Kate Bosch Professional Organizing - Blog

Back to School: Time Management Is Your Student's Must-Have Tool

8/9/2023

✔️ Backpack
✔️ Notebooks
✔️ #2 pencils

If you're just checking off the school supply list, you're missing the most important back-to-school prep that you can do for your student.

I interviewed expert Student Coach Leslie Josel of Order Out of Chaos who says the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to get ready for school is to help your student learn the organizational skill of Time Management. Students need to SEE their time so they can manage their time.

If you struggle with time management and distractibility, you'll find lots of ideas in our discussion that will help you get a handle on your time.

Watch the video for all the great tips and information. Send your students back to school with the supplies they really need!

Use my affiliate link, https://bit.ly/KateOrderOOChaos, to access all of the great FREE resources and products (20% off through 9/30 with code PLANNER20) at Order Out of Chaos.

While you're there, be sure to sign up for Leslie's free Back-to-School Webinar on August 22. If you can't watch it live, register and get the recording to watch later that week.

Kate Bosch

7/18/2023

Check out the recent Redfin article I was featured in: Organizing Mistakes: 27 Slip-Ups to Avoid During Your Next Project | Redfin

Organizing is difficult and can be a stressful, time-consuming project. It’s also an essential skill that can increase your physical and emotional health. Chances are, though, that during an organizing project, you made a few
mistakes. While it's natural to feel disappointed or frustrated when mistakes occur, it's important to recognize them as valuable learning opportunities rather than failures.

So, whether you live in a house in Brentwood, CA, or a Greenville, SC, apartment, these expert-backed tips are sure to make your life easier. Read on for 27 organizing mistakes to avoid during your next decluttering project. Read the full article here: Organizing Mistakes: 27 Slip-Ups to Avoid During Your Next Project | Redfin

Summer Blog Bonanza

6/6/2023

As we wrap up the school year and head into summer, have I got some blogs for you! Because organizing kids’ artwork and papers is a ubiquitous dilemma, I’ve written about it a few times. These three blogs tackle different aspects of the problem and will help you sort through what you have and set up a system to deal with it all so you can start with a clean slate in the fall.

Congratulations to those of you with graduates heading off to college in the fall! Get Organized for College is a not-to-be missed blog that’ll clue you in to everything you need to know about organizing the dorm room.

And for those of you who just can’t wait to set out for summer fun, my
Say YES to Summer Adventures! blog will make it easy for you to enjoy the season, whether you’re by the pool. the lake, or the beach.

QUICK TIP:

There are plenty of companies that preserve your kids' art in printed digital albums, but most parents (me included!) can't bear to throw out the original artwork. 4everbound has a unique solution: they bind your ACTUAL PAPERS into a book. Amazing!
Order your 4everbound kit with my affiliate link and they'll know I sent you.

Core Values Organizing

5/16/2023

As a Certified Professional Organizer, I connect with my clients, unleashing creative solutions to help develop competence and confidence in the way they organize so they can find contentment in their homes.

Each of the five C-words in this sentence—Connection, Creativity, Competence, Confidence, and Contentment—impacts my organizing work and together they represent my core values.

We hold many shared values—for example truth and integrity—but your core values are the unique combination of motivating beliefs that drive you to do what you do. Core values are the WHY behind your WHAT.

Let’s explore how my 5 C core values impact my organizing work with clients. Read on...

Be sure to watch my episode of the This Organized Life podcast or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Host Laurie Palau and I explore the impact of knowing your core values.

Garage Organizing Do's and Don'ts

4/4/2023

Take a look in most people’s garages and you’ll quickly understand why minimalist author and speaker Joshua Becker’s journey toward minimalism began in his garage.

As he tells the story, he and his young son were cleaning out the garage on a beautiful spring day. As they unearthed toys from the rubble, the boy didn’t understand why dad wouldn’t leave the messy garage to play with him. That’s when Becker realized that the excess stuff he owned was making it hard for him to do what was important to him—spend quality time with his family.

