Category Archives: Time Management

Tech Tools that Prevent Information Overload

Organizing Information Cover

If you’re an “information junkie”, you have likely struggled with how to manage the constant flow of information that comes across your radar every day. Before I ironed out my systems for gathering and retrieving information, I often felt like my head was about to explode as I attempted to capture information with primitive tools like paper notebooks, and browser bookmarks.

Today, I’ll introduce you to some sanity-saving technology tools that I discovered that have increased my productivity exponentially.

Feedly

I’m a heavy consumer of blog content, and used to struggle with keeping up with all of my favorite blogs. Oftentimes, I’d stumble across a great blog, bookmark it, and then forget all about it. Jumping from website to website in an effort to keep up with my favorite bloggers would often result in lots of time wasted with all of the opportunities for distractibility. To remedy this, I started signing up to receive blog posts via email, but over time, these posts start to clutter up my Inbox.

That’s when I discovered Feedly.

Feedly

Feedly is an RSS aggregator…a single place where you can read all of your blog posts, as well as online newspapers and magazines in a customized “feed” that you design. Consuming information in this streamlined, distraction-free format saves me tons of time, and ensures that I never miss a post from any of my favorite blogs.

The Feedly app enables you to access your media feed when you’re on the go via your mobile devices. So convenient when you have 15 minutes to kill while waiting in the school pick up line!

Pocket

How often do you find yourself stumbling upon a great article while surfing the web, but you just don’t have time to read it that moment? How can you tuck it away to read later?

1. Print it out (and create paper clutter)

2. Email it to yourself (and create inbox clutter)

3. Save it to your bookmarks (and never see it again)

4. Use a super cool tech solution that consolidates all of this type of information into one convenient place for you to view later when it’s more convenient

Pocket

I choose #4 and use Pocket as my solution for this common information organizing need.

For my business, I use Pocket for gathering cool content that I eventually plan to share across my business social media platforms. Essentially, I create a “menu” of great articles, tips I’ve come across on other’s social media sites, images, videos, etc. that I can pull from to create Facebook posts and tweets that will be of interest to my audience each week. For a great summary of all the ways you can utilize Pocket, read here.

Like the other tools, Pocket has an app for both iOS and Android devices that enables you to save content from any mobile device. Like Evernote, Pocket offers a bookmarklet that you can install in your browser that allows you to save any piece of web content to Pocket with a single click. In addition, it’s integrated with over 1,500 apps like Twitter and Feedly.

Pocket is a really useful tool for people who are prone to distractibility and often find themselves “going down a rabbit hole” while surfing the internet. Instead of getting sucked into reading interesting articles that are irrelevant to the task you are currently attempting to complete online, get in the habit of simply clicking the “Save to Pocket” bookmarklet. You can easily view these articles later on at a time that you’ve officially earmarked for leisure reading.

Evernote

Evernote‘s tagline is “Remember Everything.” Enough said.

Evernote

It’s difficult for me to imagine my “Pre-Evernote” life. I like to describe Evernote as my “virtual bulletin board” and/or my “resource library”. It’s the place where my recipe collection lives. It’s the place that I corral all of my travel information for upcoming trips. It’s the home for all of those random hobby-related articles I’ve torn out of magazines and since scanned into a digital file. It’s the repository for all of my business-related project materials.

My absolute favorite Evernote feature is the Web Clipper, which I use to curate and save web content for future reference. In my Pre-Evernote life, I used my browser bookmark function for this purpose. Despite having a well-organized bookmark folder structure, I found myself losing so much time hunting for a particular website. Evernote’s remarkable tag and search capabilities make information retrieval effortless and lightning fast.

In addition to web content, Evernote can be used to capture and store information in a variety of other forms including: photos, videos, text, documents (PDF, Word), even voice messages… all in one place. The Evernote app enables you to have access to all of your content from all your devices. Hands down, the magic of Evernote is that it utilizes OCR (optical character recognition) technology to make the content of your notes searchable…even a photo you took of a handwritten post-it note!

Have additional tools that you use to organize information? I’d love to hear about them. Please share in the comments section.

  Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms?  Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn

Share Your “One Thing” for 2015!

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2015 1 Thing Cover

It’s so easy to get swept up in the excitement of the new year, don’t you agree?

I have a history of being overzealous when it comes to my list of New Year’s resolutions. My tendency is to attempt to achieve too many goals simultaneously, which often results in a failure to achieve any of them.  Can you relate?

I smartened up over the last couple of years and started to heed the advice that I often give my clients…focus on just one thing at a time. 

