In 1980 or there abouts when I was a teenager in Dublin, Ireland, my eldest sister, Jennifer, wanted to go to the University of London in England to do a Masters degree in ergonomics. There was nowhere in Ireland to study this and our only choice was London. But we could not afford it. So, together as family, we researched all the big company’s in Ireland who had money and drafted a letter to them asking to help send my sister to university. Because I had learnt to type by that point, I was elected to type the many letters to send to every successful company working in Ireland. Believe me it was a lot of letters to type. There were a lot of no replies, a lot of rejections but a few companies did reply offering to help. One of those companies was Apple – they had a factory in Ireland. I think this was in the early 80′s.

It’s been quite a while since I wrote a post on my blog. I tried all kinds of tactics to get me to put “pen to paper”… even giving myself a whole day to write…. well let’s just say the house is really clean and all the blinds have been hand washed. Still no blog.

My mother died. Last year. It was such a shock, so sudden. I felt like an onion; every day a new layer of grief, of retrieved lost memories would unfold. It was all I could do to just keep going. And as an entrepreneur one has no choice. It’s my business, if I don’t work, I don’t earn. I had no choice but to keep going.

This is a very personal blog. And I guess that’s why I have written nothing, or next to nothing in over a year. How personal does one go with a professional blog? Would it be of relevance or interest to readers?

I think it is. A good percentage of my clients are people who have, or are going through, grief. It could be the loss of a loved one, but it could just as equally be the end of a marriage or career. And the majority of my clients are working professionals who run their own businesses. I can tell how long an individual has left it before seeking help just by the type of chaos that accumulates. It could be months, a couple of years or a decade. It’s usually a decade though. A decade of things building up, dreams being put on the back burner and health issues being ignored.

I remember the moment when it first hit me that my mother wasn’t just ill but was about to die. It was like my whole soul turned to dust. I explained to my clients what was happening and that I would have to postpone our work. They were amazing and so understanding.

I knew from my experience of working with people who had lost a loved one that piles build up, things get lost and before you know it you are surrounded and engulfed in documents, To-Do lists and chaos. I run my own business, an organizing business no less. I could not afford to fall behind. I also wanted to be able to be fully with my family at this time and not worry about my business. The biggest struggle with being self-employed is creating boundaries between your personal and professional life.

And so, a year later I am sitting down to write this blog.Of course the loss of my mother will always be with me. A client of mine put it this way: “Grief is like this backpack you are carrying, that you will carry your whole life. It’s always there. Some days it feels like you are carrying a backpack of bricks and other days it’s just lip balm”. Up until now it’s just been bricks I have been carrying. I so appreciate the days when it’s as light as lip balm.

There’s all kinds of help out there when you are struggling with grief and loss. But there’s little or nothing about how keep the day to day practicality of living your life together. Or even what to expect, what to be on guard for. The following are just some tips that I think you might find useful if you have been through or are going through a deep loss and feel like you are loosing control of the basic skills in managing your life.

MEMORY:

I found that my memory was no longer reliable (actually it’s still goes blank occassionally) and this causes enormous anxiety and problems…. particularly if you have arranged to meet someone, a potential client say, and you have no idea where you wrote down their number and address, to let them know you are running late (because you can’t find your keys!). It is important to keep everything in one place – a note book.

Get a note book. I like the one by Blueline (A9 Series) because it’s hard-backed and you can open it flat. Then get some of those tabs Avery sells called Note Tabs. In the front of this book you will write any messages, conversations, addresses of where you need to go, phone numbers etc. There is a space at the top right hand of the page for putting the date – make sure you do this every time you start a new page. Then halfway or so into the book put a stick-on tab that says “To Do’s”. This is where you will write your To Do’s. Again when you write a To Do list date it at the top right.

I also have an app on my iPhone for shopping because I would go blank when I got to the grocery store and come home with the oddest things. This way when I entered my drugstore or supermarket I would check my shopping list app and see what I needed.

If you have everything in one place then when you forget, which you will do a lot of, you know where to look.

DECISION MAKING

Another major problem that affects even the most mundane moments. It’s quite amazing how hard it is to make a decision when you are in a fog. Create some rules for yourself. Here are some that helped me.

Perishable Items:

At the beginning of every month go through your fridge and kitchen cupboards and dump anything that is past it’s sell by date. Don’t “if, and or but” yourself over this just do it. The goal here is to prevent a situation getting out of control. You don’t want to labour it – it’s a rule and a routine – do it and move on.

Housework:

This is a hard one. Housework never ends but during times of grief and loss it quickly gets out of control. If you don’t have a cleaner and can’t afford one then each week focus on one room, deep clean it and maintain it that week. Then the next week focus on another room. Maintaining a tidy house is easier if you know the deep cleaning is being done on a rotation basis.

