Your Organizing Coach

The Organized Cook

2012-02-24T02:28:30Z

This week’s guest blogger is Jacki Rosen, professional chef. I interviewed her about how busy people can cook healthy food quickly and how they can organize their fridges and cooking schedules to make that happen. Jacki says, I love teaching people how to cook healthy. So many people think health food can’t taste good.

You can make a delicious healthy meal in 30 minutes if your kitchen is set up properly.

Spend a little time on the weekend preparing. Roast a chicken and a pan of vegetables. You can top pasta with one or both and also make sandwiches and salads from them all week. Cook a package of bacon and use it to add a burst of flavor to salads. Wash all your lettuce and store it carefully in a paper towel-lined bag in the fridge to keep it fresh.

Pasta is wonderful because you can put a lot of stuff in it. You’ll want to have grated cheese, some kind of sausage and butter on hand. No margarine! says Jacki. Butter and olive oil have nutrients in them, and you just need a small amount to add big flavor.

If you eat pasta more than once a week, cook the whole box, rinse it till its cold, then coat it thinly with olive oil so it doesn’t stick together. Then you can divide it into portions and store them in plastic bags. For dinner, heat up your toppings, dump in the pasta, sprinkle on the cheese and you’re set.

Speedy soup: Chop up an onion, a carrot and a celery stalk and saute them in olive oil till soft. Add a carton of stock. Cut up some of your roasted chicken and toss it in along with precooked pasta and a handful of herbs. Voila: hearty soup in 20 minutes.

Eggs are another easy go-to food to have on hand. An omelette with sausage or veggies or a little cheese is a simple, fast dinner. Bacon is a great fridge staple. Not only is it great with eggs, but it can be crumbled onto salads and pasta dishes. Nuts are equally versatile, adding tasty protein to salads, pasta and veggie dishes. Toast them quickly in a frying pan until they smell nutty.

A baked potato is a nice easy dinner; just add butter and some crumbled bacon and serve with a green salad topped with toasted nuts.

For breakfast, cook several days worth of oatmeal at a time. Spend 20 minutes making a simple compote with apples or other fruit. Now you’ve got fancy breakfast makings.

Fun time saving tip: peel your carrots and then keep using the peeler to add carrot shavings to your salad. No need to switch to a knife or a grater.

Jacki works with clients to develop a repertoire of recipes they can cycle through, based on the time they have to cook and their eating preferences. She suggests getting family members involved. Many hands make light work. Even if you don’t have help, start thinking of cooking well as taking care of your body and rewarding it for serving you well. It runs better and more effectively on quality fuel.

Seeing that good food helps remind you to eat it, so keep it visible! Most fruit can be stored in a bowl on the counter. Some, like strawberries, get moldy fast in the fridge. Zucchini and tomatoes also fare better outside the fridge.

The staples: onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, salad greens, nuts, eggs, fruit, bacon or sausage, broth, canned tomatoes, canned beans, pasta, butter, olive oil, herbs. Olives and roasted peppers keep almost indefinitely and add lots of flavor to pasta dishes.

Keep your refrigerator lean and clean it out regularly. Make a point of using what’s in there and if you don’t, don’t buy it anymore. This goes for cabinets too. Many homes have deep kitchen cabinets and five year old cans of soup get lost in the back.

Try the professional kitchen trick of putting your new purchases at the back of the cabinet so the oldest stock is always in front. Again, if you find you’re not using it, get rid of it instead of pushing it to the back. Unopened jars and canned goods are donate-able. To avoid that in the future, shop with a list.

I told Jacki, so the great news is that you don’t have to become Julia Child to eat well at home quickly. Jacki responded, you can bet that Julia Child did not make fancy French cuisine every night! She more likely said, there are mushrooms and onions and eggs. I can make an omelette! Hurray, I’m happy!

Final comments, Jacki? “I just want everyone to cook one thing. Cooking one thing is better than no things. If you cook for yourself, you feel better and if you feel better, you look better.”

Jacki Rosen has been cooking her entire life but started cooking officially in 1993 when she went to the CIA (that’s the Culinary Institute of America, not the other one). She’s cooked for fine dining restaurants, for catering companies and has taught cooking at college and through private companies. You can learn more on her website here: www.jackirosen.com and reach her at jacki@jackirosen.com.

