organising – Page 3

16 May 2016 by Marcia Francois Leave a Comment

{Mindset Monday} How to have a great work week

Next week we’re going to talk more about my own (good) habits, and then I’m going to listen to Gretchen Rubin’s book, Better than Before, again…. and very possibly write a few more posts.

One of the things I tell myself (and others) constantly, one of my mottos, if you will, is that there are things you can control and things you can’t.

We all know this.

So I like to think about things I can control.

And one of those things is to be prepared.

At work, I start off the week ahead on a Friday afternoon. Fridays are actually like Goals Night for me. I review the week that was, look at the week coming, check the important things that need to be handled, I follow up on outstanding things, clear my inbox and I plan.

The outcome is a to-do list for the week ahead, but definitely to know what I need to do on Monday morning so I can leave all the work behind me and enjoy my weekend 🙂

Have only 6-ish items on the list for Monday

I still follow my Eat the Frog principles of doing important and urgent things, and not adding more than 6 to the list. I might add more to the list during the day but that’s really just to get my brain clear, and not an actual intention to do it that day (unless super urgent).

Be realistic

Be realistic both with your time and with your energy levels. If you have 3 hours of meetings in the morning and you’re a morning person, you’re not going to get much serious brain work done in the afternoon. You’re only frustrating yourself by thinking you’re Superwoman.

Keep a master list for the week…

but don’t worry about the future tasks til you need to, i.e. on Tuesday 🙂 Every week there is much more than 6 items i have to take care of for the week ahead. But the key is to leave unimportant things (for that day) undone while you focus on just that day.

That’s it!

Repeat every Friday afternoon, and you can leave your work at work every Friday but return on a Monday fresh and ready for people to bring it on 🙂 (I couldn’t resist!)

Happy Monday – have a great week!

Filed Under: Intentional living, Planning, Time management Tagged With: eat the frog, organising, planning, workplace

11 May 2016 by Marcia Francois Leave a Comment

Re-think your space

We currently live in a 3-bedroom house. Since the twins were born, they shared one room, with the other room being a study, and of course, we had the master bedroom.

Last year the bedtime shenanigans hit an all-time peak so I gave up my study and moved them each to their own room.

Great idea because sleep time has been amazing.

Some of the furniture moved to other parts of the house but my big, yellow desk (that I LOVE) could only fit in the sunroom.

Interestingly, it works out amazingly.

I only actually work on a laptop there some afternoons – mornings are too bright, and evenings are too cold. But that desk is perfect for the twins to colour next to each other, or for me to wrap gifts, plan my week/ month, take photos for Instagram or to separate the kids for homework purposes.

The Nester also wrote recently about re-thinking spaces too.

I didn’t intend to have a big yellow desk in my sunroom, but I must say, I love having it there 🙂

How can you re-think furniture placement in your home to make something work better for you?

Filed Under: Organising Tagged With: living with kids, organising, rethink your spaces

6 May 2016 by Marcia Francois 3 Comments

Children’s capsule wardrobes

A few things I want to quickly mention:

my kids are 6.5 (nearly 7 if you listen to them!) and I’ve long stopped buying clothes for future years
they do have some things, mainly gifts from people that are too big for the current year so these get put away til the next warm/ cold season

I had an aha moment when I started Konmari-ing my own clothes last August.

First, the kids have way too many things if we have to rotate clothes (newly washed clothes go to the back of the pile)
There’s so much that I don’t plan to buy anything until they outgrow clothes
Capsule wardrobes are the in thing. When you have to think of mixing and matching, it becomes a whole new set of work.

I put my new capsule wardrobe theory to work in the summer…. the hot, 8-month long summer.

Kendra needed some strappy tops so I got her two tops that would match with everything else in her wardrobe.

Connor needed two sleeveless tops too and I did the same, less picky, because he wears denim shorts a lot.

