You Can Take the Organizer Out of Her House....

 I'm on vacation this week, so I'm pulling a Wednesday True Confession (#6) out of the archives -- one that's still rings true three years later.

I love hotel rooms and vacation spaces. Aside from the fact that being in one of these places usually means I'm taking a break for fun and/or learning, I love how easy it is to be organized in these spaces.

First of all, the sheer amount of stuff I have with me is minimized, limited to only what I could fit in the suitcase and various tote bags I packed specifically for the occasion. Hanging my clothes up is something I want to do because the alternative is to leave them crumpled up in my suitcase.
Not cool.

Second, these spaces are compartmentalized. There's the closet (for clothes), the desk (for my laptop and other work materials), the bed (for sleeping), the bathroom (for toiletries and makeup), and, if I'm lucky, some sort of reading chair/sofa/side table combination (for leisure). Figuring out where everything goes is easy which means that most of the time, everything is either where I packed it (where I left it last) or where it belongs. Everything. Nothing is homeless and, as long as I packed it, it has to be in the room somewhere.

I also designate spots for things like chargers (the one for my laptop is with my laptop and the one for my phone is usually on the desk as well) and my room key. Putting things in the same spot each time saves search time and, in addition, helps to create the habit of taking what I need with me when I go.

Last weekend, we were at the beach. We stay at the same condo complex each time and the number of rooms and their composition/layout are pretty similar from one unit to the next. This allows me to do the same type of organizing in this much larger space as I do in a hotel room.

While it might seem silly to focus on organization while I'm on vacation, for me, this predictability and consistency (not to mention knowing where to find my things) contributes to a sense of relaxation. It's not really surprising that that is the case since the same thing is true at home. The better organized I am and the less stuff I have laying around, the less stressed I feel.

How about you? When you take a vacation, do you take a vacation from organization as well?

Throwback Thursday: Back-to-School Shopping

 

pixabay.com

 I've been talking a lot about back-to-school choices at my online Christmas in July party, so revisiting this post from the archives seemed a good fit for this week. Style-specific shopping can be a challenge if you have official school supply lists to adhere to, but it's still possible to do some adapting so your kids can find tools that work for them. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Have you ever watched a left-handed person try to take notes in a traditional spiral notebook? It's almost painful. The angle is wrong, the spiral's in the wrong place, and even the neatest handwriting approaches illegibility as fatigue and frustration take over.

That's how it feels to be a non-traditional organizer using traditional school supplies. While everyone around you slides papers neatly onto binder rings or into the pockets of folders, you just never manage to make things work as neatly and effortlessly.

So...why buy those supplies?

If you've got a kiddo (or two) at your house whose notebooks and folders look like they've been through a natural disaster somewhere between school and home, help them adapt their supplies to their styles. 

Ways to adapt a binder:

• Buy a portable three-hole punch to put in the front of the notebook.
• Load the binder with page protectors so unpunched papers make it into the notebook. Or, if that's not gonna happen with your cram and jammer or drop and run organizer, try folder pockets (hole-punched inserts that look like a pocket folder opened up and folded back) or a three-ring acetate envelope with a snap or Velcro fastener.

  

  When I taught Organizing by STYLE
  to an elementary school audience,
  I found that clamp binders were a
  huge hit with fifth grade boys.
  Photo: staples.com

• Add a clip to the front of the binder so the day's papers get clipped inside the cover and can be added to the right section of the notebook at home.
• Ditch the three-ring binder for one with a spring-loaded clamp. Kids who don't take the time to put stuff into the rings sometimes enjoy putting papers away when they have an excuse to play with the clamp.
• Replace the binder with an accordion folder. Choose one that's divided into sections, or one with just one wide, yawning opening, depending on your child's style.

What to use instead of a standard-issue, paper pocket folder:

• A file folder. Like pocket folders, these come in a variety of colors, and can be color-coded by subject. If the papers aren't going to go in the pockets anyway, why create an unnecessary battle?
• Transparent folders that allow kids to personalize them (photos show through the opening) or see what's inside. These also come in a variety of colors, with and without pockets.
• A folder that has top and side access and a tab closure at the top. Multi-colored (again). Never underestimate the value of being able to play with an organizational tool. The more fun it is to put something away, the more likely it is it'll get there.
• Clear acetate envelopes with string-tie and button closures. Sold at office supply stores, these often come in multi-packs that make them less expensive per item. 

avery.com

Admittedly, these choices are often more expensive and harder to come by, but in many cases, the time and heartache saved makes it worth the extra cash and detective work -- and sometimes, you actually luck out and find cool tools at the dollar store or the clearance racks. When I taught lessons in elementary school classrooms, I brought a variety of supplies in for kids to play with and had them trouble-shoot potential issues. They were amazingly astute when it came to figuring out what they would and would not use, and they often loved things that cost a dollar or less (colorful report folders with hinged closures were a big hit) as much as the more expensive office supply items. 

