“Organizationally Yours”

professional organizing services for homes and home businesses.

Specializing in residential organizing for families with children, seniors, moves, memorabilia/photos, the chronically disorganized, lifestyle transitions and ADD.
Find out why papers pile up, why clothes drift across your surfaces, why the car won’t fit in the garage, and why you can’t get it all organized. Learn the skills, techniques, tricks, and tools that you need to maintain an organized life.

The introductory visit includes a custom assessment of the habits, values, and routines that are sabotaging your home and life, along with personalized strategies and systems for creating a more organized home or office. Try the Per Project or per hour options and get immediate ‘hands on’ help with clearing out the clutter and instituting maintainable organizational systems. For inquiries regarding speaking engagements click on Contact Us

A picture of the book “Organizing Solutions for People with ADD” on the left of screen

Below picture of book on left side place tabs that will lead to these documents, How to organize for ADD, Book Reviews for Organizing Solutions for People with ADD, ‘See Inside the book’ link to amazon.com

Susan C. Pinsky Place a single iteration of logo to the right of this address

Professional Organizer

Owner, “Organizationally Yours”

Professional Organizing Services

Serving Boston and the Metro-west area

Author:

Organizing Solutions for People with ADD, Fair Winds Press,

The Fast and FuriousFive Step Organizing Solution due in stores Spring 2011

Acton, MA

Organize_you@comcast.net

“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.”
Henry David Thoreau

In organizing for ADD I always make efficiency –least number of steps, least amount of effort- take precedence in all of my organizing strategies. I reject beauty, preparedness and even frugality in order to create an efficient maintainable home and home office. Here are some examples where efficiency has been placed before other values in order to create a quick and easy-to-maintain system.

Beauty sacrificed to efficiency:
Tall kitchen sized garbage bins instead of small decorative waste baskets in the bathrooms and bedrooms make it easier to throw out shoe boxes and other packaging (bedroom), and feminine hygiene products and large shampoo bottles (bathroom), and of course don’t need to be emptied as often.

On the other hand, won’t your home be more beautiful if the garbage is in a garbage can?

Don’t be prepared, be resourceful:
Throw all of that paid bill paperwork you probably won’t need into the large paper recycling basket you should keep near your desk. On the off chance that you really do get curious regarding last January’s electric bill, you can either find it, filed chronologically, in the recycle bin, or resourcefully procure another copy with one phone call to the electric company.

Besides, overall won’t you be better prepared if the papers in your home are so limited that they become manageable?

Weighting frugality in the efficiency equation:
Consider selling your lawn mower and hiring a lawn service. True, it will be one more bill to pay, but that bill might represent one minute of your time and a negligible fraction of your seasonal budget, while mowing the lawn could cost you hours every week, garage space (the lawn mower must live somewhere), and of course further time and money for machine maintenance.

Is it possible that when the equation includes, time, space, and stress, then frugality is just too expensive?

Dear Susan,

Your book is wonderful.  As a typical ADD person that collects
organizing books by the dozen, I loved everything about your book.
The format is perfect for someone with ADD who often reads
from back to front – and right page to left page!
It outlines so many strategies that have taken me 6 years as a Mom with ADD,
… to figure out on my own.
You provided many great new ideas, and reinforced some ideas I have
been considering, but have been reluctant to adopt
all because too often I let aesthetics get in the way
of function (i.e. BIG garbage cans in every room).

Thank you! Thank You!!
Best Regards,
Amy J.

January 2007
Book Review

Pinsky, Susan C. Organizing Solutions for People with Attention Deficit Disorder: Tips and Tools To Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized. Fair Winds: Quayside. 2006. 192p. photogs. ISBN 1-59233-234-X
[ISBN 978-1-59233-234-2]. pap. $19.95. PSYCH

Pinsky brings real-life experience to her topic. Not only is she professional organizer and member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, but she is also the parent of a child with attention deficit disorder (ADD). These two roles led to her creating simplified organizational systems specific to the needs of those with ADD.

