Hasta La Ideas

Four days last week, I attended the National Association of Professional Organizers’ 24th annual conference in Baltimore. It was nice to see so many terrific leaders in the industry and catch up on the latest trends and research relating to uncluttering and organizing.

One of my favorite parts of the conference is the exposition hall, which is filled with manufacturers, retailers, and service providers who work closely with the professional organizing industry. Many of these providers use the conference to introduce new items that aren’t yet on the market, as well as to solicit suggestions for how professional organizers think products can be improved.

Today, and then a couple days next week, I want to feature some of these new and yet-to-be released products so you can see the latest trends in organizing. A couple of the items are in the “new-to-me” category, but most of them will also be new to you. To be clear, I’m not getting any sort of payment or kick-backs for writing about these products. These are simply the items I found interesting and helpful for common organizing problems.

I’ve grouped the items into themes, and today I want to feature the new paper sorting and filing products –

Pendaflex has a few new products that caught my attention. The first is their PileSmart View Folders. If you’re someone who insists on piling papers instead of using a filing cabinet, these are folders for important papers that include tabs so you can easily see what you’re searching for in your stack:

Another Pendaflex product I like is their Divide It Up File Folders. These are great for sub-dividing paperwork for small projects:

The final Pendaflex product I thought could be useful are their new Ready-Tab Hanging File Folders. Instead of hunting for plastic tabs to insert into the folder or having those tabs accidentally pop off, the tabs are part of the folder and pull out of the folder itself:

The Smead Company is now making Lockit Pocket Folders that have a tab at the top of the folder to keep papers from sliding out during transport. These are great for important papers you can’t afford to have slip out of their folders:

Next up is Smead’s Vertical Divided File, which is so new you can’t even order them yet. They are vertical folders with interior pockets and tabbed dividers. These would be great for organizing a trip, similar to the Pendaflex Divide It Up Folder, but for folks who prefer vertical folders:

Also related to the topic of paper management was word from the people at Fujitsu that we should expect to see updates coming to the ScanSnap 1300 series of scanners at some point during the summer. They were tight-lipped as to what those updates are, so I imagine they’re going to be good ones.

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I’ve been having an email exchange this morning with a woman who is looking to keep her desk organized while she works, which is especially difficult because she has a significant amount of physical paperwork she has to manage. She works in human resources and paperwork is unavoidable in her position. Accountants, billing managers, and anyone who works with hand-signed contracts likely have similar paper management concerns.

The paperwork she processes can be organized into groups, although most of those groups are regularly changing. For example, she’s constantly receiving resumes, but the jobs she is collecting resumes for change as openings for positions do. Having erasable file labels or a label maker will help folder identification change as the file needs change.

Having quick and easy access to those files is also important. I like working with tiered or separated desktop file organizers. My favorite is an expanding metal file organizer that adjusts to meet your size needs:

I also like non-adjustable tiered racks and tiered boxes. If a workspace is next to an empty wall, a wall-mounted pocket rack can do the same thing and not take up desk space:

Individual papers that don’t belong in groups, can always be suspended from clipboards, paperclips suspended from a piece of twine tacked to the wall or a bulletin board, or a restaurant ticket order holder:

As part of this paperwork management, it’s also important to shred, recycle, or file into an archived filing system papers and files as they are no longer being circulated. Be sure to schedule 10 minutes twice a week to review all the active papers and files to make sure you’re keeping inactive items out of your active system.

Do you have a constant flow of active papers and files crossing your desk over the course of a day? What products have you discovered to help you manage your work and keep papers and files from overwhelming your workspace? Share your suggestions in the comments.

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Whether you’re moving into a new office or simply uncluttering and organizing your current space, one of the easiest ways to get your desk in order is to focus on organizing zones according to purpose. When you deal with the items on your desk based on similar function, you can keep the most important items as the focus of your space and put the least important items out of the way. If you’re uncluttering your desk, take a day and work on just one zone — you’ll keep from feeling overwhelmed, and you’ll have a well organized office in less than two weeks.

