Paper Doll
Paper Doll’s NAPO2016 Recap: Smead Takes On Coloring, Minis, and Corners
As we discussed in last week’s Paper Doll post on Samsill’s new products, there’s a particular delight to the pseudo-shopping aspect of attending the NAPO Expo. For me, there’s a specific magic in the air when I get to see exciting new products from our industry stalwarts, and nowhere is that more true when I get to see new paper management products.
Yep, I’m an office supply fangirl. Particularly a paper-related office supply fangirl. That may explain why, although I love all my NAPO Corporate Associate Members and NAPO Conference Expo vendors, I have a special place in my heart for my friends at Smead, who have been kind enough to have me on their Keeping You Organized video podcast twice, once to talk about small business organizing, and again to discuss organizing-related fears.
So, of course, as soon as NAPO President Ellen Faye cut the Expo ribbon with those giant scissors, I made a beeline to my Smead buddy, Leiann Wright.
With file folder aficionados (say that three times, fast) crowding around the booth, it took three visits over two days to learn everything about the new offerings, and I’m still finding items in the 2016 New Product Guide that I missed in person!
Today, we will focus on just a few of the new products that had conference-goers talking.
SuperTab® Coloring Folders
Smead’s SuperTab® folders aren’t exactly new. I originally reviewed them back in Paper Doll Dishes Out the Super Goodies back in 2011. Back then, I explained that with larger tabs, one could:
1) Use Larger Text — This makes it easier to see labels from across the room, assists those with all variety of vision issues from aging eyes to macular degeneration, and ensures that offices with files bearing many similar-appearing labels (Johnson/Jonson/Johnsen) can be discerned with relative ease.
2) Use Multiple Lines of Description — Although brevity is the soul of wit, and although we professional organizers usually advise keeping file folder labels as simple as is serviceable, sometimes a label just has to say more.
3) Use Icons — In addition to labels, colored dots, stickers and other icons can be used to help categorize the content of a folder, and the larger the tab, such as with SuperTab® folders, the more expansive the available space for adding definition and clarity.
This new product takes the practicality of the 90% larger tab of the original SuperTab® and combines with a colorful new trend.
As Paper Doll doesn’t have any artistic inclinations (and recently went into anxiety-mode at a recent visit to one of those paint-the-pottery places), I have long wondered what it was about these best-selling and highly coveted adult coloring books I was missing. So many of my high-profile colleagues, including Deb Lee, Janine Adams, and Danielle Liu, enjoy this pastime that this year’s NAPO conference planners added a lounge area with oversized coloring pages at which my friends could be found doodling in spare moments, when in prior years, they might have chugged coffee or returned phone calls.
If you’re unfamiliar with this latest habit of adults pulling out crayons and markers to color, I direct you to A Neuroscientist Patiently Explains the Allure of the Adult Coloring Book from New York Magazine. My favorite aspect of this article notes:
Our prefrontal cortex is responsible for coordinating thousands of decisions each day, from which socks we should wear to life-altering relationship and career choices. As an unconscious response to this so-called daily “decision fatigue,” making a series of small, inconsequential decisions (teal or mahogany for this squiggly line?) may give us a refreshing sense of self-control after a long day of big, important ones.
Smead SuperTab® Coloring Folders are letter-sized and come in geometric and floral designs. The tabs are 1/3-cut and constructed of 11 pt. (reinforced) paper stock, which works with colored pencils, crayons, and markers. The bottoms of the folders are scored for up to 3/4″ expansion, and all folders are made of 10% recycled content with 10% post-consumer material.
I should note that 11 pt. paper stock is a little less robust than the 14 pt. heavyweight folder stock I prefer, but I suspect that for typical office work, aesthetic appeal may outweigh (pardon the pun) sturdiness for those who are visually focused or inclined to reduce stress with conference call coloring.
Find the Smead SuperTab® Coloring Folders at office supply stores and Amazon, in packs of 6 or 12, with a dozen running about $12.
Mini Stadium® File
Fans of the original Smead Stadium® File, which we reviewed in our NAPO 2010 Conference Expo Recap, liked the fact that it was portable, lightweight, and (surprisingly) sturdy. It had 12 pockets, could hold up to 900 sheets of paper, and most importantly, was stepped like a riser or stadium to ensure that nothing could be hidden.
The Mini Stadium® File has many of the same features as the original, but is more compact, so it’s suitable for correspondence and small projects you need to keep on your kitchen counters, dorm room desks, and small offices. As always, the idea is that if you clear your paper clutter, categorize it, and contain it, you’ll get your space and sanity back. Smead has taken this approach to the desktop file box and made it fun-sized.
