A Special Treat - An interview with Lissanne Oliver from Sorted!

I'm still working on all of my organising and de-cluttering at Chez CurlyPops.

Christmas seems to be the time of year when we all accumulate more and more stuff, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to interview the Master of Organisation, Lissanne Oliver from Sorted!

She even has some tips for the holiday season - perfect for us creative types!

1. How long have you been a professional organiser?

My whole entire life (43 years).  Started in kindy apparently - thank you Dr Maria Montessori! Montessori teaches organisation so I think if I didn't have the gene (which I do) kindy would have got me going.

I worked for 16 years in broadcast production; film ,video, stills photography.  I had loads of different roles that all involved organising, from reception and production assisting, to editorial assistant and stylist.  I also worked in props and wardrobe, produced websites and CD Roms (when new media was new!) and my last job before SORTED! was working as a theatrical agent, representing some big names in AUstralian film, television and theatre.  I *hated* it.  Ghastly workload, no respite, shockingly bad pay (the equivalent of a receptionists wages).  So I quit, and thought, I want to have a job that I love.  love love love.  I heart organising!  That's how it happened... and in February 2002, SORTED! was born.  It's been a brilliant 10 years!  (Tip:  we have lots of special free things and discounts and great competitions next year to celebrate, so we'd love you to join our mailing list!)

2. What are your top 5 tips for dealing with clutter?

• Don't let it in the door.  Stop at the source (I often use a pic of a tomato sauce bottle for this one)
• Don't put it down, put it away!  Clutter is sometimes just a visually busy space.
• Don't wait for the organising fairies to come and save you.  Make time to deal with your stuff.
• Do keep a permanent box or bag that is destined for charity.  Feed it regularly and scoot it away to the op shop.
• Do make friends with your bin!  Clutter can simply be rubbish or recycling (think old packaging, outdated printed material).

3. If you walked into my house and only had one hour to make a difference, what would you do?

Love this question!  I would go straight to your tertiary storage space and help you discard .. no hang on... if I was dying, I'd remind my family, AGAIN, that I am an organ donor...

kidding

If I had an hour at yours, I would first identify what you felt the problem areas are, and/or ask you which space you were most avoiding dealing with (eg paperwork!).  I'd then hold your hand (not literally) and step you through doing something you really didn't want to do or felt overwhelmed by.  I would be non-judgemental, creative and you would have my attention 100%. That's my job. I love to help, and I LOVE my job.

4. What are your 5 favourite organisational tools?

• A texta and a sticky note for labelling
• Evernote.com (I swear I'm getting an Evernote tattoo!)
• My brain for it's problem solving abilities.

I know these are not probably the tools that people want to hear about, so I will say I do love my Rexel shredder that will do 100 pages at a time.  It's such a strong piece of equipment and saves me time and energy.  Plus, I use the shredding in my cat's litter tray!

http://blog.sorted.net.au/2011/06/09/product-review-rexel-auto-100-shredder/

Sorry, that's not too many tools, is it?!

 5. Do you have any tips for the upcoming holiday season?

Yes, get in the car and go away for a week.  Then come back and look at your space with fresh eyes, and take at least 1-2 days to start creating positive change in your space.

Declutter
Shred
Archive
Put away
Rearrange
Throw out
DONATE

It's important to take time to get organised!

That's all for now!

Thankyou so much Lissanne.... if you pop on over to Lissanne's blog, there are some upcoming workshop details for anyone in the Northcote area.

My Creative Space

Working on something new just in time for Christmas....

All will be revealed very very soon!

In the meantime, I would love it if you could pop on over to the SORTED! blog and check out my interview all about donation and recycling and re-using - thankyou Lissanne.

The home of my creative space

Getting Sorted

I have to confess that for a control freak like myself, the topic of organisation is heavenly.

If you follow me on twitter, then you'd also know that I'm quite addicted to any reality tv shows that feature hoarding/organisation.... think Hoarders on Biography Channel, Clean House on Style Network, and Clean Sweep on Discovery Home and Health.

Unfortunately I was also born with the hoarding gene (it's on both sides of my family). I find it extremely difficult to throw anything away that might be useful one day.

It was definitely time for an intervention!

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to spend the day at a hotel in the city at the 6 Steps Workshop.


