 Life is busy and maintaining an organized space can feel like an uphill battle. Whether due to a lack of time, a significant life change, or simply an overwhelming accumulation of clutter, it’s easy to feel like you just don’t know where to start. You don’t have to muscle through it on your own. Bringing in a Certified Professional Organizer® can save your sanity and be a game-changer.
Here’s when you need to call in the experts. Chaos & Clutter What’s bugging you? Is it your jumbled kitchen drawers, overstuffed closets and bureaus, messy entryway, chaotic playroom, or piled-up home office?
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 I once read a book about a man whose wife divorced him because he was a total slob. He wanted to clean up his act, but he wasn’t going to spend longer than absolutely necessary on any chore. So he timed himself doing various household tasks to find the most efficient method.
With dishes, he assumed it was better to let them pile up in the sink and soak, then wash the whole load at once. To his surprise, rinsing and putting them into the dishwasher right after eating was much quicker. If you’re familiar with productivity expert David Allen’s 2-Minute Rule, this won’t surprise you. The 2-Minute Rule states that if you can do something in two minutes or less, do it now instead of putting it off for later. It’s more efficient to get little tasks out of your way than it is to let them build up into mountains of work. My client Meredith* knows this first hand. We had cleared, sorted, and organized several rooms in her home, but Meredith struggled to keep it up. The mail piled up in front of the door, dishes overflowed the sink, and hills of laundry littered the bedroom floor. While we cleared the backlog, I had Meredith time herself doing routine tasks so she’d have a realistic sense of how long things take. Meredith found that she liked the challenge of timing herself and how it turned chores into games. If it took her 18 minutes to fold laundry one time, she’d try to beat the clock and do it in 17 minutes the next time. Now she knows that putting off chores only makes them grow, so she’s more motivated to get them out of the way. Here are some tasks that you can start timing yourself doing chores. Work a few of them into your daily and weekly routines and you’ll find it’s easier to maintain your home and you’ll be less stressed  “How long will it take for me to get organized?” As a Certified Professional Organizer®, I get this question a lot.
Remember, your home didn’t get disorganized in one day, and it’s not going to get fixed in one day! How long your organizing project will take depends on 4 factors. 1. HOW QUICKLY DO YOU MAKE DECISIONS? If you need to reminisce and tell the story of each item before deciding whether or not to keep it or where to put it, the organizing process is going to go pretty slowly. If, on the other hand, you set some pre-decision guidelines, your project will pick up speed.  ✔️ 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.   Did you know that 80-95% of college students procrastinate? Maybe you’re rolling your eyes and saying, “Duh, who doesn’t know that college students procrastinate?” And maybe you were one of those students.
But when you’re trapped in a procrastination cycle, it can feel as if everyone around you has it all together and you’re the only one who has, once again, gotten yourself into trouble with the doom of an approaching deadline. In her new book, How to Do It Now Because It's Not Going Away: An Expert Guide to Getting Stuff Done, Leslie Josel tackles the sticky problem of procrastination.  Paperwork, filing, taxes -- there must be some people who enjoy dealing with these, right? I’m not one of them and I suspect you aren’t either. Unfortunately, with tax day coming up next month, piles of paper are a reality for many of us.
What are the top causes of this paper pileup?
What are the solutions to these problems?
 At the beginning of every year, there are a lot of ideas rattling around in my head of new things I'd like to do and others I’d like to refresh or revise. The problem is that it can be hard to change habits and make a fresh start, right?
I don’t want to end up next December wondering where my time went and what happened to all those things I’d hoped to get done. So, I came up with a new event to help me achieve some goals.  If you’ve ever had the chance to attend a professional conference, you know what a rewarding and renewing experience it can be to learn new things and network with people in your profession from all around the world.
At this year’s conference of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, I met organizers from as far away as China and Australia! In addition to being a geographically diverse group, the organizing professionals I met are varied in the types of organizing they do and the ways they run their businesses. Some organizers have lots of employees while others are solo-entrepreneurs. Specialities include home organizing, business organizing, photo organizing, digital organizing, time management, and more. Now that Kate Bosch Professional Organizing is in its fourth year in business, I decided to focus on conference sessions that would enable me to run my business smoothly while it grows so I can maintain the level of excellence that my clients expect. The connecting theme of these conference sessions was “process.” The emphasis was on defining and refining your processes so that what you do becomes more automated and things don’t fall through the cracks.  Did you know that January is GO Month? The National Association of Organizing and Productivity Professionals created GO Month as a way to kick-start the year by focusing on getting organized and being productive.
Instead of focusing on the depressing fact that most New Year’s resolutions fail by February, let’s keep ourselves motivated by using the word GO: Do you struggle with how to be efficient and productive at work? Do you dread meetings because they're torturously long and nothing ever gets accomplished?
My colleague, Maryann Murphy, has written a fantastic book to help you with these common dilemmas: Stop Wasting Your Precious Time. This book should be required reading for any workplace or organization (Hello, schools and nonprofit boards!) that needs to get more done in less time and with less aggravation. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of the book and I loved it! I started implementing some of her suggestions right away and was able to clear my “Action” file in record time. This is definitely not one of those organizing books that I’m going to find among your piles of clutter, where I usually find the Marie Kondo book or another comprehensive “this-will-change-your-life” organizing book. Maybe you had high hopes when you bought those books, but I think they are overwhelming for most people. |
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