Organization Quest

Quest On!

Allrighty!  Well, that was a refreshing little breather. Taking a little time off--whether a long weekend or, let’s see, nine months or thereabouts--allows one to re-define goals, re-set priorities, and re-focus anew. With a long weekend behind us, a short work week ahead, and school starting for many tomorrow, it’s the perfect time for some goal assessment and to think about what you’d like still like to accomplish this year. 

My short list includes learning how to edit video, finishing up a scrapbook I started for Alpay last year on our trip to Turkey, working David Allen’s Getting Things Done system (yes!  after much resistance I’m giving it a try), and committing myself to the great One-Pile-‘O-Week venture, whereby I commit to going through one stack, pile, drawer, shelf, or box a week.  What about you?  What would give you a sense of accomplishment or just plain relief if you finally got it done? 

Above:  boats moored at Gumusluk, one of the, let's see, 400 or so pix that need a home in my scrapbook.

 

"Clean Enough": Finding the Sweet Spot

This morning I was delighted to read the following comment from reader Patricia Balinski, which is just too good to keep buried with a post I wrote last February ("Why I Can't Fly with the Flylady"), and so I'll quote it in its entirety below: 

In reviewing the preview of Flylady's book, I thought of the many New Year resolutions begun in earnest and fallen to the wayside within hours, days, maybe even a week of making them. Like yourself, a daily regime of chores, whether done until completion or broken up because of side-tracking to do something else within the room, can not be done without frustration of having to do the same thing so repeatedly, day in and day out. At 23, I willingly accepted the wisdom of two women in my life. Thereby, reducing stress and possibly adding years to my life. They were: "Saying you have to clean or do mandatory cleaning routines is true to you now; that is, until something else in your life takes precedent." And, "Let your house be clean enough to be healthy; yet, dirty enough to be happy." Now at 68 1/2, I reduce clutter by redistributing loved treasures to various family members. Still can see them, but they have to clean it. I spend minimal time several times a week to spit polish "hot areas" and use the extra time to volunteer my services where and when I find the most enjoyment. Finally, when the time comes to sweep angel dust under a cloud, I know my children will remember the happy times they had in growing up and not having to live each day in a "white-glove inspection house".

This is exactly what I needed to read this morning. 

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how the Quest somehow got away from me, or rather, that at times it has taken me away from what I had intended to be my focus:  making room for the important things in life. It's the "subtitle" I chose over any number I considered when starting the Quest, because I wanted to keep the thought front and center--the reason, above all others, why bother trying to be organized at all.

It's time to reclaim the Quest for its original goal and purpose.  The intended goal was never perfection but communion, a leavening of spirit by making it easier, not harder, to get through the day.  "Clean enough to be healthy, yet dirty enough to be happy," as Patricia's mentor so wisely put it.  Now that's a resolution to live by!

Back on Board with the New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

All right, so it's been, let's see . . . .let's just call it a while. The Short Version of What Happened is:  I went back to school.  Remember the Back to School series I wrote in September?  In doing so, I pulled out old textbooks, notes, projects, and binders to photograph in order to illustrate the concepts, and in the process I began, in the manner of packrats everywhere, to re-read and look through everything, which is when it struck me:  wow, I really loved studying design.  And:  I wish I was the one going back to school, which led in turn to: why, exactly, wasn't I in school?

I did recall withdrawing from one of my courses that last quarter, after the instructor told me, in front of the class, that I was "unteachable."  What I couldn't remember is why I would believe him.

Other people may have control over any number of things in our lives--from our salaries to when we are able to catch a bus on a particular corner--but they don't get to decide our character. My former instructor had indeed been unable to teach me.  But that didn't mean I couldn't learn.

What I love about January is the renewed hope and promise of a fresh start the new year brings.  No matter what your goals, the focus of new year resolutions is in the present and the in future. All transgressions are in the past--instructive, perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant. 