The three pockets are tiered and fixed so the papers don’t fall to the bottom of the organizer, and is suitable for holding both papers and folders. There’s also a small, low-profile, flat outer pocket. Like its predecessor, the Mini comes in Navy with fully lined Tyvek® gussets to allow for expansion. The Mini also includes labels for alphabetical (A-Z), monthly (Jan-Dec), and daily (1-31) filing, as well as household subjects and blank indexing.
Right now, the Smead Mini Stadium® File seems to be sold primarily at smaller online office supply stores and at Amazon, where it costs $19.95.
Corner Organizer File
Smead Corner Organizer, with Bunny Ears
While the two prior products are updates of popular Smead products, the Corner Organizer File seems to turn a product on its head, or at least its side. Picture if the traditional Stadium were turned 90° and cut on an angle to provide accessible storage in a corner, where two walls, a desk/wall edge, or the top of a filing cabinet meets a cubicle divider. Paper Doll‘s first thought was that it worked to make typically dead spaces more accessible much like Lazy Susan kitchen cabinets allow you to store food or small appliances in the netherworld where two cabinets meet at right angles.
Smead’s Corner Organizer is letter sized, Navy with a white interior, and has seven expanding pockets. It’s suitable for storing top-tab and side-tab folders. Like the Mini Stadium® File, the Corner Organizer File doesn’t seem to be distributed by the major office supply big box stores, but you can find it at a variety of smaller and online stores, as well as Supply Geeks and aAmazon for about $28.
These are just a few of the Smead products that caught my eye at NAPO2016. Be assured that after our recap series, I’ll be circling back to discuss some of their fun new poly products — poly expanding files, poly file boxes, and poly pockets — as well as new document wallets, line extensions for Viewables, and soooo much more about folders. Until then, enjoy this photo of professional organizer Lita Daniel showing of her grown-up approach to today’s moment of Zen.
Photo courtesy of Dan Slutsky, NAPO Photographer Extraordinaire
Photo courtesy of Ellen Delap, NAPO President-Elect
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll’s NAPO2016 Recap: Samsill’s Duo & Trio & Pop…Oh, My!
Last time, we covered the conference aspect of NAPO2016. That’s the part that’s a mixture of college courses (education), class reunions (networking), and cocktail parties (food, beverages, and entertainment). But Paper Doll knows that you come here for the expo talk — you want to know about the shopping!
This year, we start with a newcomer, a vendor we’ve not seen before at NAPO conferences, Samsill. If Samsill were a person, it would be almost old enough to collect Social Security, but it’s not as well-known as some of its competitors in the world of office supplies.
Samsill showcased three products that really got attention at this year’s NAPO Expo.
Duo 2-in-1 Organizer
The Duo is the first of two hybrid products from Samsill. It combines a seven-pocket expanding accordion file with a 1″ three-ring binder. The accordion file portion holds up to 225 sheets of paper, while the accordion-style expanding portion includes blank write-on index tabs so you can customize your labels.
The Duo has a dual elastic clasp and cord closure to provide access to each portion (pockets or binder) individually while maintaining a secure closure to either or both sections. The Duo weighs 14.6 ounces and measures 9.8″ x 1.5″ x 11.8″.
Here, we see Paper Doll friends and colleagues Nanette Duffey and Michelle Cooper modeling the flexibility of the Samsill Duo.
Think of the Duo as a grown-up Trapper Keeper in which you can store tax prep or financial information (budget, bills, coupons, and shopping lists), family medical files (with categories for tests, prescriptions, and dietary rules), or household plans (with sections for decorating, monthly upkeep, garden plans, etc).
The Samsill Duo is lightweight and flexible, but durable and water-resistant, and is made of PVC-free, acid-free, archival-safe environmentally flexible polypropylene. (Paper Doll fans know that while I am a paper doll, I do love my poly products!) The Duo comes in Hot Pink, Turquoise, Green, Burgundy, Orchid, Black, Light Blue, and Coral.
Find Duo 2-in-1 Organizers at Amazon for about $10.79.
Trio 3-in-1 Organizer
With the Samsill Trio 3-in-1 Organizer, you still get:
- the seven-pocket expanding accordion file folder (which holds up to 225 sheets of paper)
- the 1″ three-ring binder with blank write-on index tabs so you can customize your labels
- the dual elastic clasp and cord closure which allows you to open or close the areas independently of one another
- PVC-free, acid-free, archival-safe environmentally flexible polypropylene
- the same weight and measurements
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
The Trio also has retractable hangers which turn the TRIO into a hanging file, so you can store it conveniently in a file cabinet, desktop file box, or filing drawer in your desk without fearing that it will sink below the visibility of other files or worrying that the poly will make it slide to the bottom of the drawer.
