Mail driving you nuts?  Do you feel a sense of dread every time you hear that mail truck coming down the street or feel a sense of anxiety when it is time to retrieve it?  You aren’t alone!  Ironically, today, I’ve been hearing from a few clients about their struggles to control the dreaded mail! So I thought it time to offer some tips on how to “do” the mail to help you stop the madness.  Oh, and it can be stopped.

I think we get three types of mail — bills, mail with short (or long) term action or TO DO attached, and junk mail.  Getting the mail doesn’t have to be a major task but there are steps that should be taken every time you go to that little box with the red flag in order to avoid ensuing madness!  “Doing” the mail can take less than 2 minutes if you do it diligently, efficiently, and often.

Step one: I am going to guess that most of your mail falls in the junk category.  {You get flyers for a sale at Macy’s (maybe a coupon attached); you get solicitations for new credit cards; you get catalogs from places you’ve never even heard of.}  When you get the mail, immediately discard the junk mail and stand over the recycle bin/trash to do so.  Whether you recycle it, burn it, shred it – doesn’t matter. Just don’t let it get past the front door.  A friend suggested to me once to enter the house after getting the mail via the garage where recycle/trash bins are and discard the junk before you enter the house.

Brilliant!

Step two: put all your bills in your bill paying center.  Bill should be kept separate from all other mail.  I am not suggesting you have to pay your bills at this time – just put them where you will pay them. All in one spot means you can find your bills again.  You’ll be less likely to be late in paying a bill and less stressed come bill-paying time.

Doesn’t less stress sound magical?

Step three:  Everything that requires some action (non-emergent action) should be put in one spot. Use an inbox tray or a bulletin board to post things like wedding invites with hotel directions attached.  These need to be added to your calendar and responded to.  And those flyers from your favorite store with coupons attached – that you didn’t recycle – can go in the inbox or on the board.  The goal with this step is to put those items in a home — albeit temporary — so you can address them once the kids are fed, the dog is walked and you’ve had a chance to breathe.

Breathing is good.

Now there is a followup to step three that really can’t be pushed aside – a verri important step: You need to schedule administrative time each week — let’s call it… “accomplish calm” time.  I suggest you spend at least an hour a week going through paper — paying bills, responding to invites, filing things where necessary.  The more often you go through the paper that needs some action, the more time you save. This hour can be split up into 10-15 minutes each morning, 1/2 hour 2x a week, or all at once.  Doesn’t matter just schedule time to deal with paper.  You’ll get into a routine, which is an important part of staying organized.

{Mini tip: if stuff is mailed that you can deal with right away — a quick phone call, a quick RSVP – do it!  Taking the less-than-43-seconds to do these little tasks makes you feel accomplished and means there less paper hanging around your desk, waiting for your attention.}

Look, mail that piles up will overwhelm you but you are smarter than the mail.  Don’t anticipate chaos or anxiety where paper is concerned.  Look at it as something you can control – cause you can.  Say it to yourself or say it out loud.

Hello Paper, I control you!”

It sounds funny but sending that message to your brain says you can – and will – take control.  No more being swallowed up or overwhelmed by mail.  Bye, bye madness, hello calm!

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Doesn’t it always feel good to make others feel important, loved?  I like to find joy, and to spread joy.  My intentions aren’t completely unselfish.  I know that in doing little things to make people smile it in turn makes me feel fantastic. And I do like to feel fantastic. Those feelings boost self esteem – an important component in, among many things, believing in your abilities to do just about anything.

My knowledge about and desire to feel good was instilled in me and my 3 siblings at a young age.  We grew up with a mother who is a motivational/humorist speaker.  {Great combo, huh?} She was always saying something funny or teaching us about how to see things funny and “light”.  She always told us that accepting compliments and paying them was a sign of good self esteem.  And if you could laugh at yourself you’d be well on your way to being happy.

She taught us that you have to find ways to boost your own self esteem, find happiness in yourself.

I could list a million tips about how to feel good, organized, accomplished as a means to boost your esteem but will share five of what I think are some of the easiest things you can do daily to increase a healthy sense of self.

1. One of the easiest ways to feel good is to smile. And I don’t just mean in general, I mean specifically to smile at yourself.  My mother used to always tell me to wake in the morning and look in the mirror and smile.  Why?  Because someone is always smiling back, she’d say, and that feels good.  Just one of many pearls of wisdom and life lessons she passed on.  You will think I am nuts and won’t feel it’s positive physiological effect until you try it. Go ahead. And make it a routine each day.

2. One of the easiest ways to feel organized is by making your bed every day.  Yup. Just make it everyday. I truly believe completing this task daily is essential for starting the day off in an organized way.  Your space looks better, tidy and neat.  You feel organized and when that happens you feel better. And at the end of a long, perhaps crazy day, you’ll be grateful for the sense of order (and calm) your made bed provides.

