The Organising Guru from the Oprah show
Two weeks ago, AAPO (our industry association) celebrated N.O.W.  With workshops, stalls and a special breakfast with Peter Walsh, organised by Dymo, our major sponsor for that week.
Hugely enjoyable; I have never been at the Westin Hotel, which is a beautiful conversion of the old GPO on Martin Place in Sydney. The Architect in me was very impressed.
The cook in me was impressed with the service and absolutely delicious breakfast. There was a whole table of Organisers and Peter Walsh always makes a point to get the message out there that POs exist in Australia, too. He even recognised me from the last years, which made me feel very special indeed.
One of your questions and one in the room for Peter Walsh were: what’s your most important organising tip? “It’s not about the stuff! Leave the stuff for a moment and think about a vision. A vision for your live, a vision for work. Following from there you should be able to create a more concrete vision of your workplace. And that doesn’t mean what filing system you want or what colour pencil holder. Words like welcoming, productive and inspiring came up in the room. That’s your motivation to get it done, getting rid of everything that is in the way of that vision.
Another one was: “I never have time” And I completely agree with Peter Walsh here. “It’s not about time, it’s about importance. If it’s important enough you’ll find time. If you think, your employer doesn’t value a clutter free environment, it’s hard to maintain one.” As a leader you have to give your team permission to create a clutter free desk. “When you are organised, you function on a much higher level.”

A couple of other quotes, I thought worth mentioning here:
“Clutter is a decision delayed”
“Later is the best friend of clutter”
“The most important minutes in your workday are the last 10. Set up the workspace for tomorrow”

please have a look here for my guest blog about camping simplicity

LessMess was featured in the August Issue of Prevention Magazine.
Here is the article by Sally Kuzemchak and Christina Sexton

The kitchen is the heart of your home, but it might also be the heart of your unwanted weight. Everything from the size of your plate to the wattage of your bulbs has a direct effect on what and how much you eat, according to research published in the Annual Review of Nutrition. Here are seven signs that you kitchen ins sabotaging your waistline – and simple fixes to get the scale moving in the right direction.
You Stack Mail On the Benchtop
“When your kitchen becomes a dumping ground for clutter, you tend to avoid cooking, which is a problem,” says Susanne Thiebe, owner of Sydney-based organising company LessMess.” Often, people might have healthy fresh food hidden in the back of the fridge, bought with good intentions to cook. But when your kitchen bench or dining table is covered in homework, paperwork and odd socks, it’s too easy to give up on preparing a nutritious meal and just order takeaway. About 95% of my clients keep clutter on their dining table and eat from trays in front of the TV and wonder why they’re overweight!”
Solution
Take baby steps with kitchen clutter:” Clear one area of the fridge at a time,” advises Thiebe.” This can take as few as seven minutes. When you finish plan to do another the next day, so you don’t get overwhelmed and stop.” The best advice Thiebe gives her clients? Always unpack the dishwasher. “It’s not a cupboard for clean plates! If you leave clean plates in the machine, there is nowhere for dirty ones to go except in the sink or on the benchtop. Lack of bench space discourages you from taking time to cook a healthy dinner.” Organising is a skill.”
Anyone can learn to keep their kitchen in order, but you have to want to,” adds Thiebe.

DeclutterOnline
The ABC of Organising

A live on line group coaching course aimed at people who are overwhelmed with stuff.

We tackle decluttering, organising and time management to get you back on track and give you more time to live your life.

Live and interactive. You get time during the sessions to put into practice what you learned. We don’t just talk – we DO. We get over the procrastination.

Courses are currently conducted via SKYPE.

31/08/2011    Bathrooms
7/09/2011       Wardrobes
14/09/2011    Laundries
21/09/2011    Time Management

Lessons start at 12.30 and go for 90 min. In this time you will learn the secrets and get started on your own organising mission.
You can book the whole course for $289 or book separate units for $60.
to book go to my website and find the right course under the DeclutterOnline tab – and hey, I finally figured out how to make the PayPal button work!!