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Tips for Taming Distractions at Work

2012-02-23T07:40:15Z

Originally posted 2007-10-02 20:10:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

I often hear from people that they come in to the office early in the morning or on weekends just to get some work done in peace. They don’t particularly like doing it, but they do like the quiet and the lack of interruptions from phone, email and coworkers.

Lifehacker yesterday ran a post about “guerilla tactics” people use to get some distraction-free time at work. This was a favorite:

“A couple colleagues of mine and I schedule fake meetings so we can sit
and get an hours work done. If it’s just the three of us, it’s quiet
and easy because we know why we’re there.”

Over at 43Folders, there were several good ideas for managing emails and meetings, such as “filter any email that contains the string “to unsubscribe.”
Although many of these certainly will be valuable (sign-ups, Google
lists), that string means there’s a good chance they’re also bulk messages
that are being generated automatically. And some folks want to only see
those sorts of emails, again, once or twice a day — and only when they
have extra time”

Email in this category is being referred to these days as bacn. It’s not as bad as spam but it significantly clogs inboxes.

Pay Your Bills

2012-02-16T22:10:31Z

Next week is National Pay Your Bills Week. Isn’t that exciting? Okay, so it’s not. It’s important though. Like filing, death, taxes and going to the dentist, bill paying is a must.

How could it be easier?

Use online banking. I believe this is a very safe way to pay, despite recent alarms. You have to do your part to make it safe, however.

Remember:

Don’t click on links from bank emails! Just don’t ever do it. Many intelligent people have been scammed this way. Go to your bank website, log in and check for messages.
Check that the website address starts with https instead of just http. The “s” means the site uses encryption. Windows users will see a closed padlock indicating encryption at the bottom right of their screens.
Create passwords using letters and numbers, not common words. Here’s a post I wrote about how to make good passwords. Keep them safe! I record mine using hints only as described in the post.
Change your passwords regularly, at least twice a year.

Even if you don’t want to bank online, you can save trees and reduce clutter by getting your bills electronically. And don’t print them out! I do recommend downloading the PDF version if you want to keep a record. Sometimes your bills are only on the website for a few years and you may have to pay a fee to recover old ones.

Schedule days every month to pay bills and put them in your datebook. I use email reminders in iCal to pay my bills twice a month. Choose dates that allow for online processing or mail delivery so your payments aren’t late.

What’s to be gained by doing this?

Freedom from worrying about what is due when, and paying bills multiple times per month.
No more late fees!
Spending less time on a task you don’t really like anyway

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Packing List for Holiday Travel

2012-02-16T06:48:14Z

Originally posted 2007-11-09 18:42:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Holiday travel season is coming up! If you’re going somewhere, use a packing list. It will ease your travel considerably.

I use checklists a lot, all kinds of them. They’re very helpful for making sure nothing falls through the cracks, and I get the satisfaction of checking off items as I do them. I put everything on my checklists because I find that the most common things I forget are the ones that seem most obvious (my toothbrush, for example). When my checklist is as complete as I can make it, I can stop worrying about forgetting things and focus on worrying about missing the plane (!)

There are many generic packing lists on the Internet, such as this one on a travel website. It includes tasks to take care of before leaving home; a great addition. I recommend cobbling together several lists and then editing them to suit your own travel style and to comply with current security regulations.

Again, it’s important to add in everything you can thing of and be specific. For example, the entry for arranging for pet care might also include: make sure this person has a key to get into your home! On the other hand, a checklist is great because it helps you avoid packing unnecessary items; you’ve already decided what you need to take. As this site points out, a packing list

"…defends against last-minute attacks of "I might need this." The worst possible time to be considering what to take on a trip is while you are packing for the trip!"

Hindsight, of course, is 20-20. You can refine your list by making notes while you’re on your trip. Was there something important you forgot? Did you bring some clothes you never wore? Did you have the right shoes? Would it be great next time to have a book light so you can read in bed (I’m always amazed at how poor hotel room lighting can be)? If you’re traveling domestically, what about bringing stamps with you so you can actually mail those postcards from your destination?

Happy trails!