Christmas in July

This week, I’m partnering with Celebrate Lit Publicity to do a special Christmas in July Giveaway. 

What can you win? 40+ books or a $500 Amazon card -- enough to exponentially increase that TBR pile AND do some Christmas shopping!

Click here to enter the Celebrate Lit Christmas in July Giveaway: https://promosimple.com/ps/1e46d/2022-christmas-in-july](https://promosimple.com/ps/1e46d/2022-christmas-in-july

I'm also putting together a back-to-school bag of goodies to give away on my Facebook group, L2Hess and Friends. I'll be posting about this in the group all week. Come join me!

Double-Parking and Other Hazardous Basement Habits

On Independence Day, I liberated myself from some of the clutter in our basement. My reward, appropriately enough, was freedom to move about in a space that had not been clutter-free in quite some time.

As is often the case, the project was kick-started not by a sudden desire to organize, but by something else entirely. My daughter, who recently moved into her own apartment, needed a bookshelf and I knew we had at least two in the basement. Unfortunately, they were serving as storage space, so liberating the bookshelf meant removing everything that was on it before cleaning it off and moving it out.

I suppose I could have left the piles for another day, taken them a few at a time, or taken a short cut and just put everything back in the space where the bookshelf had been. But, it seemed silly to pass up the opportunity to tackle a task that had long been on my home organizing to-do list, albeit at the bottom.

Many hours later, the bookshelf was upstairs, everything previously on the shelves had been sorted, and the belongings that had made the cut had been stored in their new homes.

Can I check basement organization off my list?

No, I cannot.

As big a job as this was, it was only Phase 1. There's another bookshelf double-parked next to the space that formerly housed the one my daughter took. If you're wondering what I mean by double-parked, you're probably:

• a Type A organizer, who would never do such a thing;
• someone who has a bigger house than we do and wouldn't need to do such a thing;
• someone who has lived in his or her house for less than ten years;
• someone whose basement is in better shape than mine.

"Double-parked," in this instance, means the bookshelf is in front of something else in the basement, just as its neighbor had been. In this case, what it's in front of is an old dollhouse we don't need to access, but which also has shelves we're using for storage.

At this point, you're probably wondering what on earth I'm doing writing about organizing. Double-parking? Isn't that something from an episode of Hoarders?

Maybe. But although I do have more than a touch of the I love stuff personal style, I'm not a hoarder.  In my basement de-cluttering, I had no trouble separating trash from treasure, and was delighted to see bags of trash make it out of the basement and out to the curb. I would prefer not to double-park but, like many of you, I'm someone who has lived in a small house for a long time (nearly thirty years, in my case) and who has run out of places to go with the accumulated evidence of the past three decades.

Although the outcome of organizing is tidy spaces, it's rarely a tidy process. Most of the time, like my basement, it gets worse before it gets better. Part of the process for those of us with an I need to see it personal style is spreading things out so we can clearly see what (and how much) we have. Those with a cram and jam personal style may be shocked by just how much they fit into a small space (and perhaps puzzled as to how to put it all back), while those whose personal style is I know I put it somewhere may find more "buried treasure" than they know what to do with.

If this process were easy, there wouldn't be so many of us who need to work so hard at it.

Organizing is hard, but it's worth it. Back in my basement, where there's still a serious co-mingling of trash and treasure, I'm choosing to focus on what I've accomplished so far, while acknowledging that I still have work to do. It's likely that I'll do that work in small steps instead of devoting an entire afternoon to it, nudged on by things like writing this post and the wonderful feeling of accomplishment I feel every time I go down into the basement.

The other day, I went down to put something away only to discover that my husband had put a cooler he'd emptied onto the table in my newly cleared area. 

As someone with a drop and run organizational style, I understood the impulse.

As the person who felt every muscle in her body after spending an afternoon restoring order in that space, I had no sympathy.

