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Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for July 2011: The Fun Side of Organizing

Janet — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:00:54 +0000

It's summertime here in the Northern Hemisphere, and many of us would rather lounge on the beach or around the pool than work. But, as all professional organizers know, organizing is fun too, and that's what this month's Professional Organizers Blog Carnival is all about. Read on and find out what "fun" means to all the different bloggers who participated! Please join me in welcoming our two newest participants: Kate Brown - The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same Alys Milner - Organizing Fido and Fluffy And, our returning bloggers: Deb Lee - When Plasticware Attacks Elaine Shannon - How do Entrepreneurs take a Vacation Ellen Delap - In every job there must be done, there is an element of fun! Jane Woolsey - Spring Clearing Challenge Julie Bestry - Paper Doll Cleans Out Her Backpack: Foreign Studies Edition Lisa Montanaro - Want to Get Organized? Take a Page Out of Harry Potter! Nancy Borg - The Secret to the Perfectly Organized Pack That You Will Never Forget Jane Veldhoven - Another Filing Masterpiece! Linda Samuels - The Win Win of Motivation & Fun Angela Esnouf - Turn Organising into Fun Have FUN reading their posts, and be sure to leave a comment introducing yourself. We are now accepting submissions for next month’s Professional Organizers Blog Carnival, when our topic will be Life Balance. In the meantime, please answer this question: What is the most fun part of organizing for you?

Product Review and Giveaway: Filertek Dry Erase Hanging File Tabs

Janet — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:54:28 +0000

One of the most popular ways to organize paper files for home or business, whether the project is best suited to an alphabetical, numeric, or topical system, is a set of hanging files, but I've never been a huge fan of hanging files, for various reasons. Many hanging file tabs come with inserts that are pre-labeled from A to Z or January to December, which is handy IF that's what your client needs, but often that's not the case. Most of the time you end up affixing a label over top or folding them the other way so you can write on the back. These inserts can only be re-used so many times before they need to be replaced. Even worse, many hanging file tabs are made from thin plastic which wears out over time, causing them to break and fall off. This is especially problematic if the tabs have been removed and updated or replaced, and it severely limits the efficiency of your filing system. Fortunately, filing products have come a long way since my early days working in an office, when hanging files came in only olive drab! They're now available in assorted shades, with hanging tabs to match, and it's great to see that manufacturers are also coming up with innovative products that eliminate the issues we had to deal with in the past. One such manufacturer is The Pencil Grip Inc., who have done away with those little cardboard slips altogether with their Filertek line of file indexing systems. You simply pop open the durable plastic cover, write on the file label using a dry-erase pen (included when you purchase a set of tabs, or available separately), and close it again. This clever system means the tabs can be used over and over again, so your client doesn't go to update a label one day, only to discover they have no paper inserts in stock. Not only is this convenient, it makes sense from an environmental perspective and keeps expenses down as well. The tabs are lovely and strong, so you don't have to worry about them falling off. Although I wouldn't recommend the practice, I actually pulled one of my files out of the drawer by the tab and it remained firmly in place. I'm so impressed that I'm probably going to use them in my office filing cabinet, which I've refused to do for many years. Filertek Hanging File Tabs are available in packages of 5, 12, and 50, and come in assorted colors for the benefit of your visually-oriented clients, or in clear, for those who prefer a cleaner, more uniform look. If you can't find them in your local office supply store, you can order them directly from The Pencil Grip or from Amazon.com. If you'd like to try this product out with one of your organizing clients, or even in your own office, you'll be thrilled to know that The Pencil Grip Inc. has generously offered to send a sample to one of my blog readers! For a chance to win, simply leave a comment below. For additional entries you can:

Join our mailing list and leave a comment to let me know you have
Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment to let me know
Blog about this giveaway and leave a comment to let me know (please include the URL to your blog post)
Tweet about this giveaway and leave a comment to let me know (please include @JanetBarclay in your tweet)

You're allowed to tweet about the giveaway once per day, so you can have up to 10 chances to win! The giveaway closes at midnight (Eastern Daylight time) on Sunday, June 12, and the winner will be selected using a random number generator and announced on June 13. Good luck!

