simplicity sake

using facebook to give away your stuff

Trying to unclutter and organize and have less stuff? I have tons of baby items and random stuff stacked up in my garage to give away. I would like to share some of it to my friends. What a great idea to use Facebook to do this. Put up photos of your items and let your friends take their pic.

what we're reading at simplicity sake

This week, Simplicity Sake has been getting ready for twins' birthday parties, going on business trips, but we're still finding a little bit of time to read:

• Our toy organization post got us thinking about when should you sell and when should you donate. See this post for some great guidelines: Ask Unclutter: Sell or Donate?
• Linsey is on twitter (follow her @linseyk), but can you Get Things Done with Twitter? Zen Habits has a very interesting article on how to actually Get Things Done with Twitter...as opposed to having it be a complete time suck, which it really can be.

escape from email hell

So the whole GTD thing (Getting Things Done, if you didn't know)...I have tried it at various times with varying degrees of success. Last year, I read David Allen's hugely popular book and set up a paper system. That worked...sort of...for a little while. Then I kept forgetting my little tickler files everywhere, and hey, I'm a digital girl at heart, so I abandoned it. What followed what one of the most chaotic times in my life, both personally and professionally.

December took the cake. I was stretched to the very limit, and what I got done was only because there was a fire and I was the extinguisher. No time for extra planning and tracking. When I did that, other things would fail. I was exhausted. I entertained fantasies of quitting my job and becoming a yoga instructor. I was short with the kids. I did not enjoy my "off time" because what I had to do (or MIGHT have to do, buried in the depths of my follow up emails) was always lurking in the back of my head.

Enter Inbox Zero.

I had known about this great blog called 43 folders (named for the ticker file idea of a folder for each of the 31 days in a month, plus 12 more folders for the months in the year). Had not spent much time on it, but had good intentions. One evening, not sure why, I decided to watch a Google Tech Talk given by 43 Folder's author, Merlin Mann. Only an hour long. Wow, it has changed my life. 

I won't get into the specifics of the Inbox Zero strategy, but I will tell you about the results. 

I just spent a week in all-day meetings where computers were highly discouraged. Wanna know how many emails are in my inbox? Zilch. In my previous life, I would have probably had 300 emails flagged for follow up after a week in meetings. Keeping my inbox empty has been my goal for the past 7 days. I have gottten good at this: Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, Do. It's become my mantra. 

The biggest plus? My stress level has taken a HUGE hit. I don't feel like I'm a slave to my inbox anymore. It's not hanging over my head.  Truthfully, it's not. I have enjoyed my children more this weekend. I have given attention to my husband. I have planned some social events and activities just for me. Hey, I think I'm actually getting MORE done, but it feels a whole lot easier.

What are you doing right now? Just surfing the web? Go watch Inbox Zero. It's an hour. Go watch it right now. You will thank me. 

tips & tricks: organizing kids toys

What to do with All Those Toys. Ok, so the holidays just happened. New toys were squeeled over with delight. Yay!!!! In addition to the holiday influx, it seems like it is birthday central for all my kids' friends. We seem to be in birthday season, so every weekend...and every week at school...my soon-to-be-5-year-old twins (they turn 5 this Saturday!) are getting little toys as party favors. Seriously, it is a bit crazy. So much little stuff accumulates, seemingly no matter what you do. As a result, I find myself in the midst of reorganizing my kids' toys. Want to see what I'm doing? I'll share some photos soon, but in the meantime...

Here is what I recommend:

* Before you start, gather together the following items:
- ziplock bags
- grocery bags
- pen
- sticky notes

1. Set aside some time. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to get a project done that has to be completed in one sitting or else you have to start all over again. This can be one of those projects. Make sure you have at least a couple of hours available to get this done. You may decide to just do one area at a time (inside, outside, etc.), so that its more manageable with your schedule.

2. Take care of the kids. If you have little ones, say under 3 years old, organize a playdate with some friends or Daddy/Nana/a babysitter to take the kids to the park. It is really tough to sort and organize when the kids are undoing everything you are trying to do! If you have older kids, get them involved in the process. It will be a good learning experience for them and they will be more likely to keep up the system you set up for them if they have some say in the process and help to make it happen.

3. Assess what you have. Get everything into one place, to the extent you can. Go through your house and find all the little items that need matching up and/or sorting. Grab a basket or a bag to collect things and then put them all in one room. It might be better NOT to put all the stuff in the room that the toys will ultimately be stored in (for instance, your kids' rooms). Maybe put it all in your living room or your bedroom, anywhere you will have the space available to spread out and see what you have.

4. Sort. Go through the stuff and sort it into 4 piles: 1) Keep, 2) Sell, 3) Give away and 4) Throw away. 

- Keep: For things that you are keeping, look to see if you already have a good organization solution for that type of toy. If you do, put it away where it goes. If you don't, gather the pieces together and put them in a temporary bag (for instance, a ziplock bag or grocery bag, depending on the size).
- Sell - For toys you want to sell, put these items in your garage or another storage area. Try to gather all the pieces together (including any directions) and put them in ziplock bags. Assess whether you need to clean anything and put a sticky note on those items if you don't have the time to clean it right now. If something is ready to sell, get out your camera and take some photos of it RIGHT NOW. Then when you're ready to list it on Craig's List, eBay, your mom's group or whatever, you'll be ready to go.
- Give away - Simply put these toys in a bag or a box. Make sure they are not really throw away items. No one wants to receive toys that are broken, missing parts, or just plain worn out.
- Throw away - Hooray! This one is easy - toss it in a garbage bag and you're done. Be sure to recycle where you can.

