
Check out the News and Observer article Tricks and treats for your decor, where I offer advice on how to organize a pantry.
Ruminations on organizing and the organizing profession.
What systems/tricks do you use to save money on your shopping?Tina:
Kerry:I don't tell other local people how I get my coupons for free at the library because I don't want competition. Some of the local branches never put their "slickies", or what I call Sunday innards out at all because there have been fights (supposedly). The librarians divide that stuff up between themselves and the public never sees it in most branches. Thankfully mine see me several times a week and know that first thing when the doors open on Monday morning, I'm there for that stuff.Walgreens is the best for free stuff. Every month they have an Easy Saver catalog in the store full of coupons and sales and free rebates and partial rebates. And the cool thing is, they'll accept two coupons per item, as long as it's one manufacturer's coupon and one store coupon. They also usually have a shelf or an aisle or a bin of stuff that has been discontinued. Like a few months back when Pantene changed their bottle type, everything on the shelves went into a shopping cart on clearance for $1-$1.50. If I had coupons on top of that price, it made them free or close. That wasn't just true at Walgreens, it was most of the local grocery and drug stores. Last month at Walgreens, they were offering some new kind of Pantene for free, one per household, by rebate. I had a $2 off coupon for that bottle so they paid me $2 to take it home, after the rebate. But it gets better. I also had a buy one get one free coupon, so I took two bottles home and they paid me $2 for it, after the rebate. The cool thing about their rebates, too, is that you don't have to cut any UPCs or send stuff to the manufacturer. It's one envelope per month, one stamp, one form, and your receipts. And one thing that's even better on this is that if you opt for a Walgreens card instead of a cash rebate, they'll add 10% to the card's balance when they send it to you, because it ensure you'll shop there with the money you get back. And that's fine with me because there will be toothpaste and toothbrushes and shampoo and stuff I'll want from there for free (after rebate) next month too. I have an entire drawer and two bins under my sinks full of deodorant and floss and toothpaste and toothbrushes and shampoo and conditioners... that I've gotten for free or almost free, and so I'm actually turning down chances to get free stuff sometimes because I don't have any more space to store it.
How do you organize your coupons? I'm interested to know more about your system. Did you see the binder system Faye has on her site? She had hers at the meeting and it was the kind where the binder rings are 3" in diameter, and when shut was about 5" thick. She practically needed a pack mule to carry it. Some of the organizers almost fainted.Tina:
I am surprised and not surprised. This is an example of how people can be hyper-crazy-organized in some areas of their lives while being less organized in other areas. My sister still claims to have organizing issues that she battles but my impression is that she's got a good grip on all of them and won't cut herself some slack for hanging on to some old magazines and some other stuff. I don't know because I haven't been to her house in a long time. But I'm really impressed when I hear about her shopping systems in detail.I have a three ring binder with dividers in it. On the front cover is a zipper and that's where I stick all of the sales flyers when they come in the mail or that I take out of the Sunday paper. Each of the dividers inside has a pocket on each side of it, and I sort my coupons by what they are. There's one for food in general, one for dairy and meat products, one for pet stuff, one for health and beauty, one for misc (this is batteries and cleaners and "stuff" in general).
There are a few pockets that I use to keep store coupons too. I have old bookmarks with paperclips on them - one for each store. So when their system prints you out those coupons based on what you buy that day, which can only be used in THAT kind of grocery store, I clip them to that store's bookmark. Also, when I'm putting together my list for the week, what I'm getting where, I pull the appropriate coupons and clip them to the bookmark of the store I'm going to.I go through the system once a month and pull expired coupons. Some expire during the month, but I'm not sorting the whole thing every week to catch just a few.And when I clip them, I don't cut out the ones for Poligrip or Depends or Pampers, which I have NO use for. But if I like Pantene, but I wouldn't rule out buying some other brand of shampoo if the price was right, I clip those out too. If I have a drawer full of toothpaste I probably don't clip out any coupons for toothpaste for a while, either. That's how you keep the binder from being cluttered.Also inside my binder I keep pens, a sharpie, scissors, paperclips... and in the binder rings I keep regular lined school paper and that's where I keep my shopping list. That way, when I leave the house, no matter where I might be going, I have absolutely everything I could possibly need to go to any store and buy anything. That way I'm not shooting myself when I wind up unexpectedly at the store, waiting for film developing or a pharmacy order, when I find something and wonder if it's on my shopping list. Or if its price is fabulous, I don't kick myself because my coupons are at home. If I'm going to the store, any store, I have it all with me, and there are no pack mules required. And yes, it's a fabulous system that works for me, but in the hands of someone a little less organized, it would turn into a disorganized mess, and utterly unusable. I'm sure you saw this coming. Like a cluttery person needs hundreds more little scraps of paper in their house or car, right?
