Archive for ‘Travel’ Category

20+ Sites to Organize Your Holiday Dining, Shopping & More

Posted on: November 15th, 2021 by Julie Bestry | 18 Comments

Most of the time, when we talk about being organized and productive, we’re discussing reducing the non-essentials — whether those are duplicate or no-longer-necessary items, tasks that don’t fit our values or our goals, or habits that don’t get us where we want to end up.

But sometimes, and at the risk of seeming very much like that “You Won’t Believe How Much Time You’ll Save With These Organizing Secrets” clickbait, all we need is a little edge to make something a teeny bit easier. So, today’s post serves up a Thanksgiving smörgåsbord of web sites and apps to help you accomplish making your holiday life run more smoothly, whether you’re headed over the river and through the woods or staying put while everyone takes the I-90 or the red-eye to get to you.

And even if you’re planning to stay safely snuggled, avoiding the Thanksgiving hubbub again this year for safety, consider bookmarking these tips for future holiday seasons.

NIFTY SITES TO SAVE YOU FROM COOKING CONUNDRUMS

Still Tasty — Before you get started on holiday cooking, you’re going to need to take stock of your kitchen and check your pantry inventory against the recipes you plan to use. Sometimes you have an ingredient, but you’re just not quite sure whether it is up to snuff. Is it going to make your dessert dazzling or require a trip to the emergency room? 

I don’t cook, but people who do always tell me that if an herb or spice has no scent anymore, it’s not going to deliver much to your meal. That makes sense. And obviously, anything that comes with an expiration date (as opposed to a more vague “best if used by” date) should be sent on its way. But what about everything else?

For example, I was recently on a web site where the community gives a lot of great advice, and someone posted, “I just realized I forgot to put the soy sauce back in the fridge last night. Do I have to throw it out.” Readers, I was gobsmacked. In all my <mumble mumble> years, I’ve never refrigerated soy sauce! So that sent me running to Still Tasty to find out if I’d been risking self-poisoning with every take-out sushi or Kung Pao dinner! (It turns out, I was okeydokey.)

To keep from wasting money by throwing out ingredients are still good (and maintaining the health of your family and friends), visit Still Tasty to figure out whether you should keep or toss an ingredient, ask questions about storage and expiration dates, and get the low-down on how to deal with food during or after a power outage. There are even tips on which foods you can bring through airport security (in case you’re sending folks home with leftovers) — and lots (and lots) of posts about turkey. Speaking of which…

Butterbull Turkey Talk Hotline — This year marks the 40th anniversary of the hotline at which more than fifty professionally trained turkey experts answer turkey-related questions (in English and Spanish) every holiday season, responding to 100,000+ questions for many thousands of North American households. Thaw, brine, stuff, roast, spatchcock, deep fry, grill, or carve, if you’ve got a Q, they’ve got a gobble-gobble A.

And it’s not just a phone hotline anymore. You can get answers to your turkey queries via multiple methods, including:

And because you know Paper Doll is all about pop culture references, I dare you to watch this classic Butterball-related clip from The West Wing and not giggle.

All these years, and I’m still not sure this wasn’t a PSA to make sure none of NBC’s viewers got salmonella.

Punchfork — Maybe your family cooks all of the same favorites year after year after year and that’s fine by you. But perhaps this is your first holiday season on your own, cooking Friendsgiving. Or maybe you and your sweetie-pie want to create new traditions that don’t include pecan pie. Sure, you could troll all the cookbooks and cooking blogs.

Or you could visit Punchfork. They gather the newest recipes from top-rated food sites and blogs and display them Pinterest-style so you can look at the mouth-watering photos and browse, seeing the finished product, the blog/site name, the community rating (based on how often it has been shared on social media), and how recently the recipe was posted.

Sign up for free, and they start you off with a Favorites dashboard to which you can add recipes by clicking (again, Pinterest-style). Punchfork is available via your browser or as an iOS app.

The site is updated daily, and you can browse by ingredient name or use their natural-language search engine to find whatever you’re craving. I started researching this post late at night while craving chocolate, and was delighted to find twenty different recipes for Nanaimo bars!

If someone’s following a particular diet (vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free, etc.), there’s a search option. You can even search by excluded ingredients, in case someone has an allergy, sensitivity, or ick factor. (For example, Paper Doll hates cauliflower and gravy.)

And once the holidays are over and you’ve hoovered up every remaining leftover, you can just randomly type the ingredients you do still have available, and it’ll find you a recipe that will work.

Next, we have a little controversy.

Just the Recipe — With Just the Recipe, you can copy and paste any URL from anywhere on the web and it’ll give you (you guessed it) just the recipe. Not the blogger’s tale of the recipe’s history, not a request to join an email list, no ads, and no pop-ups. Just the recipe (including ingredients). You don’t even have to go to the website; you can just right-click (or control-click on a Mac) to copy a link directly from Google. (Hence the controversy, as you’ll see.)

Let’s say I want the Love and Lemons blog’s “Best Stuffing Recipe.” Let’s also say I’m in a super rush and can’t be bothered to scroll down the page to read the text and look at the photos that come before the recipe. I can paste it into Just the Recipe and it will spit out a clean, organized, ready-to-print page with just the ingredient list, the instructions, a small photo of the finished result, and a link back to the original. (This last part is important.)

