Best Results Organizing

Paper Doll hates to be listless.

Recently, a few social networking pals on Twitter and Facebook posted about a new list-related site called WorkFlowy. I thought that was an awfully odd little name, and figured I’d pull up the site, give it a glance and then save it in the bookmark folder I’m using to collect sites to update the information I provided the last time I talked with you about To Do lists and sites to help others with their To Dos.

It’s been almost three years, but I’ve been in no rush to revamp and revise. As much as I enjoyed testing to provide readers with a sense of what nouveau To Do-ness they offered, each site left me cold. (Of course, in the case of Remember the Milk, that’s a good thing. You can’t stay awake to write a blog post if your milk is warm, right?)

As I’ve been examining newer To Do sites, apps and programs, I’ve clarified my vision of what I hope to present. Eventually, there will be a Paper Doll series on paper-based time management systems. I’ve reviewed all my old Getting Things Done notes from my readings of David Allen, and I’ve followed the teachings of Mark Forster, mostly second-hand via the blog of fellow Professional Organizer, Janine Adams of Peace of Mind Organizing. (Forster’s the one who came up with the various iterations of the AutoFocus system that went viral a few years ago and the new SuperFocus system, which I’ve yet to research.) Among the paper-based time management systems, there’s even The Pomodoro Technique, which creates a time-limited system for achieving goals and has something (obliquely) to do with tomatoes.

I’ve researched all of these (and am excited to investigate further, as my colleague Emily Wilska, of San Francisco’s The Organized Life will be presenting two jam-packed sessions on these systems at this week’s annual conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers.

To me, paper-based really means list-based. I’m flexible. It doesn’t have to be on paper. However, none of my research, back then or in recent months, had yielded a To Do list site or app that had the the paper-y ease of use I was seeking. Until WorkFlowy.

Readers, you know I don’t generally gush, but (at the risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial) thirty minutes after starting to use WorkFlowy, I was tweeting its merits to fellow professional organizers and the public at large. Over the last few weeks, I’ve put WorkFlowy through its paces during one of my busiest times of the year, and it has not disappointed.

I love it. Not just for what it does do, but for what it does not. WorkFlowy is elegance in its simplicity. It lets you create lists, sub-lists and sub-sub-lists. It lets you see what you want, hide what you don’t want to see (until you want to see it again), move items as necessary and more. Yet WorkFlowy does not offer so many options that you’d likely forget the features exist, and nothing requires reading a manual to understand (although there is a nifty video to help you get things started).

I’ve found what is, to Paper Doll, the Holy Grail of To Do lists. It lets you do everything you could do with a pad of paper, with all the features that we’ve come to love from word processing programs, like the ability to cut and paste to rearrange text. While mind-mapping is great for visual people, many of us think in words and outlines, in bullet points and lists. But if third grade Social Studies outlines (Roman Number I, capital letter A, numeral 1, lowercase letter a) is a bit overambitious for your cognitive framework, WorkFlowy bridges the gap between complexity and chaos. It’s just yummy. (See? I gushed!)

GETTING STARTED

WorkFlowy is easy to use. Sign up by providing your email address and creating a password. That’s it. Really.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be presented with a pop-up screen that shows the same introductory video to which I linked above, and a cheat sheet of commands and shortcuts. But don’t worry — everything is so intuitive, you won’t really need the cheat sheet.

When you’ve soaked it all in, hit the close box in the upper right corner, which points helpfully to the “Help” menu. If you ever need to access either the video or the cheat sheet, it’s as near as clicking “Help”. (Forgive me for not being able to show you the Help button, but WorkFlowy is wider than my blog screen.)

You’ll be provided with a blank page with one bullet point. One lonely little dot.

Type something. Let’s say it’s your task list. Type “Task List”. Then hit enter and type something else, like “Shopping List”. Lather, rinse, repeat.

FORMATTING YOUR LISTS

At the end of any given bullet point, you can hit enter and tab, and the next bullet will indent underneath the parent bullet. You can type wherever your insertion cursor is blinking, or click the plus sign next to “Create new item” and that lonely little dot becomes an active, powerful task item.

If you forgot something that you want to add in a list, place your cursor at the end of any item in that list, hit enter, and you’ll have a bullet item, properly lined up. If you realize you’ve created a sub-tab too deep in the hierarchy, you don’t even have to erase and re-replace your cursor. Just as you increase the indenting by clicking your tab key, you can decrease the indenting by clicking shift and tab.