In 2014, my one organizing goal was to improve the functionality of several closets in our home (the guest room and my daughter’s bedroom). So what is my One Thing for 2015?  Actually, it has nothing to do with tackling a space within my home.

Planning The Menu

For years, our family has struggled with the “It’s 4:00…What’s for Dinner?” Syndrome, which leads to a lot of unnecessary stress, unhealthy eating habits, and overspending. So my One Thing for 2015 is to consistently plan out and shop for our weekly meals ahead of time.

How can I increase the probability of meeting my goal/resolution?

Focus on the benefits I will experience as a consequence of achieving the goal

~  Less stress…since I will have a plan in place

~  More money…since we won’t have to eat take-out food by necessity any longer

~ Improved health…since planning meals enables me to make healthier choices for our family

Create a list of concrete action steps

  1. Create a “Master List” of meals that all (or most) of my family members will eat
  2. Identify a printable menu planning/grocery list to use as a tool for mapping out my weekly plan
  3. Incorporate a meal planning component into our weekly family meeting that occurs on Sunday evenings, so that I can get family member input
  4. Explore meal planning programs and apps, such as Emeals.com to determine if they might be useful (my kids are extremely picky eaters, so I’m pessimistic about the usefulness of such resources for my family)
  5. To the extent possible, batch process weekly food preparation (e.g., dice veggies, measure out portions) in a single hour-long session each Sunday

Enlist the help of an accountability partner

Communicating your desire to achieve a goal to other people and asking them to support you and hold you accountable throughout the process is one of the most powerful methods for helping you stick to your commitment.

Now that I’ve put my 2015 goal out there for all of you to see, I’ve got no choice but to achieve my goal!  I invite you to hold me accountable via blog comments, emails, and Facebook check ins. My plan is to write a follow-up post at the end of February to share my progress.

Now, it’s your turn.

I invite you to share your One Thing for this year below in the comments section. Perhaps it’s a chaotic space you’d like to tackle, a system you plan to implement in order to increase household efficiency, or a clutter-producing habit that you’d like to nip in the bud. I’d love to serve as your accountability partner in order to help you achieve success in 2015!

 Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms?  Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn

Do These 8 Things NOW to Reduce Holiday Stress LATER

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Reduce Holiday Stress2
When it comes to reducing the sense of overwhelm that generally accompanies the holiday season, the name of the game is “Do Things Early”. Today I’ll offer up a list of items that may be on your super-sized Holiday To Do List that you can focus on knocking out in the next week or two, in order to carve out more time for the festive aspects of the season come December.

1. Do the Deep Clean

Now is the time to clean your carpets and refrigerator, dust the blinds and ceiling fans, and disassemble your family room furniture to vacuum under the cushions! If you tackle the deep cleaning now, you’ll be ready to entertain guests after just a surface cleaning of the common areas come December.

2.  Declutter

November is the perfect time to declutter your closets as well as the kids’ playroom, in order to make room for the influx of new items that will be arriving in late December.

Decluttering also comes into play as you begin the holiday decorating process. Take time to review your holiday decor; remove any items that you haven’t used in the past few years from your collection. You can either donate the items, or consider hosting a “holiday decor swap” with your friends.

During your declutter frenzy, don’t neglect the kitchen! Declutter the refrigerator, freezer and pantry by tossing unused leftovers and expired items.  You’ll need to make room for all of the yummy holiday party food!

3.  Take inventory of your food

As we all know, food plays a significant role in our holiday celebrations, so expect to devote a bit more time and energy during this season for organizing and maintaining the areas that serve as home to your food items.

Once you’ve cleaned and decluttered the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry, take inventory of what food items you now have on hand. Knowing what you already have comes in handy when you begin preparing your holiday grocery shopping list. I actually recommend using laminated printable inventory sheets on a regular basis to assist with weekly meal planning (click on the image to purchase a set for yourself!).

Pantry Freezer Refrigerator Inventory Sheets

Source

4.  Prepare and freeze meals 

 During the holiday season, you may find yourself hosting an impromptu get-together with friends/family. It pays to cook and freeze a few one-pot meals now so that you’ll have an easy home-cooked meal on hand for these occasions.

5.  Organize your coupons

Go through your coupon collection and weed out the expired ones. Create a system for tracking expiration dates for those “great deal” coupons that you definitely plan to take advantage of as you begin your holiday shopping in the weeks to come.