I left home yesterday to fly to Minneapolis for my annual conferences
for NSGCD and NAPO.
I get easily stressed out when I travel--especially when I travel alone.
It took me 15 minutes to decide which jacket to bring that could serve
as a blazer and as outerwear.
I walked through every logical argument and still could not decide.
This is what happens when my brain chemicals start combining in
incorrect proportions (a stress response I suppose). This is also a
time when I remember to empathize with my clients.
This is where my pharmaceutical friend, the Happy Pill comes in. My
buddy HP could have saved me in the past, like the time I almost got
in a fight with a very large man who butted in line while I was
waiting to get on a Southwest flight (aka Cattle Air). Or when walking
through the xray machine too fast and the security employee raised her
voice and I lost it.
I become completely irrational during the packing phase and can't
balance packing exactly what I need and packing for every eventuality
(ultimate preparedness so I don't have to buy some toiletry at an
outrageous price).
HP makes me not care, like when the gravitationally-challenged woman
next to me on the plane spilled her diet coke on the blazer that I had
labored over and finally decided to bring on the plane 1) for warmth,
2) because it was too bulky to pack and 3) because I might need it when I
arrived in the northern clime. This was right after she dumped her
entire can of Pringles in the aisle right after the flight attendant
handed it to her, so I should've seen that coming.
Oh well. I also realized in transit that I forgot to pack pocket
kleenexes, and HP piped up and told me it wasn't going to be the end
of the world.
Most people need two types of hangers in their closet, one type for tops and one type for skirts and pants (although in some cases all the functionality can be found in a single type of hanger). Here are some things to consider when making your choices.
Thicker is better. You may think you can cram more onto your closet rod with thin hangers but you just end up wrinkling your clothes. Joan Crawford may have been a nut-job but she was dead-on with the “No wire hangers!” policy. Also, the more three-dimensional a hanger is, the better—what I mean is that a hanger that is contoured front-to-back, or doesn't lie completely flat when horizontal, like most suits come with, is better.
Matching hangers are good—no, I mean great. Yes, I do have tendencies toward “matchy matchy” in many areas of my life but matching hangers serve several purposes.
Your closet will look less cluttered and more streamlined. Mismatched hangers are visually distracting, making picking out an outfit harder.
They will not tangle as much. Matching hangers slide right up and right in next to each other without getting caught on one another.
It looks pretty (or pleasing, if you're a guy). Enough said.
Hangers with swiveling hooks drive me batty. But some people love them. Here are the cons and pro (I could only come up with one):
Con: They tangle like crazy.
Con: They're usually that clear plastic which just feels junk-y and has a connotation for me of really low-end discount shopping.
Con: Metal hooks on hangers feel rough and unfinished.
Pro: You can make your garments face the right way more easily, although it can be easy to develop the habit of putting things on in the right direction in the first place.
Skirt hangers come in two major types, clip and clamp.
Clips increase the tangle factor. Sliding a clip hanger next to another one is not a smooth process, especially when the clips are metal. Look for the lowest profile plastic (or high quality metal) clips you can find. But clip hangers often allow you to adjust the distance between the clips, depending on your waist size.
Clamps have a low profile so they easily slide in and out of your skirt section. But if your waist is more than 18”, the edges of your waist band will droop down. Larger clamps are available but are more expensive.
Pant hangers come in three major types, clip, clamp and bar.
Like with skirts, there is the tangle factor. You can hang pants from the waistband or from the cuffs or hem, but doing the latter could leave crimp marks.
Clamps can hold pants from the waistband or cuffs. Felt-lined clamps are less likely to leave crimps. And again, they don't tangle.
Bars allow you to hang pants in a short-hang section of your closet. The thicker the bar, the less likely it will leave a crease across the knee. The crease factor depends on the type and thickness of the fabric.
Hangers for tops should be multipurpose in a way that makes sense for your wardrobe.
If you have a lot of tank-style tops, your hangers should have loops or slots that fit the width of your tank straps.
If you have a lot of slippery fabrics or wide necks, hangers with grippy rubber or ridges on the shoulder work better.
If you have wide shoulders or larger tops you may want to get a large size hanger or one with sloping shoulders so you don't end up with what I call “pokey shoulders” or what a client once called “shoulder nipples” (that cracked me up so I must share it).
Buy exactly as many hangers as will reasonably fit in your closet (with clothes on them). Ideally, there should be a minimum of 1/4” between every hanger. This defines the limit on how much can live in your closet while maintaining optimal closet function.