To promote a bullet to a higher level in the hierarchy, decrease the indenting; to demote it, increase the indenting. However, if you wish to move a sub-bullet to another location, just grab the little multi-directional arrow parallel to any bullet point but all the way on the right of the screen:

and drag the arrow in any direction and drop it where you want the bullet to relocate.

THE DETAILS

WorkFlowy’s interface is exactly like Word or any other word processing program — use the same keyboard shortcuts you’d normally use to cut and paste, copy or edit text. If you type a complete URL (including the http://), WorkFlowy will make it an underlined, clickable link. (This makes it ideal for researching and planning blog posts.)

You can collapse (hide) or expand (show) any given list or sub-list by clicking the tiny plus or minus sign that appears next to any given bullet when you hover your cursor. If everything is currently hidden:

you merely hover your cursor over the bullet (to make the + appear) and click the plus sign to expand so you can see just that bulleted list and any or all the bulleted sub-lists:

Above, Thursday and Friday’s bulleted sub-lists are visible, Saturday-Monday’s are collapsed and everything under the next main bullet is hidden. With one keystroke, you can expand or collapse as you see fit. In under two seconds, my view of the above list can change to:

As you type, WorkFlowy auto-saves every few seconds. However, there is a “Saved” button at the top of the page so that you can gauge whether your very last keystroke was saved before you log out or close the browser window. There’s also a “Search” box, so even if a list is collapsed, you can locate a key word or reference.

THE EXTRAS

In addition to controlling the formatting of the page, you can modify any item by hovering your cursor over the bullet. A little menu will pop up to the left to indicate your options for that specific bullet point:

You can:

Add a note, which opens un-bulleted space right under any bullet, so you can make notes to yourself about the list without the note becoming caught up in the list hierarchy.

Complete allows you to strike through that bullet item to indicate completion. Once you have lots of completed items, if it gets untidy, there’s a button at the top of the screen giving you the option to toggle Completed: Visible or Completed: Hidden so you can decide, on a macro level, whether you wish to see completed tasks.

Export lets you export a particular list or sub-list (rather than the whole shebang):

so you can include it in a report, email or any other document. If you want to export your whole mega-list (for backup purposes), there’s an “Export All Lists” link at the bottom of the screen.

Delete lets you delete a particular bullet and any sub-bullet under it. I was all set to warn you to be careful, because WorkFlowy does not ask for confirmation of deletion, and Control-Z or Command-Z does not apply. However, I discovered that whenever you delete a bullet or series of bullets, a menu appears at the top of the screen, offering you an option to UNDO the deletion. If you click it, you’ll be offered further instructions:

THE DRAWBACKS

While WorkFlowy is perfect for Paper Doll, certain missing attributes are deal-breakers for other users. For example, WorkFlowy:

—does not have color coding. Text is in black on white. When you mark an item as complete, it appears slightly dimmed with strikethrough text.

—does not have aesthetic formatting. You can highlight a word and click Control-B or Command-B until the cows come home, but you won’t be able to make the text bold.

—does not sync with iCal, Google Calendar or any other app. It’s up to you to figure out when you’re going to accomplish any given task and how you’ll alert yourself to do it.

—doesn’t have offline support, which I know is a sticking point for those who use laptops, tablets and smart phones in environments where Wi-Fi (or any Fi, or 3G or 4G or any old G) may not be available.

THE FUTURE OF WORKFLOWY

What about other high-tech issues, like security, mobility and collaboration?

WorkFlowy already works in a secure environment. Just go to https://workflowy.com/ and you’re all set. (In fact, WorkFlowy beat Facebook to the punch on this feature.)

WorkFlowy is continuing to work on fully-featured mobile versions. Just three months ago, their preview version for mobile devices let users view lists, expand and collapse sub-lists and zoom in, but it was more “read” than “write” because it lacked editing features (and the aforementioned offline support).

The WorkFlowy team moves quickly, though. iPhone, iPad and Android users can now edit on their devices, and the mobile interface is constantly being upgraded.

As for collaboration, team access to lists is in development. As a first step, if WorkFlowy is open in two tabs, or on a computer and a device, changes made in one are reflected on the other.

Not bad for a five-month-old site that’s still in beta, eh?

There’s no shortage of To Do apps on the web, and Paper Doll isn’t a savvy enough prognosticator to call this the next Google, Evernote or Dropbox. But I really, really like WorkFlowy, and I think you might, too. Try it out, and please share your comments below.

Readers, we have a small mystery here at Paper Doll Central.

