Organizing your computer
Today I am welcoming my friend Marcia to the blog. Marcia and I share a passion for organizing and became friends not too long after I started my blog. Marcia is a time management and organizing coach in South Africa (which explains why her spelling is a little different than ours :)) and she really is an inspiration to me. I’m so happy she has come by today to talk about the various ways we can declutter our computers. Since our computers are such a big part of our home offices this is an area we definitely do not want to neglect.
Welcome Marcia!
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Declutter your computer
Today I want to talk about an area of the office that may just be one of my favourite things to organise – your computer!
Because we can’t SEE computer clutter as obviously as we can see physical clutter, we often don’t realise it’s there but believe me, it’s still affecting you.
When you open your Inbox, you feel drained at the sight of all those emails, your computer runs slow because there’s so many photos on there (well, hello, they’ve been there for the last 3 years!) and when you click into your Google Reader, you can’t BELIEVE how much some people post because you went through your blogs for 3 hours yesterday and now there are 127 unread items yet again!
Sound familiar?
Let’s look at 4 places where you can declutter electronically:
Blogs
How many blogs are you following in your Google Reader, Bloglines or other feed reader? Do you know how long you take to read all of those blogs every day?
Take some time to go through and declutter those you tend to skim over. Get to know your comfort number. Mine is around 42 – 45 and I know when I start adding more and more blogs without deleting any, I start feeling more and more overwhelmed at the sight of all those unread items!
Free downloads
We women like free things, don’t we? As a result, we download anything and everything we can find that’s for free. If it’s free, it’s got to be good, right? Right?
No, actually, it’s not all good. Not only are you cluttering up your computer but you can’t possibly use all the things that are out there because we’re living in an information overload society.
At one point I had about 6 different grocery shopping lists on my computer (all free downloads). None of them quite worked for me so I made my own :)
Mmmm, email. My clients need help with email more than any other thing in their office, and paper’s a close second. That’s because email’s so fast and because we don’t use it correctly.
Get familiar with the delete key (my favourite key on the keyboard) and start deleting. Delete immediately once you’ve replied to an email and don’t file unless you absolutely have to.
Disable all the notifications from social networking sites like Facebook. I only get friend requests, messages and notes on my wall in my inbox. The rest I’ll see when I log on.
Here again, decide on your comfort level for emails and make sure you process until you can breathe again.
I set a daily goal of deleting at least 50 items so once I’m done with my inbox, I go through my Sent Items and delete, delete, delete ;)
As a matter of interest, how many emails are in your inbox right now? Please comment :)
Photos
Now that we’ve all gone digital, it’s so easy to snap, snap, snap and then snap some more. Download pictures regularly, delete the bad ones there and then, and save to CD or DVD regularly.
I only print gorgeous shots (because printing is so expensive) so if I wouldn’t want to print it, I don’t keep it on my computer. If I want to use pics on the blog, I compress them immediately so that they take up 50KB as opposed to 1MB.
My coaching challenge to you
Print out this post.
Tackle one of these sections every week until they’re all done.
Let me know when you do them.
Happy organising!
Marcia Francois is a time management and organising coach who works with small business owners and other busy professionals who want to make the most of their time. Marcia shares practical organising and decluttering tips on her Organising Queen blog and anything else that takes her fancy like photos, recipes, etc. on Marcia’s take charge blog.
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Sponsored by The Organize It Mom!
Organizing your office the inexpensive way
Today I’m very excited to welcome Professional Organizer Debbie Jordan Kravitz from Virtually Organized to the blog. Debbie is going to talk to us a little bit today about one of my favorite topics, organizing using items you already have around the house. I get such a huge thrill when I’m able to use something that was intended for one purpose and turn it into a creative organizing tool instead. Talk about a high! Since this is office month around here Debbie is going to share some of the re-purposed items she uses to help her organize her own office.
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The Re-Purposed Office
Whether you work from home, work outside of the home, or work at running your home, every household has some sort of an office space. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have an entire room dedicated to your office. Or maybe you get by with a sliver of kitchen counter and a junk drawer. Whatever the case, chances are, your space could use some good re-organization. Before you run to your local office supply store to load up on products and supplies, do some shopping around your own home to see what items you can re-purpose. You’ll save yourself some cash, you’ll be helping out the planet by going “green,” your office will meld more with the look and feel of the rest of your home and you’ll create a much more inviting and productive space to work. Here are some examples of things I’ve done in my own home, as well as with some of my organizing clients.
Need a space for files? I turned an old, unused Hope Chest into a lateral filing cabinet/bench. Now it’s an eclectic piece in my office that is functional, discreet, beautiful, and sentimental:
Drawer dividers are rarely the perfect fit for every situation. Plus they can be expensive and sterile looking. Instead, try empty stationary boxes and box tops as drawer organizers:
Need a desk space? I painted the surface of this old, inexpensive kitchen table and turned it into a desk for two. My youngest daughter will often sit across from me and do homework as I finish up my own work.
The top of your desk needs to be functional, too. A floral frog can hold pens on a desktop:
An antique sugar mold can contain supplies:
A small pot or urn can really give your desk a feeling of sophistication and importance:
As you work on your desk project for this month’s round-up, try going “shopping” around your house for otherwise overlooked and under-used items you can put to work in your home office space. Let me know what you come up with . . . I’d love to discover more ideas and options!
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For those of you who might be needing a little extra push to get your office organized, be sure to check out Debbie’s Procrastination Challenge. Thanks Debbie for being here with us today!
My new big girl office, sort of
I didn’t get to posting today because it was my hubby’s birthday and I knew exactly what would make him happy AND it’s not what your thinking! Nope I knew he’d be happy with a clean house and let’s just say our standards are very very different. I’m definitely a little more on the lax side of things to say the least. So house clean I did and for one whole day our house is a shining, tomorrow you won’t even be able to tell the difference (I’m potty training a two year old after all) which makes me wonder why I even bothered in the first place. Oh right, happy hubby, how can I forget that!
My reward after all my hard work though was well worth the wait. I got to spend time organizing my new big girl office, except it’s not really an office, it’s more like an office area but it’s all mine nonetheless (I’ve always wanted to use the word nonetheless in a sentence, gee could it be my new big girl office is making me smarter already?).
About a year ago, when I apparently started taking up too much time on the family computer with my blogging “hobby”, my hubby purchased me a laptop. I love having a laptop and I was pretty impressed with the little laptop tray that I bought to go along with it. Nowadays though, with my blogging “hobby” turned blogging business, I spend far too much a lot more time on the computer and the ergonomics of my hand-me-down recliner and laptop tray started to take their tole on me.
So yesterday I finally purchased a big girl desk which technically, as per the friendly Staples salesgirl that sold it to me, is considered a “student” desk but hey I’m making progress nonetheless (look there’s that word again!). I even got myself a new chair to go with it, all for $120.00 ($60.00 each)! Here check it out.
Before:
After:
Now don’t go expecting this new desk to produce any type of superior results around here on this ole blog (I used a big word twice in this one post, what more do you want?) because really once a freak always a freak, ain’t no matter what kind of chair you sit in :)
Now I’m curious where do you blog?
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