The benefits during our holiday in Cape Town were huge:

everything “went” with everything else – surprisingly navy goes with neon orange, green and hot pink 🙂
I didn’t need to make sets (as I’ve always done) – I just tossed 5 tops and 5 pairs of shorts/ skirts in the suitcase and that was that – happy, happy days for me!
they dressed so quickly every day because it was easy

While Konmari-ing their clothes, I also decided to not waste my time “forcing” the kids to wear some clothes, e.g. gifts. If they told me they hated something, I donated the item even if they hadn’t worn it at all or enough. I really don’t have the energy to insist they wear things. And to be fair, I won’t wear things I hate either.

Once those items were out of the house, I felt happier so it worked.

I’ve told my mom (who loves buying clothes for gifts) to also rather not buy clothes anymore unless pyjamas – both my kids LOVE pyjamas. I think they get that from me 🙂 So that’s what she did for Christmas – pjs and money!

This winter we’ve done the same – everything goes with everything. I had to replace one or two pairs of pants and I’m being very strict – it either matches with everything or doesn’t come home with me 🙂

The kids are happy and so am I.

Have you thought of doing capsule wardrobes for your kids?

Filed Under: Decluttering, Intentional living, Organising, Time management Tagged With: capsule wardrobes, Konmari, organising, organising for kids, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

4 Apr 2016 by Marcia Francois 1 Comment

March review and a few happy links

March was a really good month for me. It’s always a good month when you have 10 days off to recharge but boy, did I pay for that last week when I got back.

I’m just about caught up so hopefully (!) this week will be easier.

I mentioned in my newsletter that I’d had “big plans” for my leave but beyond a bit of organising, some Konmari-ing, I did mostly nothing except lots of reading and sleeping. I way exceeded my sleep goal for every day of the holiday except one.

I read 10 books in March. 10! Besides December when I was pushing hard to reach my 2015 reading goal, I don’t know the last time I read that much for leisure. So decadent!

So I have to give a shout-out to the best book I read in March – Smart Money, Smart Kids. Dave Ramsey and his daughter, Rachel Cruze, are the authors. Oh man, just read it. It is fabulous. Packed full of big picture strategic thinking and really practical common sense (which is not at all common these days) in raising money smart kids.

If you have kids, you should get this book. Just do it – seriously 🙂

Other highlights

We took 4 walks (it’s still far too hot… 7 months and counting now)
I have been bullet journalling – posts coming up soon
My Project Life is up to date for Jan and Feb. And my photos are nearly done for March.
I did a few things on the house to-do list, but not as much as I wanted!

And now a few posts you may have missed:

Goals for kids

The adult colouring craze

Do you toss your Christmas cards?

Project Life – before………. and after

On being a printer of photos

Your favourite instagrams

This Goals Night one, the Konmari one and the Easter craft one

My favourite instagrams

This one, this one and this one 🙂

How was your March?

We’re up to 355 followers (this is a lot for me!). If you’re not following yet, check the feed and click follow. I love to engage with you so ask questions if you want to (the rug I feature a lot is from Superbalist) and that yellow table was the brightest Plascon yellow they had 🙂 🙂

Filed Under: Goals, Intentional living, Organising Tagged With: goals, live intentionally, organising

25 Mar 2016 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

Seeing your space in a new light

I literally only pulled out my camera one day a week for the whole of Feb (to take the 52 Project photo of the kids on Sundays), and then not quite as bad, but there’s a sense of get this done, instead of play in my March photos so far.

I was even completely up to date on Monday night after the Sunday photos last weekend.

So I decided I needed to leave my camera out more to encourage me to just grab it and snap a few photos as things look good in certain light.

And I went a bit wild today.

It was good for me because I always feel great after I’ve created with my camera, but more than that – this!

I noticed bits of my home that I’d forgotten, both good and bad, like

the big canvas hanging slightly skew
the beautiful light in Kendra’s bedroom
the hand towel I should swop out to match with the bath mat
the way the light shines on my wooden floors in the lounge
how much I love my yellow desk

I even gave myself a challenge to take photos in the kitchen with unwashed dishes, and make it look good 🙂

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that sometimes we need to literally take a photo of our spaces to really see them – you might have got used to the clutter in your space and this helps you see your space properly again.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this situation. You buy some clothes, come home, toss the bag in your bedroom and a week later it’s still there. We’ve stopped seeing it because our eyes are now used to that clutter.

