Articles for Household Organization
Whether you use your desk for paying household bills or making multi-million dollar deals, an organized desk will help you function more efficiently with less stress.
- · Clear your desktop and drawers of everything except large items like computers or printers. While you have your desk clear, wipe down surfaces and drawers.
- · Put desk accessories (pencil cups, calendars, desk pad, rolodex) back on the desk where you are able to easily reach or see what you need. Insert drawer dividers or other desk organizers you need to keep like items together and stay organized.
- · Sort the items you cleared from your desk. Set up boxes with categories like: shred, recycle, trash, office supplies, equipment, papers to file, decorations, and elsewhere (items that don’t belong at the desk to be put away later). Place items in these boxes.
- · Put items you have sorted away. Place the things you use daily within easy reach, items you use weekly close enough to reach them with little effort, and supplies you use monthly or less often away from your desk. These can even go in a closet or storage area in another room. Keep your workspace clear so that you have a clutter free environment that allows you to focus on your work and put like items together so you can easily find them.
- · File papers. If you do not have a good filing system, set up simple system for handling paper where you can find the paper you are looking for in less than a minute. Don’t pile—file!
- · Place any decorative items where they can be seen and enjoyed, but not on your workspace. Display items that inspire you most, but minimum the amount of decorations so you are not distracted from your work.
- · Maintain the hard work you have done. Take time to put things in their proper place each time you use them. When you are working your desk can become cluttered, which is understandable. Just make sure that at the end of the day everything is put away and the desktop is clear, ready for a new day of work.
Cathy Bates is owner of Practical Solutions Professional Organizing and a Golden Circle Member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). They offer hands on organizing help for homes and offices. To find out more about how they can assist you, contact them at www.psorganizing.com or call (909)810-3719.
Paper and clutter–as busy parents we are flooded with more each day. One of last year’s resolutions was to learn how to organize my family’s schedule using a paperless system. I am getting there and I am going to share some of my tips with you!
First I encourage you to de clutter your email. If you have a hotmail account, aol, or just a local ISP. Merge them all into ONE. My only recommendation is GMAIL. Gmail is one of Googles MANY tools to get you organized. Besides, if you have multiple email accounts you can check them all via Gmail as well as send and receive emails from a POP account.
In addition, it’s easy to organize your family life with the use of different Google applications such as Google Calender, Google Black Berry Sync, Google Contacts, Google Documents, Google Mail, and Google Voice.
Google is quick to point out to business; the value of time saved using Google to manage their business. Busy Moms rejoice because these same tools can save you time and sanity for both your busy family and yourself as well!
So how do I manage my family’s schedule with Google ?
The first step is to register for a Gmail account for each of your family members old enough to have an email account (old enough to learn how to use one.
I do not suggest creating a ‘family account’. Each user needs to have their own individual Google Account. Google will allow you to share what you want with each user.
Once you’re signed up with Gmail you can begin to coordinate the different accounts and start organizing you family life from wherever you might be whether it’s at home or on the road.
You can head over to the Google Calendar section and begin filling out your own calendar that you can then share with everyone, other individuals or specific groups of people. You can limit some events to private settings while sharing other information with a different level of access. You can even sync your calendar with other popular applications like Outlook or you Iphone or Blackberry.
How many computers do you have in your home ? I have five (but I am a self proclaimed mom geek). As the resident geek of my flock I am in constant demand to help my friends clean up their computers. Which I really shouldn’t have to do if they are maintaining their computer.
So here are my tips for looking after your family computers and keeping their maintenance up to date.
1) Check your antivirus programs and make sure they are downloading their updates. If you don’t have one, get AVG free. Make sure you only have one anti virus program or you will find your computer will stop liking you.
2) Protect your kids ? Hey PROTECT YOUR COMPUTERS. Kids will visit any and every website on the internet and downlaod all kinds of nice and not so nice things to your computer. So stop right now and get cyber patrol. Know what your kids are doing and keep them from doing things to your computer that they shouldn’t.
2) Run a disk Defrag. Go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter *do this every week. Need more ? You need to do this each week
3) Clear your internet cache. You need to do this each week. Videos: Fire Fox Internet Explorer
4) Take your videos, photos, and music off your computer. Most of us don’t have enough memory to store all of these on our computer without slowing down your computer.
5) Remove unused programs using the Control panel add/remove programs. Read More→
It’s September and here that means back to school has arrived. So have the newsletters, teacher notes, dance registrations, band forms, lunch program and picture day forms.
I am lost in a pool of paper and determined to not be as ‘unorganized’ as I was last year. or to drown under the pile.
So this busy mom has dusted off her mom time management skills and has managed to get through the first week of school with everything under control.
My family time management control center is back up and running… complete with;
1) a LARGE desktop calendar – stuck onto the cork board with double sided tape. The little ‘30 day family calendars have never had enough space to write down all of our schedules.
2) the large envelopes (on the corkboard) are used for teacher notes, school forms ect.
3) my ticket (the small blue paper). Graciously handed to me by a local RCMP officer who felt I did not come to a full and complete stop at the four way intersection this week. Read More→
