Best Results Organizing

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:
   

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   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.

In the olden days (that is, when Paper Doll was still young enough to think the olden days involved the kind of wardrobe you see on AMC’s Mad Men), going to the movies was an activity low on the paper clutter scale.  If went to a play, a musical, a concert or even the circus, you were likely to get a program, a brochure, or some sort of sizable paper memorabilia.

But the movies?  Even if you were the sort of person who became so sentimentally attached to the experience (first date?  baby’s first Disney film?) and felt compelled to save the ticket stub, the tickets were relatively tiny.
  You could save many years’ worth of movie-going stubs in an envelope until your spouse “accidentally” tossed it out, or you could lovingly paste the stubs into scrapbooks.  But even if you went to the movies every single week, movie-watching just didn’t produce clutter.

And then came online DVD rental.  By now, most people have experienced Netflix (or the similar Blockbuster Online) and the nifty little snip-slide-view-slide-rip-fold-seal-mail ritual of the specialized envelopes.  The idea is brilliant:  rent movies and return them with minimal effort and no charge for postage.  It was especially intriguing for people who used to rent videos but forgot to return them, racking up huge late fees, as well as for those who made lists of the movies they wanted to see and then forgot to take the lists to the store.

This modern era of movie watching has eliminated late fees and lost movie lists.  Once you set up an account, you create a queue, your laundry list of movie (and TV series) titles you want to rent.  You can easily add, remove or change the order of the items in your queue.  The top movie on your list is sent automatically, and once you return a DVD, the next title is sent.  No late fees or fines for pokey viewers or forgetful consumers.  But the new solution, as we’ll soon see, has created some new problems.

REMEMBERING TO RETURN

Forgetting to return a DVD doesn’t cost money in terms of fines, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get your money’s worth.  Are you an Absent-Minded Professor?  If your problem is remembering to return DVDs, so you’ve not only got paper clutter but unreturned DVD clutter, cyberspace-age help is available.

FeedFlix.com is your own personal Jeeves (DVD-reminder service)–plus, it’s free!  Sure, we’ve talked about cool online reminder services before, but this one works along with your Netflix account with minimal initial effort on your part.  You probably didn’t even know your Netflix queue had an RSS feed (yes!  just like a blog), but it does, and that’s the key to making sure you get the biggest bang for your movie buck:

1. Visit http://www.netflix.com/rss to identify your personal queue’s RSS feed code.  (Don’t worry if you don’t know HTML from AARP–you’ll merely have to cut and paste.)
2. Enter it in the box that looks like this:
3. Verify your login name and password.

Within minutes, FeedFlix is busy calculating all sorts of interesting info about your Netflix account.  For example, given your monthly plan and your speed (or lack thereof) in returning movies), it will identify your relative rental cost per movie.  For a sample:

So, if FeedFlix finds that you’re like Uncle Joe (he’s movin’ kinda slow), it’s a cue to either watch and return your movies more quickly or change your rental plan to fewer movies per month.  Why spend to three movies at a time (the standard) if it takes you two weeks to watch and return a DVD?

Even better, FeedFlix has account alerts, which you can set for the day of the week you prefer, to tell you if you’ve kept a movie too long to make it worth your monthly cost.  (You can pick 3, 5, 7, 10 or 15 days.)  So, Netflix (for which you pay) can be monitored by FeedFlix (which is free) to make sure you get your money’s worth…and eliminate paper and DVD clutter from around your home.  It also helps save those little green pieces of paper we all love.

By the way, if you’re one of those developer/programmer types who lives to make apps (applications, for the rest of us Luddites) for Facebook and the iPhone, Netflix has made it possible for you to create your own Netflix-based funky-cool applications, just like FeedFlix.  Just don’t expect Paper Doll to understand any of them.

NOW WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT MOVIE?

So, let’s backtrack. Modern movie watching helps us save money and reduce clutter when it comes to getting movies returned.  But what about paper clutter created when we try to find movies?

Have you ever tried on a heavy winter coat for the first time all season, only to put your hand in your pocket and pull out a crinkled ATM receipt or sticky note bearing the scribbled title of the movie you wanted to see all last summer?

