Best Results Organizing

“This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn’t say how far to separate them.”

I like to imagine that Gracie Allen’s kitchen was much like her on-screen persona: charming, but a bit addled…with mismatched paper scraps fluttering around her like so much snowy flaked coconut.

Even when we eliminate all the things that don’t belong in our kitchens, our Food HQs are often littered with clipped and copied recipes, cooking magazines, regular and diet-related cookbooks, and more. Kitchen clutter is often a sticky mess, preventing us from ever finding the perfect recipe when we want or need it.

The toys and clothes that surround us may no longer be age-appropriate, size-appropriate or lifestyle-appropriate. Similarly, we can outgrow cookbooks, diets and recipes that once fit us so well. It may be time to part amicably with Macrobiotic for a Groovy Life or 172 Ways To Lose Weight With Grapefruit. To downsize your own cookbook collection, ask yourself:

Have I used a recipe from this cookbook in the past year?

If you use the cookbook heavily, even in just one season, keep it. If you seek it out frequently but only for the same one or two recipes, copy out what you use and set the cookbooks free. And, if you can’t remember the last time you opened it, the book has become a stranger in your home—send it away. Your options are to:

• Donate the cookbook to your local library book sale or a book-related charity (or even Harvard)
• Sell it at a local used book store or online
• Store it elsewhere than your kitchen. If you have the bookshelf space elsewhere in your home, store extraneous cookbooks as you would history or reference books.

In the future, test-drive a cookbook to see if it’s a good fit by borrowing it from friends or the library before making a purchase.

For the piles of loose recipes clipped out of magazines or copied after tasting a friend’s culinary triumph, select one recipe at a time and follow these simple rules:

1) SEPARATE DREAMS FROM REALITY: Will I ever really cook this?

We have to be honest with ourselves and realize that if the fanciest thing we cook is spaghetti, we’re not really going to be dabbling in egg drop soup or meringue flamb from scratch. If your lifestyle is such that you, your spouse and your kids aren’t home until 15 minutes before stomachs start rumbling, cookbooks concentrating on dishes that require all-day loving attention just don’t fit your lifestyle.

If the photos with those recipes are truly dazzling but out of your reach, create a “Dream Recipes” folder to keep in your files along with dream vacations and dream decorating ideas. You can preserve the dream without cluttering your kitchen.

2) DIVIDE AND CONQUER: Under what category does this recipe fall?
Pretend you’re a cookbook editor and come up with some major categories, and then add the ones that fit your family’s dining style:

• Appetizers
• Salads
• Entres
• Desserts
• Ethnic meals (sub-divided by region)
• Holiday food
• Picnic meals
• Allergy-free recipes
  

Once you have a healthy stack for each category (and are certain you’re really going to attempt to cook each item), you’re ready for the final step.

3) PUBLISH YOUR OWN COOKBOOK:

Buy a fat three-ring notebook and a box of transparent, plastic sheet protectors and slide the recipes into the sheet protectors. If a recipe is continued on the back of a page, you’ll be able to see the front and reverse easily; if the recipe is continued on another page, place it back to back with the prior page. The sheet protectors keep the recipes from getting damaged or sticky and can be easily cleaned with a sponge. Use simple subject dividers to separate the categories.

If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, consider this pre-made Cookbook Binder Tabs Kit from OnlineOrganizing.com.

And don’t forget, the Internet can often replace printed recipes. For example, sometimes you can just type a short list of ingredients into Google, and you’ll be led to various recipe options. You can also search for recipes at these helpful sites, often by recipe name, category or just ingredients:

• Epicurious
• Reluctant Gourmet
• The Food Network
• For a list of many other recipe sites, check out Best Cooking Sites.

Keep the recipe clutter to a minimum — you’ll have more space to cook and dine well, and you’ll have more time to enjoy your meals and dining companions.

Say goodnight, Gracie!

Today’s quote yields two important points. First, love is eternal. Awwww.

Second, it shows that paper is not love, and the things written on paper (with the exception of declarations of love) are not deserving of so much of our space, time and effort that we inconvenience ourselves and our loved ones to make room for the scraps of dead trees and cellulose.

I have a wonderful client who has incorporated many organizing systems and skills into his repertoire, and his life is far improved from the clutter-laden stress cubicle I first encountered. However, he’s had one habit of which we could not break him: writing everything on small scraps of paper.

Mr. Wonderful Client operates two businesses: a brick-and-mortar retail operation with multiple locations and a multi-level marketing company for which he has literally thousands of contacts. He’s also actively involved in his incredibly-adorable children’s lives and is a devoted husband, son, brother and friend, a volunteer for his alma mater and his house of worship, and a man with many disparate interests.

