Best Results Organizing

As I fought my better angels over whether those Post-Halloween Sale Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups would be better off living with me, I noticed that the Huge & Ubiquitous store (oh, you know which one it is!) was piping in Johnny Mathis singing Silver Bells.  I have nothing against Johnny Mathis. (Indeed, I’ve been known to warble Chances Are, to the dismay of neighborhood puppies.)  I have nothing against Silver Bells.  But it was only the day after Halloween!

Sadly, there’s little chance we can stem the tide of having ChristmaHannuKwanzaka* take over one-sixth of the year.  Perhaps we should be spend Thanksgiving thankful for Halloween, or else the festivities might start right after Labor Day, or goodness knows, Independence Day!

Unless we’re employed at Santa’s workshop or live on the Island of Misfit Toys , as much we might love a great deal about the winter holidays, whether we observe one or many, it can be a period of great overwhelm.

One might think that an earlier onset of commercialized holiday fever would prompt everyone to get their acts together sooner, but it’s just not the case.  People become aware of this festive equivalent of a term paper earlier every year, but most people still aren’t getting to the library until mid-terms (Thanksgiving) or even the week before exams (mid-December).  The holidays include a distinct kind of paralysis.  Indeed, after hearing reports of this malady from many of my professional organizing clients, I was prompted to write my ebook, Simplify the Season & Save Your Sanity, to help people conquer their troubles.

This early onset holidayophobia is often characterized by anxiety, distress and listlessness.  Well, Paper Doll can help you with that last one.  Yes, kids, it’s time for lists!  The following categories should help you get started on brainstorming to get a jump start on the season.

LIST #1:  WHAT DO YOU HAVE?
The key to being organized in all areas of life is creating homes for everything so you know what you have. Then, you don’t waste time searching for things you don’t own or waste money purchasing what you already have (under all those piles).  Make sub-lists like these below to help you inventory what you have, so you can figure out what you need to buy.

• Gifts lists of what you’ve already purchased during the year — If you haven’t already done so, gather them in a gift closet, drawer or opaque storage tub.  If you already know who the gift is for, wrap it now and stick a Post-It or holiday label on it so you know to whom it will go.  As you shop, keep adding to this inventory list, and note any generic gifts you’ve purchased for when you’re surprised by a gift-giver and need to reciprocate.
• Card and gift recipient lists — Start with last year’s lists, if you have them, to help guide your plans this season.  If you keep shopping lists from year to year, you’ll be less likely to duplicate purchases given to the same people, and you’ll have a better handle on style and size preferences.
• Wrapping essentials list:  paper, bows, gift bags — Would you like to have a Green Christmas?  Recycle and reuse, or skip holiday wrapping altogether and opt for using the funny papers.  As you inventory, organize your resources in a tidy container.
• Shipping list — Make sure you have enough cardboard boxes for shipping care packages and gifts to loved ones afar or abroad.  Once you’ve finished your shipping list, keep one or two extra boxes, but then set the rest free.
• Batteries list–Know what you have on hand so you only buy what you need.  AA and AAA are the most-commonly needed batteries, but stockpiling them for years on end does nobody any good.  And you can always consider rechargeables.
• Spending Plan Seriously, this is something you have to have, whether you devise a standard budget or just list your expenses, it’s the key to keeping January from making you feel like you downed some really bad eggnog.  Identify your regular expenses first, then anticipate holiday costs based on prior years, and brainstorm what activities or purchases can be limited or replaced.

LIST #2: WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BUY?
Shopping lists should be divided by category, as they’ll help you determine which stores or departments you need to visit.

• Menus–No, you don’t need to buy menus, but of you’re hosting the Thanksgiving meal and other holiday festivities, planning your menu first will let you figure out what pantry ingredients and special items you’ll need to buy.  It also helps you figure out how to delegate a menu option if someone asks “What can I bring?”
• Groceries–Your regular shopping list items of a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter may need to be expanded if you’re having company during the holidays, even if you won’t be hosting holiday meals.  Do find out if guests have strong preferences or dietary requirements.

Parents of college-age kids:  make sure they haven’t gone vegetarian or vegan since summer vacation.

Children of senior citizens:  check with grandma and grandpa to make sure they aren’t on doctor-prescribed diets.