This is why I like to get my donated things out and into the boot (trunk) of the car before it becomes a new item of “furniture” in my house that I get used to.

*ahem* I have a box of books in my sunroom….

If there’s a space in your home frustrating you, take a photo and see if you can spot what it is you need to do.

When was the last time you took photos of your home?

– Both big canvases (size A0) printed by Mojo Printing who I thoroughly recommend. I used a number of printers until I found them – they are my favourites and will courier anywhere in the country.

– Chevron rug by Airloom, bought via www.Superbalist.com

– Couches and pillows from Mr P Home

Filed Under: Decluttering, Intentional living, Konmari, Organising Tagged With: decluttering, Konmari, organising

21 Mar 2016 by Marcia Francois 4 Comments

3 quick things, one of which is the end of an era

Happy Human Rights Day!

Well friends, tomorrow will be exactly 10 years since I first registered the domain takechargesolutions.org and it’s also the first time I’m not renewing that domain.

Instead I’ve bought marciafrancois.org and everything has been transferred over there.

So goodbye, old friend 🙂

2. Many of you know that friendship is very important to me and as such, I like to be very intentional about connecting with my friends.

I wrote about how I have a friends spreadsheet here to help me get organised.

Tomorrow I’m sending out a copy of that spreadsheet to those who are on the list.

If you’d like a copy, make sure you’re signed up 🙂

3. And last but not least, I want to highlight my one organising book, Live Organised. This is a very practical guide to getting and staying organised, and because we’ve been messing around with all the website pages, it’s now only $5. Boom 🙂

Get yourself a copy and be spurred into action. Thank you for your support.

What are you doing this Human Rights Day?

PS We’ve been grocery shopping, done cleaning, prepared our books for the Se7en library project, and I’ve done the budget while the kids coloured/ did wordsearch, etc.

Filed Under: Freebies, Intentional living, Organising Tagged With: organising

15 Feb 2016 by Marcia Francois 8 Comments

What I learnt from my R600 mistake

When we were on our holiday last month, we went to the beach for our (as it happens) first photowalk of the year.

Behold the beauty…

It was right when I was taking this set of photos that my battery light began flashing. I carried on taking pictures while I made a mental note to charge the camera once we were back at the house.

OH MY WORD.

And then it hit me – I didn’t pack the charger. Panic!

I used a different bag to pack all my cables and chargers so I didn’t notice that the bag was lighter than it’s supposed to be.

I contacted a few friends and one said I could use hers. Her charger was for an older camera and didn’t fit my battery.

Another friend said they are Nikon people (!) so no luck.

Long story short, eventually we went to a camera warehouse (I could have stayed for hours!) and I reluctantly forked over a good chunk of unnecessary cash for this charger.

Just in time because my camera stopped working about an hour after the purchase.

It’s not about the money; I just really don’t like wasting money on things I had in Jhb!

However, this not-so-little mistake made me do two things differently:

I will now start using my packing checklist again.

You see, I’d become a little too complacent. Yes, I have my list but I essentially know what I need to pack every time we go on holiday and so I’d stopped properly checking the packing against the actual paper list.

2. I took TONS of photos after the camera was charged again

My one friend checked with me at one point to see if I still wanted to do all our plans given that I was running around quite a bit… and I said YES! You see, I felt like I needed to go take lots of beautiful photos to justify the purchase of that unnecessary charger.

Crazy but true.

I went to the Bo-Kaap twice, saw many friends and we did a Red City Bus tour. All those photos are priceless and would not have been even half as good with my iphone camera.

Cape Town does grey buildings so well. I have photos of three different buildings in the most stunning shades of grey.

Taken in the Bo-Kaap. My latest Instagram pic is taken from the other angle in front of this very house.

My three loves

Have you ever forgotten chargers for phones or cameras when you’ve gone on holiday?

