day’s reading materials to tackle and not enough time to read two week’s worth of information. I have a project case to hold my “to read” materials, but no set plan to ever empty the case. Weeks and months pass, the box becomes jammed packed, and I end up tossing the materials straight into the recycling bin without ever looking at them. My crutch is this box, and all it does is create clutter.

Each day for the next seven days, I’m going to try to eliminate one clutter crutch from my life. I’m going to look at how the problem came to be, what is wrong with the situation, and how I can change my behavior to immediately deal with the clutter. I’m also going to try not to use the words “terrific” and “wonderful” in my writing or speech.

What clutter crutches do you have in your life? If you’re game, make a seven-day commitment with me to banish these clutter creators!

(Thanks to Michelle who writes Design Evolution for inspiring me to do something about my terrific and wonderful vocabulary!)

Again we want to welcome guest author Alex Fayle, the writer behind the helpful anti-procrastination website Someday Syndrome.

One of the most frequent questions I ever get asked about organizing is the process. How do you make the decisions to get rid of things? While there are many tips and tricks you can use to ease the streamlining process, it all comes down to 5 easy steps:

1. Set yourself a goal “I am going to sort half this room before bed” or “I’m going to streamline the contents of this one box.”
2. Figure out broad categories and where you are going sort each category into.
3. Sort your stuff, moving systemically through the space, and not bouncing back and forth.
4. Purge what you don’t want.
5. Stop when you’ve reached your goal.

Use the sorting time to reminisce about the objects — don’t make any decisions at this point. Allow the emotions to come up and clear themselves out so that when it comes to the streamlining stage you are free from the emotional ties and can make more objective decisions about them.

If the idea of sorting overwhelms you, give yourself some early victories and do a walk-through of the space, choosing to remove a few large things that will open up the space quickly.

After sorting:

• Take one category and if you can, move it out of the space in which you are working, and into a clear space (like the dining room). This allows you to concentrate on the one category and not have to face the rest all at once.
• Ask yourself two questions: Need it? Love it? If you can’t say yes to either then get rid of it. Life is too short to fill out our spaces with things we’re indifferent to.
• Take the things you are not going to keep out of the house as quickly as possible. The longer they stay the more likely they will come back into the house.
• Give yourself rewards – for example out of fifty childhood books you’ve never reread but have kept for sentimental reasons, keep five and store them in a place of honor where you can see them and appreciate the memories associated with them.

There are two instances in which you stop for the day even if you are not done:

1. If you find yourself hitting a “brain fog” where nothing makes sense or you find yourself holding on to everything you are reviewing.
2. If you have hit a manic state and start tossing everything without looking at it.

Simple, yes? So now tell us, what are you going to streamline this week?

As we talked about in the post Ask Unclutterer: How can I change someone into an unclutterer?” we get many emails asking how unclutterers can live with clutterers. It reminds me of one of those light bulb jokes: How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Our clutterful light bulbs — our roommates, significant others — may not want to change. But, there is something that we can change, ourselves.

If you’re up for the challenge, what small unclutterer change or efficiency enhancer are you willing to make? If you’re stumped, think about your partner’s pet peeves. Some examples I’ve seen with couples are:

• Dropping a jacket on the floor when arriving home
• Leaving dishes about the house
• Losing keys frequently

These things may not bug you, but we’re talking about our partners here — the things that bother them. As I got to thinking about Valentine’s Day this year, and realizing my husband hates gifts, I thought: how about changing something I do that bothers him? I ran the idea past him and he’s all for it. We decided that I will work on keeping the house better stocked with groceries. I’ll sit down with him and templatize a specific list of items to regularly have on hand (in addition to the staples). It’s the little things that make a difference.

Forming a New Habit

First, it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I like to use 30 day blocks, however, to be sure the habit gets locked in.

Start Small: Pick just one daily, do-able thing that you’ll take on for 30 days. For example, you commit to putting your clothes in the hamper before bed for the next 30 days. Selecting one thing will put all of your focus there, rather than trying to tackle several habits at once.

Be Clear: Be sure that you know clearly whether you’ve accomplished the task or not. For example, is your goal to file paper in your home office for 10 minutes each day or is it to file 1/2 an inch of paper each day? Near dinner time each day, mine will be to check off food items that need to be purchased this week.

Track Progress: Use a calendar, goal-setting software such as Lifetick or create a spreadsheet with 30 boxes to track your progress. A check mark or gold star means you did the task. Leaving the box blank of course means you didn’t do it.

Keep It Visible: Have your document pop up on your screensaver, set reminders in your electronic calendar or place in another visible place, such as on the refrigerator. As you’re forming a new habit, you’ll need prompts.

Be Consistent: When possible, do the task at the same time every day. This will make the action a routine and, in time, you’ll be pulled to complete it automatically. For instance, pop your jacket into the closet right away when you arrive home each day.

Begin: The hardest part is to begin. Pick a start day. Today is a good idea so that you don’t build up resistance to change. And, why wait to surprise your partner with a clean family room or an uncluttered car?

I think creating a productive habit will give you more mileage than your standard Valentine’s Day gifts.

Up for the challenge? What habit do you want to take on for 30 days? Let us know in the comments. And, if you choose to go a more traditional route, check out Matt’s post from last week on uncluttered Valentine’s day gifts.

A recent article in USA Today explores organization and how it can help keep expenses low in these tough economic times:

We have all heard about R.O.I. — Return on Investment. It’s a useful way to analyze whether you are receiving sufficient bang for your buck for your efforts.

But have you ever considered your R.O.O. — your Return on Organization?

Look, we all know that main two pain points for most small businesses are not enough time and not enough money. This is even more true in light of the current economic environment. But what if I told you there was a simple, affordable way to get more of both? After all, as we all know, time is money.

I have been doing some work with Office Depot recently in order to help small business owners understand how, with just a few smart changes, they can increase their R.O.O., and how that can have a significant impact on the bottom line. In fact, it is estimated that increased R.O.O. can yield up to an extra two hours of productive time a week and up to an additional 6% of revenue.

How? Well, think about it. It costs five times more to create a new customer than it does to keep a current one. The whole idea is that with some extra time you can take better care of your best customers. No, 20 minutes a day may not seem like much, but what if you used those 20 minutes a day to their maximum effectiveness? You could check in with customers, make some sales calls, send out some “checking-in” e-mails … that sort of thing.

His later suggestions for how to specifically be more organized at work aren’t too in-depth, but I think he makes a very good point in this first section of the article. Being efficient with your time can create more opportunities for profits. The implied flip-side, of course, is that being disorganized can cost you your job/client/opportunity.

I also like the phrase “R.O.O. — your Return on Organization.” I may have to use that in the future.

What do you think? Is there such as thing as R.O.O.? I’m interested in reading your opinions in the comments.