Store your ringed notes, sort and organize your handouts, bills, and paperwork, closed it all, secure the binder, and safely file away your Trio when you’re not using it.
The Trio currently only comes in only two colors, Black (sometimes labeled Dark Grey) and Turquoise, but I’m sure if you all let them know how much I’d like them in Hot Pink and Burgundy, the people at Samsill would be happy to oblige. Find the Samsill Trio for about $9-11 on Amazon.
Both the Samsill Duo and Trio are eminently designed for durability, portability, and storage. They — particularly the Duo versions — are bright and colorful. However, there is significant “floppyability” about this combined binder/accordion file when open, and poly can be slippery, so these are probably more suited to office supply use than for younger school-aged kids (or adults, I guess) without sufficient fine motor control.
Pop N’ Store
The Belle of the Samsill Ball was definitely their line of Pop N’ Store boxes, which offer innovation, practicality, and aesthetics. The Pop N’ Store’s space-saving folding-box system is sold flat-packed, but POPS from flat to popped up in five seconds. Samsill’s patent-pending locking system holds the boxes’ bottoms in place, so they are entirely suitable for stacking.
The double-thickness walls of the boxes are made of heavy-duty chipboard and are covered with
Lotus Seed™ textured paper, and the box bottoms are covered in scratch-resistant fabric to protect delicate surfaces in your home or office and offer a touch more support for the contents of any box. And the box corners are metal-reinforced to add durability and smart accenting.
The boxes are made of 100% recycled material and 70% post-consumer material.
These lidded, decorative storage boxes come in five sizes with the following (internal) dimensions:
- Document Box (12″ x 8.5″ x 3″)
- Essential Box (14.625″ x 7.5″ x 5.34″)
- Medium Document Box (12″ x 8.625″ x 5.8″)
- Medium Square Box (9.75″ x 9.75″ x 5.75″)
- Mega Box (14.625″ x 11.875″ x 7.34″)
The boxes currently come in Black, Navy, Red, Brown, Grey and White. (At press time, Paper Doll was awaiting word on the availability of the colorful, patterned versions shown above, but we have learned that these are prototypes for future line extensions.)
Pop N’ Store lets you organize everything from linens to office supplies, gifts to crafts, toys to CDs, to whatever you want to store: tucked away, stacked, shelved, and shown off. Find them at Amazon from $11.99 to $16.99.
The Due, Trio, and Pop N’ Store are just a few of the items Samsill had on display at NAPO2016, and just a small subset of their wares. Samsill is best-known, for example, for their traditional three-ring binders in traditional and D-style rings. Above, Samsill’s Drew Bowers with my NAPO and BCPO® colleague Helene Segura are showing off the Speedy Spine, which purports to let you insert spine labels five times faster than other types of binders.
Samsill also makes Heavy Duty Clean-Touch Anti-Microbial binders (to keep you germ-free in a medical setting or around jam-handed colleagues), value-priced storage binders, Earth’s Choice™ Biobased + Biodegradable Round Ring View Binders, traditional poly round-ring binders (suitable for schlepping to Social Studies), truly enormous 6-inch capacity binders, and a collection of 1″ Fashion Print round-ring binders.
Samsill also makes padfolios, business card holders, laptop cases, tablet sleeves and a variety of other office supplies, and I’m looking forward to what they will be displaying at NAPO2017. From their website, it appears their retail locations are primarily in Kansas and Oklahoma, but you can find all of the above products on Amazon.
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll’s NAPO 2016 Conference Recap: The Wisdom Edition
NAPO TIME!
As is the annual tradition at Paper Doll HQ, this is the time of year where we step away from paper-related topics to look at the bigger picture of what’s going on in the organizing world. The Annual Conference and Expo of the National Association of Professional Organizers was held just down the road from me this year, in Atlanta, GA.
The atmosphere as everyone starts arriving at a NAPO conference is like the first day of summer camp — or a college reunion. We’ve all seen each other on social media, but it’s a delight to view my colleagues when they’re bigger than their one-centimeter high avatars.
The first full day is all about preliminary, but important, activities. On Wednesday morning, I attended the Angela F. Wallace Leadership Forum, where we learned techniques and strategies for encouraging and motivating volunteers. In the afternoon, I participated in lively discussions at our meeting of the Board of Certification for Professional Organizers, for which I serve as the Director of Program Development (also known as the Sacred Keeper of All Rules Persnickety) and as the local grammar and spelling cop.
SETTING THE TONE
Our opening keynote speaker, Scott Greenberg, presented The Third Factor: The Mindset for High-Performance Leadership.
