Do you like stories? I do! My last tele-class with Margaret Lukens, veteran organizer, coach and NAPO educator, had a story about a cookie. I had signed up for the class to learn how to better help my Time and Organizing clients start new habits.

The story: Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, did an experiment on himself. He had a habit he wanted to change. Every day around 3:30 p.m. he would get up from his desk, go to the cafeteria, buy a cookie and eat it while chatting with friends. Problem was, he started to gain some weight. He noticed, and his wife noticed. He decided to break the cookie habit.

In his book he says to change a habit you must identify the routine surrounding the habit. So he broke it down to each small action this time of day. He described every small thing he did at this time of day, trying to discover the cue, the trigger for the cookie habit.

Well, after weeks of experimenting, he discovered the cue was the time of day. But what was his reward? Every habit has a reward, he postulated. Did he feel just as good if he ate an apple, for example? He did. After trying lots of combinations, he realized his reward was actually chatting with friends.

His next step was to create a plan to change the habit. His plan included following his cue to get up from his desk, but instead of getting a cookie, he just went straight to his friends’ offices and chatted with them for 10 minutes. In this way, he still got the social reward he craved without the weight gain! Of course, his discipline wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t able to quit “cold turkey,” but eventually he kicked the cookie habit.

What I love about Lukens’ class is this: she always asks each of us great questions that cause us to think about our own habits. The habit I want to change is to stay focused on tasks that require concentration even when I think of something else that needs to be done. It was a powerful moment when she helped me realize the strength of my fear that I will forget that newly remembered task if I don’t write it down right away. My reward is the peace of mind that I have it captured.

So what I decided to do: instead of getting up to write personal to-do’s on the whiteboard, I will capture them on a Post-it at my desk, and stick it to the whiteboard later that day. It’s not perfect, but it is better.

What is one habit that is stealing your time? Angry Birds, TV, Facebook? Try Duhigg’s method on yourself. Experiment. Be patient with yourself; it can take up to 254 days** to establish a complex habit. It usually helps to have someone to keep you accountable, and I would be happy to be there for you. Tell me your habit and I’ll check in with you monthly.

**research by Phillipa Lolly, Great Britain

Recently, I had the pleasure of picking pears at a pear farm run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The light passed through green leaves in the morning light, and it seemed a green glow surrounded the trees. We worked quickly, trying to fill as many bins as possible (the pears go to an LDS cannery from which they get distributed freely to needy people throughout the world). It is a bit tricky to find some of those pears, because they are hiding in and under the leaves. But even a novice can fill many containers quickly when there’s a plentiful harvest. The big aha for me: sometimes when I would reach for a pear, I had two pears sharing a stem. At first I randomly selected which of the two pears to pick–whichever one I reached first. If I chose the smaller of the two the larger one sometimes fell to the ground, making it unusable. (Once on the ground, pears cannot go to the cannery.) Faced with a choice, I trained myself to pick the biggest, most plump pear. If I could only have one, I wanted it to be the biggest pear.  If I had to sacrifice a smaller one, so be it.  So I learned to get the most pears possible–or have success–I had to reach for the biggest one.
With all the reaching, bending, twisting and heavy lifting I did that day, my shoulders and back were sore the next day! Whenever I used those muscles over the next few days, I definitely remembered picking pears. My effort caused some pain, yes, but the success and sense of accomplishment was well worth the effort.

This has application in life and business. They say it’s better to aim for the stars and miss than aim for the mud and hit.  I aimed for the biggest, best pear, and I need to do that in business too in order to be a success. It’s easy to say, I’m not ready for that market yet, I’ll stay in this smaller, comfortable one, serving the same kind of clients I have been for years. I recently had a conversation with Barbara Hemphill, an organizer I respect greatly.   She advised me to decide on the direction I wanted my business to go and focus all my advertising, networking and budget there. Otherwise, she argued, I am really trying to promote two services and my resources are divided.  In order to follow her wise words, I would need to let go of marketing for home organizing.  That is a scary move because right now a large percentage of my business comes from homeowners.  So in order to grow in the direction I see Efficient Spaces going, I have to sacrifice some comfort by seeking out larger companies.

Reaching for success is just like reaching for the best pear. You have to look for the opportunity, sometimes looking underneath the leaves, at all the possibilities. You also have to want it. You need to be ready to sacrifice, even go through some discomfort or growing pains in the process. Ask yourself why you are reaching for that pear, that goal. Why is it important to you? What is your motivation?

My motivation for getting a multitude of  pears was to serve others, to give a hand up from unemployment or poverty. My Number 1 motivation for Efficient Spaces’ success is to make my clients’ business more productive and profitable by sharing my unique spacial and time management skills.

Success: Are you willing to reach for it even if you have to stretch to get it?  What is your next step to take your business to a higher level?