The workshop featured three fantastic, passionate Professional Organisers who presented a range of topics around de-cluttering, organisation, and simpifying your life.

Lissanne Oliver from SORTED!
Chantale Bordonaro from Simplicity Source 
Joshua Zerkel from Custom Living Solutions 

The sessions were:

• Cut Clutter Forever
• Manage Paperwork Without Pain
• Moving or Downsizing - Think Outside the Box
• Need Storage? - Reclaim Your Space
• Master Your Paperless World
• Skyrocket Your Productivity With Online Tools

I can seriously say that I've started making changes already which are going to make my life sooooo much easier - most importantly for me I think it will improve the following dramatically

• No more forgetting things (lack of oxygen to the brain has seriously affected my memory skills)
• No more double handling of things (means less energy expended)
• No more searching for things in the craft stash (time saver)
• No more re-buying things I already have just because I can't find them (money saver)

Some of my favourite tips from the day that are really easy to implement.

• Stop things coming into your house that you don't need
• Insist on consumable gifts (chocolate is always welcome if you're giving me a gift)
• Filing Cabinets are nursing homes for paper
• Think about retrieval, not storage. If you store it, can you find and access it when you need it?
• Done is better than perfection (great tip for those of us who read lots of perfectly pretty blogs)
• Label Label Label (I currently suck at this one)
• Think Rightsize, not Downsize.

I'm such a technodork - I also finally learned what 'in the cloud' actually means!

All of the online / tech solutions were really interesting. These are the two that I'm using now.

The best one for my needs is going to be EVERNOTE

You can create all sorts of lists and notebooks.
I've taken photos of the business cards I've collected and made a business card notebook in Evernote, so that the actual cards can be thrown away (its ingenious).
I've also made a grocery list, and as I remember what I need, I just add to the list in my iPhone. It can also be synced with my PC and Laptop.

We also learned about DROPBOX

I originally found out about Dropbox from Michelle at Frankie & Swiss. I use it to share my fabric design files so that she can just access each one when I send through a printing order. It's fantastic.


Another thing that I really liked was that it was re-iterated that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to anything. It's important to do a little research and find the solution that fits the needs of the problem that you have. The storage and organisation solutions that I need to take control of my craft/space and back up supplies, are going to be different to what I need in the office to take care of personal and business paperwork.



The trick to everything that I've learned being implemented is to take action within the first 3 days (that means make a start... not a finish).
 

So today I toodled off to Officeworks and bought some supplies, and then came home and started organising.

My sewing patterns are now all stored in pretty magazine holders. I can't see the mess of all the different sizes / packaging types (apart from a few largish envelopes that are peaking over) 

 

 

This was another great tip - all of the stacks of paperwork and receipts that come in via my front door end up in piles on the kitchen bench. I'm now going to categorise them (and separate the personal receipts from the business receipts) as they come in, so that I stop losing things.

I have a little cupboard with packaging supplies for my online orders. It's a bit messy, and it was hard to find which business card / swing tag / postcard I needed each time (depending on what I'd sold)
 

I bought some business card and postcard holders, so that I can now see the fronts of each type of card and easily retrieve them when I need them for my packages.

I have to also confess that I bought myself a new box of labels at Officeworks and when I moved all the cards around, I found the box of labels that I already had!

My next job is to tackle this cupboard. The plastic containers house all of my bag / pouch making supplies - from flex frames, to magnetic snaps, o-rings, d-ring, slide adjusters etc... you name it, I hoard it (and yes I do have an entire basket of zips....and screenprinting ink - don't ask).

The good news is that I do at least have them containerised. The bad news is that I can't find what I need because there are no labels!

I have a discount code that I can share with everyone for Lissanne's webstore - you can get 10% off all products and services until Nov 7th by using the code 6STEPS.

In the meantime.... I'll get back to my organising.

Sorted.... from my archives

A long long time ago (ok, well not really that long ago), I bought a little book.

This little book was the subject of my second ever blog post on Wednesday January 16th 2008.

Today I'm off to spend the day at a 6 Steps Workshop with the books author and organising guru Lisanne Oliver, and two other organisational experts. I'm completely fascinated by the topic so I'm quite excited about the day ahead.

Here's hoping it might also keep my hoarding tendencies at bay!