Laundry:

Not only could I not decide what to wear but I couldn’t decide if I needed to wash it, iron it or purge it! I am not usually this anal but when you can’t decide what to wear because you don’t know how you feel because you are not sure that last time you felt anything then pulling out the “Martha Stewart” is not a bad thing. I did this simple thing in my wardrobe that really helped me. I categorised my wardrobe in the usual way one would (trousers, skirts, dresses, shirts etc) but then I organized them by colour. I did this with everything and it really helped me put an outfit together on the worst of days.

If you can’t face doing your laundry then drop it off somewhere to be done. It comes back all sorted, folded and perfect looking – and seriously you can’t put a price on that.

PAPER MANAGEMENT:

Paper and document management is a massive problem for everyone so its even more challanging during these times. You need to have a system in place for paper management. I can’t stress this enough. It is neigh on impossible to manage papers when you are in emotional upheaval let alone make a decision about them. Spend the money early on, on getting someone in to put a filing system in place. If you can’t find what you want in five seconds the method you are using is not working. If you do this early on it will be a fraction of the cost financially and emotionally than doing it two, five or ten years later. Opening up old wounds when you have finally found peace is doubly heartbreaking and takes ten times longer to sort (and therefore ten times more expensive). So get a paper management system in place.

When mail comes in break it down into two categories. One will be “Actionable” – i.e. a bill that needs to be paid, an event that has to be scheduled, a letter mailed. The other will be “Filing” – i.e. bank statements, manuals, warranties, cards etc. Don’t make it any more complicated than that. It’s hard to make a decision about something you don’t have a feeling for. So don’t. You just need to be able to find it. When the filing tray is full then file it away (which will be easy because the system you have in place takes care of that). Every day go through your actionable drawer/box and do what makes sense that day to do.

Newspapers, magazines and fliers:

Keep them one month and then recycle. I know you think you would like to read them when you have more time, or they’ll be good for future reference, or you think of someone you want to send the article to. But you won’t and you will just add to your sense of overwhelment and guilt. The grieving process can take years. And you need to put yourself first here… not something that really belongs on a “one day”  To Do list. Again, the goal here is  to prevent something getting out of control. Every month recycle newspapers, magazines and fliers etc.. that you have had a month.

TIME:

I had no sense of time – at all. Also I would get to the end of a day and it would seem like I had done nothing. When it came to scheduling clients I miscalculated how long it would take to get to their businesses. Or I would show up on the wrong day. I remember waiting in a doctors waiting room for over two hours before I realised I had come on the wrong day! I was so sure I was meant to be there, I never properly checked in – just said “Hi” and sat down.

Day Timer – doesn’t matter whether you have a smart phone or a wall calander – write it down. Then at the start of each day check to make sure you know what day it is. You can confirm this via your computer or smart phone. Sounds horrifying but time kind of morphs and you do have to make sure you know what day it is. Once you know the day and date then look over your schedule  so that you get a spatial awareness of what’s ahead.

Also I found writing everything I did into my schedule very useful. Because I would forget how long ago I had spoken with someone. Even if I was just out and about doing errands – I would mark it in my schedule. If I got together with a friend, I would put it in my schedule (even after we met). It’s just difficult to tell what happened recently and what happened…. well a year ago.

INVOICING:

This has got to be a well oiled machine. I invested in a great invoicing system that is web based and very user friendly Freshbooks. I would not have been able to stay on top off things had I not had such a system in place. My billings went out on time, clients got billed for the right days, times and supplies and I could do it from anywhere.

It’s hard going through loss but when you have to run and maintain a business on top of that… well it’s really hard. And I can say that now from personal experience. I was fortunate that I knew from working with and organizing individuals that I would  have challenging times ahead in keeping my business running smoothly. So I got all my systems, processes and environments in shape and today my business is thriving, my clients are happy and I was able to take personal time out for myself, my family and the grieving process and still maintain “business as usual”.

St. Patrick’s Day is only days away. And for me it’s an odd mixture of feelings that come to the surface. When I grew up in Ireland St. Patrick’s Day was a very simple affair. You went to mass, watched a tiny parade in the rain and went home to dry off. But it was not the big drink festival it is around the world now. I’ve never really got into either version to be honest – I would much rather Irish music, or Irish writers, or Irish artists or even Irish cooking were celebrated on this day. Popular demand dictates otherwise.