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How to Weed Out Your Clothes Closet

2012-02-09T06:04:29Z

Originally posted 2008-06-06 09:38:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It can be hard to know where to start when you want to pare down your clothes. If you're going to spend some time and go through everything, take it all out and pile it on the bed. That way you have to make a commitment to keeping something by putting it back in the closet. When you flip through the garments on their hangers, it's too easy just to keep everything.

If you want to do a quicker purge, try my friend Ellen's technique, "Always, Sometimes, Never." Start at one end of the hanging rack and ask your self whether you wear each garment always, sometimes or never.

"Always" is for clothing you wear all the time. It also makes you look and feel good. (If you're wearing
something a lot that doesn't make you look and feel good, we have to talk…)
"Sometimes" is for garments you don't wear that often, but they have a specific function, such as a
velvet top you would wear to a fancy dinner or a pantsuit for special business meetings.
"Never" is for anything that you never wear because:

Even though you paid a lot for it, you don't like it
It doesn't fit
It doesn't make you look great
Even though it was a gift, you just don't like it
It doesn't make you feel great
It's damaged and not worth fixing
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but, honestly, you don't like it

Keep the Always and Sometimes items (the Sometimes items might be better off at the back of the closet where they're out of the way). Get rid of the Never items. If it's just that you don't like them, they may have resale value. If not, cut to the chase and donate them to the thrift store.

The quicker you get them out of your life, the better. Why? Because now you have room, physically and psychically, to get some new clothes that you love and make you look and feel fantastic!

Have you purged your closet recently? How did it go?

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Storage Units: Good or Evil?

2012-02-01T21:51:13Z

My general rule about storage units is this: avoid them at all costs! People rent them and forget ‘em and they often turn out to be filled with junk.

Let’s look at why you really might need a storage unit.

There’s a short list of reasons that are acceptable.

You are temporarily living in a place that’s too small for your possessions
Your temporary living situation will be so short that it doesn’t make sense to move all your stuff in
You’ve inherited a large quantity of stuff that will take time to sort through
Your home needs repairs due to flood or fire

Notice that all these reasons are valid only because the storage is temporary. There’s no good reason to keep things permanently in storage.

Just as you shouldn’t live beyond your means financially, you shouldn’t live beyond your space means either.

I read this quotation from a storage industry executive: “People turn basements into home theaters or turn garages into family rooms and they need space for storage.” I call that living beyond your space means.

Of course, it’s much more common to fill up the garage with stuff so there’s no room for the car and to fill up the basement too so there’s no room for a workshop or pool table. People also fill up their spare rooms so they aren’t so spare anymore.

Okay, on to bad reasons to have a storage unit:

You moved in a hurry and just boxed stuff up and ditched it there
You’ve moved a number of times and keep adding to the mystery box collection
You inherited stuff 20 years ago and never got around to deciding whether you even like it
The stuff that’s in there is not worth a fraction of what it costs to rent the unit
You’re storing things for your children to have when they grow up and your kids are babies now
Keeping stuff you’re going to sell on eBay someday
Saving clothes you’ll fit into someday
Hanging on to an exercise machine you’ll use someday

All these reasons involve unmade decisions or hanging onto stuff for future situations that may never come to pass.

They also involve spending money; a lot of it if you keep paying rent year after year.

The year is still young! Make 2012 the year you make those decisions and start living in the present.

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Circa Notebook, you gorgeous thing!

2012-02-02T05:20:04Z

Originally posted 2008-08-22 09:51:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Now that I've got a bee in my bonnet about returning to a paper-based organizing system, I'm finding wonderful paper goods all over the place. Most of them I've never even heard of before (I did already know about the Moleskine cult, though). One stylish and eye-catching number is the Circa notebook from Levenger.

The appeal to this system is that it's customizable, rearrangeable on the fly, very flexible and pretty nice eye candy too. I've ouched my fingers in three ring binders too often to put up with them anymore, and I never get good results trying to jam a torn-out sheet of spiral binder paper back into the binder.

The way the paper stays in is very clever and cool looking and tricky to describe. It was hard to see on the company website, but a post on Lifehacker has lots of close up pictures that really show how it works. Their high paper quality, among other things, makes them quite popular elsewhere on the Internet and many users have multiple books for different tasks.

I love the ease of reordering sheets in this binder. And adding complete new sections wherever you want! I wish I could see one in person but they seem to be available only through Levenger, which has no brick and mortar stores in my area. Still, paper is beckoning me…

Well loved notebook from waffler's photostream.