On March 15, 2011, my post Displaying Children’s Art: Reframing Grandchild Moses & Making Raggedy Andy Warhol More Magnetic posted without difficulty. It was the first part of a two-part series on children’s art. The next week, we had a small hiccup, so the follow-up post, Children’s Art: Curating Not-So-Little Collections, instead of appearing on its regular day, appeared on Wednesday, March 23, 2011.

On that day, some people did have the chance to read the post, but sometime in the intervening two weeks, the post disappeared from the archives, and clicking “next post” at the end of the March 15th post links directly to last week’s post on frequent traveler rewards…skipping the second art post altogether. For those of you who use RSS feeds or have linked to the post from my Facebook business page, you’ll note that clicking on the link that used to work now yields a strange error message. (This does not feel very organized at all!)

Paper Doll was tempted to fear she imagined having written the post altogether. (I always did want to be more like Ingrid Bergman, though perhaps not in Gaslight.) However, one can still access tweets quoting the post — apparently, my line about “Not everyone is a Picasso. Heck, not even every Picasso was a Picasso!” was pretty popular.

Plus, the original post does still exist in Google’s cache:

We’re working to get the original post recovered, but it may be a while. For those of you who were left hanging and requested information about the missing post, I encourage you to click the link to read the post in its entirety via Google’s cached version (even if the colorful highlighting is a bit disconcerting).

Thank you to all the readers who wrote in to find out about this mysterious little art theft. We’ve got everyone, from Hercule Poirot to the staff of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? on the case, and as soon as we know something, you’ll know something.

Travel can be a real headache. First, there are the modern indignities, from taking off your shoes to choosing between TSA-fondling and subjecting yourself to the radiation and embarrassment of airport security backscatter scanners.

Then there are hotel alarm clocks that require a PhD to set, woefully indifferent desk clerks and overly attentive bedbugs. (Ick! But at least there’s a national registry!)

The recession led to staycations (the name, not the concept — people have been staying home since long before the internet). The cost of travel keeps going up, with airlines charging for everything from checking luggage to selecting seat assignments to booking a ticket. (Isn’t charging for booking a ticket like a supermarket charging to let you pay for your groceries?) One airline actually considered charging for use of the bathroom until Boeing refused to install the requisite equipment out of fear for flyer safety!

Frequent travel loyalty programs used to be a highlight of the travel experience. Sure, sometimes it was hard to find dates on which you were able to use your miles or points, but generally, the experience took some of the sting out of travel, because you knew the money you spent would be, in part, rewarded down the line. Now, you not only must pay to purchase miles (for yourself or for a gift — which, of course, makes sense), but you now have to pay to transfer — yes, to GIVE — your miles to someone else, even in your own family. (Imagine if you had to pay Macy’s if you decided to pass along a sweater or purse to a friend or sibling!) It’s enough to make a Paper Doll “harrumph!”

It’s a comfort, then, to know that at least keeping track of travel miles and points need not be difficult or paper-intensive. Once upon a time, there were only a few domestic airlines and primarily business travelers made use of loyalty programs. Now, every credit card seems to have an affinity program, and airlines and hotel chains have intricate reciprocal arrangements. You can earn, buy, sell, trade and combine miles with the help of ingeniously sophisticated sites and wise travel points gurus.

THE OLDEN DAYS

A decade ago, I used to help my clients organize their loyalty points by creating file folders for each of the travel programs and filing paperwork in reverse chronological order. Back then, all the programs mailed quarterly updates, so we just popped the most recent mailing into the front of the folders and purged the out-of-date paperwork once a year. For an occasional heavy-duty traveler, we created Excel spreadsheets to track miles added or redeemed.

Nowadays, it’s a rare loyalty program that sends any mail unless trying to induce you to sign up for an affinity credit card. Instead, the programs send emails which may reference your point/mile balance but probably require you to log in to the web site, forcing you to search for the password. (Technology is great, but I still prefer letting one’s fingers do the walking across a few file tabs vs. through layers of online validation.)

Paper Doll is not a frequent “frequent traveler”. I generally use one of two airlines, and as for hotels, it would be far from exact to call me loyal, but hedging my bets against a future in which I am a jet-setter (or am able to creatively combine points and miles for a big reward), I participate in the loyalty programs of every hotel chain in which I’ve stayed in the past few decades. Trying to track all of that data at each individual site and supervise a DIY spreadsheet is so taxing that I don’t see myself doing it, let alone my clients.

Enter, the loyalty point aggregators!

THE AGGREGATORS

AwardWallet tracks loyalty reward points and miles in 321 (and counting) programs, including major airline (100+), train (5), hotel (40+) and car rental (13) programs.