The New Year is carte blanche to reflect, hope, plan, and prioritize.  What do you want for yourself this year?  Dream big! Dare to defy the limitations you place on yourself and those others place on you.  It's a new year, a new decade.  Take a few minutes this weekend and ask yourself:  who do you want to be, what do you want to do, how do you want to live in the years to come? Decide on one tiny step towards that goal--whether it's replacing chips with celery for a snack, doing a load of laundry every day until you get caught up, making a point to work in a walk a few days a week, or looking into getting your GED, Associate's, Bachelors, Master's, or Ph.D.  The first step in getting what you want is realizing that you want it. 

PS I took the same class--perspective drawing--this quarter with a different professor.

I got an A.

 

Saving Money: The Importance of Due Diligence

I looked up the term "due diligence" this evening to make sure it means what I think it means.  According to investopdedia.com, due diligence means "the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party."  Close enough.  This isn't the New York Times here, so forgive me for taking a few liberties.

What we're going to be discussing tonight is "the care a reasonable person should take" with his or her own finances.  You probably already know that you should be doing this:  reconciling your checkbook, checking your credit card statement for errors, filling out the paperwork to get rebates coming to you, confirming your new doctor is in your insurance network, those kinds of things.  There's no way to sugar-coat this: A responsible, orderly adult life requires a certain tolerance for tedium. 

As it happens, my own tolerance for tedium is not especially high, especially when it involves numbers.  Still, this is an area in which I'm trying to improve. I've come to think that the universe is nudging me along by by showing me how very much I'm rewarded when I put in the effort to do what needs to be done. 

Example #1: The Case of The Misplaced Decimal

Last month, a gift I'd bought was returned to the store via mail.  I called up the store to ask when I would see the credit and was given a date range, which I noted on my calendar.  When the earliest day passed, I called my credit card, but no credit had been issued. I called a week later, and the expected credit still hadn't been posted. I did, however,  have a credit--for $19.00, which would have been excellent if that's what I'd spent.  Unfortunately, the amount had been not $19.00 but  $190.00. 

"Oops," is what the customer service agent said at the store's call center.  I put my aneurysm on hold to clarify what the agent meant.  "Decimal error," was the official finding.  And I was reminded once again how unforgiving punctuation is when it comes to numbers. 

Savings: $171.00, the difference between $19.00 and $190.00.

Example #2: Double-Checking Someone Else's Checking

When my family practitioner was 72, he gave me what he called the "5-year warning" that he was planning to retire; that was 4 years ago.  Since then, it's been on my Dread List to look for another physician. 

In January, I decided to start my search.  I called my local hospital's referral service for a list of physicians associated with the hospital who take my insurance.  I chose a physician and then--just to double-check--I called up my insurance provider, who told me they didn't have the physician listed in my network at all.  When I called the physician's office itself, they confirmed that they used to carry my insurance, but as of the new year they no longer did.  I called my insurance provider back and used their referral system to find my current doctor. 

Savings:  $65, the difference between the $90.00 I would have had to pay out-of-pocket and my $25.00 co-pay.  And that's just for the first visit.

Example #3: The Just Do It Approach to Financial Paperwork

For whatever reason, I seem to have an inexplicable resistance to forms involving refunds.  What happens is that I get the forms, read the instructions, plan my response, collect the associated paperwork and put everything on the top of my desk, which is where it stays.  And stays.  And stays. Until I successfully forget all about it.

Thus Alpay has taken over Form Duty in our house.  Last month he filled out the paperwork for a rebate as soon as we got the form.  We're expecting the payment soon--I have, of course, the earliest and latest dates it should arrive marked on my calendar, so that if it doesn't come, I can do my part and get on the phone.

(Expected) Savings: $50.00

How much due ddiligence has saved so far this year: $286.00

Making Others Make It Right, Or Why It (Literally) Pays To Complain

Here's the thing about life: things go wrong. Packages are lost, shipments delayed, a decimal is inadvertently moved, things break and the people who are supposed to fix them don't. Fair enough. But in my view, the people selling goods or services have an obligation to keep the promises they make to clients or customers. And that promise is that things work.