Even if you didn’t know these things before you saw his office, a cursory glance at the mountains of loose scraps of Post-It notes, scribbled envelopes, doodled napkins and notes on the peripheries of unrelated faxes would clue you in to all the activities and thoughts pressing upon him.

I advised multiple techniques to downsize his excess scraps:

• Carry one notepad everywhere (attached to a clipboard if necessary) and put every new subject, conversation notes or transcribed message on a new page, with a date-stamp (and time-stamp, if helpful). Follow up each issue on that particular page until you can tear it off and either file it as archival, use it as a task reminder in a tickler file or throw it away.

• If you can’t write on an actual notepad (say, if you’re in restaurants, the restroom or on the golf course), use a cell phone to leave messages for OfficeYou while you’re being MobileYou.

• Regarding tasks and phone numbers, once back at the office, instead of transcribing messages onto scraps, immediately program phone numbers into a PDA or your computer’s contact management software to bypass paper altogether.

• To capture information quickly, use the memo option on a cell phone to record quick reminders or contact information. Then, set a daily alarm right on the cell phone to remind you to listen to your messages and copy the information to where it belongs.

Mr. Wonderful Client doesn’t favor high-tech solutions, but anyone addicted to loose papers could also:

• Create all notes digitally as text messages and then text or email them to email account accessible at any computer.

• Invest in an 21st century magic, like the Logitech IO2 Digital Pen. With this device, you take your notes with a special pen and paper, and your handwriting is stored for later uploading into the computer for use in a word processing document, spreadsheet, contact management program or presentation software. Basically, your handwriting magically becomes typed text!

Mr. Wonderful Client became adept at keeping himself from writing TASKS on scraps of paper and succeeded at using his tickler file to keep all his action-oriented papers flowing smoothly as I’d taught him.

But the snowy flutter of minuscule papers bearing phone numbers and small details (price quotes, confirmation numbers, etc.) continued unabated until one magical day. As we worked our way through a small pile, it struck me that perhaps his own devotion to his wife, family and gentlemanly upbringing could work in our favor. I wasn’t sure how he’d take it, but I said I thought I had a solution to the loose paper issue.

I shouted “NO MORE FLOOZIES!”

He titled his head in confusion.

“Stick with me, here. Y’know how a good man, such as yourself, may sometimes feel passionate and want a kiss?” This giant of a man blushed and nodded.

“But you love your wife and are magnificently devoted. No matter how much you want a kiss, you’re not going to grab any loose woman who saunters by. You’re going to wait until you can take your wife in your arms. Those loose women are floozies, and they’re bad for you…LOOSE PAPERS are FLOOZIES, and your notepad and message system is like your wife. Stay faithful!”

My client’s wife (that would be Mrs. Gorgeous Model-Client) was nearby and suggested that she could be supportive by threatening to give him a (playful) slap every time she saw him “cheat” with the floozies.

Silly? Absolutely. A perfect solution? Absolutely not. But the key to all organizing systems is that they must be customized to the user.

Be willing to experiment and personalize your approach. Don’t worry if the organizing system in a best-selling book or taught by a famous professional organizer isn’t perfect for you—allow yourself to be creative and develop a narrative or mythology that works for your mindset.

To be faithful to any system, perhaps you need to step beyond the plain notepad to find yourself the right trophy spouse with which to collect your notes. Fun options include:

• A phone message book works well for tracking contact information until it gets into a more permanent system.

• Consider some pretty and artsy notepads. (Note: if you’re like me and are hesitant to write in a notebook that’s too darn pretty, under the rubric of “Oh, I can’t cut that beautiful cake and ruin the lovely frosting”, stick with plain yellow legal pads. The last thing you need is a stack of fancy but unused bound paper.)
  

• If you’re not ready to skip paper altogether, but really need to have your information saved digitally, look into that Logitech IO2 Digital Pen. Just don’t ask Paper Doll how it works.
  

If loose papers are the bane of your existence, remember that paper is not love, and be faithful: steer clear of floozies!

Last week, I quoted Nora Ephron; this week, I’d like to quote another witty and wise lady, Sheila Bestry:

Although my mother is undoubtedly referencing illness, bad dates and other tsuris when she says this, the philosophy is entirely applicable to paper.

Look around you. Look at all the paper that you have, but do not want. It could be catalogs that tempt you into spending money (little green paper) that you don’t have, or junk mail telling you that you “may have already won” (although you assuredly have not). If you’re not careful, these papers fill up your mailboxes, car passenger seats, desktops and kitchen counters.