Filed Under: Intentional living, Organising, Time management Tagged With: live intentionally, organising

6 Nov 2015 by Marcia Francois

My technology bag

It’s so interesting to me how, as some things develop and are supposed to make our lives better, there’s also the flip side, usually a down side.

Like social media – amazing for connecting with like-minded people but it also leads to comparison-itis 🙂 and can be a huge time-suck.

And how I still adore my iphone 4S but because the battery life is so terrible, I now carry around a technology bag so I can always be powered.

(I do close all my apps and have my background app refresh turned off)

Let me show you my technology bag.

As an aside – I changed to a smaller bag and lost that one in various handbags a time or two, then decided it wasn’t worth it, so I’m back with this gorgeous coral Matt and May bag (R149 – I thought it’s a bargain for such a beautiful bag. They also had grey, navy and black…. all far too boring for me ;))

What I have inside (from top right):

iphone charger
powerbank
powerbank charger (I put a name sticker on everything. Literally. I really don’t like to lose things)
multi-USB point
earphones
Fitbit charger

It’s so reassuring to know that even if my phone battery dies, I can charge it up quickly and be on my way again.

Just on Tuesday I exited the Gautrain and was busy requesting an Uber when my phone died. I whipped out the powerbank, connected it and about two minutes later, I was able to log back in to request the taxi.

Of course, the trick is to make sure the powerbank is charged all the time. I do it whenever I’m at my computer during the day.

What do you carry around in the way of technology enablers?

Filed Under: Organising Tagged With: organising

23 Sep 2015 by Marcia Francois

Let’s get motivated to organise

I’ve been writing about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for awhile now. Don’t worry – I’m going to do a wrap-up post with links to everything soon.

I also still want to write about how personality affects the way you approach tidying because I’ll be honest, I was only motivated to sort out my study because the craziness resulted in me not even wanting to go in there…

I’m someone who is very affected by my physical surroundings and for a room to be a “mess” makes me feel frazzled and scattered in my thinking.

What gets you motivated?

Is it music? Then put on some 80’s tunes to get yourself energised.
Is it competition? Then challenge yourself and see how many of the tasks you can accomplish in an hour.
Is it being accountable? Then post a comment on Facebook or Instagram telling me what you’re going to do and come back to tell me when it’s done! The Virtual Organising Workshop works great for obligers.
Is it social interaction? Then make a coffee date with a friend, but only once you’ve done an hour’s organising.
Is it reaching a goal? Then reward yourself once you’ve done all the tasks.

Right! So now that we know what motivates you, let’s get to it!

In your home

1. Declutter and sort through all your old magazines. Tear out the articles you need and toss the rest/ let your kids cut and paste pictures.
2. Organise your launch pad – that place in your home where you tend to dump things when you walk in the door. For me, that’s my entrance hall table.
3. Collect all the clothes you need to dry-clean, declutter or get mended. Put them in a bag and put that bag straight in your car.
4. Clear off the front of your fridge. Toss the magnets and recipes you’re never going to use.
5. Throw away any old food in your fridge and freezer, and give the surfaces a good wipe down.

And now for some…

Office organising

1. Do 10 minutes of filing.
2. Collect all the bills and invoices from around your home and schedule the payment dates in your phone or paper planner.
3. Shred any junk mail with your name on it.
4. Organise your desk.
5. Delete 100 emails from your Inbox and Sent Items. Conquer your email may help you.

Whatever you manage to do, give yourself a pat on the back!

Filed Under: Organising Tagged With: organising

19 Aug 2015 by Marcia Francois Leave a Comment

Facing (organising) reality

I got into crafting about 3 – 4 years ago.

I use the word “crafting” very loosely, by the way, but I do love playing around and getting creative.

I also love lists and so I’ve made two lists – “things to make” and “things to make this year with supplies I already have”.

See, there’s a distinction.

One is more pie in the sky and very much on the nice-to-do list whereas the other list is grounded in reality. I already have the supplies at home so all I have to do is take them out and create.

When I was making the second list, I thought about how it’s the same with organising.