3. One of the easiest ways to feel accomplished is by doing small tasks to keep your space in order. Feeling like you have accomplished something is an esteem booster for sure.  There is nothing worse that going through the day feeling, however unconsciously, like you’ve “done” nothing.  Ticking off tasks from your to do list will  help for sure but here are a few things you can do daily, regardless of what’s on your list, that will infuse as feeling of order into your day and in return help you feel quite accomplished.

a. Keep the sink clean and clear before leaving the house and/or going to bed. Waking to a clean sink allows you an orderly, one-step-ahead way to start the day. Instead of waking to a task (and another piece of chaos in your sight), you will wake to to a perfect visual of calm, order and balance. This task doesn’t have to be a hardship, especially if you stay on top of it and don’t put it off too long.  And you can bring your children along for the ride and set expectations so they help you make it an easy task to accomplish.

b. Clear the floor! Just like a void-of-dirty-dishes sink allows you to enter the next day with a “clean” slate, so will a clean and clear bedroom floor or family room.  Make sure dirty clothes make their way to the laundry basket and clean clothes to the closet or dresser.  Straighten out the pillows on the couch and tidy up the coffee table contents before your day ends.  Again, its a great lesson for children (start ‘em young) to learn to pick up after themselves and put their things away.  As they get older, that sense of order will become second nature and helping you keep things calm will too.

4. One of the easiest ways to make others feel good is to pay it forward – daily.  I read an article recently (and I might just have to expound on this tip in a later post because it carries to much weight for me) about a man who, for one year, performed one act of kindness every day.  Imagine what this world would be like if we all did this?  It doesn’t seem that hard to do if we put pushing kindness ahead of pushing our own agendas.  And imagine how good we would feel just to see someone else smile or know you helped in even the smallest way?  Hold the door for the person behind you. When in traffic let someone “in”. Smile at a stranger or two, or offer a kind word if the spirit moves you. Pay attention to what’s going on around you and offer kindness wherever you can. It.feels.good.

5. One of the easiest ways to make you and others feel good is to write a note or drop a line to someone to brighten their day. Like tip 4 this tip has the power to change the world – at least those in yours. Whether you’ve been in touch in the past week or haven’t been connected in over a year, letting someone know you are thinking of them sends esteem through roof – for both of you. Try to connect daily with a friend to say hi and check in, or send a card and mail it just because.  You feel good, and someone feels the love.  How perfect.

Challenge yourself to do more for you (and others) to increase your self esteem, make life happy, and make this world just a little bit better – one smile and good act at a time.

What good things have you done to brighten your day or the day of those around you?

Today I’m being featured over at this little light: embracing the joy in the everyday where I’m talking about …well… joy, and sharing why finding it and embracing it means so much.

Join me over there, won’t you?

Losing focus can be a real drag.  And losing it affects our mental wellness in ways we often don’t think about. The reasons we lose focus might not be immediately recognized but the loss of focus weighs on you.  Whether from boredom or the chaos of trying to multitask too much, your mind is what is suffering — that and your job performance.  Consider these tips to wellness, and to find better balance in doing your work and regaining focus.

1. When you don’t want to do something, it feels like it will take an eternity to climb that mountain of a task and our mind feels cluttered by its enormity.  Allot small chunks of time to complete the task. You’ll likely see the mountain shrink quickly and the task done in a flash.

2. Use your high-energy times of day to do the mundane. Mundane equals boring and boring requires more energy to keep you up, (and awake!) and on your game. If you have more energy in the morning, plan your mundane tasks for that time. Don’t worry; you’ll have plenty of gas left for the more exciting projects.

3. Add variety to your tasks. Find new ways to do boring or recurrent tasks. Sometimes switching it up makes it more engaging.

4. Laugh a little. Losing your motivation isn’t funny and the best way to change it is to change your perspective. Find the funny in what is around you. Sometimes, we take our tasks and ourselves too seriously, making our goals seem harder and less interesting. Laughter can make any goal seem not so out of reach.

5. Take a break to rejuvenate. Our brain needs a recharge, especially when doing the mundane, and often becomes more creative and productive when we give it a break. Take a walk, listen to some music, get some fresh air! Your mind will thank you and return the favor ten fold.

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(photo source)

We all love our sleep. And I am sure, if you’re like me, you like it to be restful and long.  And doesn’t it always feel longer when you wake up refreshed?

The best way to assure a restful night sleep?  Set your routines in place and take care of your to-do’s, so when your head hits the pillow tonight, you will sleep better.  The routines and order you set before you hit the hay say allow your mind to rest easier.  The same holds true for making a good, solid list and putting everything you feel you need to do on it — gives your mind a little vacation from having to think about those things.  It rests easier.  And so will you.

