Day 11: Home Office (Part 2)

Okay, so today I DID do something on my decluttering challenge! See, I *can* be dependable and consistent! Thought you had me there, didn't ya? Not a chance! Ah-hahahahaha. . . (don't know how to write it, so imagine a wicked cackling sound there, lol . . . )

Here's what I did: I went through all the challenges that I haven't done over the past 10 days or so and organized my to-do's for each challenge day so far onto my Kanban Flow chart. If you are interested in being invited to this board so you can use my check-off lists, send me your email address here: jumbledsunshine@gmail.com and I will be happy to add you. You just have to promise to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS in the left column before you copy any of the challenges to your own color/name. (This will all make sense after you join and read the instructions!)

Anyway, the reason I did this was because I'm a visual person and I need a way to check off what I've done and keep track of what I haven't done. I found Kanban Flow several weeks ago when I was on my quest to find the best time management software. I really like it for something like this - a major project that has a lot of different parts) - it's been very handy! Oh and did I mention the best part about Kanban Flow? It is combined with the Pomodoro method! So you have a timer that you connect to each task as you are doing it. So awesome!


When I created the "board" for my decluttering challenge project, I shared it with several friends who agreed to do the challenge with me so we could see visually what everyone had done so far and comment on it and keep each other on track. (Who, by the way, have all been extremely silent for a couple of weeks, so I think they have all been doing about as "well" as me lately. . . Correct me if I'm wrong ladies! And it's not too late to jump back on board, I'm still on Day 11, so you're never too far behind!)

Anyway, so I got all the missed power purge tasks listed on my Kanban Flow chart and they are all ready for action tomorrow! Oh, and not only did I get them organized, but I did a couple more of the to-do's on my Day 11: Home Office checklist. First, I read Hannah's tips for organizing the home office, and I also finished organizing my bill-paying system using Sandglaz (another great online tool, similar to Kanban Flow, but with the addition of dates so it's like a to-do calendar, love it!) I had actually organized those most of the way a couple of weeks ago so I was pretty excited to see that I could check it off! (Joy in little things!) And then today I went over the bills for the week with my husband and we added a few more that had gotten missed the first time around. So, I feel very organized in the bill-paying arena. Yay!

While I'm on the subject - I think Sandglaz is a great system for keeping track of to-do lists that are time-sensitive, such as bills. It helps me to visually see what needs to be paid when, because it has them organized by "this week", "next week" and all the rest of the future ones are lumped together in the 3rd column so you can see they are coming in the near future, but they aren't right there in your face. The other two things I love about Sandglaz is that you can create repeating tasks, and anything you missed on accident will move itself forward into "this week" until you get it checked off. SO - it's much better than a calendar for to-do's that need to be done on certain days. I used to use Google Calendar for my bill paying, but the flaw was that if I forgot to check it one week, the missed bills would just move along into the past and never be remembered again. (Until the late fee, of course!) So having them move themselves forward is extremely helpful for someone who is not perfect at routines (and who truly is, anyway?)

So - I guess maybe this counts as a mini-review on a few different time management programs: Pomodoro Technique, Kanban Flow, and Sandglaz, even though I didn't go into a ton of detail. If you are interested in any of these, click on the title of the product and the link will take you to either the official website or to some information about it on the web. That will have to suffice for now because if I start blogging in detail about any of these, I will be writing for a couple more hours. (And if you think I'm exaggerating, just ask anyone who lives with me - I'm not exaggerating - trust me!)

ANYWAY - so that's what I did today! I didn't necessarily get a new area totally done today, but I did get everything back on track so I'll know exactly what to do tomorrow! Oh - and I *promised* I would post a picture today, so here's a random one of how awesome my living room looks right now! It was still fairly out-of-sorts from the post-holiday odds & ends, and the furniture was still re-arranged in the way we had it for the Christmas Tree. So the other night my nephew caught the cleaning bug and started clearing out all the little piles, so I jumped in and helped put things away where they go. Then he moved all the furniture and vacuumed and was trying to re-arrange it all into a better formation when I caught him. :) So I threw in my advice and we ended up with a nice new look for my front room! Here's a few pictures. ENJOY!

It was dark so this one came out a little blurry - oh well, you get the idea. :)