Just the Recipe is a free browser-based site, though they’d like you to consider a $2/month premium version (for which there’s a 14-day free trial).

So why is this controversial? Apparently, there are a lot of people are out there who feel strongly that they don’t want to read carefully crafted food writing. They don’t care about the blogger’s grandmother, who carried the secret family recipe for borscht, scribbled in her own mother’s writing and tucked into her bosom as she escaped the old country. They just want ingredients, measurements, and steps.

I’m not fussing about the people who don’t care and scroll past the lovely stories. I get it. We’re all in a hurry these days. I’m talking about the people who are ANGRY AND VOCAL that food bloggers are writing anything but the actual recipes. (How vocal? Type “I just want the recipe” into a search engine and you get lots of profanity-laden posts, articles, web sites and app,s filled with anger about having to be subjected to non-recipe paragraphs. I imagine these people snapping impatiently at Grandma when she tells a story, shouting, “Get to the point!”)

The thing is, bloggers take time and effort to craft their blogs. (I know I do.) Some of these bloggers (including food bloggers) want to recoup the cost of ingredients for testing recipes, hosting sites, and tech support, and so they run advertising on their sites. (I don’t, but I still respect bloggers who do.)

And this content, whether it’s an essay about the blogger’s family or the history of the recipe or explanations of different ethnicities’ approaches to similar types of food, all serve to improve what’s called search engine optimization. It’s the thing that makes Google tell you about that recipe on the first search page and not the 57th. It’s brings people to a page. 

So, it’s understandably controversial that there are sites (like Just the Recipe, Copy Me That, and others) that take this lovingly created content and strip everything that is a) meaningful to the creator and b) gives them a chance to generate money and especially c) gives other sites a chance to make money off the originator’s content.

My opinion? Not cool, dude. And I’m not the only one.

 

Last spring, I learned about the hubbub from an article in Eater called, This Is What Happens When Tech Bros Attempt to ‘Fix’ Online Recipes. (Short answer, the Recipeasly shut down within weeks of being announced because they also realized what they were doing wasn’t cool.)

So, I encourage you to at least respect food bloggers enough to actually go to their pages. If you don’t want to click on the ads, I feel you. If you don’t want to read the content — and are willing to risk missing cautionary tales about food prep pitfalls, as well as narrative flavor — you do you, boo! But respect the bloggers enough to go to their pages, give their sites the “hits” for their posts, and maybe don’t complain.

(Don’t worry, I know none of Paper Doll‘s loyal readers would ever be such meanies. This is for those future readers who land here from a search about only wanting recipes.)

I was hoping to find you a website that provided timers and assistance for getting all of your Thanksgiving (or other holiday meals) cooked and ready at the same time. I was certain I’d find a link that would help you figure out how to enter the prep and cooking time for each menu item and then get step-by-step instructions for what to do when.

If there is such an app, I didn’t find it. If there isn’t, and you know a good programmer, consider this idea my gift to you. I did find the following articles, though:

How to Cook Thanksgiving With (Gasp!) One Oven

When You Should Start Cooking Every Dish For Thanksgiving

Here’s Exactly When To Cook Every Dish For Thanksgiving Dinner 

And remember, your cell phone will let you set oodles of timers. Set one for every single item you put in the oven and label each timer (it just takes a second) with which food and what you’re supposed to be doing, whether that’s taking it out of the oven or flipping it over, or adding a glaze.

Omnicalculator does have a bunch of online calculators to make your cooking experience easier and more organized, from a Thanksgiving calculator that tells you how much (in pounds or pieces or gallons) of holiday food/beverages you’ll need to a turkey defrosting time calculator and so much more.

SITES TO EASE YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

Obviously, as a professional organizer, I want to discourage you from shopping willynilly for things neither you nor your recipients need. I urge you to stay home on Black Friday (to stay safe — we are still in a pandemic, after all) and if you must shop, do it with a list and whenever possible, online.

There are several extensions you can add to your browsers to notify you if a retailer’s site you visit has a discount available.

My favorite is Rakuten, formerly Ebates (and formerly easier to pronounce). You can go directly to their site and then click through a retailer’s links. Doing so will give you a cookie (though not the kind with chocolate chips), and not only will you get a discount, but you’ll earn cash back. But even easier is to just add the little extension to your browser, and it’ll do all the work for you.

Similar sites include Capital One Shopping (formerly WikiBuy) and Honey.

Another site I use often is Retail Me Not. Let’s say you’re shopping at Kohl’s. (OK, let’s say I am, because it’s the only non-grocery, non-Amazon place I’ve shopped for the last 18 months.) Type the name of the retailer into the search box and you’ll see a wide variety of discount codes for different types of purchases at any given retailer. (I’ve found discounts for my web site’s domain registrar, restaurants, clothing stores, and sometimes even Amazon.)

 

CamelCamelCamel.com — Speaking of Amazon (and I know that between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many of you will be), this dromedary-themed site is a free Amazon price tracker. Type in keywords for a product you want, or paste the Amazon URL for something you’re thinking about buying. (There’s also a Camelizer browser extension.)

Last week, my friend bought an iRobot 240 Braava Rob Mop, a mopping cousin of a Roomba.

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I copied the product link into CamelCamelCamel and it fed me a chart of the pricing history of the robot over the past five years.