5. Try NOT to go shopping.  Now that you know what you have, you can see what kind of containers you need. Look around the house for baskets, bins, etc. that can be reused for your purposes. If you really find you need some new containers, its ok to go shopping. Look for inexpensive solutions that are not necessarily labeled as "toy storage". For instance, The Container Store has shoe boxes for only $1.99 and up that work great for small toys with lots of pieces - they are clear so you and the kids can easily see what is inside them and they stack nicely on shelves.

6. Put away. Group like items (e.g, doll clothes, cars, train tracks and trains, action figures) and put them each in a box. Ta-da! If you want to make labels for your boxes, this is a great way to remember what goes where...and it helps your kids learn to read too! For example, put a label on the side of your car box that says "CARS" and also has an picture of a toy car. This will be a good visual cue for them and will help them to remember that the idea is not to mix all the stuff back together!

7. Train the kids. Work with your kids on establishing a routine of taking out one thing at a time to play with and to clean it up before moving on to the next thine. Make it a part of your bedtime routine to clean up all the toys before reading books or whatever it is you do right before bed.

8. Have a mechanism for failure. There will be times when your kids will get something new that doesn't fit in your system or when your babysitter is over and doesn't know where something goes. Have a small basket in our living room that is available for "I don't know where this goes" toys. Aim to put things that accumulate in it away each night. If you do need to add something additional, you'll at least have a temporary place for it.

9. Play! Now that you have a system for your kids' toys, if you can keep it up, you'll be able to enjoy the relief that comes with not tripping over toys (well, at least constantly!) and you and your kids can JUST PLAY.

Now go have some fun!

Original Simplicity Sake post.

what we're reading at simplicity sake

This is a great article - The Single Secret to Making Your 2009 Your Best Year Ever from Zen Habits - a hint: its about happiness!

We're also watching this video from Wall Street Journal Video on Getting Things Done. The secret here seems to be keeping up with whatever system you have going. So true.

voluntary simplicity is in

Graphic from Elephant Journal.

Ok, but boxed wine? Here is where we draw the line. We're not saying we are wine snobs. Some of us do appreciate the bargain Two Buck Chuck, but we do have our limits. If anyone has suggestions about good boxed wine to try, however, we're game.

the 3 r's plus 1 = 4 r's: reduce, reuse, recycle...re-think?

The waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle sometimes gets stuck in our heads from the Jack Johnson "The 3 Rs" song on the Curious George soundtrack. Having kids that are headed to kindergarten next year and are working on pre-reading skills, we are always talking about letters and numbers, pointing them out, trying to spell things, counting things. Is 3 really still the magic number? Well, yes. But maybe there it is a 3+ or a 4, depending on how you look at it. The plus or the 4th R being to "re-think."

In our house, we are...

reducing by simply accumulating less stuff. Call it anti-consumerism if you want to. We aren't stopping spending completely, of course. But we are reducing what we buy in general. Our pantry has less in it, as we are trying to buy more fresh, local food and less packaged junk. We are trying to resist the urge to "keep up with the Joneses"* by not buying the latest and the greatest fad products and clothes. We are trying to focus our spending on things that will be more sustainable and that really matter to us. It is tough sometimes - Christmas got us back into our old spending habits to some degree - but we're definitely doing better.

*although in this economy, will keeping up with the Joneses become a competition to see who can use less and be the most thrifty? 

reusing by finding a new use for something in our own household or in someone else's. We have always traded kid clothes with family and friends as they all grow and new babies are born. We bring our reusable grocery bags to Trader Joe's (raffle tickets - I will win one day!) We are going through our house and garage right now and selling or donating things that we don't use anymore. We are eBay and Craigslist machines!

recycling by not just tossing stuff in the garbage. Apart from the usual sorting of bottles and cardboard and paper from our garbage, we take milk and egg cartons to school for use in school projects. I signed up for our local Freecycle - a great way to both get rid of items and to get items for free in your community.