As long as you can remember the title (or the stars or the genre or any other searchable attribute) long enough to get to your your computer or mobile device and the movie to your queue, you’re all set.  No more wandering video store aisles in search of a match for a vaguely recalled movie promo.  No more messy lists or forgotten titles.  The 21st century rocks!

For reference, Paper Doll is not assessing the relative merits of Netflix vs. Blockbuster Online.  I admit that I’m a Netflix customer; however, I do see the advantage of Blockbuster Online’s Total Access, which allows you to return movies rented online at actual stores (assuming you still have a brick and mortar video store in your area) and get a new DVD.  For those who have a burning need to see a particular flick right this minute, that’s an advantage.

Enjoyed it while it lasts.  We loved Polaroid pictures, but they’re a technology of days gone by.  Now, Netflix and Blockbuster Online allow on-demand viewing, bypassing the U.S. Postal Service and the need for return envelopes in the first place. (Yet another chance to reduce paper clutter!)  The services have been offering PC users the option for a while, and now Mac users will be able to have Netflix magically beam movies into their homes, too.  But until that’s widespread, let’s talk about that pesky paper clutter.

THE DVD/PAPER CLUTTER PROBLEM

OK, so you’ve got an online DVD account.  You create your list or queue of the movies you want to see, and then prioritize them in some order that make sense to you.  And then the movies start showing up in your mailbox:

• The envelope arrives.
• You break the seal made by the the little white dot.
• You slide the DVD sleeve out of the envelope.
• You slide the DVD out of the sleeve.
• You watch the DVD…or don’t.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.
• Eventually, you decide to return the DVD and put the DVD in the sleeve and the sleeve in the envelope.  Here’s where trouble arises.
• You tear the extra (flappy) advertising page off at the perforation and you remove the plasticized paper strip covering the adhesive.
• You fold over the edge to seal the package, and give the Netflix envelope to your friendly, neighborhood postman, Mr. McFeely, for speedy delivery.

So what’s the problem?  You still have the flappy advertising page and the plasticized paper strip.  You know you should pick them up, walk them to the recycling or trash bin and get them out of you living room.  You know that.  But instead, you keep them.  You let them pile up around your kitchen and TV room and front hall. 

You know you don’t need to file the flappy page.  You don’t need to shred it, either.  Yes, your name and address are on the reverse side, but these are a matter of public record.  So, unless you joined Witness Protection but had your old Netflix account forwarded to your new address–in which case, paper clutter probably isn’t your most serious problem–there’s no need to shred the flappy advertising page.

I wish I could tell you there’s an official professional organizer secret to throwing out these scraps, but the truth is, this one depends on self-discipline.  You have to actually make the decision to get the piles of paper clutter, the flappy pages and skinny strips, to the bin.  No secrets.  The best I can offer are some tips:

• Open your DVD rentals when and where you open the rest of your mail.

If you’re following our game plan, as soon as the mail comes in, you’re taking the time to open each piece of mail, tossing the external envelopes, the shiny advertising copy and the unnecessary inserts.

If you’re doing this daily, tossing out flappy advertising pages easily becomes part of your ritual.  Then, bills get carried to the household billpaying center, DVDs get carried to the logical home (coffee table?  remote control stand?  counter above the DVD player?), and so on with the rest of your mail.  (This solves the flappy advertising page clutter.  However, since you can’t pull the strip off the adhesive until you’re ready to mail your DVD back, the strips may still create clutter.)

• Create a ritual and schedule your activities.

To get yourself to return the DVD in the first place, you need to encourage yourself to pack up your shipment.  If paper clutter is generally an issue anyway, set an alarm on your cell phone or computer for the same time every day, and make a quick sweep around the family room to pick up paper clutter, toss it and then package up your DVDs.

• Put a trash can or recycling bin in the TV viewing area.

The more convenient an item’s home is, the more quickly and easily it’s put away.  If the flappy advertising page and the plasticized paper strip have a home in the trash, keep the trash can close at hand.

• Give up on organizing and trade order for art.

I know, it’s almost sacrilegious for Paper Doll to turn people away from organizing, but there are just such adorable alternatives.  So, at least for today, reflect on occasionally skipping the step of tossing or recycling the flappy advertising pages.  Make the world a goofier, more beautiful place by following the step-by-step guidance of NetflixOrigami.com.

