Hasta La Ideas

Please welcome Mark W. Shead, who blogs once a week on the informative Productivity501.com. He is a business management consultant focusing on using technology to streamline businesses.

I have been moving toward a paperless office for two reasons. First the amount of paper in my life continues to grow each year and I’ve grown tired of spending so much effort just wrangling physical paper. Second I spend a lot of time on the road. It is nice to have access to all my files whether I’m in working in my office in Kansas or waiting for powder to fall in Colorado.

The move to paperless has been an interesting experiment and I’ve been amazed at just how attached I have become to the pieces of paper I have saved over the years. Here are some tips for people looking to make a similar transition.

1. Scan what makes sense – Go for the biggest bang for your buck. It doesn’t make sense to scan every single book you own, but it does make sense to scan in your bills, receipts and insurance paperwork.
2. Give yourself time to adjust – You are probably going to find yourself very attached to your papers. I got over this by creating a “to shred” set of files. I kept the paper around until I was comfortable with my electronic access to it and was ok with shredding it.
3. Backup, backup, backup – Make sure you have a reliable way of backing up your data. Not only do you need to back your data up, you have to test it as well. Also make sure you store your backups in a safe place. I keep one backup in my office and another encrypted on Amazon’s servers using Jungle Disk. That way if a flood or fire destroys my computer and backup hard drive, I can still get my data back.
4. Get some help – If you have a lot of paper to scan consider hiring someone to help. A high school or college student can go through quite a stack of papers in a few afternoons. The worst part of switching to paperless is when half of your data is on paper and the other half is digital. Getting a bit of help initially can make your system much more useful to you right away.
5. Think “Where will I look for this?” – There are many ways to file your scanned documents. When you are designing your system, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of thinking “Where should I put this?” You need design you system around the question “How will I look for this?”
6. Don’t skimp on your scanner – The ScanSnap is one of the best scanners for the money. You want to make sure you don’t get something that requires putting each page, one at a time, on a flat bed. If it is too much trouble to scan in a new piece of paper, you won’t do it.

Once again, I would like to welcome Lauren Halagarda as a guest author on Unclutterer. Her ROI advice is perfect for the tax season. Lauren is a spectacular professional organizer living in the Washington, D.C., area.

We invest our time, energy and money on buying and acquiring things while futilely trying to achieve the life we want. I can assure you that you gain more return on your investment when you switch your focus from buying stuff to being organized. Here are just a few examples:

ROI: Self-confidence.
Put an end to the apologies you make for being late, forgotten commitments, and lost or misplaced information or belongings.
Investment: Time management basics
Stop over-scheduling. We often try to fit in “just one more thing” before moving on to our next commitment. We end up running late, frazzled, overwhelmed, and distracted. STOP and THINK, how long will it really take to get there or prepare for that meeting? Are you being realistic about traffic? Parking? Etc. Honestly, the worst thing that can happen is that you will be early. The horror! Bring a magazine or book and catch up on your pile of reading. Yes, you know, I’m talking about that “I’m gonna read it someday” stuff that has taken over your horizontal surfaces.

ROI: Quality Time with loved ones
Stop spending your “free time” maintaining, cleaning, storing, battling through, and tripping over your stuff.
Investment: Letting go
Let go of the stuff that you don’t love and don’t use that gets in the way of stuff that is important — which isn’t really stuff at all, is it?

ROI: $$
Investment: Clear your Kitchen
Unclutter your kitchen, rid your cabinets of idle appliances and gadgets, toss the excess plastic storage with no matching lids, and clear your counters of unused spice racks and unitaskers. Instead, create a functioning kitchen where you have room to breathe and the ability to access what you need. Involve the family (including children) in the cooking experience. Not only will you save money by not eating out as often, but you will be teaching your children a lifeskill.

Small investments in being organized will provide you with a huge payoff. If you are having difficulty getting started, check out the NAPO Professional Organizer Directory to find an organizer that’s right for you.

What are some small investments that you have made and what is the ROI?

Today we welcome back Unclutterer programmer, Gary DuVall. In the first post in this series, he discussed how to prepare yourself and your home in case of a disaster. He is writing for us based on his personal experience of losing everything he owned in a fire last June.

After the fire was declared extinguished, we were allowed back into the building to survey the damage. We walked up three flights of stairs through noxious air, flooded floors, and dripping ceilings to get to our unit. The fire started in the unit immediately above ours -— which was now just a giant hole -— and the enormous amount of water, soot, chemicals, and smoke that had made their way down had left nearly everything in our place unsalvageable. Luckily enough, our important documents, which I had been in the process of organizing days before and included our insurance policies, were still mostly untouched in their airtight container. Though we tried, there wasn’t much we could do to mitigate any further damage to our things as water was still raining everywhere through the exposed timber ceiling. We grabbed our records, as many valuables as we could find, our waterproof Mag-Lite flashlight, and a digital camera that had been partially soaked but stored away from the brunt of the damage. And then we left for the night.

