Mom's Favorite Organizer

This is the time of year when many of you pick out a new calendar or organizer to help you plan your days, weeks and months. Wait, let me rephrase that. This is when the paper calendar lovers pick up a new calendar. Amongst my Professional Organizing clients, I've found that there are old-school paper calendar fans and there are electronic calendar fans. I'm one of the technology converts (some call us geeks) who keeps my schedule on my hand held iPhone and Google calendar.

If you like to use a non-electronic, paper organizer and you're a mom with kids, let me recommend a calendar created just for moms by moms. The Mom Agenda is a unique calendar that begins in August 2007 (the month school starts for most kids) and runs through December 2008. It features pages for planning your month, and pages for planning your week. But best of all, it has separate spaces for each kid and even has a place to plan each day's menu. Plus it comes in the cutest colors and has the prettiest fonts. If I ever ditch the iPhone (AS IF!!!), I'd use this calendar even though I don't have wee ones. I'd just use the bottom section for biz-related stuff and the top for my personal life.

The Mom Agenda is on sale right now at See Jane Work for $31.50, a savings of over ten bucks.

What calendar do you love and why? Leave us a comment to spread the word on your fave.

Put Your Mailbox On A Diet

Want to lighten the load of junk mail that lands in your mailbox every week? I think I've found a great solution at www.catalogchoice.org. Catalog Choice is a free service that allows you to decide what catalogs get delivered to you.

Sponsored by the Ecology Center, the service has been endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. According to their web site, Catalog Choice's mission is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices.

Here's how it works:

• You go to www.catalogchoice.org and sign up for a free account.
• You'll be directed to a list of paper catalogs commonly sent to consumers. Check off the ones you no longer wish to receive. If you don't see a particular catalog, click on the "Suggest a Catalog" link.
  
• Catalog Choice notifies these merchants to take you off their mailing list. Many of these merchants are happy to do so because it reduces their costs.
  
• Within a couple of months you'll see a reduction in the number of catalogs you receive.
  

I signed up in November with a big stack of holiday catalogs in front of me. Since then, the number of catalogs landing in my recycling bin has drastically gone down.

There are couple of reasons why I love this service. First, over three million tons of trees are consumed each year in the production of paper catalogs not to mention the additional resources that are then used to mail these wish books to our houses and businesses.

Secondly, if you're like me, you probably get way too many catalogs from the same companies throughout the year, especially during the holidays. There are very few of these catalogs that I even open. I do most of my shopping online so many of these companies are wasting their money sending me all these catalogs because I'm already a loyal customer! I just do my browsing on the computer instead of by flipping pages.

Finally, I've organized, recycled, and contained a crazy amount of catalogs for my clients over the years. Through this process, I've discovered that unread catalogs haunt many people because they fear they may be missing out on items that they "need." So, the catalogs accumulate and, for some, the debt rises as they do, indeed, find tempting treasures in those glossy pages. I suspect that they would spend less if they weren't barraged with images from their daily catalog deliveries.

I challenge you to go on a catalog diet. Join the 450,000 consumers and businesses that have cut down on their paper, time and financial clutter by signing up for Catalog Choice.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Article

Check out Saturday's (January 12, 2008) Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Buyer's Edge section for an article by Patti Ghezzi on "Clutter Busters: Learn to let go of stuff with the help of a professional organizer." Yours truly shares a tip about calendars in the article. Lots of my esteemed Atlanta colleagues have contributed as well.

January is the National Association of Professional Organizers' Get Organized Month. Since getting organized is always in the top 3 or 4 on people's New Year's resolutions lists, it's the time when many Professional Organizer's phones ring off the hook and our email boxes begin to fill. This year is no exception for my business. I kind of liken it to the rush to the gym that occurs in January. To accommodate the rush, I've enlisted the assistance of a couple of colleagues who can help you get organized if I'm already booked. If you're in the Atlanta area and you're
ready to get better organized, send us an email at suellen@creativeorder.com and we can set up a free Discovery Assessment.

Happy Organizing!!