You will wake more refreshed, more ready to tackle the day.

But not so fast!  Now that you have more control over what the day will serve up {I’m telling you, routines make your life easier!} you can try this quick tip to add you-time to your day. Set your alarm 15 minutes early.  Allow yourself a leisurely entry into a new day before the kids get up, perhaps before the sun does too. At the least it is built-in time for any snags that come up in your routine. If all runs smoothly, you just bought yourself some extra time for you.

What will you do with your extra 15 minutes?

Don’t you want your day to be entered into calmly, efficiently, stress-free?  Of course you do!

Mornings are usually crazy because we don’t utilize our time well during all parts of the day and haven’t set efficient routines in place. Here are some tips to help you start your day off in a calm way.

1. Throw out the trash – in your head that is. I truly believe what you think, what you expect will happen — will happen. Expect some calm; expect a smooth transition. It’ll happen.

2. If you have a family, organize each evening what you need for the next morning. You should lie out clothing for your children (or better yet, get them in the routine of doing this), pack backpacks with homework and snacks, and set the table for breakfast.

3. Chances are good you need to get dressed each morning! Assess the night before what the weather will be like the following day and prepare what you are going to wear. If your mornings are fast-paced and require you to do for others, this tip is important. The mental time you save in the morning by laying out your clothes the night before is invaluable.

4. Look at your calendar each evening for the next day. Plan out what you need to do the next day. If you keep a to-do list (I hope you do!), you should pluck from it any tasks you need to get done, or can get accomplished the following day and write them in your datebook,  planner, or smart phone.

5. Have one designated space for all keys, purses, cell phones. You’ll never again have to say, “I can’t find my keys” or have to be flustered or angry because you can’t put your fingers on them. As well, designate one place for children’s coats and backpacks. You will save time every day by setting this system in place.

6. Take inventory each evening of the things your children need for the next day. Have a checklist ready and go through their needs, including signing any permission slips, homework, and making lunch. Leave their belongings – backpacks, lunch boxes, coats – in their designated spot each evening.

7. Establish a routine and stick to it. Routine means you have a system in place for accomplishing, efficiently, the same tasks every day. Much of what you and your family need to do each morning is repetitive. Develop a routine around these things and they will become second nature and operate like clockwork. You will likely gain more time the more efficiently your routine runs. At the least, you won’t be wasting it.

8. Get enough sleep. Your mind should rest much easier now that you have built good evening habits and a nice morning routine. You don’t have to worry or think about getting dressed; getting the kids dressed, preparing breakfast, finding your keys or making sure the dog didn’t eat the homework.

Give these tips a try!  You’ll see that the morning is less stressful and the rest of the day – and week – will follow suit.

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Today is my anniversary!  I can’t believe it has been 10 years since I started Verri Organized!  When I began, I intended to provide people with hands-on help in organizing every part of their life that was causing them angst. And I’m happy to say I’ve done that.

I’ve helped many people address their physical and mental clutter and worked with them to makes the changes necessary to live a more stress-free life.  I love to work side-by-side with people (in confidence of course!) and help lessen their load and kick clutter to the curb.  {After all, it’s that pesky clutter that clouds our mind and confuses us constantly}. And I am proud to say my clients learn and grow and do realize that life is lived lighter when you are verri organized!

10 years later, I am still working with people in their homes and businesses get things in order physically so they can mentally feel better about what they do and how they do it. I still love what I do! And I want to do more!

Do you feel overwhelmed?  Have you heard yourself saying “life is so hectic”? Feel like you are going a little nuts?

Well, let’s celebrate!  Before you go and think I am an insensitive person to suggest celebrating your trip to the loony bin, let me explain.  I want to help you and as a way to celebrate my 10 year anniversary, for the month of February 2012 I am offering all new clients 10% off a Comprehensive Evaluation!

It’s your time now to get organized and live your life lite.  Let’s celebrate Verri Organized’s 10-year anniversary and your new vision for a more organized life. Connect with me today. Let’s get you organized!

And feel free to share the love and pass this along to anyone you know who has uttered, even once, that they feel frustrated, annoyed, or overwhelmed with life.  They, too, deserve to celebrate!

Just like boxes of photos from year’s past don’t do much more than collect dust and take up needed space in your home, your child’s keepsakes {while valuable} are often plentiful and carry with them an air of chaos.  They need a better solution.

Digitize them!

Yes, dinosaur drawings and life-size portraits can be set in stone in the way of a digital photo that you can then upload to Shutterfly and create a “Keepsake Album.

Reduce the amount of paper and projects you are keeping for each of your children.  Take a digital photo of each keepsake; save it on your computer by-child, by-year, and make a digital photo book.  The keepsake will be preserved a lot longer on the pages of these books than in the bottom of a bin you keep stored in your basement.

