Collector Care's Blog: March 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Senior Downsizing Project - Before And After Photos

Everyone loves before and after photos!!

This was a job I did last week, this man is an avid collector of everything, and had a huge home. After losing his wife, he decided to downsize by one third. This is just phase one as we have yet to organize all of the items and find a home for everything!
For more before and after photos visit http://www.collectorcare.com/projects

Rachel Seavey, Professional Organizer
I am located in Pleasanton Ca, and serve the San Francisco Bay Area.
I specialize in Hoarding Disorder, Chronic Disorganization and helping the overwhelmed with clutter. I love what I do, and I provide realistic expectations and timelines. Don't suffer in chaos any more. Every breath is a new beginning! Please visit my site at www.collectorcare.com
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

5 Tips On Organizing Your Credit

5 TIPS FOR ORGANIZING YOUR CREDIT

1. Find out how bad it is. Request your credit report fro the major credit agencies.
2. Contact your local credit bureau, which is basically a credit reporting agency that may cover only a single state or county.
3. Look for inaccuracies or missing accounts on your report.
4. Follow up on all changes immediately.
5. Request new credit reports. Make sure changes have been applied.

OTHER tips:

Reduce the number of credit cards you own. One is enough. If you own a business, you should have one for your personal uses and another for your business.

Only charge items your able to pay cash for.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Peter Walsh And 10 Tips To Declutter Your Home!

How to Keep Your House Clutter-Free

Tackle messes one room at a time.
When you buy something new, practice the "in-out rule:" For every one new item, get rid of an old one.
Create intimacy in the master bedroom. Remember that improvements in one room can spread to the rest of the house.
Make cleaning up fun for your kids.
Create a vision for the room you're cleaning.
Teach your kids how to sort.
Use a hanger system to determine which clothes you wear most.
Ask yourself if you really need something. If you hesitate, you don't.
Establish a "magic triangle" in your kitchen between the stove, refrigerator and the sink. Keep the items you use most in that area.
Identify useful utensils with the cardboard box test.

This was featured on the Oprah show.

Tips From The Pro's On Organizing Your Computer Clutter

Virtual clutter is still clutter, professional organizers say.

Yet because files on the computer or endless emails don't take up physical space, it's easy to overlook them. But over time it can weigh you down, distracting you and keeping you from being productive.
Professional organizer Andrea Stout, owner of Tasteful Transitions in Findlay, said clients often bring up the issue of digital clutter.

"It creates unnecessary stress and anxiety for them," Stout said.
Stout said organizing files shouldn't be seen as a one-time thing but "creating a habit," so you are doing it regularly.

The first step is to "Get rid of things you don't need," she said. "And then you can assess what you have and start categorizing it from there."

This means creating folders both on your hard drive and on your email account, she said.

Stout, as well as several other organizers, said it's also a good idea to pay attention to mailing lists and unsubscribe to regular emails you don't read.

Stout said it's easy to search for files on a computer, in theory, but it helps to know what the file is called and to name it in a way you will remember.

"Computers are smart. They will do it for you," she said. "You just have to use the tools."

Stout works as an organizer for businesses as well as individuals, and said organizing company files is a particular challenge.

"Maybe you have one shared drive, one server," she said. "And everyone's dumping files into one place. And it turns into chaos."

Reducing that chaos means training the whole team and helping them work together, she said.

"My goal as an organizer is not to come back ... over and over and over. It's to teach you skills," she said.

Dorothy Breininger, who has been nominated for Emmy awards for her role as "Dorothy the Organizer" on the A&E TV show "Hoarders," said the show has dealt with a few of what she calls "informational hoarders."

"This is a danger zone for people," she said.

Physical clutter is obvious, she said. After all, the home only has room for so much stuff. But with digital clutter, it's easy to accumulate many, many files without it being apparent, she said.

"It's like having unlimited numbers of rooms in your home," Breininger said.

She said some of the same techniques work for digital clutter as for physical clutter, and people often have the same patterns with both. For example, if you have the habit of procrastinating organizing your physical belongings you are likely to procrastinate organizing computer files as well.

Breininger recommends organizing computer files on the "cloud," a virtual storage area that can be accessed from multiple devices.

"I live in Los Angeles where we have earthquakes and fires," she said.

When someone is on the news after a disaster, the things they wish they had gotten out of the house tend to be important financial papers such as insurance and sentimental items such as photographs. So it's these items, the things you'd want with you if disaster struck, that it is most important to save, she said.

Breininger said with virtual clutter or physical clutter, professional organizers recommend a system called TRAF. This means you have four choices with each file: Toss, Route to someone else, Act on it or File it.

She said it may help to use a system similar to what you use in filing paperwork, such as color-coding both paper and digital files.