It’s a bit like predicting the stock market, but by seeing past pricing trends for products, it’s easier to make a bet on when you should buy it. If you see that a particular product always increases in price in November but goes down in February, you may postpone your purchase to get the best price.

STREAMLINE YOUR HOLIDAY TRAVEL

Obviously, Paper Doll isn’t a travel blog, but there are a few sites that should help make your holiday travel run a bit more smoothly.

Are you road tripping, either alone or with your family? If you’re at all a germaphobe like Paper Doll, the idea of using a public restroom was never high on your list of appealing activities; a global pandemic makes it all the more ick-filled. But if you’re traveling more than a few hours by car, it’s something you’ll have to consider.

According to the National Association for Continence, there are three apps suitable for helping you find the best (cleanest, safest) bathrooms while traveling:

  • Bathroom Scout
  • Flush
  • Sit Or Squat

All three have iOS and Android versions, and the association’s site has details and links.

When you’re driving at home, you tend to know which gas stations have the lowest prices, but when you’re on the road, you can be faced with a mystery.

Gas Buddy is a public-facing database and resource that has been around for a long time, since before the days of apps. You can use it to search for gas stations by city, state, or brand, but it’s best known for it’s price maps. Type in a zip code or area, and overlaid on the map, you will see the gas prices wherever you are.

For example, I can see that prices within a few miles from my house are varying from $2.95 to $3.25. That’s huge, especially when you’re filling up a tank in multiple locations over the course of a road trip!

Check out the site and the Gas Buddy app (for once you’re on the road) for various features to save money on fuel costs.

Are you traveling by air? Are you worried about how much time to leave to get through security? You can download the My TSA app; fellow travelers post airport delays (reported in real time). However, if you’d rather limit the app clutter on your phone, there are simple web sites you can use, including TSA Wait Times and iFly (under the Getting Around tab).

iFly is a particularly useful site for travelers, with links for information on:

  • parking
  • ground transportation
  • navigating airports, including:
    • gate walk times (so you’ll know how far and fast you’ll need to schlep)
    • how to get on the airport WiFi
    • how to find airline lounges
    • how to locate Lost & Found
    • airport maps

If you’re headed between Canada or Mexico and the US, the TSA does operate an easy-peasy Border Wait Time site, no app required.

Speaking of the TSA, they’ve got a page, Turkey Trot On Your Way Through the Airport, focused on which of your leftovers you can carry on and which you must put in checked luggage. (There’s even a dancing turkey!) FYI; cranberry sauce is categorized as a liquid.

BONUS LINKS TO KEEP YOUR HOLIDAYS ORGANIZED

Do you have to get up early to catch a flight, get on the road, or spatchcock the turkey?

Setting your alarm is easy enough, but did you know there are optimal amounts of time to sleep to avoid waking up mid-sleep cycle to keep from being foggy-minded? Like, we do better sleeping in 90-minute cycles, so sometimes getting 7 1/2 hours of sleep might be better than 8.

Sleepy Time is a sleep cycle simulator that will calculate what time you should go to bed to make sure you’re alert for the drive or that you don’t doze off while stuffing the bird.

Once Thanksgiving (or the whole holiday season) is behind you, how will you plan for next year? you could write down everything you did this year that worked out and everything that made the holiday a little more problematic. But where would you put that note to yourself? In Evernote? In a “holiday planning” notebook? Tucked in one of your cookbooks?

To best prepare for next year, send yourself an email timed to arrive in early-to-mid November!

FutureMe lets you write and send a letter to your future self to be delivered one, three, or five years from now, or on any date of your choosing. 

For more tips on being organized for the holidays, check out my classic ebook, Simplify the Season and Save Your Sanity. 

Paper Doll Models the Spring 2021 Organizing Products

Posted on: March 29th, 2021 by Julie Bestry | 16 Comments

It’s finally springtime, the perfect time for new organizing supplies!

For most of the fourteen years I’ve been writing this Paper Doll blog, I’ve delighted in sharing new organizing products displayed at the annual NAPO Conference & Expo. Unfortunately, last year, the conference was canceled due to COVID. This year, although we’re very excited that we will get to have a 2021 NAPO Conference (albeit virtually) next month, there will not be an expo. 

However, that doesn’t mean you’ll miss out on new organizing products! I’ve been collecting tidbits and emails over recent months, enough to assure you that there are novel and interesting organizing products out there in the world, and today, we’ll look at a few of them.

Organize Your Papers & Information

Whether you feel like you’re working from home or living at the office, whether “work” is your career or your volunteer gig or having a serious meeting at your kids’ school, the business of your life involves a lot of moving parts. Let’s look at what make these efforts run more smoothly.

Smead Soft Touch Cloth Expanding Files

Right now, most people’s “meetings” are held virtually, with each person in his or her own Brady Bunch-style box on Zoom or the equivalent. As long as we’re dressed from the waist up and have combed our hair, we pass muster. Nobody can see much below our shoulders, so if we’ve scribbled our notes on a Snoopy memo pad, our co-workers won’t be able to tell.

But imagine someday soon, it will be like the “before times” – eventually, we’ll all be back in the “real” world, with in-person meetings. And for good or ill, style will matter, at least a little, and we won’t be able to just carry an armload of papers as we might do now, from couch to desk. Somehow, I suspect our old briefcases will seem stodgy, a remnant of another era, but backpacks will feel just a little too casual for a meeting with the CEO. Smead has found a middle path.