I didn't say a word as I removed the cooler and put it somewhere I knew he'd see it.

Clear space. The final frontier.

Then and Now: From the Mouths of Babes

 I celebrated Fourth of July by declaring my independence from some of the clutter in my basement (more on that next week). In the process, I discovered several fat binders whose contents need to be reviewed before I toss them wholesale. 

One of those binders contained notes and research for what eventually became my book, Know Thyself. In paging through the (color-coded, labeled) sections, I discovered my notes from the very first small group I ran on organization. The group members were third graders at the elementary school where I worked as a school counselor. In the first session, each of these eight-year-olds self-selected their personal and organizational styles. Then, the next time we met, I asked them to share their successes, along with the things that weren't working so well.

As we head into back-to-school shopping season, I thought it might be fun to share their observations and their wisdom before you hit the back-to-school sales with your own kids. 

Basic concept #1: Homes. Although they didn't phrase it as such, nearly every third grader in the group identified the concept of homes ("a place for everything") as a key to success. Some of these things included a bag for all the soccer gear, a hamper for dirty clothes, and folders color-coded by subject. 

Basic concept #2: One size doesn't fit all. But before you get too excited about those folders, (likely available for 10¢ each at many back-to-school sales), let me warn you that the group was divided on "responsibility folders." These ubiquitous pocket folders are standard tools, with elementary school students practically everywhere labeling one pocket "Bring back" and the other one "Keep at home" as they set up their systems during the first week of school. Most of the group members liked them, but a few did not. One girl cited "name on tab" (file) folders as preferable to pocket folders. 

"It all falls out," two of the girls said about the pocket folders, while readily admitting that their papers would be less likely to fall out if they put them in the pockets. 

It wasn't that these third graders, who'd been using some version of that folder for at least three years, weren't smart enough to put things in the pockets. Rather, for one reason or another, that tool did not work for them.

Basic concept #3: Like with like. The group was also divided on the "Agenda," a school-issued planner, with about half the group (3 students out of 7) citing it as helpful, and one student saying she preferred tucking her assignments into the Agenda instead of the folder. Again, though she didn't label it as such, she recognized the idea of keeping related items together. 

Basic concept #4: Leading a horse to water (so to speak) is only part of the battle. One thing both of these tools (the folder and the planner) have in common is that their use has been modeled by the adult at the front of the room. At the end of the day, teachers allow time for students to copy assignments from the board into the Agenda and put papers in the correct pocket of the "Responsibility Folder." Yet, even with this set-up, less than half of my group of students, most of whom had been trained in this process since at least first grade, used one or both of these tools. 

Basic concept #5: Give them ownership. Other times, well-meaning adults complicate the process. One of my group members cited her mom as both a help and a hindrance. Mom's advice and assistance were appreciated but, when her mom put her stuff away in a place that made sense to her (Mom), the student was stymied and frustrated. 

ds_30 via Pixabay

This was by no means a well-constructed study; rather, it's a set of observations made by a group of kids who joined a group to learn how to get better organized. Some actually came for that purpose, while others were there because they wanted to hang out in my office at the end of the day or because someone else (usually their teacher) thought they needed to be there. Still, it's the closest thing I have to kid voices on the subject of organizational tools, and the conversation sounds remarkably similar to those I have with adults still struggling to create organizational systems that work. 

Before you plunk down a substantial chunk of change on traditional back-to-school tools, perhaps it's worth doing non-scientific study of your own. Ask your child to pinpoint his or her own organizing- for-school successes, and then, perhaps, inject a few observations of your own, making sure to ask them what they think. 

Then, if you have flexibility in your school supply selection, let those observations and discussions be your shopping guide. If you must shop for specific tools, perhaps consider doing a little doctoring of the required supplies to make them a better fit, so that the tools work in the service of the student rather than vice versa.

That's exactly what I did with the binders I found in the basement. While binders are rarely my tool of choice, when I add dividers and pockets and clips, they serve as a resource years beyond the time I created them. Sometimes, they even yield organizing gold like the observations of students who are now college graduates. 

And the rest of the binders in that bin? When I finish this post, I'm tagging the bin with a sticky note. Anything not sorted by August 1 gets tossed, whether I've gone through it or not because, as my then-third graders pointed out in their examples, it's important to know where things belong and put them there.

And these binders most decidedly do not belong in a bin on the floor in my sunroom, awaiting further action.

Happy shopping.