Think!!!!
Take responsibility and don’t always cc everyone – just so you are on the safe side.
Someone  delegated that task to you because they trust you that you can do the job and they want to focus on different matters at hand. You are actually showing that you are not quite up to the job.
Ask about a company policy surrounding e mail. If your company doesn’t have one – maybe it’s your job to get the ball rolling. Remember: up to 30 % of time is wasted with attending to e mail. That should get HR and Finances interested in the project!!!
Don’t always ‘reply all’. Same as cc and bcc. Not everyone needs to know and just because outsiders send their e mails to everyone (they might not have thought about it) doesn’t mean you have to do the same.
Have a go at deleting e-mails in regular intervals. Diarise it, or do what I do, I take my laptop on long drives, get hubby to drive and delete e mails.If you are using outlook, sort your e-mail by the ‘from’ column. That way, your brain doesn’t have to switch between persons and projects too much. Deal with some arising issues straight away. Flag others and put a deadline on them. Don’t forget the sent items. It tends to be a bit harder, because we are all such geniuses that we don’t want to get rid of our own creative writing.
Set up rules in outlook about into which folder e mails should go. For example newsletters you subscribe to. If you don’t get to it in a month, chances are they are outdated, and you can ‘ctrlA’ the whole folder and … Off it goes. Once you have done a good purge, delete the deleted item folder. ‘CtrlA’ should become your favorite key combination.
Have a separate email account for mail outs, Face book notifications and Newsletters. That way, you are not distracted by a constant flow of e mails telling you that someone has written on your wall or very unimportant mail outs about cat proofing your garden.
Same goes for private and business e mails. If you have separate accounts, it’s much easier not to check them on the weekend. It’s life balance we are talking about!
If you want to know more about e-mail and time management why not book our 90 min on line course.

Sometime, I need inspiration.  Last week I was at the Women & Leadership Conference organised by Macquarie University. I went to get inspired and to actively network my newest Organising venture to potential clients: Corporate Workshops about organising your office, time management and e mail etiquette.
Lot’s of people were really interested, and I was thrilled when one of the speakers mentioned, that employees can spend up to 30% of their time in an office dealing with e mail – what a waste!!!!!
These are the things I want you to start thinking about. This is what these corporate workshops are all about. Start thinking so you find a solution that uses less time and space.
Apart from this, there were some brilliant (mostly female) speakers. Dr Fiona Wood, 2005 Australian of the year who has SIX children and answered the question about how she manages all that: ” something has to give you can’t have it all, but you can make a conscious decision of what you let go”.
I learnt about Mentoring from Amanda Phillips, Director of APA Training and will implement a Mentoring program for Professional Organisers into my business.
Dr. Suzy Green talked about the idea of identifying your strengths and using them to better yourself. Something I always do with my customers but will focus on even more.
And than, as a key note speaker for the gala dinner  Julia Morris. She wore the red shoes, in case you are wondering!