You can also use it to aggregate and track credit card reward point programs like American Express Membership Rewards and Thank You Network points, and frequent shopper programs as varied as Aveda’s Pure Privileges, office supply rewards programs for Staples, Office Depot and Office Max, Hallmark Crown Rewards and Ebates. Track dining programs, from the big guys (iDine, Open Table) as well as individual restaurant chain programs (from Landry’s and Outback to Panera and Qdoba).

Registration is simple: create a username and password, provide your name and email address (which doesn’t have to match the email addresses with which you’ve registered for your loyalty programs), and agree to the terms and conditions.

Once you join, begin adding program information by clicking the green plus sign at the top of the page. Then type the name of any program into the search box or select from a long alphabetized list. Enter your user name (or rewards account number) and password, and AwardWallet pulls up all the vital information. It will always automatically update all information for that account upon login, and you can sort by program name, balance or expiration date.

Even if you lack a few key pieces of login data, it’s easy enough to go to a program web site and use the password recovery to straighten everything out before adding the information to AwardWallet. (Heck, you’d have to do it sometimes, so why not now?) I added eight major travel programs in about 20 minutes, and now when I log in, I can not only see updated point tallies (associated with the program, account number, and, if applicable, expiration dates), but also trip details for upcoming flights, rentals or hotel stays.

AwardWallet has two plan levels. At both the (free) basic level and (paid) Plus level, you can automatically track rewards balances for an unlimited number of plans, organize rewards into “custom” views, automatically track travel plans, and share rewards balances and travel plans. You can also get notified of impending expiration of loyalty points or miles (90, 60, 30, and 7 days in advance), though the basic level limits you to warnings for only three programs.

The Plus level has additional features, such as historical charts of point balance changes and the ability to export data to an Excel spreadsheet (e.g., for corporate record-keeping). If you upgrade to Plus status but choose not to renew the next year, AwardWallet will merely downgrade you to the basic level, keeping all of your data fully available.

Interestingly, the Plus has a Priceline-esque name-your-own-price fee that seems both quirky and mysterious. For what it’s worth (which remains undefined), AwardWallet has provided me with a code that the first ten registrants can use to upgrade to a free year of AwardWallet Plus. Have at it, Paper Doll readers — enter the following code during the registration process:

Points.com is similar to AwardWallet, but offers a few twists in terms of functionality. To sign up, provide your email address and create a username and password, plus your country and state or province. (You can also provide your city or community, in order to be provided with earning opportunities, but this is optional.)

Points.com participates in fewer programs than AwardWallet, including 55 airlines, 14 hotel chains, 4 credit card rewards programs, and 29 (mostly obscure) retail programs. To add a program to your account:

1) Scroll down in the correct category and click “add” for the intended program.
2) Click on the Register Program button.
3) Supply the requested program login information and click (again) on the Register Program button.

The system will then update your account with your point details for your reference. But Points.com isn’t just for tracking points — it enables users to buy, sell and trade points!

Once you register your account, use the search function to find someone who needs, say, 3000 of your airline program points and is willing to offer 7000 of his hotel program points in return, via the site’s Global Points Exchange. (There are fees associated with most trades, in part to cover the fees charged by the individual programs.)

The site also helps you make trades between your own accounts, allowing you to turn certain hotel or dining points into airline points, and vice versa (again, with fees attached). You may also use Points.com to redeem miles or points for gift cards from retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, Pottery Barn and Crutchfield — a great idea if you’ve got a small number of soon-to-expire miles.

Points.com has an intriguing model, but the trading functions may be more confusing or complicated than you’d want to bother with unless you have an urgent, pending need to acquire miles or points. For reference, similar sites which broker sales or trades of frequent traveler miles include AwardTraveler.com and Air-Awards.com.

Mile Tracker started out a decade ago as a Windows-only downloadable software program created by “a guy named Mike”. Now, the cloud-based program is powered by USA Today and can be used by everyone.

Once you create an account by supplying your name and email address and creating a password, the system will send you an activation key by email. After activation, you’ll have one more step–creating a user name–before you can get started. At first, I wondered at the disorganization in not creating the user name as part of the initial set-up, but it turns out that one MileTracker account can track miles for multiple travelers (Mom, Dad, the kids, Alice, Sam the Butcher, etc.)