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Smead Soft Touch Cloth Expanding Files offer up an attractive way to look professional and keep your documents organized. It’s never too early to make a good impression, and I think these cloth expanding files help you accomplish just that.

One step up from poly or paper expansion folders, the Smead Soft Touch Cloth Expanding File provides 2 inches of expansion capabilities, so you can store your important documents and files, a small laptop or tablet, your phone, and maybe a bullet journal. Closed on three sides, the top flap has one of two styles of closures to secure the fourth side, securely containing everything when you’re on the go.

The Smead Soft Touch Cloth Expanding Files come in two styles, letter-sized (13″ wide x 10″ high) with a snap closure or tabloid ( 12″ wide x 18″ high) with a magnetic closure. The soft cloth design comes in black, grey, and dark blue. All versions feature a cloth exterior with matching sewn stitching and a satiny, purse-like, black cloth interior. (Caveat: Smead calls the exterior “soft,” which is a relative term. Let’s say it’s a bit like a woolen blazer.)

You can find these sharp-dressed portfolios at the Smead links above (about $15 for the letter-sized or $25 for the tabloid sized) or on Amazon (about $13 for letter-sized and $21-$25 for the tabloid version).

So, when the world gets back to “normal,” whether you’re heading into a client meeting or an interview, something snappy and professional may not only help keep you organized, but like a new pencil box on the first day of school, might just give you just the confidence you need to re-enter the working world.

Quartet Portable Glass Dry Erase Pads

Recently, Quartet, one of the ACCO family of brands, reached out to show me their new line of Keep notes handy wherever you are with the Quartet Portable Glass Dry-Erase Pad. The idea is that you can keep notes and reminders on a small glass whiteboard that fits in a bag or purse, and opens and folds like a notebook for easy dry-erase writing.

The dry-erase pad is a non-porous glass board made of 5″ x 8″, 4 mm thick tempered glass; along with the cover, it weighs one pound. The pad opens and closes like a notebook, so you can quickly jot down notes, reminders, or squigglies throughout the day, while the durable, poly cover and its small foam pads protect the glass whiteboard’s surface (so there’s no jostling or unintended erasure of your notes).

Write, close, drop it in your bag, roam around our brave, new world, open it again, and pick up where you left off, without smudges.

There’s a bungee closure to keep it closed and protected, and criss-crossed elastic bands hold dry-erase markers and accessories.

The magnetic kickstand embedded into the cover holds the pad in place and angles it so you can comfortably view your notes while you’re speaking on camera or to a group, or just trying to review your mind-map while eating at an outdoor cafe among other humans (as we’ll all be doing soon, I hope).

 

The Portable Glass Dry-Erase Pad comes in two cover styles: blue (with orange closures and bands) and black (with red closures and bands), and with one dry-erase marker. (Note: Quartet does make a 9″ x 6″ glass dry-erase desktop “notepad” in two styles, floral and dotted, but these are designed to use at your desk and have no cover (and thus no protection from jostling), so please be careful when ordering.)

The Portable Glass Dry-Erase Pads are priced at $40 on the Quartet website, or a little under $30 at Amazon.

I’ll admit, at first I was puzzled by the appeal of the product. Why would you carry around a piece of glass when you’re already carrying your phone, and maybe your tablet? What’s the appeal of writing something down that’s erasable when you’re mobile if you could type or dictate into your phone? I mean, I’m a paper girl, so I could see the appeal of a notebook or note pad, but to me, dry-erase is for your office space. (Hey, that rhymes!)

What was I missing?!

I shared the product with a few of my colleagues. A few were “meh” about it as I was, finding the sleek design appealing but the utility doubtful. However, others got very excited. For them, the combination of being able to hand-write their notes but have zero impact on the environment (no trees killed, no landfill topped off) got them very jazzed. And, of course, we all noted that information on the pads can be captured and kept permanently via a quick snapshot and upload to Evernote, OneNote, or similar data storage before erasing.

Readers, what are your thoughts? Would you tote around a one-pound dry-erase board? What other uses could you find for this product? Feel free to share in the comments!

Quartet Desktop Glass Whiteboard Computer Pads

While I was scrolling around the Quartet website, I did find something that appealed to me. Although it appears the product isn’t new, it’s new to me.

Quartet’s Desktop Glass Whiteboard Computer Pads are just as environmentally friendly as their portable cousins, but they are designed to be used at the computer, where there’s far less chance of dropping them! (What?! I can’t be the only person who fears being klutzy and having a purse full of shattered glass!)

This two-pound, 18″ wide by 6″ high, angled organizing tool does double-duty. The contemporary-style glass top is made of a sleek, durable, dry-erase surface, designed to fit in with any office or home décor.

The non-porous glass does not absorb ink, so Quartet guarantees (for 15 years!) that it will not stain or ghost, and it’s made to resist dents and scratches in case you have a cat or tiny human (or co-worker who behaves like either one) visiting your desk. So, write your task list or the phone numbers you’re transcribing from voicemail, erase, write something completely new – all to your heart’s content. 