• Presents–In this economic climate, it’s easy to feel like anything less than a fully-commercial holiday season will be Dolly Parton’s Hard-Candy Christmas.  We’ll talk about holiday gift-giving in a future post, but bear in mind that children remember that long-desired gift (e.g., Ralphie’s Red Ryder BB gun, the dreamed-about dollhouse) much more than all the little extras.  Think quality, not quantity.  For everyone else on your list, if you don’t know what to give them but feel you must give a gift rather than donate to charity, ask or get some advice. Not everyone wants a seventeenth vanilla-scented candle or yet another tie.  Fit the gift to the person; don’t buy a gift in hopes you’ll think of someone who might like it.  If you don’t know someone well enough to know what they like, are you sure you want to buy them a gift in the first place?
• Cards—Paper Doll urges you to skip a year of sending holiday cards to see how freeing it can be.  But if this is a holiday tradition you really love, consider shopping in holiday discount stores for unusual designs and better prices.  What about sending holiday postcards to save on postage?
• Stamps–Buy them early before the designs you prefer are sold out.
• Wrapping Paper–As noted above, check your supplies before going forward.
• Clothing/accessories for special events and specific weather conditions (for traveling to different climates or replacing worn or outgrown items).

LIST #3:  WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO?

• Prepare the guest room for company (e.g., strip and launder bedding, remove clutter, make space in closets or drawers)
• Make travel arrangements — Shop sooner rather than later for flights, hotels, rental cars, travel packages, etc.  Keep notes (or digital bookmarks) on all the information you find.
• Schedule flu shots (and, if you’re in the right age category, pneumonia shots)
• Arrange for auto maintenance before you go over the river and through the woods
• Packing lists for travel (which may include sub-lists for special-event clothing shopping, dry cleaning, transferring big liquids to TSA-approved Lilliputian carry-on-acceptable containers)

Please feel free to write to Paper Doll and comment about your own favorite holiday lists.

One last note: Frequent Paper Doll readers know how I feel about loose papers, or floozies.  Get yourself a legal pad, clipboard or 3-ring binder to keep track of these lists.  With legal pads or loose leaf sheets on clipboards, use tape flags to separate your different categories of lists.  For a three ring binder, take advantage of index dividers so you can archive your holiday notebooks in January.

Don’t be listless.  Once begun, a job’s half done, and getting a head start on your holiday lists will give you a superb sense of control.

*Please note, Paper Doll does not use this as a term of derision for any faith observances.  It’s merely a pop cultural reference that implies more merriment and irony than using the generic “The Holidays” to cover all major observances.  Please take it in the holidayesque spirit in which it was offered and don’t make a fuss.  You wouldn’t want me to tattle to the man in the red suit, now, would you? 

Contest lovers, WE HAVE A WINNER!

With all the excitement surrounding the United States selecting a new president yesterday, let’s not forget that we had our own little contest going on.  Nobody had to caucus or debate or come up with foreign or domestic policy — entrants just had to add a comment to the contest blog post. 

And while your newspapers may bear the names and faces of your new local, state-wide and nationally-elected officials, one more name gets to ring out tonight, that of our contest winner:

The great folks at Innovention Lab will be forwarding Susan her very own copy of Paper Doll‘s first (officially) favorably-reviewed product, the Internet Password Organizer™!

If you’d like to read Susan’s winning entry and all the others, just visit the contest post and scroll to the bottom.  And if you somehow managed to miss the original review, you can see it here.

I’d like to thank all of the other aspiring contestants for entering, and all of you who emailed separately to say you already had (and loved) your own Internet Password Organizer™, so you weren’t entering, but wanted to let me know you were reading.  I hope to have lots of contests in the future, so if you see a paper-related organizing product you like, tell me!  And tell the vendors/manufacturers you’d like to see their products reviewed here at Paper Doll.

Do you run out the day after Election Day or immediately following huge Dow-Jones fluctuations to pick up multiple copies of the newspaper? Do you imagine your great, great grandchildren getting rich from the proceeds of your well-planned newspaper acquisitions?Think again!

Some events naturally bring to mind famous newspaper front pages.  For example, on Election Day, the iconic Chicago Daily Tribune headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” provides a superb “nyah nyah” to arrogant pollsters:

Nobody can forget the day that mankind took that giant leap into the future.  In my baby trunk in my parents’ basement in Buffalo, NY, there’s a wrinkled, slightly-yellowed copy of the (then-entitled) Buffalo Evening News reporting on the very same topic shown in The New York Times:

And of course, you music lovers might have kept copies of the papers the day the music died:Even if for you that wasn’t Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valenz and the Big Bopper, but Elvis, or John Lennon or Kurt Cobain, that “bad news on the doorstep” probably made you shiver, whatever time of the year you read the paper. 