Idea > Decision > Action

2012-01-25T22:10:07Z

For many people, it’s easier and more fun to think up new ideas than to take action on the ones they already thought of. Buckling down and focusing on one idea and making it happen can make them antsy.

Sometimes the project you take on is very large and there are so many things to address that you’re tempted to start them all at once. When it comes to organizing, this can get you into trouble.

The process is this: have an idea, make a decision, take the action.

For example, the idea could be “organize the bottom shelf,” the decision is “only have notebooks, pads and file folders there,” and the action is getting those items into the spot and finding other homes for anything that doesn’t fit those categories.

Here’s what happens when you leave off the action part.

My client, Annie,* is a big picture kind of gal. She’s very good with coming up with ideas and making decisions. The action part, not so much. She’d rather move on to the top shelf, or the counter above the shelves, or the table on the other side of the room.

She had numerous shopping bags with things sorted into them. Some of them were marked, some not. There were also piles and collections of items on which decisions had been made. This is definitely progress, but it’s not enough.

We needed to spend some time moving the physical stuff around.

For Annie, this was the tedious, low priority part. But not doing it was impeding our progress. It was like having puzzle pieces all over the floor and knowing exactly where each one went, but not assembling them into a completed picture.

Is this a sticking point for you? Look around and see if you’ve collected some piles of decisions that need a nudge to get to the next step. If taking the action seems dreary and monotonous, approach it like washing the dishes. It’s a chore that needs doing and you don’t really need to like it.

The good news is that you’ll stir up some good energy by moving things along. You’ll also see some inspiring progress when you see the results of all that decision making!

* Not her real name. In fact, whenever I write about my clients, I’m usually combining events and compositing people.

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Mail-Free Tuesdays?

2012-01-26T04:59:47Z

Originally posted 2009-01-29 12:16:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

We all get too much mail. We all complain about too much mail. And soon, there may be a day every week where no mail comes at all.

The US Postal Service is considering dropping mail delivery either on Tuesday or Saturday, historically the lightest volume days. USPS officials say, "The Postal Service may be running out of cash by year’s end."

USA Today wrote: ""We hope these changes go unnoticed by the customer," spokesman Gerald McKiernan said at the time." Perhaps they will. Between email and other delivery services such as UPS, we may only be missing our daily allotment of junk mail. What do you think? Will you even notice?

Old Post Office photo courtesty of yeowatzup's photostream.

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A Million Ways to Organize Your Stuff

2012-01-19T04:27:10Z

Originally posted 2011-03-02 11:08:40. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Everybody loves top ten lists. Or any kind of numbered list. Five Ways to Pamper Your Siamese Cat. Top 50 Favorite Bagel Toppings. 100 Best Tips for Losing Weight by Eating Pineapples.

Ideas galore!

Throw them out. You don’t need them. I’m not saying they aren’t good ideas. I’m just saying you don’t need them. And I’m saying that you already know this. What you need is to do something with the good ideas you already have.

I’m guilty of this myself. I look for inspiration, for motivation, for something new, dammit. What I notice, though, is that I look more obsessively for a new idea when I’m stuck on an old one.

I was on a conference call this morning and got two good ideas. I am committed to working on one of them today. I know that if I don’t, its luster will fade a bit. It won’t seem as exciting or promising. My infatuation for it will be over and I may callously discard it.

The second idea I will keep safe and at hand, because I can only work on one at a time. I’m already mentally preparing myself for not loving it quite so much when I’m ready to act on it. I’m making notes about why I think it’s a good idea, in case I look at it later and scratch my head.

Maybe it’s not the best idea in the world. But I have it now. I spent time finding it. I don’t want to waste that time by not using it. If I decide not to use it, I want to be sure it’s not because I feel intimidated or worried or discouraged about whether I can use it effectively.

It’s that, not just the distraction of the new, that gets me out searching again.

What if it doesn’t work?

What if I waste a lot of time?

What if people don’t like it?

What if I’m horribly embarrassed by it?

It’s not easy to get through that swamp of worries, but I need to.

If I don’t, I’m caught in an endless quest for the perfect idea. And I never find out what would happen if I actually did something.

Does this happen to you? How do you handle it?

Birdies by novemberwolf

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