Add mileage programs easily: select the user and program to add, then enter the login information required by any given program. Just wait a few minutes for the system to populate the fields with your mile/point information, which you can view under the Account Summary tab. A nice time-saving feature of MileTracker allows you to not only view and track your points and mileage on the site, but a navigation button grants you one-click (already-logged-in) access to whatever program you want to view at its official site.

In addition to mileage and point tracking, MileTracker boasts features including airport links, currency converters, flight trackers (including information on flight delays), mileage calculators and a USA Today feed of travel-related news via the Today In the Sky blog. However, I did encounter some odd programming hiccups that make it hard to recommend.

MileageManager.com is an oldie-but-a-goodie, dating back to an offline service that began in the 1980s and went online in 2001. It’s much more than a consolidation service, providing some real comprehensive mileage management, but at a price (albeit a small one, of $14.95/year, and there’s a 30-day trial membership). And, unlike AwardWallet and MileTracker, MileManager only allows one person’s loyalty programs to be tracked per account, so a married couple would have to maintain two separate accounts.

MileageManager tracks balances and activity for frequent traveler (hotel, airline, car rental) and credit card rewards programs, as well as elite status-related characteristics. Like the paid version of AwardWallet, MileageManager offers unlimited notifications for expiring points/miles, but in a unique offering among these sites, MileManager has an Award Planner service (in beta development) to help identify which of your programs have award travel bookings available.

Members type in basic information regarding an impending trip (dates of travel, number of award-related tickets needed, the airports of origin and destination, etc.), and the Award Planner locates free tickets and opportunities in each applicable loyalty program. This saves an inordinate amount of time, whether surfing airline sites or being lulled into an elevator music-induced stupor while on hold with your frequent traveler customer service line.

While I’d encourage readers to check out all possible point management options and evaluate them with regard to individual needs, frugal Paper Doll gives top scores to the free, easy-to-navigate AwardWallet. Happy traveling!

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been two and a half years since we’ve talked about organizing children’s artwork. Today, we’re going to revisit a popular classic Paper Doll post, Whistler’s Mommy Invites Grandchild Moses and Raggedy Andy Warhol For A Playdate. The avant garde coffeehouse that showcased kids’ art seems to have closed, but I’ve updated with newfangled art storage solutions to reflect improved technology.

Do you sometimes feel like you’re the curator of the MMOTA (Modern Museum of Toddler Art) or the AMOKAC (American Museum of Kindergarten Arts and Crafts)?

Do you feel obligated to believe a picture is worth a thousand words because you can’t understand half of what your toddler says?

Have you forgotten what color your refrigerator is because the doors, like museum walls, are covered with all of the major artistic methods–watercolor, oil(y Play-doh or sticky jam-hands), and mixed media (painted, sparkly macaroni)?

When children are very young, every artistic endeavor may seem like a masterpiece, but soon enough, parents can become overwhelmed by the embarrassment of finger-painted riches. At some point, you realize you’re either going to have to start buying Frigidaires in bulk, or you’re going to run out of display space in the kiddie art gallery you used to call your home.

Unlike the other categories of paper we discuss — bills, To Do lists, references papers, Social Security cards…there’s no agreed-upon records retention schedule for determining how long one should keep art created by tiny hands. It’s neither an art nor a science, but a labor of love wrapped in papier mch and held in place with colored pipe cleaners. Today, we’re going to explore creative methods for displaying the work, and next week, we’ll cover winnowing the collections.

So, before you run to Fridges-Are-Us for your next art wall installation, recognize that there are alternatives to hanging art where your lunch lives.

THE CLASSICS — ON THE WALL

Hang a retractable clothesline a few inches below ceiling height (too high for children to climb to reach) and hang paper artwork, attaching it with clothespins. Paint wooden clothespins or use plastic ones in primary colors for a more kid-friendly atmosphere. Alternatively, you can use curtain rods and drapery clips, as Heidi Smith of Budgetwise Home suggests.

This can be a fun way to decorate your child’s room as well as any other casual area, like a guest room, mud/utility room, playroom or basement. You can make it a permanent display gallery with rotating collections, or just put on an ad hoc art show.

Invest in a large cork bulletin board or a number of cork tiles (arrayed uniformly or artistically) and affix to a bare wall. Display the art as-is, right on the cork, or cover the entire board with dollar-store wrapping paper or kraft or butcher paper. Your kids can even draw on or decorate the paper, first, creating a meta-message of art-on-art. Or, just use one cork tile in a high traffic area of the home to showcase the Masterpiece of the Week!

Wallpaper an unfinished basement. The walls of a basement laundry room are likely to be gunmetal grey and depressing. Charming and colorful children’s art can brighten the area (and the mood of laundry day) immensely. Artwork can be easily and safely attached to walls with removable Command Poster Strips.