Scott spoke about the three factors that influence success:
- External factors that we can’t personally control, like the economy, what our competition does, the weather, our own DNA,
- Operational factors, over which we have a bit of control, like if we work long enough and hard enough,
- Mindset, or how we think about things, and whether we have a fixed mindset (and believe that we have little-to-no control over our own qualities) vs. a growth mindset, one in which we can improve and grow.
Scott talked about the importance of making interpersonal connections and having gratitude, but my biggest takeaway from his motivational presentation was that it’s not just about the tangible (or even temporal) clutter, but about the “head trash” piled up by our mental hecklers. Scott encouraged us to externalize what these internal hecklers were saying to us so that we could fully appreciate the flaws inherent when we are deprecating ourselves. If you followed any of the tweets from our #NAPO2016 hashtag, you would have seen how much we all embraced Scott’s parting wisdom:
EDUCATIONAL SESSIONS
After the welcome and keynote, we moved on to the meat of our conference sustenance: our concurrent educational sessions, where, over the course of three days, we have the choice of attending one of five classes in each of six concurrent sessions. Somehow, just going to six out of thirty amazing presentations does not seem like enough!
While I work with residential as well as business clients, this year, my focus was on technology and productivity. Courses I took included:
The Art of Tactical Time Management — If you don’t follow the blog and podcast of Mike Vardy, the Productivityist, you’re truly missing out. Perhaps Mike’s presentation resonated with me so much is because it dovetails with what I teach my own clients. For example:
You’ve heard me say this before — if we try to keep things in our heads, or if we leave tangible items out (on our desks, and around our computers, and blocking our doors) to trigger us to think of something, that’s all we do. We think of them, but the energy we waste on remembering something and thinking of it, instead of about it, contextually, is wasted energy. Capture it — write it down on paper or save the thought digitally — and then you can move forward toward your goals.
Mike also talked about “time theming” similar to the task-and-time blocking I discussed in my book, 57 Secrets to Organizing Your Small Business (the revised and newly named edition of which will be out later this year). Mike’s time theming (for the year, the month, and the days of the week) is central to his NOW Year Method, about which we learned extensively in the session. I won’t give out those details and spoil Mike’s brilliance — you definitely want to check him out, but I’ll leave you with another of his bon mots.
Other sessions I attended included:
The Paradox of Technology in Business (and Life), in which Nadine Seidman, MSW, MPA, and Nancy Kruschke, CPO®, looked beyond the benefits of technology (communication and collaboration, mobility, and productivity) to the darker costs of technology, including financial (initial and ongoing), physical/health (sleep interruption, neck and back pain), societal (reduced privacy and diminution of etiquette), and psychological (depression, anxiety, and overwhelm). Nadine and Nancy shared great tips for professionals to create “response time policies” for setting expectations for how often, when, and by whom business replies will be made, and encouraged us to unplug ourselves, personally, to recharge. (Just be sure you wait until after you finish reading this post.)
Achieving Balance and Creating Peace with Organizing, where my colleagues Amy Trager, CPO®, and Suzy Margolis Hart used philosophies from the practice of yoga to discuss how we might work better with our organizing and productivity clients. As I once explained on a Smead EZ Grip product testimonial video, Paper Doll has weak, wimpy wrists and appreciates, rather than practices, yoga. However, the messages of this session, from the philosophical — “There is no perfect” — to the practical — how to be non-judgmental, reduce unpleasantness, improve flow, and maintain boundaries — are things we can all use in our work and daily lives.
Down With Digital Clutter, taught by my colleague Pam Holland, seemed to bookend the class on the paradox of technology, and offered up a cornucopia of advice and tools on how to eliminate the clutter that technology builds up. I liked that Pam went against the modern grain (as I do), championing the idea of organizing and building infrastructure for your digital files instead of relying on search technology. My favorite tip, however, and one I intend to keep reminding myself, was that it’s important to remember to empty ALL of the trash. Just as my residential clients are good at remembering to take out their big (usually kitchen) trash on garbage day, while neglecting the tiny bedroom, office, and bathroom trash cans, we all tend to forget that our computers and digital devices have multiple trash cans — not just our desktops, but our emails, our photo collections, and our individual apps, and if they go unemptied, we waste our resources.
Of course, not all of the educational sessions I took were for helping my clients be more productive. The title of my friend and colleague Deb Lee’s Content Marketing: Blogging Tips for Your Small Business practically damns with faint praise what was a 90-minute master class in creating, researching, writing, promoting, and excelling at blogging.
If you are a small business person (or a big business person), there’s nobody better from whom you can learn how to promote your business — so be sure to check out her newly updated D. Allison Lee website to see how her productivity and technology coaching can rock your world. (Nope, this isn’t a paid promotion. Deb is just THAT good that everyone should know about her.)