However, Martin Zibauer of Cottage Life approached me regarding traditional Irish dishes he might write about. I was delighted to be of help. My mother’s Irish Stew came to mind immediately. I dug the recipe up and sent it to Martin. I warned him that though it did seem like a pretty bland meal it was “simply delicious”. Martin made the stew and wrote about it for Cottage Life:

Cottage Life

What was interesting about this article was that the dish was so simple – really just lamb, potatoes and one herb. But it’s simplicity allows the ingredients and the meal delight the senses. And I agree with Martin that culturally now-a-days we have become so complicated with our tastes.

It is the same with our lives. We create homes that accommodate so many purposes and needs. We have kitchen gadgets especially designed for one function and one dish. We have creams for so many different parts of our bodies.

Sometimes simple really is best and sometimes it’s also delicious. This year see where you can simplify your life so that what’s important can really be enjoyed and savored.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

With all the best of intentions, even buying the latest “organizing” gadget… You even purge everything you no longer want. And there you stand looking at your desk and no matter where you position the new paper tray … well it just doesn’t fit nicely and your desk looks even worse. It doesn’t even make it look organized! So you rearrange your lamp, move the pen, paper clip, and business card holders and stack the books and put them under the paper tray.

Seeing a solution. It’s interesting, I have been thinking about what we really see, what we think we see and how hard it is to see with fresh eyes.  When I begin my work with a client I do literally bring fresh eyes to a situation. I also bring a lot of other skills but it’s what and how I see that separates me from my client.

And until the other day I never really gave it too much examined thought. I was with a client, in her new home. We were working on her home office. She mentioned something about needing a hook for her tea towels in her kitchen. She brought up the subject of her tea towels and the hook quite a few times. She had bought a hook but it was the wrong hook – it didn’t fit on the door beneath her sink. We went into her kitchen and she stood, dumb struck, looking at  the problem of her tea towel. I asked her why she felt she needed a hook for the tea towel? “Well in my old kitchen my hook was right here under the sink. It worked so well for me”.

I asked her why it couldn’t go on the handle of the stove? She looked at her stove as if it were the oddest place to put a tea towel. “But I always kept it on a hook under my sink – it worked well there”. She tried hanging the tea towel on the stove and it worked. And it made sense because it would also dry.

But the interaction over the tea towel really struck me. And over the next couple of days it kept coming back into my mind. What had really happened for my client is that she was “seeing” her old kitchen, relatiing to her old kitchen. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to organize she just wasn’t seeing with fresh eyes.

We all do it. Think we are seeing but really we are not. Here are some tips on “seeing”

1.  Take a photo of the area in question. Sometimes it helps to look at something through the eyes of a camera.

2.  Itemize every single item in the area. Say it’s a mantlepiece. Write down everything thing that is on it. Including match boxes, pens, bits of paper – everything. I can assure you that when you itemize everything you will realise that in fact you had not seen at least 25% of it.

3.  Don’t group things in your mind when looking. If there are candles on your mantlepiece then count how many.

Let me know how you get on! And drop me a line if you have any questions.

All during the month of March I am offering very special savings. If you book my services I will apply a 10% discount. It’s such a great time of year to commit to yourself and having a healthy, functional and relaxing home. It’s also a great time to get your office into tip-top shape – changing it into somewhere that you can focus, be efficient and productive.

Give me a call or drop me an email and let’s get started together.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Here’s a quote I read recently and want to share with you now:-

“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change my town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realized that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could indeed have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”

Unknown Monk
1100AD

Most people I work with who are excited about change in their life also experience being overwhelmed by the thought of what that change involves. When I work with a client we discuss what’s holding them back, what systems need to be put in place – not just to keep their life moving but expanding. And almost without exception that’s when the first hurdle arrives. The magnitude not just of what needs doing in one’s environment but also within oneself comes clearly into focus. The system, the structure to support the system and the support itself is there because we have put it in place but it is precisely when clarity is allowed a glimpse into reality that the big picture of where you are and where you want to be seems an overwhelming journey.

When we embark on change, whatever that change may be, personal or professional that desire, that passion for change comes from a big place inside of us.   Focusing on the BIG picture and looking at your current reality in the present can lead to a big overwhelm. It is important to know the big picture and keep it in your mind’s eye, kind of like having a lighthouse that guides you and keeps you going in the right direction. But in order to achieve a goal, get where you want to go, you need to focus on where you are and the path in front of you. The work I do is about creating a path of least resistance for your journey. Your work is to keep the passion in your heart.

I have found that quote so helpful because for me it reminds me to take care of the details, take care of myself because then that guiding passion and light wont go out.