What did I do on vacation? I played, of course! I went to my Dad’s, the home in Maine where I grew up, and organized about 2500 photos.

This is a great summer project for those long, slow summer afternoons when you just want to stay close to your air conditioner.

2500 photos: For me, projects like that are fun. I got to look at all the photos my Dad had in albums, which spanned from ancestors in the 1700s to the birth of my brother Dan’s most recent baby. That is why it’s fun for me, I’m really into pictures. They tell a story that words sometimes cannot capture.

I’m not going to tell you it was all perfect and I didn’t have some rough moments, especially with the odds and ends, the pictures that didn’t seem to fit in any of the categories I’d set up . . . that is the hardest part for me.
And I was wishing for a more flexible album type, one which had clear pockets pages that could be removed and shuffled around when I discovered photos later that should have been in that album. But as my Dad reminded me, it doesn’t have to be perfect!

Photo Safety
First things first. And that would be . . . photo safety.
Make sure to get your photos out of magnetic albums. To spot a magnetic album, look for sticky pages that have a whole-page plastic sleeve that peels back. Also, the glue will have a striped look. When you bought the magnetic albums, the glue was white. In a few of my Dad’s older albums, the glue around the edges of the page was a deep yellow color. And a few of the photos I removed had some “tracks” from the glue.

When that yellow spreads so that it is under your pictures, the acid in the glue will start a slow aging process in your pictures. If left in there long enough, pictures will show the stripe pattern of the glue that is underneath them. Yuck! It is time to get them out!

Seriously — It is better to take them out, rub off any glue residue from the back of the photos, and stick them in a shoebox than to have them in that album. Preferably a shoebox lined with acid-free paper, of course.

Finding Patterns
In order to sort that many photos, I did just one album at a time. I took out the photos that were out of order or didn’t ‘fit’ in that album, which sometimes meant most of the album.

After a while, I noticed patterns–which is what organizers do !–and each album became a certain time span or theme. For example, my Mom had started a Christmas album, which had all the Christmas pictures from our childhood to the present. In my picture search, I discovered several years’ worth of earlier Christmases, so I added them at the beginning of the album. It’s important to work with what you’ve already got and make it better.

At the end I had several small stacks of photos that didn’t ‘fit’ in any of the albums, or that should have gone in an album which was full. This was one of the times when Dad reminded me it didn’t have to be perfect. I had to make some hard decisions. One of those stacks of pictures was from the weekend we had Kate blessed. She is our first child. I felt a little guilty for taking them out of the album they had been in. But in the end, it worked out well and she got to be in an album with her cousins.

It all turned out well by the end of the day. Dad’s pictures were safely separated from the magnetic pages, and well organized into pocket albums. A good day’s play–I mean–work!

I saw so many Garage Sales and Yard Sales this weekend! Spring has definitely sprung. I love to see sales around the city, because it means people are cleaning out their surplus.

Good for you! I say.

We tend to accumulate “stuff” in the good old US of A. Trends, gadgets, great deals that cause us to buy way more of one item than we would ever use and our own desire to surround ourselves with pretty things and feel prosperous– all contribute to our society of over-indulgence.

A lot of that ‘stuff’ we buy, we love it for a little while, and then we stop using it. After some time passes, we realize we haven’t used it in a while, so it either stays where it is, becoming clutter, or you take it out to the garage, to sit there for who knows how long.

Oh, I know how long–until your next garage sale, that’s when!

See what I mean? THAT’s why I love garage sales. When you know you are hosting your annual spring garage sale, you tend to really evaluate the stuff in your closets, attic/basement and garage. For me, I know I actually go through the house LOOKING for things that we haven’t used in a while (especially kids toys and clothes). There’s nothing like an upcoming garage sale to motivate you to purge! It actually creates a sense of urgency to find things you haven’t been using, things that don’t have a future with you.

Though I’m not an expert at garage sales, I am an expert at purging. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you are evaluating what stays and what goes to the garage sale.

Ask yourself:
• Do I use this?
• Do I love it?
• Does this item have a future with me or just a past?
• Am I ever going to be this size again?
• How many golf balls do I need, anyway?
• Does (insert name) even care about this _____ I am saving for him/her?
• What’s the worst thing that could happen if I sell this/ throw it out?

A final word: Be disciplined with the things left over from your garage sale. Take the lot to a thrift store or the dump that day or the next. DON’T save them for next year’s yard sale, despite the temptation. The cost to

This organized Garage brought to you by Efficient Spaces organizing!

store that ‘stuff’ will outweigh any amount you might earn selling it later. Think of your garage as prime storage space. You don’t want to clutter it with stuff you already know you no longer want or use.
Be ruthless!

Photo courtesy of Monkey Bar Storage