Match your child’s magnetic personality! We’ve spoken before about chalkboard paint, but magnetic paint can help you yield just as much creativity (without risking that your kids will want to scratch their nails across the surface). Pick up some brush-on or sprayable magnetic paint primer at your favorite home supply store, and paint your wood, metal, masonry, drywall or plaster wall.

Once the primer is dry, cover with the latex paint of your choice — one solid color, stripes, or a pattern designed by your little artist. As the paint primer goes on in grey or black, you’ll need multiple coats of the latex, especially for any lighter colors, before your art wall is ready for display. Then attach the artwork with decorative magnets. (Hey, that’s another art project your kids might like!)

Embroider the truth! This may not be a classical display method, but Eydie, a FeelingStitchy blogger, put her crafty talents to excellent use in framing and displaying children’s art. She made an inkjet transfer to muslin, matched the embroidery floss to the colors of the original drawing and completed a bunch of other artsy tasks I can’t comprehend:

Masterpiece of Eydie/SheBrews

Admit your own artistic weakness — really, it’s OK! Sometimes talent skips a generation, or just part of one. While Paper Mommy (and my sister) seem to excel at visual representation, the results of Paper Doll‘s Pictionary attempts at drawing horses, cows and maps of the United States seem to be interchangeable. Last week, in lieu of leaving a note as I departed my sister’s house, I scribbled off a smiley-face self-portrait. The next day, I received the following email:

Sigh.

So, if painting or papering or corking just isn’t in the cards for you, consider purchasing a pre-made hanging art gallery. With a limit of six frames, you’re helping your kids to develop a discerning eye and focus on showcasing masterpieces.

Frame it to Contain it. Whether you’re a Do-It-Yourself framer with Popsicle sticks or desire upscale and frequent changes of displays, options abound. A few fun choices include theL’il Davinci art cabinet sold at OnlineOrganizing.com and the Wall Art Gallery from Lillian Vernon.

Whatever you choose, no rogue art project will ever complain to the warden that it was framed.

MODERN ART — A LITTLE OFF THE WALL

“Take a picture; it’ll last longer.” Sure, that sounds a little snarky, but it’s a perfect option for preserving mixed-media and other three-dimensional works of art. Better yet, take a snapshot of your child holding the masterpiece to keep a historical record of the little star during his or her Blue Period.

Scan the artwork using standard scanning software; for oversized pieces, you may have more luck with professional scanners, such as those found at FedEx Office. Either way, suppress your temptation to color-correct green hair or fix the spelling mistakes that actually make children’s art delightful. Maintain backup copies (in the cloud, on hard drives, and on flash drives). Remember: Memory is cheap, but memories are priceless!

Upload scanned art to flickr, Google’s Picassa, or other photo-sharing web sites and share with friends and family via Facebook or Twitter. Because the photo-sharing sites can be password-protected and permission-based, you can ensure that only people you know and trust have access to information about your little Michelangelo or Georgia O’Keeffe.

If you do want to showcase your kids’ art for the world, acquire a little web real estate. A few years ago, I recommended having your own web site as an option; nowadays, I’d suggest a free WordPress blog for maximum ease and flexibility. In such cases, remember to guard your children’s privacy by providing no identifying names or locations.

Create calendars, mugs, greeting cards and other gifts to share with your little ones’ fans. Make calendars by laminating pages and having them spiral-bound at your local printing shop; they can print your cards, too. Or, you can have a photo developing site like Snapfish produce calendars or cards in bulk, or use an online service like Zazzle, CafePress or RedBubble to make (and even sell) the creations.

Book ’em. (“Framed”? “Book ’em”? Dare we say that some children’s art is criminally cute?) Online book publishing sites like blurb and Tikatok will let you turn digitized versions of your children’s artwork into coffee table art books.

For proud parents who have the deep pockets to dress up as Medici-level art patrons, Artimus Art specializes in creating entire packages. For one price, get a hardcover book with a customized cover, art box, online art gallery, and e-greetings to showcase prolific little artistes. Artimus Art has you ship the actual artworks and they’ll professionally photograph them before preservation.

Of course, there’s nothing saying you can’t go Old School and use a three-hole punch in the margin of your kids’ art and then help them “sew” it all together into book form with brightly colored yarn.