As a consumer, your obligation is to make sure businesses keep up their their part of the bargain. This is where organizing comes in, and why it's important to develop reliable systems for filing receipts and warranties. You also need a place to store names, numbers, addresses, and websites, as well as account numbers, user names, and passwords. Once something goes wrong, you need to pull out a notebook and start recording the specifics of your encounters: who you talked to, the time and the date, what was discussed, what agreements were made. These are the details that are crucial for satisfactory results--results that you can count on your way to the bank.

Example one: The Broken Delivery Promise From The Fancy Department Store

This past holiday season, I was, well, late in ordering a gift for one of my nieces.  I know.  I'm supposed to be getting better and believe me, I am: usually my holiday gifts don't get out before April.  Anyway. I was late, I was desperate, and there it was, a Very Fancy Department Store that said: don't worry, we'll get your package to your niece in time--guaranteed. 

Well, heck, who can argue with that?  Never mind where my package was going was Seattle, where  a huge snow storm was raging, or that my sister hadn't seen a UPS truck on her street for over a week.  THE VERY FANCY DEPARTMENT STORE PROMISED my niece's gift would be delivered on time, and by golly, I believed them!

Folks, it did not get to my niece on time.  It did not get there one day late.  Or two days late.  Actually, when it finally did arrive, it got there a whole week late.

I got on-line and connected via real-time chat with customer service. I told them:  I don't know what you're going to do--you tell me--but make it right.  You made a promise and you didn't keep it.  I'm calling you on it.  Ball's in your court.  What are you going to do?

It helped a great deal to have all the information before me: the dates and time that I made my order and a copy of the on-line receipt and delivery "guarantee".  When the first customer service agent mysteriously dropped our chat, I copied it and pasted it into my word processing program while it was still on the screen, complete with his on-line name and identity number.  In the end, the Fancy Store agreed to give me a 10% discount on my purchase. 

Amount Saved:  $19.00

Example two: Tale of the Broken Appliance and The Repair Man Who Couldn't Fix It

I'm a big believer in buying warranties for large appliances; in my experience, it almost always pays to get one, and the longer the service plan, the better.  So a few days before the new year, I was stuck with a busted appliance.  No problem, I have a warranty for such purposes.  I called my warranty provider--neatly printed in my address book along with my account number--and arranged for service, with the naive hope that we'd be up and running in a matter of days.  A month later and the appliance still wasn't fixed.  Never mind that the service repair man had come out three times; I later found out he quit the day the company announced plans for drug testing.  Finally they sent the supervisor out, a man with 30 years experience, who required three hours to un-do everything that the drug test shirker did wrong. Mid-repair, the supervisor put down his tools and in a pique of irritation and yelled: "If he didn't quit, I would have fired him!"  which, I admit, was gratifying.  Still, there was the matter of the appliance-less month.  And so I called the issuer of the warranty, who had subcontracted out the work, and asked them to add a month to the end of my warranty contract, since I'd been out of the appliance a whole month.  And to my utter astonishment, they said no.  They would not add a month to my contract.  Fine, I said.  Then discount a month's worth of pay from my warranty.  Nope, they couldn't do that, either.  Fine, I said.  You're a big store, give me a months' worth of the amount--what I calculated to be about $3.33--in store credit.  No.  Okay, I said.  I'm through doing the heavy lifting here.  Let's here your ideas.  I'm open.  I'm reasonable.  I just want you to make this right.  After a pause, the supervisor offered an apology.  "Not good enough," I said.

By the time I called the corporate customer relations office, I was in the type of rage usually reserved for the type of reality TV that involves uniformed officers and Miranda rights.  It's the principle of the matter, I fumed.  You sent a stoned repairman to my house not once but three times and I was out of service for a month.  This isn't what I had in mind when I signed up for your service.  Obviously you need to do something here.  What's it going to be?

Amount Saved: $100, which is  half the amount I paid for my 5-year warranty service, in the form of a Big Box gift certificate for my troubles.

Example 3: My Little Hand-Vac: How Can It Be Broke When It Still Smells New?