And in my own life, I recall my mom painstakingly saving multiple copies of Buffalo Evening News columnist Karen Brady’s piece on my third grade class.  A mini-feminist, I’d ended my letter imploring Ms. Brady to speak to Miss Minklein’s 3rd grade Writer’s Club by saying it had been a campaign promise that I’d get a real writer to speak to our class.  And I’d P.S.ed that I had beaten out boys to attain the presidency.  (How could the hip columnist turn that down?)

In the case of the first three papers, while the stories had (and still have) great historical significance, the newspapers themselves have little financial value.  Our moon landing issue, complete with news stories, cartoons and grocery ads, is quaint, but is likely worth little more than pennies and certainly not in excess of the daily copy price.  It might please future family members to have it, but it’s not going to allow my folks to afford a ride on the Space Shuttle.

The very reason newspaper collecting is a great hobby is that antique newspapers aren’t very expensive.  According to HistoryBuff.com, even original copies of historic newspapers from the early 1800s, in perfect condition, cost around $10, and rarely more than $20.  That’s great news if you like to acquire old newspapers, but hopefully it will dissuade Paper Doll readers from saving tomorrow’s election results, no matter how historical, in hopes of a big collectors’ payday.  (Of course, if you just find elections fascinating, Timothy Hughes of History’s Newsstand Blog, has some advice on which post-Election Day papers might have the most historical, if not financial, significance.)

The truth is, for antique newspapers to be valuable, they must meet very specific criteria:

• Front-page coverage of major historically-significant events in either U.S. or international history. 

The reason the news has more value if it’s on the front page is that the paper can be more easily displayed, and one can view the newspaper’s full name and, with truly historic events, the banner headline.  Papers with local-interest only, like your town’s worst blizzard or wackiest pie-eating contest, would rarely garner interest from anyone other than your community archivists.

• Condition of a newspaper should be pristine. 

My parents’ moon landing paper, all wrinkly and slightly yellowed, is of no use to any collectors.  Crinkled, stained, multi-folded, laminated or just plain worn newspapers have no value. 

But don’t assume that condition indicates age.  Newspapers from prior to 1880 actually look newer than week-old papers due to the high rag/cotton/linen content.  Kept away from sunlight, extreme heat and humidity, those old rag newspapers look new, while new newspapers, conversely, are made from newsprint, which is generally non-archival, and wear out quickly.  In other words, newer papers are only a step or so up from those splinter-filled, wide-ruled sheets on which we learned to write in cursive. 

• Original issues have actual value because they are more rare. 

Back in the days of newsboys on street corners, newspapers put out early editions, mid-day editions, late editions, and so on.  People discarded the older issues as updates came out.  The very first time a publication reported a story, it was called the “First Report”, and according to HistoryBuff.com, the first paper in the United States to report on a story got the bragging reports to “First Report in the Nation”.  Such papers have greater financial (if not informative) value than later editions.  Novice collectors often think they possess original issues, when in fact they have special edition or anniversary reprints of original newspapers, which in fact have little or no monetary value.  So, tomorrow’s city papers you’re tempted to save?  They’re just not rare.  (I’ll leave it to history and journalism critics to say whether they’re well done.)

• Proximity to the original event might matter, too. 

A Hawaiian newspaper reporting on the bombing of Pearl Harbor or a New York City newspaper’s coverage of 9/11 has more impact than a story in a suburban publication halfway across the country of a major event.

Nowadays, newspapers generally print thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of one daily issue.  Further, papers are now printed on highly acidic newsprint, rather than olden days rag that kept its like-new condition.  So, the paper that thuds onto your front step too-early in the morning just won’t have monetary value.

Hopefully, this is enough to convince you that saving entire newspapers isn’t going to make you rich.  Newspaper collecting may be a fun hobby, but not a lucrative one unless you are planning to become one of the world’s pre-eminent collectors.  (Paper Doll readers probably don’t have that kind of spare time.  As Mr. Monk and Paper Mommy both say, I could be wrong.  But I don’t think so.)  So, if paper clutter is your problem, perhaps this something to eliminate from your list of prospective hobby options?

Of course, if your daughter’s engagement photo is in this weekend’s paper, or your spouse’s winning pumpkin-growing entry got full-color treatment, you’re probably not thinking dollar signs but family history.  While sentimental memorabilia has its place, my job as your Paper Doll is to help you save what you love without getting buried in clutter. 