As promised, a couple of weeks ago, I am going to go a bit more into detail about the different types of office infrastructure = stationery.
Let’s start with Suspension Filing, Manila Folders and Clear Tabs.
One doesn’t go without the other, meaning, the Hanging File does stay in the drawer and is labelled with Clear Tabs. Manila Folders act as sub dividers and are the part you take out.
Suspension Filing is perfect for people, a colleague of mine calls ‘chucker ‘. Chuckers like the quickness of flinging something into a drawer. Did you know it takes 7 separate steps to file something into a Leaver Arch Binder compared to 3 for Suspension Filing? That’s a huge amount of time, so ask yourself: “Am I a chucker or a tucker?”
And there is paperwork that sits better in Suspension Filing.  It’s such a quick way to file everything you are still working on. Things you might have, in the past, before you started reading this newsletter, just left on your desk!
Files shouldn’t be too big, once they get to more than 2.5 cm, divide them or file them differently. By that stage, they might not be so current any more. This idea, of filing in different stationery for different stages of a file is called Paper Flow.
When you have a look at a Manila Folder, you will see that one side is overlapping the other. That’s where you label them. I would strongly suggest using pencil, so you can re use them when the paper moves on.
The possibilities of categorising are varied. Put like things together in a Manila folder – you can colour code if you want, so everything private is green, everything business is blue, everything urgent is red!
Then put similar Manila folders under one mother category in a hanging file – mind the size, don’t go more than 2.5 cm.
The hanging file then gets a label in the plastic thing you can slide or stick on top of the hanging file. (Clear Tab). Again, you can colour code, but you can group things by where you place the Clear Tab on the file: financial info has its tab on the very left, staff info in the middle, correspondence on the right. So if you are looking for a private letter you would look for a green manila folder with the clear tab on the right. You can use more than one clear tab on a suspension file. You can have them all on the left and flip the whole hanging file over so the tab is on the right once you are done with a file. Very nice for those who like ticking things off their to do list.
Give it a go, it sounds more complicated than it is. And if it is all too hard – why not hire a Professional Organiser to talk it through with you in your office?
However, please always remember: don’t over file, keep categories as broad as possible, and when you know you are not going to use that file very often, don’t put too much work into being detailed about filing it. The fewer categories you crate the easier it is to file and find things! And finding things is what we aim for.

a colleague of mine in Christchurch/NZ is re focusing her business after the earthquake(s) and is holding a closing down sale of her organising products.
Here is my favourite one, but there is plenty more  through her website: http://www.totallyorganised.co.nz/home

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Our remote coaching course: DeclutterOnline-  now has it’s own facebook fan page:   like us!

these are the topics and dates for next term’s Skype based remotecoaching courses.
They are a fantastic, cheap way to get started. Or to just check  a Professional Organiser out. You can do one at a time or go full throttle and book them all. We are offering them at different times of the day – if you can’t make your favourite course, please drop us a line and we’ll try to look after you next season.
All courses are just $60 to find out more, just click on the links through to  my website. Or just comment here and we’ll get back to you.

• Wardrobe Workout – how to have an organised wardrobe 20.7.2011
• Meal planning- how to keep your family healthy 22.7.2011
• Loveable Living Rooms – do you suffer from CHAOS? 28.7.11
• Tackle your timetable – time management 29.7.2011
• Better Bathrooms – how to get controle over your shampoo collection 1.8.11
• Liberated Laundries – how changing your washing basket can change your laundry 2.8.11

I think they are all quite different things:
Most of my clients would have “a bit too much stuff” . It mostly started with a life changing event: having a baby, getting divorced, losing a loved one, moving, new job… We help them getting back on track, and they find the routine they once had and (hopefully) live happily ever after. Being unorganised is very much in the eye of the beholder – if you don’t have a problem but your mother in law has with the state of your household: “you don’t have a problem”
I haven’t had many collectors yet – not what I consider one, anyway. I had people claiming they collect things, but if a collection is not displayed or organised and enjoyed with pride, I don’t consider it a collection. There is no shame involved with having a (vast) collection. You are happy for people to come over and have a look.  A collection has focus. I guess most collectors are happy with the state of their collection and don’t look for an Organiser. This doesn’t mean that someone else wouldn’t have a problem with your collection. My grandmother collected Bohemian Crystal. Mostly, vases and glasses and bowls. She loved them, displayed and used them. When she passed away, nobody wanted it – for us, it was stuff!
Most people enquiring about my services would mention the word hoarder at one stage or another. However, I agree with one of my colleagues, who always asks at that point: “are you on any medication or are you seeing a specialist about it?”  Hoarding is a serious mental disposition, and I am sorry to say, not easily fixed. It needs determination and time, and other people helping, like Councillors, Psychiatrists and Professional Organisers. Hoarders often don’t see themselves as having a problem, which doesn’t help if you try to help. The first step is making them aware of what’s really going on in their lives – what they are missing out on because of their addiction. As Peter Walsh always puts it:” what is more important, people or stuff”?