The first order of business was to begin our claim with the insurance company, at which time we were told to find a hotel and wait to hear back the next day from a “floating” claims adjuster. After we found a hotel and settled in with our cats, the first things we did were:

1. Air out the camera in hopes of using it to document the damage
2. Purchase emergency clothing and supplies, all of which would be covered under our policy
3. Re-read through our policy, organize our priorities, and consult with family members with prior experience in the industry.

Despite the day’s events, it was surprisingly easy to sleep that night.

We received the call we were expecting the next day from the “floating” insurance adjuster and were told to stay at the hotel until Monday. Staying at the hotel until Monday turned out to only made things worse, as we were asked on Monday why we didn’t do more to mitigate the damage. This particular conversation was awkward for both sides and for entirely different reasons.

It wasn’t until Tuesday, after heated discussions with our claims adjuster, that they finally assigned us an on-site adjuster to survey the damage so we could start the process of remediation. As my wife finished snapping a few hundred photos of the damage, the on-site adjuster almost immediately deemed it a “total loss” and left it to the remediation/mitigation crew we hired to clear out the unit and help us file our property claim. It would be another week of prodding, phone calls, and unanticipated project management to make sure all sides were in sync before everything was finally removed from our unit and what little could be salvaged was taken by the remediation crew.

It was strange on that last day to look down from my office window and find almost everything we owned filling the dumpster below, but it meant we could finally concentrate on the most important part of the process: rebuilding.

These are some important tips to keep in mind after an emergency:

1. Your first priority is to make the claim. During this call, if you don’t have a copy of your policy, demand that one be sent overnight to the address where you’re staying. Ask about the company’s obligation to have an adjuster sent out as soon as possible, your “Loss of Use” provisions, and your responsibilities as dictated by the policy.
2. Beginning with your first call, write down and keep records of every single contact you have with anyone related to the insurance company, the on-site adjuster, the mitigation process — and in the case of renters, the landlord. Include times, dates, names, numbers, and a detailed account of what transpired, even down to the mood of all sides involved. Save all e-mail contacts in a special inbox folder if you have access to a computer. If you have problems down the road on any front, you’ll have a lot of information to reference.
3. If you have access to your residence afterward, pull your records and valuables first, including your hard drives if possible. While some insurance companies advise heavily against moving anything and add that you may not be able to claim these items after removal, it’s better to be safe than sorry. (In some cases, you still can so long as you inform the insurance company of what’s been removed.) If you find items that could directly help you sort through what’s left, such as a heavy flashlight and/or a camera that survived, their immediate usefulness in recording evidence of the damage (and building an inventory in the absence of one) will vastly outweigh your need to claim them.
4. Read your policy again thoroughly. Compare what’s in the policy against your logbook and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Have a copy with you at all times (along with the logbook) when going back to the premises.
5. Take stock financially. Your insurance may cover you immediately, but you may not see that money for days or even weeks. During that time, save every single receipt, no matter how small. You’ll be required to turn them in as part of your policy’s “Loss of Use” claim. We used zip-top sandwich bags to sort receipts by type and keep them safe at the same time.
6. Be prepared to assert yourself. Being non-confrontational after losing nearly everything won’t do any good if a company that’s supposed to be on your side tells you X and your policy or contract states Y. Although the squeaky wheel generally gets the grease, remember to be polite but firm when you state your case.
7. Breathe. You’ll come across irreplaceable mementos and be in contact with various people bordering on infuriating at times -— all the while bearing the heavy burden of uncertainty — but it’s essential to keep your thoughts as uncluttered as possible and concentrate on what needs to be done. Maintain your composure when working directly with the situation at hand, and find ways of coping during the downtime. We went to a local town festival for a day during some well-needed downtime, and it helped us greatly.

In Part III of this series, I’ll discuss the process of rebuilding your home from nothing.

Today we again welcome the phenomenal Monica Ricci as a guest author on Unclutterer. She’s the organizing adviser for Office Depot and Beazer Homes, and you may have seen her on HGTV’s Mission Organization. A professional organizer hailing from Atlanta, I’m happy to call her a friend and to have her share her uncluttering wisdom with our readers.