The writing area is only part of what makes the Desktop Glass Whiteboard Computer Pad useful. The item as a whole is designed to sit between your keyboard and your monitor, and the built-in storage drawer slides out to expose space for markers, sticky notes, flash drives, and whatever you want to keep at your desk while maintaining a clutter-free work environment.

There’s also a small trough at the top of the angled surface where your dry-erase markers can nest comfortably until you write your next reminder.


The Quartet Glass Dry-Erase Desktop Computer Pads come in five styles: White, Marble (grey with gold accents), Floral (white with pink accents), Dot (white with blue accents), and Black (with silver accents). 

Reviewers advised that while a variety of dry-erase markers will work, the Quartet brand seem to have the best staying power and erase the most cleanly, so caveat emptor. I should also note that it’s not immediately obvious what color dry-erase ink colors would be visible on a black background. It appears the black version comes with white dry-erase marker.

The different versions range in price from $27-$34 on the Quartet website, and $34-$37 on Amazon.

Organize Your Space

Organize Your Home 10 Minutes at a Time Deck of Cards

Longtime friends of the blog and beloved NAPO-Georgia colleagues Diane Quintana and Jonda Beattie have had their own, separate professional organizing practices for some time; they’ve also been collaborating on projects, including speaking gigs, classes, and their children’s books, Suzie’s Messy Room and Benji’s Messy Room.

Recently, Diane and Jonda joined forces to create a collaborative company, Release * Repurpose * Reorganize, and even wrote a book together, Filled Up and Overflowing: What to Do When Life Events, Chronic Disorganization, or Hoarding Go Overboard. But apparently, even that wasn’t enough excitement for them!

Diane and Jonda have created the Organize Your Home 10 Minutes at a Time Deck of Cards. Fully aware that most people don’t have the desire, motivation, or stamina to conquer organizing an entire room or space all at once, they’ve created a 52-card deck to guide you through organizing your home step-by-step, one 10-minute task at a time.

The deck includes two instruction cards to help you get started, plus 50 categorized task cards for coping with typical areas of a home, including kitchens, closets, bedrooms, bathrooms, family rooms, and similar spaces. The top of each card color-codes to the spaces covered, and tells you the space and task to be handled. The body of each card provides instructions for completing the task.

Whether you could use a little personal motivation to get your home organized or want to get your family (or housemates) in on the organizing action with a little competitive guidance, Diane and Jonda have you covered.

The Organize Your Home 10 Minutes at a Time Deck of Cards is available on their website for $19.95.

Organized Travel

As you know, it’s rare for me to report on organizing products unrelated to paper, information, finances, or office space…except when I’m reporting from the NAPO Expo. Given that this post replaces an actual expo report (and the realization it’s my blog and I can make my own rules!), I’ve got one more product to share.

Hang|Fold

HangFold calls itself a “travel partner,” to prevent wrinkled clothes. As someone who despises ironing and generally owns an entire travel wardrobe of (upscale) polyester and spandex in order to avoid ironing, this pricked up my ears. According to the company, Hang|Fold allows you to pack shirts and delicates — perfectly folded — into your suitcase, and then once you get to your destination, you don’t have to worry if there will be enough hangers. The hangers are built in!

Hang|Fold is a hanger, but it’s also a template for perfectly folding shirts, sweaters, and other clothes to make them both suitcase-ready while traveling and hanging-ready for when you get to your hotel or home-share. (Remember hotels? Remember traveling?)

Everything you fold goes into your suitcase the same size, as if you were using Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s Flip & Fold method, and it all comes out smooth, unwrinkled, and unsquished.

Hang|Fold is less than a quarter of an inch wide and measures 15″ long x 7.5″ high in the hanger position. In template mode, it’s less than 12” x 10”. It is a one-size-fits-all product. Pull up or push down on the hanger to change modes.

Hang|Fold features rounded edges and C-shapes, as well as anti-slip grooves, so no pointy shoulders or unseemly clothing dents!

Hang|Fold weighs about the same as a dress shirt (6.34 oz) but is capable of supporting more than 5 1/2 lbs. on the shoulders and more than 6.6 lbs. on the trouser bar. It’s light weight, but it’s no lightweight, if you know what I mean!

Hang|Fold is a patented product made 100% out of recycled polypropylene (PP), and is produced in the European Union (Spain) by ISO 9001-certified manufacturers, ensuring the quality and sustainability.

While I don’t usually promote products that are in crowdsourcing mode, in case they don’t come to fruition, I liked that the company is thinking about the environment as well as the future of travel:

Juan Flores, CEO at Hang|Fold reports that, “It has not been easy to move ahead with a project created from scratch in the middle of a pandemic, especially with a product aimed for travelers and a business model that defies the status quo in production, financing and materials used. However, despite all the challenges faced, we’ve launched our crowdfunding campaign in Indiegogo and shared this dream with our customers hoping they will join and support us.” 

It’s not available yet, but is going live on April 13, 2021. You can sign up at Hang|Fold’s Indiegogo page to get notified when the campaign goes live and to get a 45% discount. Until then, see Hang|Fold in action:

 

 

Usually, my NAPO Expo recap runs for a few posts, and it’s quite possible that in the run-up to the 2021 NAPO Conference, I might get more sneak peaks at new and unusual organizing products. Until then, share what you think of these, and let me know if you have any of the items I’ve profiled.