Other things I avoid:
Hangers with hooks designed to hold another hanger in a cascading fashion. Some people use these to hang outfits together. But to me that is an indicator that the wardrobe may not be flexible or mix-and-match enough, properties which apply to more streamlined wardrobes. And yet again, the tangle factor rears its ugly head.
Hangers or hanging devices designed to hold multiple garments. This just makes putting things away and retrieving things a hassle. And it usually compresses the clothes into too small of a horizontal space.
Check out The Container Store and Hanger City. And, to answer a common question, the cheapest places to buy wooden hangers are Target and IKEA, ringing up at about $10 for 20 hangers. Happy hanger shopping!
I just had to tell you, you started a new trend in the 5th grade of "Y" Elementary. Anybody who is anybody has a cool labeler like "A". (I am not kidding!)Before I got to the words "cool labeler" I thought she was going to say "cool pink-and-blue knee-highs with the skull-and-crossbones-and-hearts" (I thought it was time for "A" to enter her cutie-punk-rock phase). But, I'm just as pleased to hear this news.
A quote for your biz. :-)
As Yoda once said, "Off the floor up pick your stuff from, Young Jedi."
-Susan
IT is a truism of American life that we’re too darn messy, or we think we are, and we feel really bad about it. Our desks and dining room tables are awash with paper; our closets are bursting with clothes and sports equipment and old files; our laundry areas boil; our basements and garages seethe. And so do our partners — or our parents, if we happen to be teenagers.Well, any PR for my industry is good PR, even if our clients are being referred to as victims. And speaking of PR, the authors publicist is earning his/her fee, given the precision of the timing (during Get Organized Month, January, when people make their resolutions to get organized) and magnitude of all this.
This is why sales of home-organizing products, like accordion files and labelmakers and plastic tubs, keep going up and up, from $5.9 billion last year to a projected $7.6 billion by 2009, as do the revenues of companies that make closet organizing systems, an industry that is pulling in $3 billion a year, according to Closets magazine.
This is why January is now Get Organized Month, thanks also to the efforts of the National Association of Professional Organizers, whose 4,000 clutter-busting members will be poised, clipboards and trash bags at the ready, to minister to the 10,000 clutter victims the association estimates will be calling for its members’ services just after the new year.
But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.I'm not inflexible. I thrive on a combination of structure and flexibility. I get depressed with too much structure and don't get anything done with too much flexibility. And, if I was humorless, I wouldn't have any clients at all. Also, I've never met a person with too much time on their hands.
“It’s chasing an illusion to think that any organization — be it a family unit or a corporation — can be completely rid of disorder on any consistent basis,” said Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives. “And if it could, should it be? Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life. I live in a world of total clutter, advising on cases where you’d think from all the paper it’s the F.B.I. files on the Unabomber,” when, in fact, he said, it’s only “a person with a stiff neck.”I think I want my doctor to be organized enough that she can easily review my recent medical history in the 30 seconds she has before entering the examination room.
“My wife has threatened divorce over all the piles,” continued Dr. Pollack, who has an office at home, too. “If we had kids the health department would have to be alerted. But what can I do?”You can hire an organizer to help you, and possibly help your marriage in the process. Although couples counseling is where you might want to start (I know my boundaries).
Stop feeling bad, say the mess apologists. There are more urgent things to worry about. Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.”Of course I don't want people to feel bad--but many people cannot simply accept their mess and have it not affect them negatively.
His favorite example? His 15-year-old daughter Talia’s bedroom, a picture of utter disorder — and individuality, he said. “One day I’m standing in front of the door,” he said, “and it’s out of control and my wife, Dana, is freaking out, and suddenly I see in all the piles the dress she wore to her first dance and an earring she wore to her bat mitzvah. She’s so trusting her journal is wide open on the floor, and there are photo-booth pictures of her friends strewn everywhere. I said, ‘Omigod, her cup overflows!’ And we started to laugh.”I think it's useful for kids to create their own system of organization by a combination of learning from their own mistakes (trial and error is part of the process) and through the teaching of organizing skills (which are part of the life skills package). I figured out part of how to be organized on my own when I moved away to college and my mom was no longer there to pick up after me. Both nature and nurture contribute to a person's ability to organize.
Last week David H. Freedman, another amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.”It's true that the organizing product industry is trying to make money, just like the authors of the book. Organizing consultants often tell their clients that expensive organizing products are usually not a necessity. We can prevent people from spending a fortune on products that aren't right for them.
Mr. Freedman is co-author, with Eric Abrahamson, of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” out in two weeks from Little, Brown & Company. The book is a meandering, engaging tour of beneficial mess and the systems and individuals reaping those benefits, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose mess-for-success tips include never making a daily schedule.Kinda scary, given his line of work.