I tend to worry at the micro level – I want each one of you to achieve serenity and dispel chaos – but for those of you who are concerned about living green, all of these papers we don’t want create problems at the macro level, too. According to the Clean Air Council, the average American uses 650 pounds of paper a year and Americans trash enough office paper to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City. The Council also reports that U.S. businesses now use about 21 million tons of paper every year. How much less waste could there be if we all just stopped getting the paper we don’t want?

Be a gatekeeper! Start by preventing as much as possible of this unwanted paper from coming your way. Contact the Direct Marketing Association. They offer two options for removing yourself from mailing lists. You can apply online, for which you will pay $1 for processing via a secure credit card purchase. The alternative is to print a form from their site and mail it to:

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
P.O. Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

Getting your name from the DMA’s lists will be a great first start, but don’t stop there. Next, go to Abacus Opt Out. From there, you’ll see instructions for writing (via slowmail) to be removed from the lists sent to their affiliates.

Both the DMA and Abacus are great starts for paring down general junk mail. But what about credit card applications? Are you troubled by all the offers that come to your mailbox? You should be, and not only because the promise of more credit is as seductive as George Clooney.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse often reports that dumpster- and mailbox-diving are major sources of identity theft. Instead of dealing with the massive influx of applications that need to be shredded or worrying that an offer will be stolen from your mailbox, wouldn’t it be better to avoid receiving the sneaky paper offers altogether?

Call 1-888-5OPTOUT or visit OptOutPreScreen.com stop those credit card offers in their tracks.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows consumer credit reporting companies like Equifax, Trans-Union and Experian (the same agencies that determine your credit score) to share your name on lists used by credit card, lending and insurance companies so they can tender offers of credit or insurance to you. Stop the credit reporting companies from sharing your data by “opting out” and you’ll eliminate the chance of identity thieves going shopping in your mailbox.

The site and automated phone system will ask you to enter your phone number, Social Security number, and other personal information to locate your record. If you’re uncomfortable supplying this information to an automated system, you will have to call each of the major credit bureaus individually to be removed from their lists. I cast no aspersions, but it stands to reason that you might be better off trusting a computer, with no kids to put through college, then having a human being take down your personal data.

Using the OptOutPrescreen site or phone number, you can choose to opt out of these credit offers for five years at a time (in case you might want offers of credit down the line), or have your name permanently removed. If you want permanent removal, though, you’ll have to print the document at the web site and mail it the old fashioned way. Yes, they’re making it easier, but they’re not about to lose their bread and butter by making it too easy!

One note: the OptOutPreScreen applies only to the credit bureaus. It does NOT apply to all the information your individual credit card companies and insurers share with their affiliates and partners. To further limit the paper clutter sent to you, contact each financial entity, per the instructions in their privacy notices, to assert your privacy rights. (But if you aren’t going to assert your privacy rights, you may as well throw out the little tri-folder “privacy notice” papers. You’ll get another chance next year.)

Most of the paper you have that you don’t want is there because someone else sent it to you. But what about the paper you generate? Finally, you can get rid of all those loose slips of paper where you’ve transcribed voicemail messages, only to realize you’ve painstakingly copied down the name and phone number, not of a potential love interest or employer, but a telemarketer.

Take advantage of the Federal Trade Commission’s brilliant Do Not Call Registry. You can either call 888-382-1222 or fill in the quick form at DoNotCall.gov to have your home and cell phones removed from telemarketers’ lists. Just remember that removal from the lists lasts only five years from the date of registration, so make yourself a note on your perpetual calendar to re-register in 2012.

Do you have other slips of paper you don’t want, the kind with just phone numbers but no identifying names? Don’t forget that if a phone number is a listed number (in a public directory), you can type it with area code into Google to yield information regarding to whom the number belongs. No more mystery numbers! Trash those scraps!

Lastly, you may wonder about those for-pay companies, like Greendimes.com — the ones which promise to help the environment and reduce your junk mail load, all for a small fee. I wonder about them too, but am wary of spending any money when free or practically-free methods, like those listed above, work so well. But be assured the Paper Doll will continue researching and report back when I hear more.

For now, follow the steps above to limit the paper you don’t want. Then, in the time you used to spend cursing all that unwanted paper, think about your life, and be thankful you don’t have what you don’t want.

[This first Paper Doll post was originally published in October 2007, eighteen years ago. Paper Doll is now old enough to vote!]

THE WISDOM OF NORA EPHRON

I’m reading I Feel Bad About My Neck by the brilliant Nora Ephron, famed wit and screenwriter of my favorite movie, When Harry Met Sally. Ephron writes:

Maintenance is what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won’t have to hide behind a stack of canned food. I don’t mean to be too literal about this. There are a couple of old boyfriends whom I always worry about bumping into, but there’s no chance — if I ever did — that I would recognize either of them…But the point is that I still think about them every time I’m tempted to leave the house without eyeliner.
 