The following zones are the eight most common areas people have in their offices. You may have more, but don’t skip over these areas when organizing your space –

1. Equipment: This group likely includes your computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, scanner, telephone, pen cup, maybe a hard drive backup system, and any job-specific devices. These are the tools that you have on your desk that help you perform the functions of your work. You access these tools every day and you cannot successfully work if any of these devices is missing or malfunctioning. When setting up your desk (or rearranging it), these items are the first to be placed and should be in the most comfortable, convenient, and ergonomic location. When you’re sitting at your desk (or standing at it if you use a standing desk) you should be able to reach these items without having to move anything other than your arms. Nothing should interfere with your ability to access these items.
2. Inbox: An inbox is not a place for you to dump stuff you don’t want to deal with right now. The point of an inbox is so people can come into your office, leave materials, and know exactly where to put those materials so you will find them and deal with them upon your return. You can put items in your inbox, but the items in this box should be processed every day. Each evening when you leave work, your inbox should be empty. Similar to the equipment you need to do your job, your inbox should be placed on your desk in an area that is comfortable and convenient to access for you and for anyone coming into your office to leave you things. It should also be clearly marked as an inbox so your coworkers know what it is.
3. Current Projects: I store each of my current projects in a Flip-Top Document Storage Box. This allows me to have all the files and materials in one location that I can pull out when I need to work on the project, and then easily contain everything for storage when I’m ready to move on to the next project. Magazine files also work well for this. They’re easy to carry into meetings and to keep stacks of paper from overtaking your desk. I recommend storing these projects on a nearby shelf for easy access during your work day.
4. Active Files: Files you’re accessing multiple times a week can either go in a file drawer of your desk that is convenient to reach, or in a file organizer on your desk. People who are extremely visual should use a file organizer that sits on your desk so you don’t forget the files exist. I suggest using a tiered organizer so you can see all of the file tabs to make retrieval simple. If you’re more of an audio processor, keeping your active files in your desk drawer is terrific because it frees up space on your work surface.
5. Reference Materials: Most jobs come with notebooks and other materials that are required to be kept in your office. Only have the most current versions of these in close proximity to your desk, and keep them on a bookshelf or in a cupboard where you can access them without too much effort. Since most people don’t reference these items daily, it’s okay to put them further out of reach than those materials you need every day. Be sure to label these items well, however, since you want to be able to find them when you do need them.
6. Supplies: It can be incredibly simple to hoard office supplies, but you should fight the urge, especially if your workplace has a supply closet. At most, have one extra of everything you use — ream of paper, box of staples, a few pens in various colors, a box of binder clips — but leave it at that. You don’t need five boxes of pens in your desk, but rather more like five pens in your desk drawer. Let the office supply closet store items like it is intended to. There are no awards to be won for having the most office supplies taking up space in your desk.
7. Archived Files: Many workplaces require you to store files for three or five years before destroying them or shipping them off to a long-term storage facility. All the archived files you are expected to keep should be as far away from your immediate work area as possible in your office. Once a month, you should also sort through your Current Projects and your Active Files to ensure neither of these items are accidentally storing files you no longer reference.
8. Personal Items: It’s important to have a few personal items in your workspace to signal to your coworkers and boss that you are committed to your job. A small plant, a photograph of your family, and the wallpaper on your computer’s desktop set to a favorite travel destination say that you are a well-rounded person who has a life outside of your job. More personal items than this and your workspace can start to look like a dorm room and unprofessional. Keep your personal items where you can see them but out of the way so as not to impede on your work surface.

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Most of us joyfully said goodbye to homework when we left school. I certainly was glad to see it go, especially the busy-work stuff that didn’t serve any point except to waste a lot of time.

Recently, I’ve had a change of heart, at least when it comes to self-imposed homework. I’ve had some success with giving myself homework assignments related to my uncluttering and organizing projects. When I structure the homework more like a lesson plan than a to-do list, I can better remember why I’m doing work and stay focused on the end goal.

What I do:

• Identify the unit objective. What is a unit objective? In this case, it’s going to be the reasons you want to unclutter and/or organize. Your objective might be that you want to have friends come over unannounced and not have to worry that your place is a mess. Your objective might be that you don’t want to injure yourself constantly tripping over your child’s toys. Your objective might be that you want to downsize to a smaller home to reduce your mortgage and other expenses.
• Identify your deadline. Do you have a solid goal by when the work needs to be completed? If you don’t have a set deadline, can you create an artificial one to help motivate you?
• Identify current status. Where are you right now? This is a good time to photograph the room, desk, closet or area you wish to unclutter and/or organize to record your starting point.
• Identify action items. Analyze your current status and determine all the work that needs to be completed for you to successfully meet your unit objective. Be specific with these actions. “Organize shelf” is not specific enough. Use language that expresses exactly what you plan to do — “Pull all items off shelf, sort items into three piles (keep, purge, other), etc.”
• Create your timeline. Using your deadline as a guide, distribute action items onto your calendar. Do this in pencil or electronically, so you can easily move items if necessary. Always leave a few nights before the deadline open in case you fall behind schedule. If you stay on schedule, you’ll be rewarded by finishing the unit early.
• Do your homework. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. Do the homework you’ve set for yourself for each night, and don’t make any excuses. You’re working toward a goal you desire and you want to reach.
• Assess your progress. Decide if you want to review your work daily, weekly, or only at the end of the unit. Personally, I like to give myself daily grades (my system is simple: A is 4 points=did the work; F is 0 points=didn’t do the work). At the end of the week I’ll see how many points I’ve earned and keep a tally (20 points is an ideal week, only working Monday-Friday).