Some time in the late 80s, my first husband taught me to golf, and I discovered something countless people already knew: Golf is hard! In fact, it’s the most difficult sport I’ve ever learned, with the possible exception of hang gliding, but that’s a whole other (horrible scraped-and-bloody-legs) story that maybe I’ll tell sometime after I’ve had too much to drink. But I digress…

What Joe taught me about golf is that to be a successful golfer, you have to learn a bunch of new skills and combine them properly to get the results you want. Your stance, your grip, your head position, your back swing, your swing, and follow-through all have to be just right to get the ball to go where you want it to. If one of those skills isn’t right, the ball will hook, slice, or burn some worms. In short, you get a less than desirable result. To be a good golfer, it’s important to learn proper fundamentals and combine them well, so that when you practice, you’re practicing good habits rather than deeply ingraining BAD habits.

The same is true in life and organizing. Your success is deeply dependent on the habits you create over time. The way you manage your time is a habit, and all the daily routines you’ve developed to manage your life and your work are all just habits. If you look objectively at the state of any area of your life from the condition of your home, office, or car, to your relationships, your finances, or your health and fitness, what you see are the results of your habits. If you love what you see, then do more of whatever you’re doing!

On the other hand, if what you see isn’t so terrific, sorry to say, that’s also the result of your habits. If your habits haven’t created the life and results you want, it’s time to change them. Here’s how to make a change in three simple steps…

1. Pay Attention In The Moment. If you mentally “check-in” with what you do on a daily basis in the midst of your routines, you’ll notice that you do things without even realizing it. Some of those ingrained habits are positive (putting the cap back on the toothpaste or putting the seat down without even thinking) while some others aren’t so great (throwing the mail on the kitchen counter and ignoring it for a few days, trying to throw together meals on the fly, writing phone messages on scraps of paper that you end up losing, trying to keep up with multiple calendars).
2. Choose a Different Thought In The Moment. Once you notice what you’re doing, you’re halfway there! Your thoughts created those habitual behaviors, and therefore your thoughts can create new ones. For example, change your thinking from: “I’ll just put this here for now and handle it later” to “I’ll take a minute and handle this now.” Change “I’ll remember that appointment in my head” to “I’ll add that to my calendar now so I don’t have to remember it.”You’ll be AMAZED at how powerful this one specific change is! As long as you just pay attention to yourself, you’ll be able to hear those thoughts that precede the ineffective behavior.
3. Choose A Different Behavior In The Moment. Habits are the behaviors generated by thoughts. If you change your thoughts, you can change your behaviors. This is where your power lives. You can change your thinking (which is GREAT!) but unless you ACT on that change, your results will stay the same.

The secret sequence to change a habit is:

1. Pay attention.
2. Choose a new thought.
3. Act on that new thought.
4. Repeat.

Once you apply that sequence to a few of your negative habits a handful of times, your new behavior will begin to be the new “default” — you’ll replace your old habits with powerful new ones, which will create a totally new result in your life.

Today we welcome guest post author Geralin Thomas, the ideal professional organizer from Cary, NC, and her amazing advice for making a family first aid kit.

Whether it’s a scrape, a sting or a sore throat, being prepared and having the right antidote on hand can soothe almost anything that ails you or your children. Creating a family-friendly first aid kit doesn’t have to be a pain in the aspirin (hee hee hee).

The “kit” can be a backpack, large ice bucket, plastic cooler, metal toolbox, small suitcase or something similar. Look around your home and chances are, you will have a container that can be repurposed and is suitable for the job. The contents of the kit can be purchased from any drugstore. The idea of today’s post is to motivate you to organize, update and/or create a kit so you’re prepared.

Below is a list of possible items to include in your home remedy kit. While this list is far from perfect and won’t be appropriate for all families, it is a starting point. Please leave comments and share suggestions regarding what your own home remedy kit will contain.

• An oral syringe, or calibrated cup and spoon for administering liquid medicines
• Children’s strength liquid acetaminophen or ibuprofen (non-aspirin)
• Pediatrician-approved children’s strength liquid decongestant
• Anti-diarrhea medication
• Antacid
• Activated charcoal (use only if advised by the Poison Control Center)
• Digital thermometer
• Tweezers and a pair of sharp scissors
• Latex gloves
• Safety pins
• Sterilized needle
• Antibacterial ointment
• Hydrocortisone cream (0.5% for children)
• Rubbing alcohol
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Nasal aspirator bulb syringe
• Variety of adhesive bandage strips
• Gauze rolls, sterile
• Gauze pads, sterile
• Adhesive tape
• Cotton pads and cotton swabs
• Heating pad
• Hot-water bottle and cover
• Ice pack
• Pedialyte Oral Electrolyte Solution

In addition to the store-bought items below, consider including an index card with the following information typed in a large, bold, easy-to-read font:

• Mobile phone numbers of parents and the home address (in the event someone, in an emergency, can’t recall the home address)
• Children’s full names, any known allergies and birthdates
• Pediatrician’s name and phone number
• Pharmacy’s phone number and address
• American Red Cross First Aid — Responding to Emergencies