Monthly Archives: July 2016

Party anyone?

July is “National Family Reunion Month.” (Who knew there was such a thing?!)

Our family just held one of our largest family reunions ever! With over 60 people, ages 2 to 86, in attendance, pulling this event off took a ton of planning and patience.

Here are some practical tips to make your own family reunion the success you want it to be:

1. Select an event chair, or better yet, a couple of co-chairs to handle the planning and coordination. Depending on the size of the reunion, you may only need one, but for a group of 60, it was great to spread the event coordination around a bit.
2. Decide on a time of year and venue. Our reunion is always held around the 4th of July (easy travel for everyone, generally not a lot of competing events like there would be in the November/December time period) and it’s always held at the same place. Choose the venue carefully. If someone’s home can manage it, great. If you need to rent a space, be sure to get that done early. If you are coordinating people from across the country, be kind and settle on middle geographic ground.
3. Set up early and frequent communication. The more communication there is around your family reunion, the better opportunity to get people excited and eager to attend. If possible, include some fun stories from previous reunions to keep people’s attention. Be careful to include communication styles that everyone can participate in. For example, although e-mail is efficient, not everyone uses e-mail. If e-mail is your chosen mode of communication, make sure someone is assigned to pass on the pertinent information to those who don’t get e-mail.
4. Create a spreadsheet or mind map including everything that needs to be in place for a successful reunion. Be sure to include:
  1. Food: Solicit volunteers to bring specific dishes or categories (i.e. appetizers, main course, vegetables, dessert, bread, beverages, etc.).
  2. Games: Solicit volunteers to manage entertainment for all ages. For example, sidewalk chalk and bubbles for the younger ones, badminton for the older kids, and video games for all ages.
  3. Functional needs for the event: For example, determine who will be decorating, ensuring sufficient silverware/plates/glasses are available, making certain all the potluck food makes it to the serving table, manages the trash, and so on and so on and so on.
5. Solicit volunteers . . . and lots of them. When John Heywood quoted “many hands make light work” he probably wasn’t thinking about family reunions at the time, but the phrase holds true. Everyone (age appropriate) should be part of the planning and execution process. Too few people trying to handle too many things may result in a less than successful event.
6. Ask for feedback. When holding any kind of event, it’s great to solicit feedback from attendees. What did they like? What didn’t they like? What would the like to see more of? Less of? Was the timing right? Was the venue appropriate? Knowing what worked and didn’t work will make next year’s event that much more successful!

Hopefully a well-planned and executed family reunion will allow you to enjoy and rekindle connections to your extended family.

Cindy Jobs

www.organizetosimplify.com

cindy@organizetosimplify.com

206-707-3458

National Association of Professional Organizers, Seattle Area Chapter President

Institute for Challenging Disorganization, Six Certificates of Education

Are you prepared?

Nothing lets you know you aren’t prepared for life little disasters, or big ones for that matter, like preparing your will/trust or changing your homeowner’s insurance. We’ve done both within the last nine months. It was a great wake-up call that I needed to get some things in better order.

First off, when we processed our will/trust documents, the attorney needed tons and tons of information, including all our financial assets (bank accounts, retirement accounts, 401k accounts, investments, etc.), real estate holdings, life insurance policies, etc. Fortunately, I had most of that stored on a handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet so it was pretty easy to pull together.

Next we looked into our homeowners insurance and found that we were possibly woefully mis-insured. We had a lot of insurance, but was it allocated correctly (liability vs umbrella policy)? Would it cover individual items or just blanket coverage? Did we have everything appropriately insured (specific jewelry, etc.). Again, an eye-opening project. Several years ago I took pictures of all the rooms in our home, highlighting individual items that may be of significant value. I felt really good about getting that done . . . . . but I haven’t updated it since. My guess is that our TV has changed, for sure the computer, and who knows what else! If something were to happen and we were asked “what computer got stolen?” I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to give them the current make and model. Clearly I have some work to do.

To that end, I started poking around to see if there were appropriate, ready-made life and home inventory packages available. Sure enough I found a few.

Mind you, this is a new project for me too and I haven’t tried any of them, but I thought I’d share what I’ve found in case you are facing the same project I am.

Life In A Case

“LifeinCase™ organizes documents into an intuitive five-part system: Personal, Medical, Property, Estate, and Financial each featuring a durable file folder and handy checklist of suggested documents to store.” (from lifeincase.com)

HomeZada Home Management Software

“HomeZada allows you to budget and manage projects, inventory your home, set and track maintenance reminders, and even offers tools for selling or buying a home. From the dashboard, you can track your home’s value, taxes, maintenance expenses, assets, and so on.” (from www.hammerandmoxie.com)

Life Documents Organizer by Smead

“The Life Documents Organizer Kit helps you organize and store key life documents such as wills & trusts, health care directives, investment and retirement plans, marital documents and contact information.” (from www.smead.com)

Life Organizer

“Produced as a three-ring-binder, Life Organizer includes 8 tabs with pockets, 15 plastic sleeves for storing copies of important documents, and 1 sleeve to hold 2 DVDs for photo and video inventory, plus dozens of worksheets, checklists, and pages for contact information of family members and professionals.

Whether you’re a baby boomer planning your estate, parent with a new family, or recent grad just beginning to earn an income, it’s a beautiful and helpful organizer for anyone at any age.” (from www.amazon.com)

In addition to accurate records of who we are and what we own, these organizing products may give us something even more valuable . . . . peace of mind.