For those who were interested in other topics, NAPO had them covered with a variety of tracks for classes I’ve not yet mentioned, including:
Business Growth, Marketing, Leadership: Imperfection Rules! Creative Ways to Run Your Business; Coaching Works: Coaching Meets the Organizing World; How to Be an Independent Contractor; Veteran Forum Interactive; How To Keep Your Business from Becoming theIRS! [sic]; What’s Next? Planning an Effective Business Exit Strategy; Strategic Planning to Grow Your Business; Leveraging a Competitive Market: Building Your Personal Brand
Organizing and Productivity: Closets, Pantries, Cabinets, Offices: Beyond the Basics; Photo Organizing Anxiety and How To Overcome It; Transparent Power: Improve Client Outcomes through Direct Communication; Holistic Time Management; Information Afterlife and the Digital Estate Plan
Specific Needs Clients: Still Someone: Organizing Older Adults with Memory Loss; ADHD in the Family: How to Really Help; Play! The Secret Ingredient to ADHD Motivation
Research: Industry Statistics and Trends; Booming Your Baby Boomer Business: Research-based Understanding of this Pivotal Age Group
Special Interest Groups: Moving Made Easy; How Organizers Engage Students; Seven Truths to Becoming a Published Author
Trends, Technology, and Social Media: Power of Email Marketing for Today’s Savvy Organizer; Digital Eyes: Storytelling through Video Marketing; Profit and Value with Online Training
Even if you’re not a professional organizer, I bet you’re envious now!
FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD (AND KARAOKE)
We professional organizers and productivity specialists take plenty of time to refresh our brains with rest and relaxation — just as we advise our clients. For years, our NAPO meals were almost all taken together, seated at round tables in large ballrooms where the noise and overcrowding made convivial conversation difficult. (It also explains why I had laryngitis by the last day of our conference ever year.)
And let’s be real. Conference food is generally both uninspired and uninspiring. For vegetarians and others with special food requirements, conference dining has also often been a disappointment. (A plate of steamed bok choi does not a meal make!) However, this year, the Atlanta Sheraton did an amazing catering job, and our meals were far superior to anything I’d been served in my last decade and a half of attendance. Still, the hotel could not handle our volume in the traditional way, so we had more buffets and even got to lunch al fresco by the pool.
My favorite addition to our meal experience was this year’s Dine-Around experiment, where attendees could sign up to eat in small groups at any of a number of local restaurants within walking distance from the hotel. I was amused to find that although I’d arrived two days before the official start of conference and was only the sixth person to sign up for a Turkish meal at Atlanta’s Truva, I was the third Julie. Hence, this photo caption:
And be assured, lest you imagine that our professional organizing community’s lightheartedness extends only to culinary sustenance, let me disabuse you of that thought. Our NAPO President, Ellen Faye, opened the President’s Reception to all attendees this year for a “Black & White” party that included dancing and karaoke.
So, while we value our education, professionalism, and camaraderie, don’t ever believe the stereotype that professional organizers are stuffy.
In the upcoming NAPO re-cap posts, we’ll be looking at the products and vendors who can help make your life more organized, including the 2016 winners of the NAPO Organizers’ Choice Awards.
Paper Doll Post:
Up Filer: A New Vertical Filing Solution
Got paper?
Of course you do. And most of your papers for your life and work probably live in some typical places: standing up in file folders in desk-top file boxes or step risers, or hidden away in filing cabinet drawers, or flat on your desk (and maybe piled all around it), with whatever is larger and/or on top obscuring whatever is below.
If you have lots of flat, non-bulky paper items, perhaps you’ve invested in a flat filing cabinet, with a variety of drawers to allow art projects, historical documents, and architectural designs nap in relative obscurity, often ignored or forgotten.
Or maybe you’ve embraced the vertical approach with creativity — have you piled a bunch of related papers on a series of clipboards and hung them on your wall?
@2013 ASpareAndAPairDIY.com
The problem is that many people find that it’s fairly hard to gain purchase on your projects when they are hidden away. If you’re in a communal office setting, sharing resources and working on projects requires that everyone can have access without having to knock on Joe’s door and interrupt a meeting (or his tearful third-fight-of-the-week with his sweetheart) just to get the updated specs on the current blueprints. While it may seem like more and more of what we do is digital, there is still so much flat, tangible stuff and it needs to be easily stored and fairly accessible.
A new solution from Denver-based Westerville Design is a cross between a file step-riser and an on-the-wall clipboard, with a dash of the old-fashioned library newspaper rack and a soupçon of inventiveness.