 

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Paper Doll on the Smead Podcast: Essential Lists For Organized Travel

Posted on: August 2nd, 2019 by Julie Bestry | 11 Comments

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

~ Mark Twain

Whether you’re going over the river and through the woods for a holiday with Grandma or jet-setting off to some foreign rendezvous, travel can be both exciting and nervewracking. There are so many issues, from worrying that you’ll forget your medication to figuring out how to pack properly for the weather, that it’s easy to become anxious or overwhelmed.

Taking Twain’s message to heart, I would rather spend my twilight years remembering the joys of my madcap adventures (even if they involved some momentary anxiety) than basking in the coziness of never making a misstep due to never having taken a step at all.  

Readers, you’ve heard me say this before: organizing cannot prevent all catastrophes, but it can prevent them from being so catastrophic.

Organizing cannot prevent all catastrophes, but it can prevent them from being so catastrophic. Share on X

I’m a big believer that lists help keep our space and time organized, and work particularly well for banishing – or at least keeping at bay – some of that pre-travel anxiety.

You may recall my post from last fall, Paper Doll’s 5 Essential Lists For Planning an International Vacation, which I wrote after returning from my grand tour of Italy. Recently, that post prompted a great two-part conversation with John Hunt on the excellent Smead video podcast, Keeping You Organized. 

We discussed exactly how you can use lists to conquer your trip-preparation fears and travel more confidently. For convenience, both parts of our conversation appear below.

Essential List for Organized Travel – Part 1 (Keeping You Organized, episode #263)

 

Essential List for Organized Travel – Part 2 (Keeping You Organized, episode #264)

 

If you’d rather listen to the podcasts (perhaps while packing or roaming through romantic, far-flung airports than be distracted by my hair (which I swear always looks better ten minutes before the podcast starts), you can visit the podcast pages directly at Smead and download the mp3s:

Essential List for Organized Travel – Part 1 (Keeping You Organized, episode #263) Audio Only

Essential List for Organized Travel – Part 2 (Keeping You Organized, episode #264) Audio Only

On the podcasts, I talked about the kinds of lists I use, as well as the apps, products, and services that I think help create a more organized travel experience. One of those items wasn’t widely available yet when I went to Italy, nor when I wrote my recap.

Last February, I was watching Smead’s myOrganized.life daily Facebook show. When I tuned in, I learned that friend-of-the-blog and Smead personality Leiann Thompson (John Hunt’s partner in crime) was stuck in a snowstorm and John was on his own, touting a new product: the Smead Poly Three-Divider Travel Organizer File.

Once John showed off the Travel Organizer File, I knew I had to get a closer look at this hybrid tool for organizing travel documents and necessities. It’s made of durable poly material, so it’s tear- and water-resistant. The back portion of the letter-sized organizer has three 1/3-cut tabbed divider sections, each of which has a 25-sheet storage capacity. The sections are useful for sorting documents by:

  • different days of your itinerary
  • different aspects of your trip (family reunion notes, conference documents, sightseeing itineraries), or
  • different travel elements (airline reservations, hotel bookings, ground transportation info, etc.)

The Smead Poly Three-Divider Travel Organizer File also has a snap-closure pocket (also made of poly material) for collating travel expense receipts, baggage claim or valet tickets, restaurant/business cards, walking tour maps, and anything you collect along the way.

Smead has three colorful, fun designs, all of which give your enclosed documents some privacy from prying eyes. (You know, there’s always that one seatmate looking over your shoulder!) The teal-white flowered is shown above; Smead also makes purple and teal versions with a charcoal privacy design (below):
You can find a two-pack of the Smead Poly Three-Divider Travel Organizers at Amazon for around $9, as well as at Smead, and most office supply stores and stationers.

Happy (organized) traveling!

Paper Doll’s 5 Essential Lists For Planning an International Vacation

Posted on: October 24th, 2018 by Julie Bestry | 7 Comments

Recently, I returned from Italy. For most of 2018, I knew I was going to be going on a Smithsonian Highlights of Italy tour, and so I had a lot of time to prepare. I imagine you’d expect that as a professional organizer, packing for a two+ week trip to Italy would be no big deal. But I’m also a panicked packer. I may do laundry many days before the trip, only to decide at 1 a.m. before a 10 a.m. flight that I need to take a dress I haven’t worn in two years and may not have shoes to match. As a long-planned trip approaches, I have been known to shop for a new wardrobe of shoes, or socks, or foundation garments, or shirts, making me Kohl’s favorite shopper.

It’s not that I’m not organized; I have no issues with packing electronics or toiletries or meds. I put my mail on hold weeks ahead of a trip, and arrange my ride to have plenty of time to be at the airport, finding myself through security with fully-charged devices and little to do ahead of my sure-to-be-delayed flights.

Nope, it’s just clothing. I suspect it’s a body image thing: a fear that the ubiquitous photos, the only “true” proof that a vacation or conference or any other trip ever happened, will show my physique to a disadvantage. It’s a neurosis. The best I can do is to plan all of the details related to my trip with the precision of a wedding (or an invasion) – and the only way I can do that is with lists. Lots and lots of lists.

Whether you’re heading over the river and through the woods for Thanksgiving or crossing an ocean to visit a famous, giant, naked dude, consider the lists that might make your trip less stressful.