Next week, we’ll be talking about how to (manually and digitally) preserve personally significant newspaper clippings for posterity.  Gather your clippings, and I’ll meet you back here next week.

The Paper Doll Win An Internet Password Organizer™ contest closes Wednesday (11/5/08) at Noon Eastern Time.  If you haven’t already entered for your chance to win, time’s a wastin’, as they might have said in those olden-days papers!  The winner won’t be profiled in any national newspapers, but will be announced right here at Paper Doll by Wednesday evening.  Good luck!

There’s always something going on at Paper Doll. 

In the past, we’ve run series on topics like setting up your family file system, preventing and recovering from identity theft, coping with lost important papers, dealing with magazine clutter and organizing your wallet (what to keep, what to toss, etc.).  And, of course, we’ve covered a wide-variety of single-post paper topics, like selecting the right calendar and organizing all variety of papers, from recipes to maps.

Earlier this month, we had our first official Paper Doll product review.  I reviewed the Internet Password Organizer™.  Well, the folks at Innovention Lab must have been pleased with what I blogged (even my suggestions for making a second edition of the product even better), because they wrote to say they want to reward you for your readership of Paper Doll.

That’s right, three weeks into the second year of this blog, I’m running my first contest.  I’m so excited, I’ll need to password-protect my glee! If you are the winner of this contest, you will get a fabulous Internet Password Organizer™ of your very own!

Maybe you’ve never entered a blog contest before.  (That’s OK–I’ve never run one before.)  Or maybe you’ve done lots and are your neighborhood’s champion blog contest winner, like The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  No matter–everyone (who follows the instructions) has a chance to win.

First, the INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Reread the original post so you can be really excited about the prize you might win!
2. Post a comment in THIS post thread, here.  (You can still post comments in the original review’s thread, but those won’t count towards the contest.)  Just scroll to the bottom of this post, and you’ll see something that looks like:
   

   ---

   

   ---

   You’ll be asked for your name and your comment.  You can provide feedback for our friends at Innovention Lab, the creators of Internet Password Organizer™, or you can tell me what you’d like to see discussed in future Paper Doll posts.  Just share your thoughts (on Paper Doll or paper-organizing issues). 
3. Because OnlineOrganizing.com’s Blog Central does not capture email addresses, I need a way to make sure the people posting the comments are who they say they are.  (You wouldn’t want someone to pretend to be you and take your prize, would you?) So, as soon as you post your comment, copy it into an email and send it to me at contest at juliebestry dot com (I’m assuming all of you savvy enough to be reading Paper Doll know that this configuration is designed to keep those evil spambots at bay.  Just replace “at” with an @ sign, “dot” with a period, and eliminate the blank spaces.  I know you can do that!)

Be assured, your email addresses will be kept completely confidential and won’t be stockpiled or used for nefarious (or any) purposes.  Once the winner has been announced and contacted, all of your email addresses will be deleted.  Poof. 

I figure, if you wanted me to keep your address, you’d sign up for my electronic newsletter, Best Results For Busy People:  Organizing Your Modern World, where I help you save time and money, reduce stress and increase your productivity, one fabulous monthly email at a time.  (Go ahead and check out the sign-up page.  I’ll wait.  Of course, signing up won’t improve your chances of winning this contest, but it will help you become more organized!)

Next, a few RULES AND CLARIFICATIONS:

• To ensure fairness, the winner will be selected by Paper Mommy.
• The winner will be announced on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. 
• Please enter only once.  You can always add as many (polite) comments to any blog posts as you like, but only your first entry here (copied to me via email) will count.  Any duplicates or additions will not be counted.
• We are only able to ship the prize to addresses in the United States and Canada.  Apologies to Paper Doll readers residing elsewhere; we’ll work to include you in future contest opportunities.
• Use family-friendly language, please.  While Paper Doll (and Paper Mommy) are not averse to colorful language, our hosts, OnlineOrganizing.com, run a family-friendly site.

Got all that?  Read (or reread) the original review, post a comment here, copy it to me at contest at juliebestry dot com and watch this space for the announcement of the winner on 11/5/08.

Finally, please spread the word about this contest.  The more attention we get, the more likely vendors will want to offer up goodies for future Paper Doll contests.  So spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, via text message or email–even over the telephone.  Digg it, Del.icio.us it, social-bookmark-of-your-choice it.  But you know how Paper Doll feels about floozies, so don’t pass notes in class or leave Post-Its for your pals.