Planning and Organizing 101

Good Morning Friends!!! I love it when people tell me they are “super organized” and then they walk in my house and see my 8 concurrent lists that direct every moment of my life. I just laugh a little when their eyes pop out of their heads and they realize that organization is the force that guides my entire life. It would be a sad and disappointing thing to say that those who are not naturally organized are not capable of being organized. That also just isn’t true. It may be a little more difficult and take more intentionality to be organized, but it is more than possible. Here are five tips for being organized when you’re just not naturally organized: Tip #1: Write everything down! I carry a notebook with me everywhere- everywhere! When I have an idea, I jot it down. When I think of yet another thing I need to do, I write that down too. This notebook is my sanity saver. I mean seriously, have you ever been on a date and then you get the inundation of all the things at h...

Good morning Friends! It’s our favorite time of the year!!! Tax season. (Cue the moans and groans and drop in my readership). This blog is being written in response to the question I posted on Facebook about 2 weeks ago. (FB: Ashley Seguin). Tax season can be a beast, especially if you are self-employed or have more than one job (side-hustles included). Growing up, my dad was self-employed most years. So, every year, my sister and I got to do (super-fun) volunteer work helping him get ready for tax season. Disclaimer: I am NOT a CPA. This blog is not tax advice; it is advice for organizing for taxes. In no way, can this blog or its writer be held responsible for your tax issues. Talk to your CPAs. Now that I have covered my butt legally, let’s get into a few tips for organizing tax documents. First of all, make a list of all the tax documents you need. If you are an employee, you will need a series of pages that are very different from those who are self-employed. College stu...

Good Morning Friends!!! I must attribute this blog idea to my husband. I posted a question of Facebook: If you wish one thing in your life was organized, what would it be? His answer: My construction project! For those of you who don’t know, there is a massive backstory to this “project.” After we got married, my husband insisted that he wanted to build our first house. I am not naturally an adventure-seeker, so I was not 100% on board with this idea at first. I knew it would be a logistical nightmare, and my ability to help would be severely limited. But he persisted, and I gave in. (He’s just too cute!) This process has a been a 10-month insane learning curve- not just learning how to physically do the tasks, but how to trust my husband through things I have never dealt with before. All that established, I decided to write a blog on how to organize for a large and overwhelming project- or just a normal project...not everybody builds a house! 1. The first thing you need to det...

Good morning Friends! Today I want to talk about getting rid of clutter: the why and the ever-so practical how. Why should I get rid of clutter. Psychology Today poses 4 reasons to get rid of clutter. 1. Your Home feels like your enemy. Your home is supposed to feel like a refuge. It should be a place where you can relax and unwind. Clutter absolutely destroys that feeling in your home. I know from personal experience that a cluttered house is stressful. Home was yet another load on the to do list, rather than a place to go to escape the chaos of the world. Having a clutter-free or at least a low-clutter home will contribute to your peace of mind. 2. It can kill your diet. If nothing else gets you, this one should. I know so many people set a New Years Resolution to date healthy and then in a moment of weakness at the grocery store, grab that bag of half price candy from the holidays. I am not innocent of this by any means. But a study at Cornell University showed that peo...

Good morning friends! I am in my final semester of college, and I am so excited! I graduate in May! If there is anything I know about succeeding in college, it is that organization is absolutely essential. Not being organized is collegiate suicide, and it is one of the biggest things I see college students struggle with. To be fair, being organized in college requires a certain amount of self-control and responsibility. Those who are organized but procrastinate have set themselves up for failure. So, I thought I might share a few of my own strategies for getting organized in college. 1. Get in front of it. Preparation should begin before the semester begins. Print out the syllabus and schedule for each class, and order the book weeks in advance. This way you will be prepared for classes, but you can also make sure that no assignments are due on the first day of class. Be prepared that some professors like to do that, and sometimes the amount of material demands it. Also, an adde...

  Good Morning Friends! My husband and I moved to our new house about 3 weeks ago, and I have been struggling to get into a solid routine. This week is the first week that I haven’t felt like I was just chasing the tyranny of the urgent. So, I thought that it might be a good idea to talk about how to organize your life into a routine. First, I want to talk about the importance of a routine. Routines are grounding. They allow the world to be chaos around you while you remain in a strong centered grounded position. Of course, moving throws all kinds of kinks into the creation of a new routine, but there are several basic steps that are consistent. 1. Now that you live somewhere different, you’ll need to know how far it takes to get to places that you need to frequent. My drive to work previously was 48-50 minutes long. The move brought it down to 17 minutes. At the same time it nearly doubled by drive to about anywhere else. Knowing this before your first day leaving a new house ...

Good morning friends! Little update: this last month has been INSANE for me. I started my final semester of college. I have been clinical teaching for the past 5 weeks. We had a last push to finish the house we’ve been building so we could move in before our apartment lease was up. And we moved. The last three weeks have been a whirlwind of trying really hard to develop to a new normal. That’s really what I want to address in this blog. Sometimes, life just throws you for a loop. My sanity has been tested in more ways than one in the last few weeks. I promised my self when I started this blog that I would post one a week, so I worked hard before the move to have four or five blogs scheduled to go out so I didn’t have to touch them during this crazy season. But last week, I just didn’t have time. And sometimes that happens. So this week I want to give us permission. If you’ve ever heard of the Enneagram, I am an Enneagram Type 1. I am a gold on the color test; a Type A personality i...