                      

• And finally, be glad Netflix has evolved, and take a gander at this slide show of how Netflix’s DVD packaging has changed since 1999.  Without this evolution, your home would be more cluttered and our environment would be less green.

It’s a beautiful day.  Go watch a movie!

On the old television show, You Bet Your Life, Groucho Marx would encourage contestants to “say the secret word” and the audience would watch with baited breath to see if the prize-winning word would be uttered.  If so, the prize duck, complete with Groucho-glasses and mustache would drop from the ceiling and HURRAY, the contestant would win the prize.  No magic word? No prize.

Do you ever feel like trying to remember the correct internet password is like being a contestant on a game show?  If you win, you can transfer money from one account to another or post an update on your blog.  If you lose, you may struggle for hours to gain access to your accounts or files.  Sometimes, frustrated, the best you can hope for is to go home with a parting gift of Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco treat).

Previously, we’ve discussed why it’s dangerous to leave your passwords on your desk and monitor. Who wanders by your office computer? Customers, vendors, consultants? Friends and family of other employees? Maintenance staff and colleagues?  Who else? Can you be certain that you’re safe from corporate espionage and identity theft? 

Even in a home office, where only the UPS guy and babysitter see your desk, it’s crucial to protect sensitive data from disclosure—whether that’s your own Social Security number and bank data or your clients’ proprietary information. The more clutter in your desktop environment, the harder it is to know when something is missing or if prying eyes have settled on them. 

The same is true if you’ve got a mini Post-It taped to your laptop.  Turn away from your screen for a moment to get a napkin to wipe up the coffee this random guy at Starbucks just spilled and…YIKES! Random Guy’s partner-in-crime just made off with your laptop, passwords, identity and financial future!

If you’re a long-time Paper Doll reader, you know how I bemoan floozies.  Well, having your login name and password on an accessible, visible (albeit tiny) piece of paper is a disaster waiting to happen.  In a future post, we’ll review the advantages and disadvantages of various paper and digital alternatives to floozies and undependable memories, but today, I have something special to share.

Back when we were talking about identity theft, I said:

If you have a poor memory and must keep your passwords accessible, consider creating a cheat sheet with the clues instead of the actual passwords. For example, instead of writing down your password of ElvisVermontMaple, write down “1stConcertFavoriteSyrup”, or some equally obscure bit of information to hint at the information only you need to know.

Well, the folks at Innovention Lab have done my cheat sheet one better with the Internet Password Organizer™.  Now, you don’t need to encode your passwords (though you still could do so) because your passwords, though accessible, are no longer visible to every Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo.

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), and mixed media (painted, sparkly macaroni)?

Today, we start the second year of the Paper Doll blog, so it seems appropriate, given this auspicious time, to talk about children’s art as our own little cooperative masterpiece of a blog enters its toddler years.

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 this kiddie art gallery you used to call your home. 

Unlike the other categories of paper we’ve discussed in the past:  bills, to-do lists, references papers, Social Security cards…there’s no agreed-upon records retention schedule available for determining how long one should keep art created by tiny hands.  So, today, we’re going to explore some ways of looking at two aspects of handling children’s art:  displaying the work and winnowing the collections.

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

THE CLASSICS

Hang a clothesline a few inches below ceiling height (too high for children to climb to reach) and hang paper artwork, attaching it with clothespins.  This can be a fun way to decorate your child’s room as well as any other bare but casual area, like a guest room, mud/utility room, playroom or basement.  You can make it a permanent display gallery with rotating collections, or you can put on an ad hoc art show.

Invest in a large cork board and affix it to a bare wall.  You can display the art as-is, right on the cork, or cover the entire board with dollar-store wrapping paper or white or brown kraft paper.  In the latter case, your kids can draw on or decorate the kraft paper (also called butcher paper), first, creating a meta-message of art-on-art.

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.  The works can be easily and safely attached to walls with removable Command Picture Hanging Strips.

Frame it or Contain it.  Whether you’re a do-it-your-self framer, prefer a fun kid-themed frame or desire opportunities for frequent changes of display as afforded by this L’il Davinci art cabinet, no rogue art or craft will ever complain that it was framed.