It doesn’t matter how organized you are, doing your taxes means two things;

1. Taking stock of the year gone by in a purely factual way. How did it all add up, how did all the work, the effort, the dreams and the disappointments – how did they all add up and what do they reveal on paper? When you look back and reflect over another year gone by it is with feelings. Tax time forces you, as a business owner, contractor and artist to reflect on the past year as the sum of its worth. There is a terrific opportunity here – it might not have been the year you were hoping for but the perspective you can get when doing your taxes will give you insight into how to make next year the best ever.

2. Dealing with a lot of receipts of all types, shapes and memories.. and adding them up. There is so much paper to deal with when sitting down to “doing” your taxes.

Here’s the thing about receipts: You have to keep them, you have to categorize them and you have to add them up at the end of the year.  I think most people just stuff them in a really large envelope and at the end of the year pass them off to their accountant to have someone else sort them. But if you don’t do that, and I don’t, and I think it is an important part of taking stock of where you spend your money, how you spend it and where you could be spending it more effectively as a business then you will need a system of keeping your receipts so that when it comes to you adding them up, it’s not such a dreadful and boring ordeal. Here’s a solution that looks good on a shelf, is easy to maintain and was very quick to add up at the end of the year.

The Binder & Box

Get a binder and a nice box – maybe match it to the colour of the binder and the box should be no bigger than the binder – or deeper. Choose a large binder, 2 inches or bigger. In the binder you will put clear sleeves which are individually labelled by category (Research and Development, Travel etc). The idea is to put your receipts in the box at the end of the day/week. When the box is quite full of receipts then that is when you transfer the receipts into their categorized clear sleeves.

The reason I found this method to work personally was because the box means that there’s one place and one place alone where receipts are put when they first leave your pockets, bags and car. It is also portable so when you go to categorize your receipts in the binder you can take the box and binder and do it while you watch TV or chat on the phone. Some people keep their receipts in categories in the filing cabinet but I find means inevitably that the receipts never get put in. Categorizing your receipts is something you can do in your least productive times.

And the reason I have a binder to put receipts in a categorized fashion is that at the end of the year when you sit down to do your taxes it is the worst part of the whole process and you also forget what a receipt was all about anyway or it’s faded. It really does pay to do the categorizing during the year.

Hope this helps. Drop me a line if you have any specific questions.

Really it’s all about perspective; how we see or experience something is not necessarily the only way or even, at times (like for me yesterday), vaguely realistic. It can be very frustrating not to mention alarmingly confusing when we find ourselves not being able to figure out how to organize our home when we seem to be able to have a perfectly organized office. Or when we were single somehow everything found a place but now that we are sharing our life with someone we find it almost impossible to even find a place for our tooth brush! It’s very common.

Yesterday I had the perfect excuse to go for my first drive in a car on my own! I was so looking forward to it. I needed to pick up some supplies for a client in north Toronto and drop them off to her home in east Toronto and following that I had a meeting not too far away. It was ideal. I got into the car and made my virgin voyage odyssey. I drove to the store, picked up the supplies and then headed east to her house. I couldn’t believe how easy everything seemed with a car. I drove up her street, saw her driveway and drove up. I thought to myself “Wow, this is so cool!” I did a flawless reverse out of the driveway when I had dropped everything off and headed to my meeting. The whole day was perfect, blue skies, hardly any traffic – couldn’t have been happier. When I returned home I dropped my client a quick note saying I had left her supplies in her back garden on the glass table.

My computer made a sound informing me a message had come in… from my client marked URGENT. “How odd? I wonder what’s up?” I read her message. “We don’t have a glass table in our back garden” Blimey!!!!! Where the +%$#@ had I left her things! I mean I distinctly remember driving into her driveway. I am sure it was her driveway. Turns out it wasn’t. I had left all her things in a complete strangers back garden. The stranger happened to be a friend and neighbour of my client so all worked out well.

But here’s why I mention this: I had only ever approached someone’s house as a passenger or pedestrian. I had never driven up a driveway. Until yesterday evening all driveways looked alike to me. Of course I didn’t realise that all driveways looked alike to me but obviously they did or I wouldn’t have driven up a complete strangers driveway, unloaded my car and made the few trips back and forth to their back garden dropping strange boxes off onto their glass table. I have no idea what they thought looking out at my happy face.

When we take on a new role, be it as a parent, a partner, or entrapreeur – we think that everything looks and is the same. But our world has changed but we are still looking at it through our old eyes – and they don’t give the true picture. Organizing your office when you are now sharing it in the same location as your home and personal life does change everything. It means seeing things from a new and completely different perspective. A lot of my work when I first start with clients is about getting them so “see” things in a new way. Not trying to fit the new life into the old perspective. Your life changes regardless of whether you see it or not. It’s all about perspective and learning to “see” in a new way. I promise I will never look at a driveway in the old way again!