Your Paperless Business

Janet — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:41:31 +0000

Today I'm thrilled to introduce a special guest, Lelah Baker-Rabe, who is one of our Professional Organizers Blog Carnival Star Bloggers. Lelah specializes in helping clients eliminate paper from their offices, and is here today to explain how you can benefit from making your organizing business paperless. As professional organizers, we work with many clients who are challenged by paper. The daily inflow of paper is constant and our expertise helps our clients manage paper effectively. As business owners, we also have paper challenges. Because we have paper-management skills, the paper might not be as overwhelming for us, but it must be managed well in order for us to run our businesses profitably. With recent tech products like smartphones, tablets and net books, professional organizers have excellent resources and excellent reasons to take their businesses paperless. What does it mean to have a paperless business? Invoicing and contracts would be sent and received electronically. Advertising and marketing materials would be electronic, too, forgoing a paper newsletter or direct mail campaign for an enewsletter or email campaign. When you do receive a piece of paper that you want to keep or a business card you want to refer to, you would employ a scanning system and then recycle the paper rather than storing it in a filing cabinet. Your calendar, address book and notebook might be available through web-based applications you can access on a smartphone, or you might use something like Apple's MobileMe to keep your data updated across multiple electronic platforms, such as an iPhone and laptop. One always has to keep some physical records for legal and tax reasons, but they can be limited to a small permanent file. Why go to all the trouble to retool your professional organizing business as a paperless one?

Mobility. You can be anywhere and access important data, making it more efficient to schedule and follow up with clients and manage your workflow. You can also share data with employees or contractors more easily.
It saves money and space. Your office space will be lighter without a lot of paper files; having all your data backed up to an external hard drive or a cloud-based backup system takes up very little room. While you might invest in new technology like a scanner or smartphone, you'll save money on supplies like printer ink and paper.
It helps you learn new skills you can transfer to your clients. A paperless business teaches tech skills that will help you work with clients on time management, office organizing and productivity.
It sets an example for your clients and can be environmentally responsible, too. Recycling is good, but not using paper in the first place is better. However, tools like phones and computers can have large eco-footprints, so if you strive for a green business, do your homework before you invest in products.

Your organized business can also be your paperless business! Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. For more information on how and why to go paperless, call her at 818.269.6671, email lelah@lelahwithanh.com or sign up for Lelah's News, a once-monthly newsletter.

Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for August 2010: Getting Organized for Back to School

Janet — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:17:49 +0000

Welcome to the August issue of the Professional Organizers Blog Carnival! I sincerely appreciate all the submissions, but am just catching up on my work after a mini-vacation, so I hope you'll forgive me for not inserting my usual commentary, and simply publishing a list of the back-to-school organizing posts submitted by my readers. Please enjoy, comment, and share!

This is a busy time for families with school-aged children, so it's not surprising that many bloggers focused on this audience. Don't make the mistake of thinking these posts are much the same, as you'll find tips here on organizing school lunches, school supplies, daily routines, and a lot more. You're sure to find some advice here to benefit your clients, or even your own family! Audrey Cupo - Start The New School Year Being Organized Geralin Thomas - Getting Organized for School Lunches Ellen Delap - Back to School Preparation Checklist: Being organized and having a list makes all the difference for a successful school year. Heather Burke - Getting Organized for the New School Year Tina Blazer - Organizing Ideas for Back to School Clare Kumar - Be Prepared for Back to Class: Although many of us are reluctant to think about the coming school year while we're still reveling in summer, planning now will pay off in a smoother transition for you and the kids. I've included 5 quick tips to get you started. Jane Veldhoven - Yikes - Back to School Already? Jacquie Ross - Top 12 Back to School Organizing Tips - Shopping for School Supplies: Organizing tips for shopping for back to school supplies. Barbara Tako - Three frugal simple ways to get organized for back to school: Frugality and simplicity can work together here. Janet Baker - Organization Is The Key When Going Back To School Kimberly Eagles - Staying Sane During the School Year Back-to-school isn't just about young children, and a couple of our posts are geared towards high school and college students: Jacki Hollywood Brown - Summer Job Organizing: It's important to prepare for the school year but it's also essential to record necessary information to help you in your job search for next summer. Here are some tips to help you keep your employment information organized! Anne Blumer - My son leaves for college in one month...so, what does that have to do with organizing? As always, I’d like to thank all the bloggers who have participated in this month’s Professional Organizers Blog Carnival. This is a monthly event, so if you didn’t submit a post, feel free to join us next time, when our topic will be Technology. It's an important part of our lives now, so we can all use tips to keep it organized, or to use it to keep us organized! The deadline for submissions is noon EDT on Thursday, September 9. The October Blog Carnival will focus on Bathroom Organizing. In the meantime, be sure to check out this month's posts, leave some comments, and get to know one another!

Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for March 2010, Part 2: Taxes

Janet — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:20:56 +0000

Deb Lee contacted me yesterday, wondering why I had not included her post in the Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for March. When I checked to see whether I'd received it, I discovered that somehow I'd omitted all of the tax-related posts! I sincerely apologize for my oversight, but as they say, better late than never!