1) LIST OF WHAT TO ACQUIRE

Note, I say acquire and not purchase because many of the things you need for a trip, but only for that trip, need not add to your personal clutter. 

Spread the word among your friends (via social media or in person) about your trip, and ask for guidance among those who’ve traveled extensively. I guarantee that you will learn some surprising things.

Friends of the blog Nanette Duffey of Organizing Instincts and her mom, Maxine, are smart travelers and kind people. In addition to travel standbys, they offered me a variety of supplies on loan for the trip, including a few things I may not have realized or remembered I needed:

  • electric converter and adaptor with Italy-specific prongs
  • opera glasses/small binoculars
  • bungee cord laundry line with small plastic clips
  • cross-body bag (halfway between a purse and a backpack)
  • small Eagle Creek bags and money belts serviceable as purses or mini-packs
  • personal, battery-operated fan
  • inflatable travel pillow

All of these were great ideas, and I appreciated their help. In the end, I bought a fabulously squishy (non-inflatable) neck pillow on sale at TJMaxx for $6 instead of using the inflatable one, and PaperMommy bought me a Baggallini water-resistant cross-body bag that has replaced my everyday purse, but this largesse made planning the trip so much smoother.

Baggallini Cross-Body Bag

My biggest regret, as you’ll understand as you read on, was eschewing the little fan, thinking it was too much of a luxury given my 44-pound luggage limit. (Trust me, ladies, even if you’re outside of the “power-surge” age group, unless global climate change experiences sudden reversion, a mini-fan is a small miracle.)

2) LISTS OF WHAT TO PACK: CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES

In the US or Canada, you can pack very lightly because if you find you’re missing something, a quick trip to Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, or the nearest mall can find you what you need. When I visited Disney World in 2005, the airline lost my suitcase for 36 hours, but a zip over to a big box store (and a ridiculous familiarity with store layouts) meant that we lost less than an hour of precious vacation to obtain a few essentials. 

However, if your luggage is lost in a foreign country, or you’ve failed to bring shoes that match the outfit you plan to wear to give a speech, accept the Nobel Prize, or make (or receive) a wedding proposal, not having your stuff can cause anxiety. Planning is key.

Start with your schedule. What special events or activities require certain articles of clothing? Will you need a ballgown for meeting the Queen? Hiking boots? I saw people climbing the steps of the Colosseum in sandals, but I know I really needed grippy treads and closed-toe shoes to feel safe.

Check the weather report. The Smithsonian info packet included a list of the average highs and lows in Sorrento, Rome, and Venice for the month of September. However, although it was delightfully sunny for all but one day of the half-month tour, the temperatures were more than ten degrees higher than the average. It was hot. Damned hot. Checking the ten-day forecast online helped me decide to jettison anything with long-sleeves and add a few lighter skirts. And if unexpected inclement weather hits? The Points Guy blog has 13 tips for keeping rainy weather from ruining your trip.

Bear in mind that if you’re traveling internationally, many religious sites require covered shoulders for women and trousers for men. You can often buy inexpensive but beautiful scarves (or inexpensive but ugly rain slickers) outside the Vatican and other religious sites.

Don’t pack what you can’t afford to lose. Certainly, you have insurance (right?), but even the best policy only covers the monetary value of what gets lost or stolen. I made the decision not to bring any jewelry at all. Perhaps excessive (and a fashion DON’T) but losing my favorite pieces would have spoiled the trip for me. Instead, it gave me a shopping goal to find a memorable (but affordable) piece of jewelry while traveling.

3) LISTS OF WHAT TO PACK: EVERYTHING ELSE

If you’ve never made a packing list before, start by playing “Let’s Pretend.” Start at your bed and walk yourself through your day from tooth-brushing, showering, and grooming, and on through the rest of your typical day. Keep your pen or notetaking app near you for a full day, as you’ll remember things you might otherwise have forgotten.

If you consider yourself low-maintenance, or if you’re the sort of person who can crash on a friend’s couch or sleep in a tent, bully for you, but for those of us who rarely leave home without using “product” in our hair or have activity-specific shoes to avoid blisters, there are issues to consider.

For example, I’d been warned that even with converters, American hairdryers won’t work abroad; my fancy and tress-tending dryer would be staying behind, and precious space meant leaving behind the smoothing velveteen-coated curlers that keep me from looking like Art Garfunkel when it’s humid. I felt I had no choice but to accept the hotel hair dryers, but I invested $20 at Amazon for a dual-voltage haircare product. Results were mixed, especially when the temperatures topped 90°F, but at least I didn’t waste my luggage space on devices that would have blown up.

What are your little saviors? Only you know what you need in your daily life, but I can tell you what helped me survive (admittedly) “first world problem” awkwardness on this trip:

  • Zip-lock bags in multiple sizes – Yes, you have to put your carry-on liquids in a one-quart baggie, but these little marvels work for much more, from gathering all of your small chargers and earbuds neatly inside a small day pack to safely transporting the only non-enormous container of baby powder sold anywhere in Italy without making your suitcase look like blizzard scene from a Christmas movie.