As a corollary, the book’s authors examine the high cost of neatness — measured in shame, mostly, and family fights, as well as wasted dollars — and generally have a fine time tipping over orthodoxies and poking fun at clutter busters and their ilk, and at the self-help tips they live or die by. They wonder: Why is it better to pack more activities into one day? By whose standards are procrastinators less effective than their well-scheduled peers? Why should children have to do chores to earn back their possessions if they leave them on the floor, as many professional organizers suggest?I don't live or die by any self-help tips. I am a procrastinator. I know that I am deadline-driven, am a recovering perfectionist and am more likely to accomplish something if I'm accountable to someone besides just myself. Knowing that I work best in this framework, I make things happen. I also assumed, when I got into this business, that other organizers would fit the profile described. But, once I got to know other organizers, I found out they are more like me than than not. I question whether he has ever actually consulted with or worked with a credible professional organizer. And, I can't comment on the children's chores comment, since I don't have any kids, but I'm pretty sure that a parent's job is parenting.
In their book Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson describe the properties of mess in loving terms. Mess has resonance, they write, which means it can vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin, from a moldy bloom in a petri dish he had forgotten on his desk.Obviously that worked for Fleming. There's nothing wrong with that unless he missed other opportunities in his lab that we'll never know about.
Mess is robust and adaptable, like Mr. Schwarzenegger’s open calendar, as opposed to brittle, like a parent’s rigid schedule that doesn’t allow for a small child’s wool-gathering or balkiness. Mess is complete, in that it embraces all sorts of random elements. Mess tells a story: you can learn a lot about people from their detritus, whereas neat — well, neat is a closed book. Neat has no narrative and no personality (as any cover of Real Simple magazine will demonstrate). Mess is also natural, as Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson point out, and a real time-saver. “It takes extra effort to neaten up a system,” they write. “Things don’t generally neaten themselves.”The narrative of a person comes from their actions in life, not the landscape of their desk. Also, the authors clearly miss the point that neat does not equal organized and mess does not equal disorganized. It seems that the whole of his work is based on this fundamental misunderstanding. It does take effort to “neaten up” and create a system in the first place, but substantially less effort to keep it organized. He may not realize that all these years his attempts to “neaten up” were actually disrupting a system he unknowingly had in place, the system that someone else convinced him was a “mess”.
In the semiotics of mess, desks may be the richest texts. Messy-desk research borrows from cognitive ergonomics, a field of study dealing with how a work environment supports productivity. Consider that desks, our work landscapes, are stand-ins for our brains, and so the piles we array on them are “cognitive artifacts,” or data cues, of our thoughts as we work.Yup. I can usually tell the difference between a disorganized desk and a working desk, even though, to the untrained eye, they may both look like a mess. Though, in my case and in the case of many people who call me for help, disorder on the desk is reflected onto our brains, distracting us and inhibiting us from thinking clearly, sometimes killing productivity entirely.
To a professional organizer brandishing colored files and stackable trays, cluttered horizontal surfaces are a horror;Aha. The organizer he has worked with walked in with stackable trays. 99% of the time stackable trays are a no-no, in my book. And also considering that the professional organizer exhibited horror, it's clear the author hired the wrong one. There are organizers who don't know what they are doing, just like there are financial advisers who don't grow your money and lawn guys who scalp your grass.
According to a small survey that Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson conducted for their book — 160 adults representing a cross section of genders, races and incomes, Mr. Freedman said — of those who had split up with a partner, one in 12 had done so over a struggle involving one partner’s idea of mess.A whopping 160 people and the method by which they were chosen goes suspiciously unquoted. I'm surprised that only 1 in 12 split-ups involved a mess. I see disorganization factoring into ½ to ¾ of my clients' relationship issues. Of course, my study is as unscientific as theirs and, again, disorganization and mess are not equivalent.
For example, most peole would tend to think of Microsoft — and let's think about Bill Gates too — as sort of a rigid kind of company. In fact Microsoft is really a mess. Bill Gates is famous for letting his teams pretty much run on their own, and I think Microsoft in fact does a great job of taking advantage of mess. On the other hand, Steve Jobs at Apple, he's really famously a neat freak — he pushes his teams to finish right on time, he has very specific ideas of what he wants them to do. Of course, Apple has tremendous and very vocal fans, it really is very much the minority in the marketplace.First of all, letting teams run on their own is a management style, not a style of mess. Second, which product, Microsoft or Apple, is actually better and more innovative in the minds of those creative people who are supposedly being persecuted in our neat-freak culture?