The Up Filer™ Original Vertical Wall File
Each Up Filer™ unit has ten nickel-plated steel hangers designed to hold whatever flat content you need to keep off your desk, like:
- file folders
- blueprints
- design layouts
- photos
- newspapers (remember those?)
The central spine of the Up Filer™ is made of solid maple hardwood, and the full size of the contraption, spine and hangers, combined, is 11.5″ wide x 34.5″ high x 2.5″ deep (29.2cm x 87.6cm x 6.3cm).
You don’t have to limit yourself to uniform height, weight, or thickness of papers or folders. Westerville says both the thickness of the content and the width can vary greatly (though they’ve not provided maximum measurements). The site notes that the height of the content depends on the thickness, but can measure up to approximately 16.5″ (42 cm) depending on the thickness (just as when too-thick file folders tend to stand a bit too tall in a hanging folder, beyond a certain point).
The Up Filer™ Original runs $149.99 and comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
If you’re looking for something with similar capabilities but a little more panache, Westerville Design has you covered.
The Up Filer™ Bamboo Vertical Wall File
The Bamboo version conforms to the same measurements and specifications as the original version, but adds environmentally friendly sustainability with style, and you can select one of three colors (arranged from lightest to darkest)
- Natural
- Light Caramel
- Caramel
The Up Filer™ Bamboo runs $169.99.
Westerville Design is currently offering free shipping on both versions of the Up Filer™ to customers in the United States and Canada.
Why is the Up Filer™ better for some flat paper and storage displays?
- It doesn’t matter how small or large an item is — the design ensures that it won’t obscure what’s behind it, and it won’t be obscured by what’s on top of it.
- The Up Filer™ saves precious horizontal space and makes use of the always-forgotten-but-so-magical vertical space. The Up Filer™ is wall-mounted, so your flat items get up and out-of-the-way of your workspace.
- It’s easy. The spine of the Up Filer™ holds the hangers, and the pivoting hanger design makes it simple to remove or add items. Just lift a hanger to pop something new into the system or grab what you need.
The Up Filer™ system is designed so you put labels at the bottom of each item. It may be unusual at first to see labels at the bottom, but it lets you quickly scan your eyes down the center and see everything at a glance. Nothing will be hidden or forgotten.
In the words of the people of Westerville Design:
It quickly became obvious that it wasn’t just good for designers but would be perfect for engineers, architects, fine artists, teachers or anyone who needs a filing system that keeps all the important stuff visible and at your fingertips.
Not having been able to examine the Up Filer™ up-close-and-personal, my sense of the drawbacks is limited to a few key items:
- The price is pretty up there. Granted, a flat file cabinet is even pricier, but most people and businesses are more likely to opt for a less gorgeous and more cost-conscious storage+display solution.
- Installation/mounting shouldn’t be difficult, but if you’re all thumbs, or have a cubicle, or your home office walls are really just flimsy sheet rock, the stability of this solution may not be adequate.
- Capacity is limited. Each unit has only ten hangers, and thus holds only ten “items,” albeit those that can get fatter or larger than what you can put in a filing cabinet or on a desk-stop step riser.
To get a sense of how the Up Filer™ works, peek at this short (and silent — seriously, none of that common plinking ukulele soundtrack) video.
Of course, if you like vertical paper storage solutions, the Up Filer™ isn’t your only option. At first, I recalled the Rackit File, a wall-mounted hanging file solution I reviewed back in 2011 in Paper Doll Adjusts the Vertical Hold: Space Saving Filing Solutions. (And, of course, that post is full of more portable approaches to vertical filing.)
So, readers, on the up-and-up — would you give the Up Filer™ a try?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll’s 16 Ways To Organize Your Money In 2016 — Part 4
How have you been doing on your money-organizing efforts so far? To recap our prior posts:
- Paper Doll’s 16 Ways To Organize Your Money In 2016 — Part 1
- Paper Doll’s 16 Ways To Organize Your Money In 2016 — Part 2
- Paper Doll’s 16 Ways To Organize Your Money In 2016 — Part 3
we’ve covered pulling your credit reports and credit score, tracking expenses, and organizing your financial information. We also looked at accessing your Social Security data, planning for retirement, organizing your way out of debt, lowering your interest rates, and so much more. Today, we’ll do our final roundup of ways to organize your money in 2016.
13) Make your money make money.
Credit card marketing often promises cash back just for using a specific card, but usually it’s category-specific and requires careful monitoring. This month or quarter, you’ll get cash back on groceries (but most don’t include groceries you buy at Walmart Supercenters or Costco); next time, it might be department stores. Make your purchase within the window but on a weekend, and you might have it processed after the window closes on the following Monday, and you’ll get no cash back at all! It’s a pain to periodically register for cash back categories and remember which cards earn you money on which categories in any given month or quarter.