It’s easy to ignore the stuff piling up in the garage because we’re not walking around it on a day-to-day basis. Even if we do park our car in the garage—and many of us don’t!—we can shut the door on the piles as we walk into the house.

According to an Impulse Research survey, 24% of homeowners are embarrassed to leave their garage doors open.

When you’re ready to stop closing the garage door on your stuff, use my CALM organizing method (Clear, Assess, Locate, Modify) to sort through your things. Then apply these garage-specific Do’s and Don’ts.

CALM Organizing

3/14/2023

“Just seeing all this clutter and things out of order makes me very anxious,” my new client Diane* nervously said to me.

I hear that all the time. A disorganized space makes most people anxious. We fear losing important things in the mess. The clutter makes us distracted, our eyes can’t land on anything, and we’re unable to focus on tasks.

To combat the craziness of clutter, think CALM:

Clear
Assess
Locate
Modify

The 3 Biggest Digital Clutter Mistakes

2/15/2023

Do you have tens of thousands of emails in your inbox and the important ones get buried and go unanswered?

Are there dozens of folders on your desktop but you can’t locate the files you need when you need them?

Is your photo stream so junked up with screenshots and info photos that you can’t find the great pic of your kids where they were all smiling at the same time?

You are not alone!

I’m a wiz at organizing physical spaces, but last year I realized my digital world had gotten a little out of hand. I needed to learn some new tricks and tools. Through Laurie Palau’s This Organized Life podcast, I found Kath Younger’s life-changing Digital Clutter course.

Since I’ve been using Kath’s systems, I spend less time handling email, I know right where to put my digital files, and I can easily find my favorite photos.

This month, I sat down with Kath to talk about her digital clutter organizing methods. Watch the video here:

Read on for the 3 Biggest Mistakes Kath sees people make when trying to organize digital content.

Create a Clean Slate

1/18/2023

I love decorating for Christmas—it’s so fun to give my home a festive atmosphere. But this year I noticed that I got equally excited when I put away the decorations. With the cool winter light streaming in through the windows, my house looked lighter and more spacious. I felt like I was starting the year with a clean slate.

And then I immediately started to fill those clear spaces with a flurry of ideas for ways to reorganize, redecorate, and reinvigorate my life.

“Wait a minute,” I told myself. “You’ve just worked to put things away and clear some space. Live with it. Enjoy it. Don’t go filling it right away!”

I realized I was charging ahead in the same way a lot of my clients do with their organizing projects. They get excited to buy sleek new bins and containers before they’ve even figured out what they’ll put in the bins and how they want to use the space.

Guilt-Free Giving

12/8/2022

“If a gift has come to you wrapped in obligations and tied tightly with a ribbon of guilt, then it's not really a gift at all.” -Peter Walsh

Why is giving so tied up with guilt? Guilt about overspending, guilt about underspending, guilt about having to give equal gifts to various people, guilt about giving in proportion to what you’re getting, guilt about not liking a gift you received…the guilt list is as long as Santa’s list!

Of all of the gift guilts, the one that causes the most consternation is the problem of receiving a gift you don’t love.

For our first Christmas as a married couple, my husband really wanted to delight me. I gave him several not-so-subtle hints that I had my eye on a chocolate brown Persian lamb coat in a local vintage shop.

I couldn’t hide my excitement on Christmas morning when he handed me a box stamped with the shop’s logo. Lifting the lid, my face fell when I pulled out a mangy-looking, poison-yellow rabbit fur jacket. Seriously, what was he thinking?!

Is There Cash in Your Closet? A Vintage Expert Gives Advice on Selling Clothes

11/16/2022

Hanging in my closet is an authentic antique 1960’s Jackie Kennedy-style yellow bridesmaid dress. I’m never going to wear it, so it’s just taking up space. I should sell it for big bucks, right?

Not so fast.

In my last blog, Amy Mayberry of Viva Vintage Clothing schooled us on the best way to store clothes. In this blog, her advice will demystify the process of selling clothing—vintage, designer, and just regular stuff.

What sells?
Comparing my dress with a 1970’s purple suede outfit that a client of mine wanted to sell, Amy pointed out all the pros and cons of each piece.