Last example: I bought a hand vac, after the last one, which performed honorably for almost ten years, died peacefully in its wall-mounted holster, never to recharge again.  After doing a fair amount of research, I found a model I liked, drove to a local store and bought it.  WOW, was it ever great!  The suction!  The power! The mobility of its swivel head!  I was in heaven!  And then: it died.  Just like that.  I'd used it maybe five or six times.  It even still smelled new.

Well, that's just not right.  I got out my owner's manual (neatly filed and accessible, dear Questers!) which warned me not to bring the vacuum back to the store where I got it, but to call the manufacturer instead.  Okay, fine. I called the manufacturer and explained the problem.  "At this rate, I figure I paid, like, $10 a pop each time I used it," I explained.  The manufacturer understood.  They sent me out a new model, which I got a couple days later.

Amount Saved: $59.99 for the hand-vac and $5.65 for taxes.

How much I've saved so far this year, just by complaining:$184.64.

Comparison Shopping For Wheels and Tires, Or How I Saved $893.57

Last night when I told Alpay what my post topic was ("66 Ways Being Organized Saves Money") he asked for examples and I gave some.  "Wait a second," he objected.  "Since when does comparison shopping count as 'organizing'?"

Fighting the urge to say, "since I said so," I explained that systematic comparison shopping takes both discipline and effort.  A truly rewarding outcome can require extensive pen-and-paper note-taking and a small cache of user names and passwords, all of which you have to keep straight somehow. 

In January, I wrote about how one of the most rewarding (and surprising) uses of my new Circa notebook is how it provides just such a place to organize this type of information.  For the skeptics out there who find it hard to believe such effort is necessary, I offer the following example.

Every winter, I get my tires rotated and the wheels removed and cleaned, which has put a stop to the "Low Tire Pressure" warning I used to get with alarming frequency.  And every year for the past few years, I've been warned:  looks like you're going to be needing new tires soon.  "Sure," I say, by which I mean "whatever." Not because I don't believe I could use new tires, but, you know, a tightwad and her money are not easily parted. I also believe that tires have an obligation to last ten years, and it's only been nine. 

I changed my tune when informed that, actually, there are laws about these things and my tires' baldness was perilously close to breaking them.  One of the wheels was problematic as well; I've known it was dented for a couple years, but now it was so bad that the shop was scared to take the tire off it, lest they not be able to get it back on. 

"Fine," I said, which actually means not fine at all but I'll do what needs to be done. First, though, some due diligence was in order.

I got the quote for the four tires: $201.99 per tire.  No, wait, I would get one free. No, wait, there was also the price of putting the new tires on.  And getting rid of the old ones.  And a "state environmental fee".  A "Chicago Tire Fee"--I kid you not.  A "local tire disposal" fee.  On and on, until we were up to $768.46, not including the new wheel.  I got it all in writing and put it in my organizer.  And then I did some sleuthing.

I vaguely recalled an excellent article on tire shopping.  Having found the article, I discovered tirerack.com, on on-line tire store extraordinaire, where I found the same tires for $155 each, albeit without the free tire special.  Still, no taxes via tirerack.com made it the better buy.  We found a local place to put on and balance the new tires and to get rid of the old for $64.00 total.  The end result: I saved $42.86 by going with tirerack and local installation.

I know what some of you are thinking:  that was a lot of work to save forty-two bucks.  But hold on: remember the wheel?  Guess how much the dealer wanted for it?  $1100.  And that's for a refurbished wheel, not even new.  Maybe we could get a discount if we offered our first-born son; we hadn't gotten down to the brass tacks of the negotiation.  At this point, Alpay took over and went on-line.  He found the same wheel at Detroit Wheel and Tire,  for $225.  Okay, shipping was $24.25. So the savings was only $850.71.

Between the tires and the wheel, comparison shopping saved us $893.57. In the process, we checked at least a dozen sites, and kept track of the particulars (make, model, price, website URLs and contact names).  It did take some effort, but the $893.57 we saved is well worth the the hour of time we spent researching our options.