My favorite tool for getting cash back while shopping online is Ebates. (Note: that’s an affiliate link, and if you register with my link, I may get some brownie points; feel free to just type Ebates.com into your browser if you prefer.) Here’s what I said about Ebates back in 2014:
Ebates rocks! Imagine if every time you walked into your favorite store, a doorman slipped you a tip.
Ebates began as a shopping portal. You clicked on the name of the online store, were taken to the store’s site, and any purchase you made gave you cash back. Now, it’s even easier with the Cash-Back Button installed in your browser. Shop online as usual, and Ebates gives you a little on-screen alert that if you make a purchase at that store, it’s worth 3% (or 5%, or whatever) back. Click, which reloads the page and through the magic of cookies (the non-edible kind), Ebates knows you bought something at whatever store, and then you get a cash-back check. Apple’s the least joyous — you only get 1% back; the magazine subscription company I use yields 15%. Most are anywhere from 2-10%, with all sorts of extra bonuses and discounts. The Ebates app for iOS and Android has deal alerts and scan-and-compare features.
I keep waiting to hear that there’s something secretly malevolent about Ebates, but after using it for years, it’s all still good. But here’s the main thing — there’s no work (beyond signing up for the account). How’s that for organizing your finances and time management?
I like Ebates, but there are definitely other popular “cash back & coupon” shopping programs, including:
The exemplary personal finance site, Wise Bread, has even written 30+ CashBack Sites to Earn You Thousands Per Year, and you may also want to consult CashbackHolic, a site that purports to compare and contrast the features at various cash back sites.
Even if you don’t shop online much, or even at all, there are other options for getting cash back when shopping at stores. For example, I’ve recently started using the Walmart Savings Catcher app.
Every time I shop at Walmart, I snap a picture of the barcode on my receipt. Walmart’s magic computers keep a record of what I’ve purchased (yes, I’m completely giving up my retail privacy) and when any item’s price goes down, I get cash back applied to my account, which I can receive at any time, or “let ride” and pile up. I use the free iOS Savings Catcher app, and you can get the Android Savings Catcher app in the Google Play store.
However you shop, remember that cash back programs only make sense if you were going to buy the items anyway. Otherwise, you’re just giving yourself a tawdry excuse to amass more clutter, and of that Paper Doll does not approve!
14) Organize how you get paid.
Have you ever tried to split a check among four people when three only have credit cards with them? Sure, you can ask the server for separate checks, but as many National Association of Professional Organizers members learned in Los Angeles at our 2015 conference, “separate checks” just aren’t part of some types of restaurant culture. Many people nowadays are cashless — they swear by Apple Pay or their debit cards, and nobody seems to carry a checkbook anymore. So, you end up with the one or two people best at math with their heads down, pencils in hand, trying to calculate the check and figure out who will pay for whom and how everyone will get even.
A few years ago, the first answer that would have come to mind for a quick transfer of funds was Paypal. All you need is someone’s address and you can send a request for funds, and someone can pay you from her Paypal account or from a credit card. If you tell Paypal it’s personal rather than business, there’s no fee attached. But for a lot of people, Paypal is so 2013. Too many hiccups — frozen accounts, slow transfers, etc. — have left some people uncomfortable with it as a personal money-sharing solution.
The word on the street is that the young folks — those Instagramming, What’sApping, SnapChatting millennials have been using Venmo for quite awhile. Download the app, sign up for an account using Facebook or your email address, and send funds securely using the money you store in your Venmo account, or directly or via debit card from your linked bank account.
But I do have (quite a few) words of warning about this beloved app. Venmo is owned by Paypal, so if you have philosophical issues with the parent company, Venmo may not be your ideal solution. Worse, from my oldster perspective, is that Venmo is very public; your linked friends can all see one another’s transactions (of at least who paid whom, if not the actual amounts). For a generation of share-everything types, that might not be a problem, but some of us prefer a bit more discretion. Finally, some people have been defrauded by scammers taking advantage of Venmo’s lack of immediacy in financial transfers. And Venmo’s customer service is, at best, lackluster.
My favorite money transfer option is Square Cash, at the adorable URL Cash.Me, which I learned about from my colleague, Deron Bos when I hired him for some computer organizing support for my Mac.