What other ideas do you have for keeping your child’s artwork and memories safe?

Would you love to get these kinds of tips sent directly to your email inbox? It’s easy!  Just go to the Verri Organized Blog, fill in your email address in the little box on the right {the one that says “sign up for the blog”}, check your email to “activate” your subscription, and voila’ – you’ll never miss the opportunity to receive great news and information on being organized and well again.  How great is that?!

I am new to the blogging thing.  And I am learning something new every day. And by learning I don’t just mean about blogging, I mean about myself from what other incredibly talented bloggers have to say and how they say it.  As I learn, I want to share.  I can’t help it. I’m a sharer. I want to share the things that really move me and speak to me because they could very well do the same for you.

And how wonderful would that be?

There are a million fantastic blogs to read and I will have to organize my time well in order to fully enjoy, weekly, those that really inspire and motivate me.  And I will because what inspires and motivates is an important part of being well.

Finding those few (or more than a few) perfect blogs that really blow your skirt up isn’t always easy. {There really are millions of blogs out there!}

Let me help you.

While there are many, many smart, talented people out there blogging and creating and sharing it for the world to see, I want to point you in the direction of two that I’ve already found that really make me smile. And as I learn of more, I’ll be sure to share – promise.

These blogs have motivated me to do more with this blogging thing.  Yes, verri organized is about organizing – time, mind and space.  It is also about wellness and intentional living.  It’s about motivating and inspiring you to do your best, be your best and live your life – lite – so you are happy, fulfilled and proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished.  So from time to time, I’ll share with you the things that stir my heart or move me to action.

And whether it’s my words or the words of any number of amazing bloggers, the goal is the same: to propel you to be more.

So, let the sharing begin!  Here are two blogs that have sparked a thought, given me pause, made me feel good in some way. Take a look at them. Poke around, perhaps stay a while and be inspired by what they have to offer.

And then share that inspiration — the love — with family, friends, and strangers! It’s what it’s all about.

Happily sharing This Little Light, and Chatting at the Sky with you!

{I have a lot to share! If you haven’t done so already, sign up to the blog so you don’t miss one morsel of information on living life lite – and organized!}

The memories the pictures hold are heartwarming; the boxes and bags and bins that now store them are cause for heartburn.

How do you get out from under those piles of photos? You need to set aside time to sort and discard.  Yes, I said discard.  Even a lover of photography like me believes that you don’t need to keep every picture from every vacation.  You don’t need to keep duplicates from every birthday. And you surely don’t need to keep pictures that don’t make you feel good, or don’t put a big smile on your face.  So the first thing you need to do is to gather up all your random and not-so random groups of photos and set aside time to sort through and keep those that stir you heart and tell a story.  

After all, the goal of having pictures is to be able to look back, reminisce, and document and share your legacy with others.

Keep just enough to capture the moment, the trip, or the feeling.  Then the real fun begins.  Your creative juices can really get to work. There are so many ways to preserve and present your photos.  You can go the old-school, traditional route and buy some acid-free photo albums. {I like the kinds where you can write some notes so you can remember when you are 80 how old you were when you first saw the Sistene Chapel.} The downfall I find with these is that they tend to be bigger and bulkier and take up more storage space.

The best solution?  Digitize them baby!  My friend Carly at Digitwirl has some great ideas and suggestions for scanners that can help you digitize and store all your old photos.  Take a look here at her latest weekly tech web show — all about digitizing photos.

Of course getting them scanned and on your computer is only half the battle.  You still don’t honor your photos completely by storing them under “P” on your desktop.  In this digital age, I am going to venture a guess that we have far more digital photos than we ever had from film. And they, too, collect like clutter – just this time it’s not on the top shelf of the closet – it’s on your computer!

I have ended that madness! I have switched completely to digital photo books from Shutterfly.  I was hesitant at first but the photo books look so wonderful and are good for many reasons:

They take up no space at all — important reason, especially since space is something we tend to never have enough of.

They force me to do a sort and purge.  I only upload those photos that capture the memories of my vacation or event.  I delete the duplicates (with digital, duplicates tend to be plentiful), the blurry ones, and the ones that don’t showcase my — ah-hum — best look.  Jjust this step alone prevents clutter from building up wherever you electronically store your photos.

And Shutterfly lets me write a story for each picture if I really want to.  The cost is more than reasonable because the money I spend (about $35 average for an 8×8 book) is repaid to me over and over again in the beauty of the product I receive.

Create memories to last a lifetime – memories that showcase what you’ve done, who you are.  You’ll spend less time stressing over the clutter and more time sharing your legacy with others.

Got an interesting way you organize your photos? I’d love to hear it!  Don’t be shy, share your thoughts below!

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