Personalized Organizing

Do you get tired of all the "tips" out there? They are all over the place. Many people are willing to give us advice, whether we want it or not. If you are tired of it all, then take what you've learned and make it our own. Personalize it. Adapt, adopt, and perhaps become a foster parent to all the information you have gleaned over the course of your lifetime and make it your own.

A retired teacher recently told me about his personalized method. He still uses it even now that he is retired.

Each Saturday, he would go to his school office and organize for the upcoming week. He would make five piles on his desk, one for each day. He had everything he needed for each day when he got there. He didn't have the last minute scrambling around looking for things he needed.

He still does that. He has piles on his desk at home for each upcoming project or event. As a result he seems very calm, very ready for what is coming up on his agenda. His method impresses me.

Would that method work for me? I don't think so. For starters, my wife would never let me have piles laying around, whether in my office or elsewhere. However, the concept of getting ready ahead of time is something we can all use. But we must personalize it, find our own way to prepare ahead of time. Being ready for something is the important lessons here, not the exact procedure.

Do you see my point? If you don't, let me know. I'll tell you exactly how to do it. Of course, then it won't be personalized for you anymore, and you will have missed the point of this entire post. In that case, you might as well give up and just be content to be a disciple of disorganization!

Tool Organizers

Is this the way your projects go? You take a few tools outside to work on an outdoor project. A little ways into the project you discover that you need another tool or two. Later on you need another couple of tools. When you finish the project, it takes a bunch of trips back and forth to get all the tools back where they belong, and you begin to wonder how all those tools got out there. It seems like it takes more trips to get them back in than to take them out in the first place.

Or you are asked to help out your mother-in-law or friend, so you make several trips out to your vehicle with the tools you will need. Then when you get back, it takes several trips to get them back in again.

Enter the "tool organizer." Toolbarn.com has several varieties that would solve this problem. You can put in all the tools you need and make just one trip!




The picture to the right is my favorite, the Irwin Industrial Tools 4402013 18" Tool Center. It includes webbing to hold 24" level, adjustable shoulder strip and padded handle, and unique split sided design for easy access to both hand tools and power tools. The list price is $100.94. Your price is just $63.00 and it ships for only a penny. How cool is that?



If you prefer a bag type, there is the Makita 821012-A 16" 24 pocket tool bag shown to the left. It is a 16" heavy duty tool bag which easily fits hypoid saw, top handle saw or planer, it is water resistant, and has a padded handle and shoulder strap. This one lists for $37.80, but is now just $23.95, again with penny shipping.







Or perhaps you prefer a bucket type organizer, such as the Milwaukee 49-17-0170 Bucket Tool Organizer. It includes a dedicated speed square sleeve, internal drill holster to securely hold up to an 18V Milwaukee hammer-drill, driver/drill, or impact wrench, and 55 total pockets of assorted shapes and sizes positioned inside and out. This one lists for $31.95, now just $19.85, with penny shipping of course.



There you have several types of tool organizers as possibilities. You can do a search at Toolbarn.com and browse through their 84 possibilities if one of these doesn't suit your fancy. The next step is up to you. If you don't buy one of these (or hint for one for Christmas), then I don't ever want to hear you whining and complaining about all the trips it took you to get your tools back so you could hang them up where they look nice and are easy to find.

Organizing your garage

I like to keep on the lookout for ideas to keep myself organized, and for information to pass on. Today my son, Brian, pointed me to a great article on organizing your garage.

This article takes you from beginning to end, from organizing the rest of the house first, through labeling, to the garage sale, to keeping organized on a yearly basis. This is an excellent article. I highly recommend it. It needs no further comment. Go and read it there.

Labeling and filtering Gmail

Skelli posted "10 tips for managing email effectively" at Daily Blog Tips on 11/5/07. Before I expand on one of those tips, here are the 10 good tips that were listed:

1. Handle you domain email with Gmail
2. Create useful labels and folders to keep you organized
3. Process emails in batches
4. Read it, answer it
5. Keep it short
6. Keep it sweet
7. Re-read once
8. Build an address-book for networking
9. Use bridging emails
10. Create a dedicated signature

Now I would like to expand on tip # 2. I find it much easier to create filters and let the filters help sort out what is important and what isn't. Call me lazy, but I don't really like sorting through hundreds of emails in my Inbox and labeling them individually. I use Gmail, so the following instructions apply specifically to Gmail. However other types of email accounts could be handled in a similar manner. The "Create a Filter" option is about in the middle of the Gmail page just to the right of the "Search the Web" button.

As an example, I have several filters for my affiliate merchants. I have my Gmail set up so that those affiliates which are automatically posted through RSS feeds are tagged with "Affils - auto" and then automatically archived. When I see I have new emails in my "Affils - auto" folder, I know I don't have to look at them right away because they are already taken care of through the RSS feeds.

I have another filter which archives and sends emails to the "Affils - active" label. These are the ones I need to check soon to see if there are some time-sensitive specials I need to post. Others filter out those affiliates that have been declined, or whose programs are ending soon. With that filtering system I know immediately which affiliate emails I have to check soon, and which can wait until I have more time, and which I can ignore completely.

Since there is no limit to the number of filters and labels that can be set up, your imagination is the only limit as to how to use them to sort out important versus not-so-important emails. Plus, if you have an old client or former friend (or ex) that you no longer want to ever respond to, you can set the filter to automatically delete the email. Then you won't even know it came in. How handy is that!

While I'm on the subject of handy features, there might be a category where you know you don't have to check each individual email, but you still want to keep them for possible future reference. such as my "Affils - auto" label. In that case you can simply click on the label, click on "Select all" and then "Mark all as read." Then the label shows you have no new emails, but you will be able to tell if new ones come in later. Another "how handy is that!" Now we're getting things done in a hurry!

When you get an email from a new account or client, you can simply set up a new filter and set it to the label which best applies. As long as you automatically archive all those for which you set up filters, your inbox will usually be empty except for new ones which don't have a filter yet. And your emails will be sorted into categories so you know immediately which need to be looked at, and how many there are in that category.

If you have certain clients from whom you receive a large number of emails that should be looked at immediately, you can set up a filter and label for that one client. Or group several together into a label you know you should check soon. Remember, your imagination is the limit.

For my original post on helping keep you inbox empty, see "Organize your email and/or gmail."