Andrea Brundage, of Arizona, a professional organizer with Simple Organized Solutions, said that today's culture of being connected to the Internet 24/7 can be exhausting.

"Getting buried in this kind of stuff is just unhealthy," she said. "The stuff is flowing at such an incredible rate into people's lives whether it's through your inbox, your telephone ... (or) text messages."

And, while computers are in theory "supposed to be eliminating paper," digital clutter can lead to more physical clutter as people print out emails and other files.

She puts it this way when she is working with a client who has 1,000 unread emails in his or her inbox: "Do you realize how much this pulls you out of balance?"

Alaia Williams, a professional organizer with One Organized Business in Los Angeles, said that when she started as an organizer people would ask how to organize their photo albums. Today, it's how to create a system for their digital photos.

Sometimes, Williams said, clients want to use their computer to organize paper clutter. They may have "a sea of Post-it notes" or business cards and want to organize this information digitally, she said. Contact information, such as doctor's office numbers and important family contacts, can be easily organized online, she said.

Williams said people inclined to be "electronic hoarders" can create an "archive" folder of items they want to keep but don't need to access any time soon.

Eileen Roth, a Scottsdale, Ariz. professional organizer and speaker and author of "Organizing for Dummies," said having a cluttered hard drive or inbox can create stress.

"You're just losing time, and once time's gone, it's gone," she said.

Roth starts by recommending that clients clear off their desktop so only programs are on the desktop, not documents.

Roth recommends having a separate email account for things like newsletters and mailing lists. Organizing your calendar on your computer also helps, she said.

There may be programs that come automatically with your computer for free, but that doesn't mean that you need to keep them, she said.

"They're hogging your desktop space," she said.

Roth also recommends not keeping your email open at all times because it will distract you from other things on your computer, creating "clutter for your mind."

Jennifer Zwiebel, a professional organizer with A Place of Joy in New York City, said part of handling your clutter involves looking at why you are hanging on to a particular piece of information. Understand why and it's easier to do something about it, she said.

For example, Zwiebel had one client who was using her email inbox as a to-do list. She would intend to get back to an email someone had sent but the emails would pile up, not unlike a pile of papers piling up on a person's desk, Zwiebel said.

"Digital clutter basically mirrors physical clutter," she said.

In this client's case, the solution was a white board so she could see her to-do list.

Andrew Schrage, co-owner of Money Crashers Personal Finance, said organizing can save you money as well as time.

Schrage said his site, geared toward personal finance, also often touches upon organization and technology from a business perspective. And Money Crashers' staff writers organize their own files through the cloud, he said.

Schrage said it's good to hang on to electronic financial documents such as taxes and bank statements and electronic receipts, but they should be organized into folders.

Being organized is directly related to personal finance, not only because it's important to save your financial records but because "it saves time, which effectively is money," he said.

Exactly how to organize will depend on the person, Schrage said.

"Try to have some kind of system that works for you," he said. "I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach."

Chuck Davis, professor of ethical hacking and computer forensics at Harrisburg University, said organizing your digital life is not only "good housekeeping" but keeps your computer more secure. Davis, co-author of two books on the subject of security, is a senior security architect at a Fortune 500 Company and previously worked as a security operations manager for IBM.

Davis knows people who once a year reinstall their operating system altogether. This makes the computer run a great deal faster but is extreme, he said.

But there are tools available that will, for example, go through your applications and web browser and look for files that have collected over time that you may not need "like your download history, your Internet cache, that type of stuff."He said if you log onto a website and it asks for your username and password, that site usually will "remember" that you have logged into that account, using files known as cookies which establish your identity. But it's possible for someone with ill intentions to capture your session cookie over unencrypted wireless connections, allowing them to pose as you even without knowing your password, Davis said. He said clearing out those cookies regularly reduces this risk.

Davis also recommends keeping a separate drive for digital media such as movies, digital photos and music.

And, he said, it's important to back up. There are many cloud-based ways to do so, one of which he has used for a few years now. He said this is encrypted so the data is secure, but it can be accessed from anywhere where there is an available connection to the Internet.

"It has saved me on two occasions," he said.

He said a good rule is to have three copies of anything you don't want to lose, on two different types of media, at least one of them off-site. Off-site storage can include cloud storage or a drive kept somewhere away from your home in case of fire.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Breininger, Brundage, Roth, Zweibel, Williams, Schrage and Davis were all contacted by phone, and Rizzo by email). Arthurs: 419-427-8494 Send an e-mail to Sara Arthurs
Thanks to Dorothy from Hoarder's for this article link!

Friday, March 16, 2012

3 Tips On Organizing Puzzles, Books DVD's and CD's

Do you have a large collection of jigsaw puzzles,books, DVD’s, or CD's? Below are 3 tips to help you keep these collections organized.

