Effective Organizing Solutions

Q: What is a professional organizer?

A: Professional Organizers provide information, products and assistance to help, others organize to meet their needs. A professional organizer should guide, encourage and educate clients about basic principles of organizing by offering support, focus and direction.

Q: What can Effective Organizing Solutions do for me?

A: EOS can provide ideas, information, structure, solutions and systems, which can increase productivity, reduce stress, and create a new found freedom and sense of being in control.

Q: What does your affiliation with NAPO mean to me?

A: The National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) is recognized as the association for organizers. NAPO offers organizers opportunities to sharpen their skills through ongoing education and professional development. NAPO has a Code of Ethics by which members are expected to abide. By being a member of NAOP, Effective Organizing Solutions has made a commitment to our business and thus to you, the client.                                                                                                                                                  Furthermore, Effective Organizing Solutions prides ourselves by investing in continuing education and work shops to keep abreast of the current trends in organization.

Q: I’ve always been disorganized. Is there really hope for me?

A: It is possible to learn the basic principles and formulas of organizing for anyone at any stage of their life. However, in order to experience long-lasting, life-changing results, Effective Organizing Solutions can teach you how to maintain your new found systems on a regular basis.

Q: How long will it take to get me organized?

A: There is no set answer as each organizing project is different. Length of a project will depend primarily on the size of your home or office, the amount of clutter and/or paper that has built up, and how quickly decisions can be made. Effective Organizing Solutions works in 2-4 hour increments with a client. This time frame enables the client to see the progress that is being made and to absorb the skills without being overwhelmed.

Q: How do I select a professional organizer and is the most expensive organizer the best?

A: In selecting a professional organizer, it is important to find someone you like and with whom you feel comfortable as well as with the background, training and personality that suits you. Based on a NAPO national survey, fees range from $40 an hour to $200 an hour, so there is a price range for every-one’s budget.

• Filing cabinet should be at arms length
• Do visible papers first
• Two questions to ask:

1. What is it?
2. Why are you saving it?

• Put in a manila file folder & give it a name in pencil
• Use words that would come most readily to your mind
• Keep like files together
• How long should I keep it?
• Check with your accountant or tax adviser about papers in question

Questions to keep asking yourself:

• What’s working?
• What isn’t working?
• What adjustments need to be made?
• What items do you need here?
• What is your dream outcome for this space?

It does take time, especially in the beginning-an hour or more for each foot-high stack of papers. But as you progress it gets easier and easier.

Mail: Have a basket, bin, or other decorative object to catch mail as it comes into the house. Locate this by the door where the mail comes in. If there’s room, have a separate mail bin or baskets for each member of your household. It makes distributing information easier. Plan to review mail at a predetermined time in your weekly schedule.

Closets: Whenever you remove an item from a hanger put the hanger in a basket. When you get ready to do laundry, bring the basket for easy “out-of-dryer-onto-hanger” action!

Time: Learn how long it really takes you to do your routine tasks and chores, like getting ready in the morning, driving to work, emptying the dishwasher, getting the kids up and dressed for school, laundry, grocery shopping, and so on. This will help in organizing your daily and weekly schedule. If you assume it takes you ten minutes to get ready and leave the house, but in reality it takes thirty, you’ll be twenty minutes late for whatever is next on your schedule, and so on for the remainder of the day.

Photos: One way to sort backlogs of photos is to collect shoe boxes or plastic containers and write a year on each one. Sort photos into their correct year. These can be done in brief sessions-even fifteen minutes a night will make a difference by the end of a week. Along the way you can eliminate any duplicates, ugly photos, blurry images, and so forth. Once the pictures are sorted by year, decide how you want to sort them further. Chronologically? By event? Then you can choose how you want to store and/or display them. You will have a better idea of what size album, box, or frames you’ll need.

Family meetings: Designate an hour a week to synchronize your family. Everyone brings their calendars, to-do lists, and schedules to the table. Spend the time reviewing the events for upcoming week expectations for dinners, chores et cetera. After you have met with your entire family (thirty minutes), parents should meet to review plans (thirty minutes). Try this…you’ll be amazed at the incredible results for just one hour of investment time!

Store it where you use it: The closer you store items to where you use them, the quicker and easier it is to clean up. For instance, if you knit at night while watching TV, create storage right near where you sit. It can be a decorative basket that slides under a coffee or end table. Whenever you put away your knitting, it goes into its basket and is stored immediately-instead of sitting on the coffee table waiting to be returned to its home.

“Lid-off” policy: When and wherever possible, remove lids and doors. It means one less step to putting things back where they belong!