Getting Organized

[Alethea]

Arright, a lot of us are in our 20s and 30s (40s? 50s?), running a household and doing an okay job. We have clutter, we have mess, we have laundry on the floor, but we generally muddle through. But there are those who ROCK at this very adult responsibility. How to get from A to B? Any ideas/tips/websites?

I ask because I stumbled across this: http://www.flylady.net/pages/begin_babysteps.asp , and it's intriguing. Geared towards housewives, but interesting nonetheless. The woman has a System, and it seems to be working for many people. I may just shine my sink before I go to bed tonight.

[kahn265]

The way I've done most of my organization is use of two apps on my phone -

1. Remember the Milk

2. Google Calendar

I use 'Remember the Milk' to remind me to make my meds (my phone moos at me at the right time) and to handle tasks at work. I also use it to remember to do things in the future. For example, I need to have tests run before my next doctor's appt in June. In May, tasks will appear on my list reminding me to get my blood drawn, and my bone density checked.

I use Google Calendar to remind me not only when to go to meetings - but to say "Hey, I've allotted this time to do X, I need to do that now".

I hope this helps.

[Alethea]

Some day I need to get a phone that does more than phone people.

[CokeCanNinja]

My currently plan is to put everything I need to do for the day (workout, study, eat healthy, etc) on a piece of paper that I keep over my alarm clock so I need to move it to turn off the alarm. That way I see it and have it in my mind the rest of the day.

[Oogiem]

I'm in the 50s range and I've never been a good housekeeper or well organized. I have quite a few books on how to manage a house and have tried about every system and trick out there.

What worked for a while to get me started was the original Sidetracked Sisters system of 3 x 5 cards with tasks. But keeping the cards up to date was a PITA so I dropped it. Then I tried flylady stuff for household work and I like the system but the rampant religious messages got to me on her boards and inspirational messages. That said I do have a flylady style control journal which is actually a 3 ring binder for basic clean the house tasks that I'd like to have done on a regular basis. It's a checklist type thing. I have daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal checklists for house cleaning.

Finally for real organization my real work follows the GTD model. I use Omnifocus on my mac and iPod Touch and love it. I've been practicing GTD methods for over 2 years and it really has made a difference. I have a recurring project on my GTD system to check and do 30 minutes from my red book (my Flylady journal) on the house. Most days I even get it done. The GTD connect membership for access to the private message boards & lots of other tools is very expensive (4 sheep sold ;-) ) but worth it for me. With the GTD method I have all my current and want to projects available and ready and the breaking down of actions to do by context is awesome once you really grok it. With the GTD stuff I've managed to sort, organize, scan as needed and then shred over 10 boxes of misc papers, we've made major improvements on the farm, some of them have been in the would like to do pile for over 30 years!; I've got a set of filing cabinets with reference material that either myself or my husband can find easily as needed, we've updated our estate plan, and I've gotten many of my fun projects done including more weaving and knitting. The huge backlog of junk from the various estates we inherited is slowly being worked through and sorted. I can't imagine running my life now without GTD principles and methods. In fact my being here is in part a result of a GTD project. Like martial arts, or fitness or meditation, GTD is a lifelong practice that you learn more from every day.

[rxninja]

I just got an iPad not long ago and it's been the single most useful, powerful, and motivating organizational tool I've ever owned. I use Zenbe Lists to keep track of everything I need to get done (I have lists for tasks that fit into various time slots, such as things that take 5-10 minutes to get done, things that take 20-45 minutes, and things that are 1-2 hours), iCal to schedule all of my appointments and events, and Evernote to write down anything that comes to mind. All of this also syncs to my laptop in case I need it there.

On the web, I use 42goals.com to record data about my life (everything from whether or not I went outside on a given day to my writing habits, my workouts, and my sex life) and Mint.com to maintain my finances.

The biggest thing I learned about organization comes down to two steps:

1) Everything has a place.

2) Everything in its right place.

With programs for lists, a schedule, dissociated thoughts, life data, and finances, everything I need to keep track of has a place. From there, it's just a matter of keeping everything in its right place.

[Oogiem]

Some day I need to get a phone that does more than phone people.

Or do what I did, I bought an iPod Touch. All the advantages of an iPhone w/o ATT service. Then because we have Sprint as our phone carrier we added an HTC Peel for $30/mo to give us data capability for 2 devices at a time. 1 GB service. Add Skype and I have a poor man's internet phone for international calling and full data service whenever I am in Sprint cell phone coverage. Since Sprint is our only phone carrier and has great service in our valley this is a good solution for me.

The iPod Touch syncs to my Mac for all the critical stuff either via private wifi network or via the cable.

I am cloud computing adverse, too much concern for both access and security to trust the cloud with personal and private data.

edited for typos

[justinhamlin]

This intrigues me, mostly because this is something I have always been very good at. Very organized, nice, neat, labeled, etc. My mother instilled this in me from a very early age, and my biological father was apparently the same way.

For me, the biggest issue is this. Those of us who are married have a little different take on things. For me, my wife is Columbian and came from a very modest household where mom and dad both worked (hell, mom just retired at 80 years old after working from the age of 14). The problem became this, my wife viewed (views) having excess possessions is a sign of wealth and success. You should see this woman's closet, I mean seriously.

Anyhow, this is one of a few areas her and I are very much opposites. I have learned to not be as OCD about it, and she has learned to let go of stuff. Currently, I am in the midst of going through all of our excess, the contents of our garage and attic to start, and getting rid of whatever we deem that we do not need.

I started out by getting my blog going to document this process, to inspire me as well as to motivate me to upkeep it and report positive results. Check that out here http://justinhamlin.com/operation-consolidation/

Right after that, I started using Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) to maintain to do lists, ideas for getting/staying organized, and for motivating myself and my wife to keep on it.