  • Tissue packs – When we got off the “motor coach” in Orvieto, a lovely hilltop town, our wonderful tour director advised us to skip “not the greatest toilets” and wait until we climbed up into the city. We should have listened. There was no toilet paper. (Also, no soap, and as we found all throughout Italy, no toilet seats. But that’s another blog post!)
  • Anti-bacterial gel – See prior paragraph. Also, you’ll be touching handrails touched by thousands of people each day. I switched back and forth between environmentally un-sound but comforting Wet Ones and a non-alcohol gel. (This isn’t the blog to argue about the dangers of anti-bacterial products on overall global resistance. I won’t hold my gelato cone with a hand that’s covered in Vesuvius ash and dead Etruscans, and you can’t make me!)
I won't hold my gelato cone with a hand that's covered in Vesuvius ash and dead Etruscans, and you can't make me! Bring anti-bacterial gel or wet wipes when traveling. Share on X
  • Insect repellant, sunblock and a hat – I may not have been pinched by any Italian men, but their mosquito cousins did their worst. Our group debated the efficacy of sprays vs. lotions vs. those telephone-style coiled bracelets designed to keep bugs at bay, but came to no conclusions. Enjoy nature without becoming a victim.
  • Compression socks/stockings – As someone who once had a deep vein thrombosis, and as one of almost 20 people in a tour group of twenty with swollen ankles and legs blotched with broken blood vessels, I encourage you to wear compression socks or stockings on your longer flights.

For other packing suggestions, consult the experts:

Rick Steves’ Packing List  (as a list) or as a printable checklist PDF

Eagle Creek: What to Pack: The Ultimate Travel Packing Checklist

Travels’ Interactive Checklist – This unassuming site is a marvel! Answer a few questions and get personalized lists: travel prep activities; how to handle documents, money, and tickets; packing lists; time, weather, currency, and safety advisories for your destination; flying and packing tips; a map!

Roll It, Bag It, Cube It to Pack Light and Tight — and Save on Travel from The Penny Hoarder

4) LISTS OF WHAT TO DO BEFORE YOU LEAVE

Stop deliveries. What gets delivered to your home or office? Mail? Meal prep kits? Place a hold.

Think like a doctor. Don’t wait until the week of your trip to think about refilling prescriptions, or the timing may leave you without access to essential meds. Talk to your pharmacist (and, if necessary, your physician) to make sure you’ll have what you need. (Of course, you should pack all medical essentials in your carry-on.)

Call your health insurance provider. I was delighted (but surprised) to find that my marketplace-acquired Blue Cross Blue Shield policy had Global Core coverage to ensure that if I needed to be hospitalized or receive medical care (emergency or otherwise) while in Italy, I was safe.

Be a money honey. Review your bank account activity and identify what non-automated tasks you’ll have to address before you depart. Are there bills for which you’ll need to schedule payment even though the actual statements won’t have arrived before you depart?

Call your bank and credit card companies to alert them that you’ll be traveling (so you won’t be flagged as a fraudster or thief) and find out which of your cards charge international transaction fees.

Gather your documents. Take a photo of the interior page of your passport. (Don’t worry – your photo can’t be as bad as mine.) Keep copies in your phone’s camera roll and in Dropbox or Evernote or wherever you collect trip-related documents (like copies of your itinerary, hotel contact information, and emergency numbers). Email or text a copy to people who are always immediately responsive, like your BFF or your mom. Or my mom.

5) LIST OF IMPORTANT PHRASES

This summer, I realized that my paltry Italian vocabulary of ciao, grazie, prego, gelato, and mafia was not going to cut it, no matter how much my frequently-traveling pals assured me that everyone in Europe speaks English. I started using Duolingo, a fun and free program (available for browsers or in-app) to learn languages. While it makes language learning fun, Duolingo builds language skills using some quirky phrases. Thus, I arrived in Italy knowing how to say, “My monkey is hungry” and “My mother’s toothbrush is green and white,” but not yet how to say “Where is the bathroom?” or “How much does this cost?”

If you are traveling to a locale where your primary language is not spoken, download Google Translate (or at least bookmark the less robust web page). It’s a great app, and you can type, handwrite, or just hold it up to a sign or menu and it will magically translate what you’re seeing into English. You can also speak into it and it will translate your phrase, which was hugely helpful when the hotel laundry lost my shirt and the nice lady from housekeeping wanted to foist a lovely (and obviously more expensive) shirt on me rather than giving me my own.

My cell phone carrier promised me I’d have the same texting and data plan as I have at home and would only spend extra on voice minutes, but WiFi was sometimes lackluster and I learned early on that data was racking up major moolah. So, make a list of the essential questions you think you might want to ask while traveling and keep it handy. For example:

  • “Hello, pardon me, I’m sorry that my [language] is poor, but could you help me? Thank you.”
  • “How much should a taxi cost to get me to [point on the map]?” or “How long would it take me to walk to [point on the map]?” “Is it safe for me to walk to [point on the map]?”
  • “How much does this cost?”
  • “I’m severely allergic to [X] and I will die if [X] is in my food. Is [X] in this?” 
  • “My language course only taught me how to say that my monkey is hungry and my mother’s toothbrush is green and white. I’m certain your English is better than my [language]. Please feel free to laugh at me after you tell me where to find the toilets.”

As it turned out, “grazie” proved to be the most valuable vocabulary words I studied. After “gelato.”

Organize your planning, your packing, and your preparation with lists  – it will help you avoid being anxious or listless (literally and figuratively) as your departure date approaches. Buon viaggio!

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