I’ve started to think of my on-going house routines in this way, too. My objective is to keep the house running smoothly so I think less about chores and the state of the house, and more time on doing fun stuff with my family. To meet this objective, there are certain tasks I must do every day (homework) for this to happen. The chores are spread out over a week, and each day I can easily assess my performance — did the homework, or didn’t.

The reason I believe this method works for me is it keeps me focused on the objectives and it’s easy to see how the work I’m doing is directly related to those objectives. Chores and uncluttering and organizing tasks seem less like busy-work and more as steps to something I really desire in my life.

Could you use a little homework in your life? Share your reactions and methods you employ in the comments.

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We write a great deal on this site about how knowing what you really need can help you unclutter and organize. Do you like to have paper and pens next to you while you work on the computer? Do you access your hole punch five times a day? Do you like to have music on while you fold the laundry? If so, you should have these tools in places you can easily reach while you work on these tasks. Get rid of the things you don’t need, and have available the things you do.

In addition to knowing what tools you need, though, it’s also a good idea to know your personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to uncluttering and organizing. Are you good at putting items away after you use them? Are you spontaneous or procedural? Do you work better on your own or in groups? When you’re honest with yourself about the things you do well — and not so well — you can be more successful with your uncluttering and organizing efforts.

One of my strengths is I don’t ever get caught up in the “what if” line of thinking. When I look at small slivers of wrapping paper or fabric remnants or empty yogurt containers, I don’t hesitate to recycle these types of things. Conversely, one of my weaknesses is I don’t ever get caught up in the “what if” line of thinking. I have great difficulty imagining how to re-purpose objects. An empty paint can is always an empty paint can to me, it’s not a pen holder or a bin for small toys or a bucket to use to clean paint brushes. As a result, I’ve learned to let my husband look over items I plan to donate to charity or recycle before making final decisions about them. He’s a level-headed guy who usually agrees with my decisions but has rescued a few important objects from my purge piles over the years.

The following list is far from complete, but my hope is that it can get you to think about your strengths and weaknesses so that both can work in your favor when taking on uncluttering and organizing projects:

• Strength — Idea Generation. In your family or when working in groups at the office, lead the organizing solutions aspects of the project. Research and dream up ways to store the items you decide to keep in ways that best suit all of the people who will access the space and/or items.
• Weakness — Not Good with Follow Through. If putting things back where they belong is difficult for you, consider having storage space for an item you regularly use in many different rooms. For example, if you take off your shoes sometimes in the living room or by the front door or in your bedroom, have bins to hold your shoes in all three spaces. You’ll easily be able to find your shoes in one of the three bins, and your shoes won’t be cluttering up three rooms.
• Strength — Motivation. If you’re good at motivating others, use these same skills to motivate yourself and other people on an uncluttering and organizing project. Don’t announce that you’ll be the official cheerleader, simply do what you do best. Play music, get everyone and yourself laughing, and make the most of the situation.
• Weakness — Wandering Mind and Feet. Work with a buddy when uncluttering and organizing. This person doesn’t need to participate in the process directly, he or she only needs to be in the same room to talk with you and help keep you on task. I like to refer to this person as an accountability partner.
• Strength — Noticing Patterns. I often refer to this skill as a super power. People who are good at noticing patterns are great at sorting papers, filtering out duplicate items, and grouping like objects with like objects. If this is your strength, roll up your sleeves and let your organizing skills shine. If working in a group, help teach others how you quickly and efficiently make sense of the information you’re processing.

What do you do well? What don’t you do well? How can you get your strengths and weaknesses to help you succeed with your uncluttering and organizing projects?

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.