Charting Your Resolution's Success

After several months of organizing at breakneck speed, any progress I'e made in the last couple months seems pretty neglible.  And yet: purusing my Organization Book earlier today, I realized I really didn't do half-bad in December.  While mostly I was in maintenance mode, I did manage to accomplish one larger project, which was to organize the magnetic boards that hold my office supplies.  I also did at least a little work--digging through accumulated papers--forever my organizational Achilles Heel--12 days last month. 

Ever since I started first started organizing in earnest, I've found it useful to document my progress. I like to use blank books, which come in an endless supply of shapes, sizes, colors, and designs, to keep a casual record of projects completed and milestones met. It's a good place to take stock, write goals, and paste in before-and-after pictures, as well as to record any progress made.  Because the goals of such a book are to encourage and to celebrate, I don't have rules for what to write, or when.  I don't capture everything I do, and that's fine; it's not an official log, after all.  In other words, it's not a chore but a reward, a fun place to doodle, make notes, scan through, and plan whatever I happen to dream up.

I started my first Organization  Book almost by chance:  I'd found a blank book with a wonderful quote by Thoreau that spoke directly to the hopes I had for myself and my life, that I just had to buy it and, once bought, find a good use for it. After six years, I'm now on my third Organization Book, but I still keep the first one displayed on the bookcase, where I can see it and be reminded of its message.

If You Do One Thing Before Starting Your Resolution, Do This

Okay, I know:  we're all primed to Make This The Year We Get Organized--Really!--Once and For All.  I'm right there with you, Questers! Once you decide what it is exactly you want to accomplish, whether it's organizing the garage or figuring out a weekly cleaning routine that you can stick with, there's one thing you should do before diving into your resolution:  document where you're at, right now, regarding the area for which you're seeking improvement.  Just as you would weigh yourself and take your measurements before going on a diet, take a few minutes to assess your current organizing situation.  Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Take stock

What exactly is the problem, and whyis it a problem?  A messy closet or a disorganized kitchen, for instance, isn't that big of deal in and of itself.  Why does it bother you?  Maybe your messy closet makes for stressful mornings, or it prevents you from expressing yourself the way you want in your attire.  In the same token, a disorganized kitchen makes it less pleasant to cook, which in turn makes it more difficult to stay on a diet. Determining the scope as well as the root of the problem allows you to see more clearly the benefits of implementing your resolution.

Take a picture

If you saw the post about my Supreme Paper Mess, you know I'm a big fan of "before and after" pictures.  "Before" pictures can be great motivators while moving towards your goals; once those goals are achieved, you'll be amazed at the difference between your "before" and "after" pictures . 

Take a mental/emotional snapshot

Maybe the state of your disorganization can't be documented with a camera.  If your goals are more along the lines of remembering birthdays, appointments, or other events, getting to work on time, meeting deadlines, or feeling more pulled together as you move through your day, it's important to document the impetus behind your goal.  Close your eyes and take a moment to re-live what happened when you let yourself or somebody else down in terms of your proposed resolution.  Before I decided to keep a calendar, I wrote down all the dates and appointments I'd recently missed--a friend's birthday, two appointments in a row with my hair stylist, an event that I'd been looking forward to going to.  I let myself recall the disappointment or embarrassment I felt as I groped for an excuse for my forgetfulness. This wasn't a futile exercise in self-flagellation, but provided me with a clear "snapshot" of behavior I was trying to change.

Imagine living your resolution

How will making this change affect your life?  Take five minutes to sit down with a nice cup of tea or coffee, a pen, and some paper and write down the benefits you'll reap when you're living your resolution.  See yourself calm in the face of an audit.  Cooking is a joy, your evening routine is relaxing, you can get rid of your storage unit or fit your car in the garage--whatever it is, imagine it in full detail and either make a list of what you see, write a sentence or two, or make a quick sketch of your vision.  This is part of documenting where you are now in terms of your goal.  Once achieved, you may very well experience your goal differently than you imagined you would, but imagining how you will feel beforehand is part of the fun of making your resolution.