Set a limit (say one-quarter), choose your favorites, and donate or sell the rest. Your storage space will be limited so keep asking yourself - “Is there room for this?”.
Make sure you have storage for and display space for items you are keeping. Small, narrow display shelves that hang on the wall are a good option for family photos and small collectibles that may now be on a fireplace mantel.
For mementos and old family photos consider specially designed under-the-bed storage boxes to hold items you rarely use.

(courtesy of the wonderful NAPO website)

Thursday, March 15, 2012

4 Tips To Stay Organized While Moving

Moving can be hard at any age. Below are tips to help you get through the process.

Be realistic when sorting though your clothes closets. Get rid of things you haven't worn in a year, things that don't fit or need repair.
Once you've sorted and discarded items, you can leave your clothes in the drawers for moving. You can use the extra drawer space for storing other things, like photographs.
Get someone to help you sort; it is easier to let go if someone else is holding the item and seeing it objectively with you.
Take your time; work room by room in short spurts. Moving is stressful, and when you get tired, it becomes more difficult to decide.

(provided by the wonderful NASMM website)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

10 Senior Downsizing Tips

Senior Downsizing Tips To Make Downsizing For Seniors Less Stressful and Easier:

1. Check The Layout of The New Place

To help seniors downsize, it will be good to find out the layout for the new place in advance so you know how much space the senior will have. This will help you and your senior loved one decide on what will fit and things you can bring.

2. Sort Wisely
When a senior decides to downsize, help the senior avoid clutter. Be sure to help your senior loved one sort out his or her belongings. Separate the things that the senior uses and things that your senior loved one barely uses or does not need at all.

3. One Room at A Time
When packing, start with rooms that the senior uses the least, as it will have less emotional attachments like attic, garage, bathroom, etc.

4. Keep A List
Downsizing can be very overwhelming as there are tons of things to do. In order to stay organize it is important to keep a list so you do not forget anything.

5. Determine the things to:

Keep
Give to family and friends
Sell/Donate or
Throw

6. Organize A Family Get Together
When a senior decides to downsize, it will be nice to organize a family get-together so the senior can distribute his or her things among family members. Remind your senior loved one to share his or her memories before giving out the item so your friend or family member would know and understand its importance. This will make family and friends appreciate the senior's generosity even more.

7. Take pictures
It's a good idea to take pictures of important things the senior will leave behind. This might make the "letting go" process much easier for seniors.

8. Where is The New Place?
If you will be moving to an assisted living facility, cooking utensils and dinner plates will no longer be needed. Donating it to social services or other charitable organizations will be a good idea.

9. Is A Senior Mover Necessary?
If you're helping a senior loved one downsize, you will be able to help decide whether or not a senior mover is needed. Seniors who downsize usually hire senior movers if they want to bring their furniture and other heavy things to te new place. Senior moving companies specialize in senior moving needs. They will help make the downsizing and the transition easier as most of these senior moving companies help in organizing and sorting the possessions of the senior. Check the Internet or Yellow Pages for listings of Senior Movers.

10. Relax.
Everything is done! You can now relax with your senior love one. Assure your elderly loved one that he or she made the right choice to downsize.

About the Author: Catharine D. Allado- Writes articles for www.seniorcarehomes.com - A trusted and comprehensive online directory of Senior Care Homes such as Assisted Living, Nursing Homes and other types of Senior Housing in California, Florida, New York, Arizona and the rest of the United States. SeniorCareHomes.com also provides FREE Placement Services, helping seniors and families find the best Senior Care Homes in the nation!

Monday, March 12, 2012

3 Tips To Keep Rats Out Of Your Garage Or Attic

HAVING RAT OR MICE PROBLEMS?

I work in garage in attics a lot and I always find dead rats, or hear the shuffling of scared rats. Wild rats are obnoxious filthy little nesters who can damage your garage and attic goods.

Below are three tips to keep rats out good!

Purchase that yellow spray filler for cracks.
ALWAYS FILL CRACKS AND GAPS WITH STEEL WOOL BEFORE YOU SPRAY!
Make sure you wear protective eye wear, gloves and a hairnet, because most often you will be sprinkled with either paint or steel wool dust - or worst off mouse droppings!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Organize Your Taxes: Have you filed your taxes yet?

Filing your taxes doesn't have to be such a task if you are organized and prepared.
If you haven't filed your taxes yet, my guess is that you are not expecting a refund or that your taxes are more complicated than the norm.

If you are expecting a refund, and you don't know when to file, do it now! There is no time like the present!
If you feel you are missing something, contact your employer immediately in order to retrieve the right documents. This includes 1099's. Don't wait until the last minute to file.