Digitize! Digital picture frames are a great solution for relatives who haven’t quite joined the computer era. Load a series of photos of the art (as well as snapshots of the whole family) onto a memory card or USB flash drive and plug it into a digital picture frame; periodically swap out the card or drive to update to new “collections”. Of course, it can’t hurt to send along an occasional piece of paper artwork along with a letter that says “Dear Grandma and Grandpa” (or “Dear Bubbe and Zayde”, or “Dear Baba and Gigi”, or “Dear Abuela and Abuelo”…)

(DRAWING) THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Of course, as we all know, collecting and displaying children’s art is the easy part. It’s the winnowing and the purging (and the vacuuming of the crumbled macaroni and the shaking of glitter off of clothing) and the convincing the pint-sized artists (and yourselves) that the number of pieces of artwork saved bears no relationship to the love for the artist.

Next week, we’ll take a fresh look at how you can oversee the collections of children’s art in your life without becoming a full-time curator.

Longtime readers of Paper Doll know that this blog takes the idea of organizing to heart, including organizing each post. Each week, we focus on a theme. We may find ourselves in pop culture culs-de-sac (yes, that is the plural of cul-de-sac — really! Lorelei Gilmore doubted it, too), but each post generally has a theme — a type of paper organizing-related product or service or a view to solving a particular problem.

Sometimes, during my research, however, I come across items that are neither fish nor foul, items for which there’s no category worthy of an entire post, and yet are too captivating to let pass without comment. As my birthday is this coming weekend, and as I’ve been a very good Paper Doll, I thought I’d be a little self-indulgent and dedicate this post to paper-related items that quirkily organize paper, time and space, and which, had you known they existed, you might have considered giving me as a present. Or, y’know, not.

A Gold-Plated Shredder

Readers know how strongly I feel about shredding sensitive documents to protect one’s identity. Shredding anything that has your Social Security number, account numbers or otherwise private (non-public domain) personally identifying information is just good sense. But the El Casco 23-karat gold-plated shredder?

 

It sells for $627! The product description from Amazon reads:

This fine, fancy executive paper shredder is layered in real gold with a clear paper shredder basin and fully functional, high quality paper shredding device mounted on top. A desktop unit, the paper shredder can be stored easily and takes up little room. With fine and fancy accents, it is suitable for an executive’s office. A fine gift idea and a necessity at the office. The fancy, Gold paper shredder is hand crafted in Spain and imported to the United States. A beautiful choice for any upscale executive’s office. Order today. Finish: 23kt Gold Plated Size: 9″ x 8 1/2″ x 9 1/2″

Readers, you know that I’m all about efficiency without excess. This item not only represents financial excess, but verbal excess as well. The words “fine” and “fancy” each appear three times in one paragraph! The price offends my sensibilities, as does the unnecessary capitalization of the word “gold”. While shredders are essential, this item is not a necessity at the office, at home, or anywhere except a Robin Leach expos of the rich, famous and lacking in good judgment.

Paper Watches

Paper Doll once had a beau who gave her a lovely watch…the silver link bracelet portion of which broke the first time it was worn. (The watch was lovely to look at but kept poor time; the beau was lovely to look at but we had bad timing…and that’s a story for another post.) Lack of dependability in a watch band is a serious flaw, so there’s some appeal to the Patch, a series of Swiss paper watches from Geneva-based Altanus.

The super-thin watchbands, available in 11 solid neon colors and various sports- and international-themed patterns, was inspired by papier-mch floats at an annual Tuscan Carnival festival. They’re manufactured from biodegradable paper and are tear-resistant, like those sturdy 21+ bands one is given to wear at club concerts or the ID bracelets assigned for outpatient procedures like MRIs and mammograms. The digital LED watches are waterproof, and the whole timepiece, including the band, weighs merely 11 grams.

Perhaps you think that in the era of smart phones and other ubiquitous gadgets, watches are pass? This is certainly up for debate — in fact, my colleague Deb Lee made a great case for this on her Organize to Revitalize blog. But there are times when it would be wonderful to have a colorful, inexpensive, environmentally-friendly (and oh-so-thin) chronometer on one’s wrist. Poolside, while working out or walking/running, while playing with children or working in the garden (not that Paper Doll is likely to ever work in a garden)…

Elsewhere, Altanus charges 24 Euros, or about $33.54 (as of this writing). Paper Doll feels that’s a little pricey for a novelty watch; a price point below $15 would have been more expected. Still, they are kind of cute, so if you can’t live without one and are willing to spend a few extra dollars, the Made In Italy Mall is carrying them for $36.50 with free shipping. How could one choose, though, between the Spanish running-of-the-bulls theme and the Ice Cream Stick motif?
 