We have these tv/ blog/ Instagram/ Pinterest-like visions of what our organised homes should look like. We want our homes to have state-of-the-art organising systems, the most beautiful containers and look like they’re ready for a photographer from a magazine to walk in and take some pictures.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with dreaming, and dreaming big, but when we become paralysed and not motivated by the dream, there’s something wrong.

The thing is that those visions of perfection often leave us demotivated and uninspired to even start as you think, “what’s the point? I could never have it look like that”.

When I started the Organising Queen Instagram account, I purposefully chose to follow accounts that are more realistic rather than aspirational.

The point of these inspiring blogs are to give us ideas, and not to make us feel bad about what we don’t have or to sow discontent in our lives.

Are you looking at your home realistically?

See what you can and are able to do and take it from there.

Use what you have in the time you have available and just do the best you can do.

Read that paragraph again…

I’m working through my home using the Konmari method which could be really frustrating because it seems like I’m moving super slow.

But.

I do have a full-time job and a family, and so I really only have the weekend hours on a Saturday afternoon (if no other plans) to work on my project.

I might have felt demotivated looking at what is still left (a LOT) but I’m encouraged by my progress because my current reality is just 3 – 4 hours a week.

Here are some action steps for your organising reality list:

1. Take a piece of paper and a pen (I like a clipboard) and write down the rooms in your home that need some work. Leave space under each room heading.
2. Now walk around your house and make a list under each heading of what you want to do. For example, in the study/ home office, (1) tidy desk (2) do filing (3) put photos in photo albums/ frames, etc.
3. Choose a room to start and pick your first project.
4. Here’s the important part – use things you already have to help you get organised. The most important thing is simply a wastepaper basket.
5. Don’t let the idea of pretty stop you from having things function well. Remember a shoebox works just as well to store things as a fancy box from an expensive store. I was also encouraged to read that Marie Kondo also suggests the humble shoebox for most organising needs.

What do you need to remind yourself of for your current reality?

Filed Under: Intentional living, Organising Tagged With: organising

{Mindset Monday} How to have a great work week

Have only 6-ish items on the list for Monday

Be realistic

Keep a master list for the week…

Re-think your space

How can you re-think furniture placement in your home to make something work better for you?

Children’s capsule wardrobes

Have you thought of doing capsule wardrobes for your kids?

March review and a few happy links

Other highlights

And now a few posts you may have missed:

Your favourite instagrams

My favourite instagrams

How was your March?

Seeing your space in a new light

When was the last time you took photos of your home?

3 quick things, one of which is the end of an era

What are you doing this Human Rights Day?

What I learnt from my R600 mistake

Have you ever forgotten chargers for phones or cameras when you’ve gone on holiday?

My technology bag

What do you carry around in the way of technology enablers?

Let’s get motivated to organise

What gets you motivated?

In your home

Office organising

Facing (organising) reality

Use what you have in the time you have available and just do the best you can do.

Here are some action steps for your organising reality list:

What do you need to remind yourself of for your current reality?

Organising Queen Shop

My latest book

Get email updates for the blog

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – all my posts

Follow along on Instagram

Recent Posts

Categories

She Speaks

More of my writing

Have only 6-ish items on the list for Monday

Be realistic

Keep a master list for the week…

How can you re-think furniture placement in your home to make something work better for you?

Have you thought of doing capsule wardrobes for your kids?

Other highlights

And now a few posts you may have missed:

Your favourite instagrams

My favourite instagrams

How was your March?

When was the last time you took photos of your home?

What are you doing this Human Rights Day?

Have you ever forgotten chargers for phones or cameras when you’ve gone on holiday?

What do you carry around in the way of technology enablers?

What gets you motivated?

In your home

Office organising

Use what you have in the time you have available and just do the best you can do.

Here are some action steps for your organising reality list:

What do you need to remind yourself of for your current reality?

Organising Queen Shop

Free goals pack when you join my mailing list

My latest book

Get email updates for the blog

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – all my posts

Follow along on Instagram

Recent Posts

Categories

She Speaks

More of my writing