Cindy Jobs

www.organizetosimplify.com

cindy@organizetosimplify.com

206-707-3458

National Association of Professional Organizers, Seattle Area Chapter President

Institute for Challenging Disorganization, Six Certificates of Education

Tired of being stuck at the office?

Have you been getting the most out of your summer so far? Some of my clients don’t take advantage of the extra time with their friends and family (no school, vacations, etc.) because they aren’t organized enough to feel comfortable leaving the office. Possibly adding some efficiency to your every day processes will help you get out of the office with a clear conscience.

Here are some quick tips to get you out the door faster:

Begin with a “to do” list. Whether you produce your list the afternoon before, or the morning of, each day should start with a clear picture of what needs to get done.
- Tackle the hardest things first while you are full of energy.
- Prioritize your list. Determine what is urgent, important and possibly just aspirational. Chances are everything on your list may not get done. (Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle)
- Work in short, concentrated spurts. Working a solid 45 minutes, then taking a 5 minute break is generally more productive than working three hours straight.
Delegate when possible. My guess is that everything on your list doesn’t have to be done by you. If you have the support structure available, use it. Caution: Make sure you can truly let the project go. Micromanaging something you’ve delegated may take more time than doing it yourself. When delegating, ensure the person assisting you has all the tools to do the job efficiently and correctly.
Determine what is “good enough.” Does the analysis need to come with a pie chart? If not, let the pie chart go. Does the budget need to be broken down into 100 categories or will 10 suffice? Ensure that the scope of the project is covered, but determine if the extra time to go into more detail, etc. is really necessary.
Be open and clear with others about your time commitments. If you generally don’t leave the office before 6:00, changing your pattern to leaving at 4:30 without clearly communicating the change to your associates may prove to be frustrating and unproductive for them. For example, I had a boss that was always in at 6:30 AM. If I wanted uninterrupted time with him, I came in early. I relied on his schedule to get my work done. In addition, be respectful of your co-worker’s schedules. Don’t schedule meetings that may extend outside of the reasonable working hours: let’s say no meetings before 8:30 or starting after 3:30.
If you want to leave the office at 4:30, start the exit process early, maybe at 4:00 – 4:15. Chances are it will take some time to shut down your computer, have those last few-minute conversations with your co-workers, clear off your desk, etc.
Resist the urge to do “just one more thing” as you see your exit time approaching. As long as the critical tasks have been completed, give yourself permission to leave the office knowing the world will continue to rotate and the tasks will happily await your attention the next day. 🙂

Cindy Jobs

www.organizetosimplify.com

cindy@organizetosimplify.com

206-707-3458

National Association of Professional Organizers, Seattle Area Chapter President

Institute for Challenging Disorganization, Six Certificates of Education

Have you lost your mojo?

About a month ago I lost my mojo. You know what mojo is, right? According to the Cambridge Dictionary it’s “a quality that attracts people to you and makes you successful and full of energy.”

Harley visited the Everett Library weekly for a Paws To Read program.

I can trace it back to the day we lost our 12-year old Boxer, Harley. He was one of the best dogs we’ve ever had and his passing left a huge hole in my heart. Nothing else seemed to matter, I just wallowed in sadness. For those of you that aren’t close to your pets, you won’t get it; for those of you that consider pets a part of the family, you will.

Anyway, I lost my mojo. I failed to see the importance in important things. I lost my drive. I started focusing on easy, non-critical tasks. Lots of things just didn’t seem to matter. Well, that can only go on so long before things start to fall apart and something has to change. That trigger for change was yesterday. I decided to acknowledge that I’d been coasting for a month and that I needed a swift kick in the rear to get back on track.

What can we do to get our mojo back when we’ve lost it?

Acknowledge and respect the event that caused the change. Give yourself permission to have changed your behavior for a while. We can’t be at 110% all the time. There are times we are just tired, fed up, frustrated, sad, angry . . . whatever. Once the trigger is identified and acknowledged, it somehow loses some of it’s power.
Decide that “enough is enough.” Most of us can’t coast forever. Our families deserve more. Our business can’t support it. Take that first step toward change.
Make a list of things that need to be done. Fortunately, and most importantly, my personal life was in pretty good shape, but I was way behind with business responsibilities. I’d not been keeping up on my weekly blogging, my newsletter hadn’t gone out, I’d missed some teleclasses that needed to be made up. There were just some things that NEEDED to be done to get back on track.
Find an accountability partner to help keep motivated. I’m fortunate to have a fantastic coaching partner that let me talk through the process and helped me determine my next steps to get on track. For example, today I committed to sending some personal notes and writing a blog. When I get done with both of those things, I will be sending her an e-mail. It’s nice to have someone, besides myself, that’s interested in my success.

Yesterday I was pretty down on myself. Today, I feel like a new person.

Motivated. Encouraged. Successful. Empowered.

It was not an easy transition, but I made it. And if you find yourself in the very same place, you can get it back too!

Cindy Jobs

www.organizetosimplify.com

cindy@organizetosimplify.com

206-707-3458

National Association of Professional Organizers, Seattle Area Chapter President

Institute for Challenging Disorganization, Six Certificates of Education

Organize to Simplify

Providing organizing tips to help you get more out of life.

Monthly Archives: July 2016

Party anyone?

Are you prepared?

Tired of being stuck at the office?

Have you lost your mojo?