  

Lifesized Furniture Templates

Design Yourself Interiors (DYI) co-founders Melody Davidson and Kathy Wagner have a nifty idea on their hands. I know many people are enthused about decorating. I even hear that there are those who enjoy the furniture acquisition process. Paper Doll is not one of them. To Paper Mommy‘s dismay, Paper Doll could live happily with a bed, a dresser, a desk and every wall made of bookshelves. Furniture is never foremost in my mind. Thus, although I don’t want this product, I can at least see how advantageous it might be for readers, especially those who (like me) completely lack artistic or design skill.

DYI has created life-sized, reusable paper “footprints” to duplicate the actual size of pending furniture purchases, like tables, chairs, couches, dressers, etc. If you’re trying to design a furniture plan for your office or home and measuring or eyeballing isn’t enough, take a peek at these paper templates, which are pre-cut to standard dimensions, and then can then be folded or cut to more accurately represent your purchase options. See below for DYI’s before-and-after visions.

@Copyright Design Yourself Interiors

@Copyright Design Yourself Interiors

Cut to size and placed on the floor, the templates allow you to fashion a floor plan with real-life sizing. You can then quickly and easily, without casters or back strain, rearrange the templates to determine the most appealing layout. Of course, it’s only two-dimensional, so it won’t help you determine whether your prospective overstuffed couch will be too high to comfortably allow you to place snacks on your coffee table, but until they develop pneumatic devices to raise and lower the templates (or your flooring), this is a fun start.

DYI offers five kits for furniture layout for the following rooms:

• Family Rooms — couches, including sectional sofas, upholstered chairs, upright chairs, and round and rectangular side tables, but no templates for bookshelves or entertainment centers. (As Joey from Friends asked, “If you don’t have a TV, what do you point your furniture at?”)
• Living rooms — couches, stuffed chairs and round and square tables
• Dining Rooms — dining tables and chairs, but no china cabinets or breakfronts
• Bedrooms — bed, nightstand, chairs, and tables, but no dressers, toy boxes or TV stands
• Nursery — cribs, rocking chair, changing table and dresser

all at $29.99 each, except for the nursery kit, which is only $19.99, and three- and four-room sets are available for $75 and $110, respectively.

For what it’s worth, Lay-It-Out offers similar life-sized furniture templates.

    

 
They’re colorful, but otherwise operate in the same fashion, with furniture templates for the dining room (with a rectangular dining table and chairs, as well as a round breakfast table setting), living room (couch, loveseat, and chair), bedroom (beds only), gameroom (with an adjustable pool table or game table configuration), an accessory table kit (with a rectangular coffee table and square end tables), and a rug template, adjustable by cutting or folding. All kits are $19.99, with a Total Home Package kit priced at $99.

Inflatable Paper Sofa

If you like the design templates above and are curious what it might be like to have three-dimensional paper furniture, look no further than Polish designer Malafor‘s Blow Sofa:

For just $590 (that’s $37 less than the gold-plated shredder), you can get an environmentally-friendly paper couch made from extra-durable, 100% recycled (and recyclable) paper dunnage bags (paper airbags used for security overland cargo), rubber straps and a metal backing rack. The dunnage bags are strengthened by sandwiching two layers of paper and one layer of plastic.

The Blow Sofa ships flat and then can be inflated (to 70.9″ wide by 35.4″ high); when you move, it’s easy to deflate and transport to your new warehouse loft in some chic, up-and-coming urban neighborhood. For $60 more, you can add a cushion! As with Kraft paper or a plaster cast, you can get artsy (or have your soon-to-be-famous artist neighbor in the warehouse loft next to yours) add color and design with markers or bohemian flair.

Intriguing though all of these may be, I don’t have a strong hankering for any of them. In fact, aside from a date with George Clooney, a trip to the UK and, alright, one major tangible item (a new car), I’ve been hard-pressed to identify a particularly strong desire for specific wrap-able birthday presents.

Why?

Well, various news publications were abuzz this past week with references to University of New Hampshire psychologist Edward Lemay‘s research with Yale University colleagues. Lemay’s study found that:

“People value possessions, in part, because they afford a sense of protection, insurance, and comfort…But what we found was that if people already have a feeling of being loved and accepted by others, which also can provide a sense of protection, insurance, and comfort, those possessions decrease in value.”

In other words, people who feel loved have a lesser need for material things. Well, from Paper Mommy to my friends and colleagues to all of you dear readers, Paper Doll already feels the love.