Embroider it!  This may not be a classical type of display, but this FeelingStitchy blogger’s crafty talents are put to excellent use in framing and displaying her grandchildren’s art.

MODERN ART

“Take a picture; it’ll last longer.” OK, that saying still 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 your little star during his or her Blue Period.

Scan the artwork using standard scanning software; for larger pieces, you will have more luck with a full-sized scanner than the popular handhelds.  Suppress acting on your temptation to color-correct green hair or fix the spelling mistakes that actually make children’s art delightful. 

Create greeting cards and calendars you can share with family and friends.  You can make the calendars yourself by laminating pages and having them spiral-bound at Kinko’s or your local printing shop; they can print your cards, too.  Or, you can have your favorite online or offline photo developing company mass-produce calendars or cards in bulk.

Upload the scanned art to flickr or other photo-sharing social networking web sites.

Create a web site using a free blog template and upload the art for all the world to see.  Send the link to grandparents, family, friends and chat about it on Facebook or Twitter.  Let your little Michelangelo or Georgia O’Keeffe develop a world-wide following.  (Of course, make sure to use safety protocols and don’t identify your child’s name or location on public sites.)

Use Digital Picture Frames  If grandparents or great-grandparents haven’t quite joined the digital age and don’t use computers, it’s OK.  You can load a series of photos of the art (as well as snapshots of the whole family) onto a memory card and plug it into a digital picture frame for them.  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”…

AVANT GARDE

Every parent believes his or her child’s art is a tour de force.  The parents of these little girls took it the next step, and put their daughters’ art on display at the Peez Leweez coffee house in Livingston Manor, NY (about halfway between Binghamton and New York City) along with the creations of other local artists.  Sales of the works brought in legal tender (which was donated to charity).  If you or someone you know owns a bookshop, coffee house or other venue with walls suitable for gallery displays, this could be the bees knees for entrepreneurial types and parents of prolific artistes.

CURATING YOUR COLLECTIONS

Eventually, the issue of art displays will become secondary to the need to conquer piles of paper art.  It can become overwhelming, especially in small houses or large families.  It’s necessary to pare down your artistic collections.  Here’s one process that might work for your family:

Whatever gets created that week is put on display…no exceptions.  It doesn’t have to be pretty:  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if your second-grader beholds you as a 300 pound giant with three arms all on one side of your body, whose to say she’s not the next Picasso?  It’s the Exhibit of the Week!

At the end of the week, take everything down to make room for next week’s work.  Ask your child if he or she would like to find one piece to mail to loved ones in paper form.  Do not, however, send everything to the grandparents or they’ll end up with clutter!

Next, weed out any the pre-drawn, pre-cut designs from coloring books.  Let go of the art that doesn’t really represent your kids’ true abilities–I’m sure the mommy of guy who draws Pilgrims for holiday-themed coloring books is already proud of him, so you don’t have to honor his work.  This like an art appraiser, and concentrate on your artist’s originals and not the mass reproduced knock-offs.

Collect what’s left in a flat, clean box.  You can buy art storage boxes at The Container Store, but it might be easier to ask your local pizzeria to throw in an extra (unused) large pizza box or two the next time you have a big pizza party.  Then, set the art aside to “marinate” (as my colleague Allison Carter says) for a month or more.  Once the contents of the box has been out of sight for a while, your kids‘ attachment to the art as well as yours will have diminished, and you’ll be able to select no more than a half dozen to a dozen pieces representative any year of artistic expression. 

With this winnowed but elite collection, you can preserve art in paper form in the pizza boxes, or in more formal scrapbooks or albums.  Or, you can use long, cylindrical cardboard tubes (e.g.,  wrapping-paper tubes, mailing canisters or architect’s design tubes). Obviously, however, you may afford to be much less parsimonious with your gallery’s collections if you plan to transfer the art to digital form.  Just remember to group the preserved paper collections with other memorabilia and away from the cold and damp prevalent in basements, or the excessive heat or humidity of attics, garages or crawlspaces.

Parents, enjoy your children’s art, and enjoy their creative processes, without living amid layers of flaking paint and piles of crumbling construction paper.  Revel in your role as Curator of the Museum of Little Folks’ Art.