--

The bigger thing to look at here is do you have mess because you are just too busy to clean it up, or do you have mess because you have too much stuff? There are tips, tools, etc that can help you with anything, but you need to look at the root cause. For me, we just had too much stuff, so I have started to purge a bit.

[67alecto]

Been focusing on getting more organized and reducing clutter these last few months.

I've sold a few things on craigslist, thrown out a TON of stuff, and donated even more.

The three questions I ask of things are:

Does it work?

Do I use it?

Would I replace it if it was broken.

I condensed the nine-steps listed here into those three: http://zenhabits.net/identify-clutter/

I've also been setting aside things in a closet to be sold at a garage sale in the Spring. I have a short and long-term To Do list, and I try to get at least a couple crossed off each weekend. These past 2 weekends, for example, I was in overdrive to get the house ready for family to visit for the holidays. I painted a bathroom, scrubbed the walls, vacuumed the stairs, threw out even more stuff, and so on.

I've pared my DVDs down by selling about 100 of them, but I still have around 700. I'm finding books hard to let go of, too. I only buy the ones I really want, and over the years I had gotten rid of the multiple copies I accumulated of things like Frankenstein, The Iliad and Odyssey (keeping copies of the good translations by people like Fitzgerald and Lattimore), and other classics.

[rxninja]

Thinking about this post, a really great article came to mind that I thought might be helpful. It's on digitizing your life, so it also has the natural consequence of paring down your clutter.

[justinhamlin]

+1 for the digitizing your life.

I just spent the better part of 4 hours last night scanning about a 9" stack of paperwork that I had from my 2 home purchases. All I have to do now is validate the PDFs came through okay and i can shred all the paperwork.

[Oogiem]

All I have to do now is validate the PDFs came through okay and i can shred all the paperwork.

I'd do a full offsite backup before shredding :-)

Today I managed to sort one bankers box of estate stuff from 12 years ago. About 1/3 got either trashed or scanned. Rest needs more sorting/work. Ran out of emotional energy to deal with it.

[justinhamlin]

All I have to do now is validate the PDFs came through okay and i can shred all the paperwork.

I'd do a full offsite backup before shredding :-)

Today I managed to sort one bankers box of estate stuff from 12 years ago. About 1/3 got either trashed or scanned. Rest needs more sorting/work. Ran out of emotional energy to deal with it.

my backup strategy is nothing to be messed with.

For important docs, I have them synced between my desktop computer, 2 external hard drives, a Network Attached Storage device, my netbook and Windows Live Skydrive.

For things like photos, video, music, they are synced between my desktop computer, 2 external hard drives, a Network Attached Storage device, my netbook and my wife's computer. Bits and pieces there are synced between various sharing sites, so most of my photos are available online at any time.

I would delve more into the remote cloud backup, but not up for paying a monthly fee to backup 300+ GB of data.

But to that note, I do agree with you, for important documents/photos, etc, I would recommend an offsite storage such as box.com, dropbox, SkyDrive, or others.

[Oogiem]

I'm totally cloud adverse. So none of my important or critical data is on any server but my own. I'm even moving the non-critical reference data I had temporarily stored in Evernote off and will be canceling the subscription as soon as I verify my new system is stable.

My backup strategy is currently Time Machine to a RAID server hourly, monthly backups to a separate hard drive with a 2 level backup. The most recent is in a media rated fire safe and the next most in a media rated fire safe in another building Monthly backups of critical data files separately, 3 copies, one accessible in the main house and 2 in separate in separate buildings media rated fire safes. All files are verified at least quarterly. There are also hard copies of the most critical items both in the safes and in my main paper filing system. Critical original paper documents (birth certificates, marriage certificate, passport, drivers license etc.) are still scanned and electronic copies made but the originals are in one of our safes if not needed for daily use. Yearly backups are also stored in a media safe of a family member in another town. BTDT in terms of losing critical computer files due to inadequate backup at a former job, never will be caught like that again.

[justinhamlin]

I think that is a pretty good backup strategy, however, I do think (with enough research) you could find an online backup medium that fits your strategy and offers you the comfort of security that you seek.

(dont get me started on calling it cloud ANYTHING, its marketing bullshit that originated when engineers such as myself would create Visio maps or whiteboard sessions where the internet would be identified as a cloud. Yeah, thats it. Now its the latest damn buzzword in the industry and it is NOTHING NEW)

There have been companies like Iron Mountain that have been doing off-site data storage for years. Now they offer an online backup system that is stored in a data center much the same way their offsite backups are. Underground secure bunkers. These storage facilities have been tested and rival most 1940s bomb shelters. That is one example of a company where you can find their security policies online, call and talk to someone, and be able to trust their backup/storage, because that is the business they are in.

Places like box.net and dropbox, I am not as inclined to trust, as they are a startup trying to fill a niche, and lord only knows what corners they cut.

[Oogiem]

you could find an online backup medium that fits your strategy and offers you the comfort of security that you seek.

I come from a background in high level very secure systems. If it's not in my control and in a well built location where a Faraday cage seems like a an open door it is not secure. :-)

[makotoisle]

...

[alr]

I am so hopeless at this but the flylady is so annoying that the only improvements I make when using her system are due to the fact that I hide from my computer to avoid her (and thus spend more time cleaning - well, sometimes).

There used to be a bb called my messy house and it had a really good set of lists and you did one room a day according to their lists, plus a first five and last five every day (stuff like making your bed and doing the dishes). I wish I had saved it somewhere because it was so much less overwhelming than flylady. Also, I really resent being called a flybaby. Baby flies are maggots. Eeeeewwww.

alr