I'm still trying to figure out how this happened. Do you think I have a subconscious fear of dealing with taxes? I actually received four submissions on the topic of financial organizing specific to taxes:

Master Cruz: Two Things Certain in Life…
Stephanie LH Calahan: Consider Donations in Your Tax Planning
Deb Lee: The Taxman Cometh
Carmen Coker: Get Organized: Tax Prep

On the upside, my delay in sharing these gave me a chance to include one more post which wasn't yet available when the first part of this month's Professional Organizers Blog Carnival was published! In regards to budgeting, Audrey Cupo explained why It's More Important Than Ever To Budget Your Money. Don't forget that the topic for April's Blog Carnival is green organizing. By the way, if I choose not to include a post you submit for any reason, I will email you to let you know, so please don't hesitate to follow up with me like Deb did if I ever make this mistake again!

Professional Organizers Blog Carnival for March 2010: Financial Organizing

Janet — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:51:52 +0000

Welcome to this month's edition of the Professional Organizers Blog Carnival! We have a lot of new people participating this month, so I'd like to welcome everyone and encourage you to read and comment on your colleagues' posts. I'm sure you'll find it to be a fun way to get to know one another while picking up some new ideas for your clients, or even for yourself!

When I chose this month's topic of Financial Organizing, I was a bit concerned that we might have a whole bunch of similar posts, so I was really pleased to see the wide range of submissions that came in! We have: Budgeting tips from Joan Kosmachuk in Get Organized for the Holidays - Make a Spending Budget Money management tips from Ellen Delap in Getting Organized with Your Money and Finances and Ramona Creel in Ten Steps To Financial Freedom. Ramona says,

Financial independence is well within our grasp -- we just have to make a few fundamental shifts in the way we choose between instant gratification and future security.

Credit card tips in Playing Your Cards Right: How The CARD Act Helps Organize Your Finances from Julie Bestry, who says,

A major key to getting and keeping your finances in order is understanding the credit and debt infrastructure--the rules that determine how much interest you're charged and the fees you are assessed. As they say, forewarned is forearmed!

Tips for filing financial paperwork from Michelle Deo in Files & Taxes, Margarita Ibbott in Homebox - One Spot Document Holder and Filing System, and Elaine Shannon in How to organize your Finances Financial document retention tips from Angie Weid in Do I Really Need My Last 5 Years of Electric Bills? And last but not least, some spectacular piggy banks for storing your change from Jeri Dansky, the product-finding organizer, in Piggy Banks That Aren't Pigs: A Glyptodon, A Goat, and More. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this month’s Professional Organizers Blog Carnival! In honor of Earth Day, the theme for April will be green organizing, and you are welcome to submit your post at any time. For those of you who like to plan ahead, the topic for May will be organizing tips for busy moms, but no submissions will be accepted for May's Carnival until after April 10^th. If you’d like to suggest a topic for a future Professional Organizers Blog Carnival, please feel free to leave a comment or to contact me directly.

The Must-Have Tool for Organizing Paper

Janet — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:19:26 +0000

When you think of organizing products, the first things that probably come to mind are those items which will remain at your client's home or office, such as containers to store various large or small objects together and keep them in their proper place. Then there are other products which are designed to be used during the organizing process, such as the all-purpose file sorter. I fell in love with the file sorter back when I was working in a large office environment, so when I became an office organizer, I was quick to add one to my toolkit. When you have large quantities of paperwork to sort, organizing it into piles requires a lot of space on your work surface, and it's hard to efficiently keep track of what goes in each pile. The file sorter addresses both of these problems. Basically, you still sort the documents into piles, but instead of spreading them out on the desk or table (or the floor, if there's a huge amount!), you simply slide them into the appropriate slot. The tabs are labelled several ways, so you can easily sort alphabetically, by day of the week, date or month, or by file number, and they're staggered so you can still see the labels even when you've inserted lots of pages. Once everything is sorted, you can pull out each section for filing or further sorting. Using the file sorter can minimize strain on your neck and back, especially on really large organizing jobs. One project where I found it exceptionally useful was with a client who used a full size binder-style Franklin Planner, in which he inserted his meeting agendas, itineraries, and any other paperwork related to his schedule. Each month he would remove the pages and put them in a pile on his shelf. By using my file sorter, I was able to organize all those pages and place them in order and in their appropriate storage case in a fraction of the time that it would have otherwise taken me - benefitting me physically and mentally, and saving my client money. My file sorter, as pictured above, is Oxford model number 40652, but several similar products are available, including the C-Line 30526 and the C-Line 30532. The tabs on all three of these products are plastic, allowing you to easily slide papers in and out. If you prefer not to buy plastic products, Oxford also makes a pressboard version. What's your favorite tool for organizing paper?