SquareCash is really designed more for people in business, and charges the recipient a small 2.75% fee, but that’s generally smaller than the merchant fees associated with accepting credit cards. [Editor’s note: Deron has pointed out, rightly, that you can make personal transactions at no charge.] Deposits hit your bank within minutes, and it’s easy for clients to pay via your “cashtags.” For example, if you wanted to send PaperDoll a tip for a fabulous blog post, you could just go to https://cash.me/$JulieBestry, enter the amount, your debit card number, and an optional note, and I’d get the money. It may not be worth it for getting $4.95 for sharing a dessert with a pal, but it’s an easy way to pay your babysitter or dogwalker.
And if it’s the math, rather than the payment, that gets you down, there are a number of splitting-the-check apps out there. For example, Divvy (0.99) lets you snap a photo of the bill, drag each item to the person who ordered it, and the app will determine how much each person owes. Tab (free) works similarly and calculates the tax and tip. And Billr (0.99) can both identify who ordered what and split shared items (like a bottle of wine) among the group.
15) Use technology for money-saving apps — judiciously.
Throughout the course of this series, we’ve looked at a wide variety of apps for every use case. There isn’t a day that goes by that someone doesn’t tweet about a new app for making sense of your finances — getting discounts, finding better deals, organizing receipts, logging charitable donations, and so much more. In the last week, I learned about a handful of new apps:
Hopper is a spam-free, pop-up-free app for anticipating when the best price for a flight will be available and then booking it right from your phone. Tap in the flight preferences, and Hopper tells you whether to buy now, or watch and wait, and then it sends you a text notification when it’s smart to purchase the ticket. So, at no cost to you, there’s an app that does the research for you, offers predictive advice, and keeps you from losing money by buying too early or waiting too long.
What could be bad? Well, probably nothing, especially if you have flexibility for booking. But if you’re the sort of person to wait until the last minute, or ignore your texts for days on end, or put all your spending eggs in one basket (and not set aside funds or available credit), this app might be no better for you than plunking down your money when you actually have it and going about your business, knowing ticket buying is one less item on your task list.
Lesson: know yourself, your needs, and your productivity style. Don’t depend on apps to counteract your procrastination habits or be error free. Trust (your apps) but verify.
Penny is a new and nifty app that takes the financial dashboarding efforts of sites like Mint and makes it all very pretty. Your transactions are categorized, analyzed, and Penny texts you gorgeous, personalized charts regarding your spending habits.
Knowledge is power, but only if you act on it. If your mother tells you that you’ve spent 90% of your income on beer and mascara, you’re likely to block it out after a while. The same with an app. If Penny nags you similarly, it’s only to your advantage if you act on the information the app gives you.
Lesson: Use the information you get to work wisely.
Trim is an app that evaluates all of the recurring subscriptions (Hulu? Dollar Shave Club? Netflix? Apple iCloud?) on your registered credit cards and checks in with you by text to remind you that you’re spending $25 a month on X and asks if you want Trim to cancel it for you. Trim cancels most subscriptions for free, and charges a $6 fee for hard-to-cancel subscriptions. (One imagines Comcast fits that category.)
Lesson: Sometimes, there’s really no downside to a tech solution. You have to decide if you’re comfortable with giving yet another company access to your financial information, though, and that’s something with which we’re all struggling.
16) Get to know money-smart people.
Paper Doll has always been fascinated by personal financial management tools for organizing financial information and activities. I believe that the more advice you get from people who are smart about money, the more alternatives you have at your disposal to spend, save, invest, and enjoy your own money. Here’s a roundup of some of my favorite bloggers, podcasters, and otherwise cool places to visit on the web for smart financial advice, along with samples of their wise words.
Read what smart people have to tell you:
- Laura Adams — Your Emergency Fund: 5 Tips To Build a Financial Safety Net
- Money Girl (Also Laura Adams) — 6 Essential Habits of Financially Health People
- Wise Bread — How To Do Money Like a Grownup
- Consumerist — Does Paying With Cash Increase Your Emotional Investment In A Purchase?
- Top 100 Personal Finance Blogs (curated by Wisebread)
Check out the agencies dedicated to helping you keep more of your money:
- National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) Financial Education
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — Adult Financial Education
- MyMoney.gov — Financial information for teachers, researchers and the public
Listen to smart people talk about money:
- Planet Money — Put a Chip On It
- Payoff’s YouTube Channel — Giving Pays Off
- Payoff’s Financial Personality Quiz and Payoff’s Financial Personality Comparison Guide
- The Top 15 Personal Financial Podcasts to Follow
As we end this series on organizing your finances in 2016 and near the middle of the year, please remember, just as organizing it’s not about the stuff, it’s about the people who own the stuff, organizing your finances is less about how much money you have, and more about how you can live your financial life happily and without stress. Spend more of your money on experiences, and then save and invest your money so you can do the things you enjoy with the people you love.
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