Now for the re-thinking.  Re-thinking involves thinking about what resources you are using and how this waste can be reduced. For us, we have to think about this some more. Well, we have to re-think.

upgrading your OS is easy if your data is in the cloud

I converted from a PC to a Mac about 18 months ago and have never been happier. Last night, I finally upgraded my OS to Leopard - I had been waiting to finish up with work for the year, as I tend to have busy end-of-quarters (I am a lawyer and do a lot of technology licensing, which is very end-of-quarter sales based). I wanted to be sure that when I did the conversion, I wouldn't be stressed, trying to get time critical work completed without my system available. The beautiful thing is that the conversion to the OS has gone very smoothly - I am up and running in no time at all, mostly due to the changes I have made in the last couple of months to get all of my data in The Cloud, such as:

• I switched from Entourage (similar to Outlook, but for Mac) to Gmail for my email organization and responding. This has been HUGE for me. I love the way Gmail strings messages together in a thread. The tagging ability helps me to file things in a variety of ways, rather than a long list of folders which I ended up not using on Entourage. The search capability is so good, its almost...Googlelike, which I guess is the whole point. I limit my emails that I do receive. I try to get all messages on the web, rather than clutter my inbox with a ton of conversations that could take place elsewhere, like Facebook, Twitter, or Big Tent. I delete email messages a lot more than I used to and archive messages very quickly - immediately if possible. I am down from 5000 messages in my inbox over the summer to the current number of 150. My goal is inbox zero, ala 43 folders, and I am getting there.
• I also use Google Calendar and Contacts - and sync these to my iPhone via NuevaSync. 
• I use Dropbox for all of my files and documents. This gives me a online backup and syncing. And I can share certain folders with other people. For instance, if I want to send raw photos to my sister - easy, just invite her to share the Dropbox folder. Or if I want to share a folder with my preschool committee that different people update - I share the folder with them on Dropbox.  
• I am starting to use other Google products more as well. I have a few Google Docs for documents and spreadsheets that I share with and collaborate on with others.

I am sure there is a lot more I can do in The Cloud. I feel I am just getting started in this new way of computing and sharing and storing information, but what I have done so far has been very easy and quick* and has made a world of difference for me.

*A caveat: I have a live-in IT guy, my husband. He's the best! He's actually a medical device engineer, not an IT guy, but he's good at all the tech stuff and finds the coolest and latest stuff. I'm lucky to have him! He doesn't do everything for me - I figure out a lot on my own, but there are some things that a techie hubby is very helpful for :)

it's just a post

Okay, so I'm just on the phone with my lovely twin sister, Linsey, and we're chatting about the whole blog posting thing. Linsey is a heavy duty blogger. Me.....not so much. Why? Because my life is truly crazy. Out of control. I mean, I have a HUGE deadline at work on Thursday. I'll be up until midnight working on that, and I still won't be even close to being where I would *like* to be. (I work some strange hours, since I live in Eastern Canada and have fairly leisurely mornings with my kids, but still, midnight is late to be working). My house could use some serious attention...we still have suitcases from our December trip to California scattered about the house, in various stages of unpackedness (is that a word?) and TONS of little projects that need to be tackled. I have lots of bills to catch up on. Various Christmas cards to respond to. Pictures to organize and post somewhere. Social events to plan and partake in. My to-do list is a mile long.

Do I really have time for blogging?

Yet THIS blog, Simplicity Sake, appeals to me. My life could use some streamlining. In the past month or so, I have found myself in conversations with people all centered around the subject of simplicity. Of enjoying life. Of being okay with mediocrity. Of celerating the things that really matter. It is pretty easy to get swallowed up into the intoxication of success at work or a super-organized home or the perfect birthday party for your 2-year-old. I don't want to miss out anymore. And I think a lot of people are on the same page as I am on that.

So I'll do a blog post. It might not be a stunning work of literary genius. But it will be where I am today. Ten minutes out of my life to focus on some thought for myself. That's not a bad start.

one chair

Having three kids aged almost 5 and under and living in a very small house (under 1200 square feet for a family of 5) in Silicon Valley, our living room/dining room/kitchen (it is all one room - a"great room" concept, if you will) has been overrun with kid stuff for the last 5 years. First it was a pack-n-play, 2 swings, 2 bouncy seats, an exersaucer, etc. when we had the twins. Then it was less baby equipment, but more toys - blocks and tents and play houses and stuffed animals and.... After that came the coloring table and the train table. Now we're at a place where we're ready to take back our adult space to some degree. Not that the kids won't still have their stuff in the living room - the coloring/activity table will stay. And they have a kids computer table now that will stay. But all the toys are going in their rooms. The toys have been scaled back too - there are just less of them.

And herein lies the joy - for the first time in 5 years, we have one chair that is purely an adult chair. Well, ok, the kids can sit in in too. But it really looks adult. It is meant to be purely a reading area - or maybe to look out the window and just think - an oasis in the great room that can easily be crowded by kids and noise and life.  The chair comes from my parents who don't have the space in their little cottage to use it right now. They bought the chair after making the switch about 10 years ago or so from heavy bulky furniture to lightweight furniture, as they have moved often in their lives. There is a reading lamp and we are in the process of setting up a side table to hold our magazines and a cup of tea or coffee (or wine...). We plan to get a new cushion for the back at some point - or just recover the one that is there. All in all, a very affordable way to completely change this space and establish a little place of our own.

** As aside - the bookcase behind the chair is one of our great finds in organization for the kids stuff. The 3 baskets are for each of our 3 kids. Inside are the shoes they wear most often and their school backpacks. It is an easy way for them to find their stuff (and put it away) and all that random kid stuff that used to sit by the door in piles, or be lost amongst the rest of the house's chaos, is easily disguised. The bookcase and baskets are from IKEA and only cost about $70. Very affordable.