6.  Take inventory of your gift wrap supplies

Now’s the time to ensure that you have a sufficient supply of gift wrap, gift bags, ribbon, and scotch tape on hand. If you don’t have a gift wrap station, go ahead and create one (see my previous post for ideas).

WrappyDeluxe-2T

Source

7.  Prepare holiday cards

If you choose to send out a holiday card, begin completing all of the sub-tasks associated with getting the cards in the mail…purchasing stamps, updating your card recipient address list, taking the family photo, etc. Even if you prefer not to send the cards out for another month, you can purchase/create cards, stuff and address the envelopes and have them ready for send-off now!

8.  Declutter your camera memory cards

Remove the memory cards from your cameras and video recorders, download the contents onto your computer and delete the images/videos from the memory cards in order to make room for all of the amazing images/video footage you plan to capture during the 2014 holiday season!

What other holiday tasks do you tend to complete in early November in order to get them off of your holiday To Do list?  Please use the Comments area below to share your tips with other readers!

Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms?  Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn

Hot Organizing Tools Featured at the NAPO Organizing Expo: Part 2

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napo 2014 part 2

In my previous blog post, I presented some great tools for organizing clothing, gift wrap supplies, and vital documents that I came across while attending the 2014 annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers. Picking up where I left off in the in the NAPO Conference debriefing process, today’s post will highlight some of the impressive tools I came across at conference for organizing and reducing paper, as well as managing time.

4.  Organize Your Paper with Smead Flexi Folder

Anyone whose worked with file folders has experienced the aggravation of having to replace their folders because of a) wear and tear,  b) the need to re-label the tab, or c) the tab placement no longer conforms with the current file organizing scheme. The folks at Smead have come up with an innovative new file folder that eradicates all of these file folder frustrations. Here at the Smead booth, Jim Riesterer demonstrates some of the great features of the Flexi Folder, including the heavy duty card stock and the ERASABLE file tab that can be positioned anywhere along the top of the folder!

Smead NAPO 2014

I’m not the only organizer who was jazzed about this office product…the Smead Flexi Folder was voted the Best Solution for Organizing at Work as part of the 2014 Organizers’ Choice Awards. Take a look at this video below to see the erasable/repositionable tabs in action:

 5.  Reduce Paper and Organize Digital Files with NeatConnect

For those of you who have a keen interest in moving toward a “paperless” household, you will definitely want to investigate the NeatConnect, the latest addition to the Neat Company’s arsenal of scanning/digital organizing products. Unlike its predecessors (the NeatReceipts and NeatDesk scanners), the NeatConnect is a cloud-based scanner and digital filing system that requires no connection to a computer.

Neat NAPO 2014

The functionality of NeatConnect impressed the heck out of me when I viewed the demonstration at Conference. Like it’s predecessor, the NeatDesk, NeatConnect can scan a mix of receipts, business cards, and regular-sized documents (at a speed of 24 pages per minute). The really cool part happens after your papers are digitized. NeatConnect sends your digital documents to the cloud, at which point, you can access them anywhere. The icing on the cake has to be the seamless integration with 3rd party applications such as Quickbooks and Evernote.

Watch the company’s demo video to see NeatConnect in action.

6.  Manage Your Time with The Time Timer

I was first introduced to the Time Timer by my son’s preschool teacher, who used it in her classroom to facilitate transitions. Who knew that several years later, I would be recommending this tool to my clients and actually using it during my organizing sessions! This tool is simple, yet genius. The Time Timer provides a visual representation of the passage of time via the use of a red disk that disappears as time elapses.

TimeTimer

While I was familiar with the original Time Timer tool, I was excited to learn at Conference about all of the other Time Timer products, which include watches, desktop and mobile apps, and several useful accessories that can be used to customize the Time Timer for classroom schedules and home routines. I routinely recommend the Time Timer as a valuable tool for clients who have difficulty with procrastination and staying focused (particularly during decluttering sessions). This tool is especially useful for families with young children…you’ll never have to answer the question, “How much longer?”

A favorite among professional organizers, the Time Timer won Best Solution for Personal Productivity as part of the Organizer’s Choice Awards at this year’s NAPO Conference. Click here to see the Time Timer in action.

That concludes my review of cool organizing tools from the NAPO 2014 Organizing Expo! I hope that at least one of these products peaked your interest.  If you decide to try out any of the organizing solutions highlighted in this blog series, please return and tell us about your experience with it.

Want to learn more about Natalie Gallagher or Refined Rooms?  Visit www.RefinedRoomsLLC.com or connect via: Facebook | Pinterest | Twitter | LinkedIn