THE DANGERS OF DISORGANIZED PAPERS

Organizing your papers is basic life maintenance — very much like the kind of beauty maintenance Ephron is talking about, and every bit as important as looking FABULOUS to the former romantic partner who once foolishly cast you aside.

Think of maintaining your papers on a regular basis as an insurance policy against losing money, time, productivity, serenity and self-esteem. Ephron imagines the ensuing result of skipping maintenance; to her, going out sans eyeliner is the 21st-century variation on your mother’s warning to wear clean underwear in case you are in an accident.

So paper maintenance is an insurance policy, only instead of spending money betting against yourself in hopes you’ll never have to collect, you invest your time and effort in creating a workable system for handling incoming papers, archiving reference items, acting on the urgent or important tasks the papers represent and purging whatever is unnecessary. It sounds like a lot of work, but once your system is in place, paper maintenance is easier than applying eyeliner.

A big part of paper maintenance is knowing what papers you have and giving them permanent homes.

First, there are your essential legal, medical and financial VIPs (Very Important Papers) like birth certificates, car titles, or immunization records. Failing to keep these in a safe place from which they can be quickly and easily accessed will detract from your security and life satisfaction in much the same way running into an old beau while dressed in too-tight, tomato-sauce-spotted sweats can shrink your self-esteem to the size of a dust particle.

Missing Passports

Perhaps you imagine that if you ever lose your passport in the sedimentary rock-like layers of your desk, it’s no big deal, because you can always get a new one. However, due to new regulations requiring that American citizens have passports even to visit Canada, the Department of State has been overwhelmed.

It used to take weeks to get a new passport or renew one; now, it’s taking two and a half months or more. And lest you think you won’t mind paying the cost to expedite delivery, it’s no longer a small fee. Getting your passport expedited (that is, to get it in the amount of time it used to take without a rush job) will cost you $60, plus the cost of expedited delivery service to send it to the passport office and then to receive your passport once it’s processed. This is on top of the $97 $130 in fees you’re already paying to get the passport!

Do you want to spend weeks worried that your family vacation or vital business trip is in jeopardy just because you’ve let your papers think they’re allowed to play Hide-and-Seek?

Identity Theft

A worst-case scenario for failing to effectively maintain the papers in your life is identity theft. Even with all the hubbub over Internet (in)security, the most popular source of stolen personal information is still dumpster-diving. If you throw out the wrong documents and compound it by failing to shred sensitive data, or even if you just carry your Social Security card in your wallet instead of filing it safely away, you open yourself to being one of the 23.9 million Americans victimized by identity theft each year (up from 9.3 million when this post was published in 2007).

In most cases, thieves just use your credit card number, so keeping organized financial records and quickly alerting the credit card company means minimal financial loss. Maintaining your paper records keeps you solvent and lets you resolve the problem quickly, inexpensively and relatively painlessly. But in the more extreme cases, identity thieves can create an alternative version of you from purloined information and can ruin your credit rating, keep you from getting credit, insurance and jobs, and can even lead to your arrest if someone commits a felony using your forged identity! 

That certainly puts being seen by an ex while wearing your laundry-day outfit in perspective!

Papers document our lives and give us access to everything we want and deserve.

• Easily accessed proof of auto registration and insurance may be the difference between that traffic cop being a darling or a devil.
• Carefully maintained financial records keep the taxman at bay.
• Quickly-found immunization records mean children can attend school; conversely, lost permission slips don’t just mean your kids miss out on a trip to see how maple sugar gets made – they’ll miss out on the in-jokes that will be a part of in-group history. Not to place a guilt trip, but your paper maintenance skills will impact your children’s permanent record.

There are papers you want and need (legal, financial, medical); papers you want, but don’t need (old letters, school transcripts that prove you once knew why a participle shouldn’t dangle); papers you need but don’t want (bills that need to be paid, reminders for an upcoming dental appointment); and papers you don’t need and don’t want, but haven’t yet tossed (expired coupons, twenty-year-old notes on mitosis or Descartes).

Maintaining the papers of your life may not be fun, and unless you’re a certain breed of professional organizer, it may not be entertaining. But it is essential. That’s why, over the coming blog posts, Paper Doll will be sharing tips to make it easy to keep the unwanted paper away and easier to determine where and how to maintain the rest of the documentary evidence of your time on the planet.

I don’t guarantee I’ll be as witty as Nora Ephron. But like Ephron’s eyeliner, your mother’s clean underwear, and your auto insurance policy, paper maintenance means your life will run more smoothly, and whatever catastrophes you encounter will be less catastrophic.

And, if I might steal a line from Ephron’s movie, no identity thief will be able to say “I’ll have what she’s having.”