The book’s first section explains her organizational methods; the second targets specific areas, rooms, or events that are common to almost everyone and typically present a challenge to organize and keep organized. Pinsky uses an abundance of before-and-after color photographs as well as yellow Post-its styled notes to highlight tips for organization. Her organizational philosophy can apply to everyone, not just those with ADD. This book is easy to read, and the pictures clearly depict the look of organization. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Lisa M. Jordan, Johnson Cty. Lib., KS

ADDitude Magazine
2007
By Sandy Maynard

Library Journal under psychology section: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6403922.html

To see an interview of Susan C. Pinsky, Owner of “Organizationally Yours”, and author of Organizing Solutions for People with ADD follow this link:

To read about Organizationally Yours in The Beacon follow this link: http://www.wickedlocal.com/acton/homepage/x1957515571

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“For there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion…”
Sir Thomas Browne

1. Keep it Simple by reducing inventory and reducing steps
2. Reduce inventory (cull, weed, purge) until the quantity of inventory conforms to the available storage.
3. Store things where you use them
4. Give everything a home
5. Arrange your possessions within activity areas or “zones”
6. Store your possessions on the wall or on a shelf, never on the floor.
7. Take advantage of vertical storage space by replacing small shelves and bureaus with TALL shelves and tall bureaus
8. Don’t keep building storage, reduce inventory
9. Avoid stacking –if you have to move something to get to, or put away, a desired item, you will be less likely to both retrieve the desired item and, more importantly, to restore said item to its proper place, once you are done with it.
10. If you haven’t used it in a year, discard it. (file or toss mail the minute you open the mail -don’t add it to a pile you’ll have to sort again later).
11. Duplicate where necessary to store things where you use them- (toilet bowl brush in every bathroom)
12. Eliminate items that unnecessarily duplicate functions (hand can opener OR electric can opener, not both.)
13. Don’t overcrowd shelving, cabinets and drawers –make things easy to access and more importantly easy to put away.
14. Name your cabinets and shelves (dish cabinet, sock drawer) to remind you that only eponymous items are stored therein
15. Make sure the ‘rough storage’ areas in your home are well lit and easily accessible.

Organizing Tools

The following is a list of products that I recommend for almost every home -they are the tools that enable good organization. These products are all widely available from a variety of manufacturers in almost any discount department store and/or home improvement store.
Cheap pre-finished shelving –available at any discount store –provides efficient storage in the living areas of your home. The most efficient way to store almost anything is to pop it on a shelf –no opening of cabinet doors, no prying off lids.

Hint: for those who are Chronically Disorganized, or loathe to attempt assembly, do yourself a favor, and either pay for assembly, or haunt the consignment shops for a used shelf that is already assembled.
Sturdy modular plastic shelving takes advantage of vertical storage space and can be assembled in ten minutes with a rubber mallet. The light weight and modular nature allow you to easily modify their height and locations as your storage needs change. If you don’t have two or three of these in every rough storage area of your home (garage and basement), you probably have no hope of conquering the clutter monster.

Hint: always buy the five shelf high model for maximum vertical storage space and the 24” deep variety –you don’t want your possessions hanging off the front of shallow shelves.

Clear plastic tubs without lids are useful for storing small collections from dishtowels to Barbies. If your tub comes with a lid, leave it off, toss is out, or store it beneath the tub. (For storage in very dusty areas, simply rest the lid on top as a dust guard without actually snapping it on.). Keeping the tubs lidless has the added advantage of discouraging stacking. It is inefficient to un-stack a tower of tubs, and then pry off the lid every time you want to put something away. The style pictured above is a nice alternative for those who like to retain the lids, as on this model the lid hangs down to the sides and out of the way.

Hint: Make sure to choose clear tubs: you shouldn’t have to touch it to know what is inside, and you certainly don’t want to waste time managing labels if you can avoid it.
These bins are often a nice alternative to lidless bins as the open front provides even easier access, while the small front lip prevents items from falling out.

Hint: Purchase the style with a solid bottom –mesh bottoms have limited uses since small objects fall through the gaps.

Clip-on over the door hooks install in 3 seconds or less –no tools, no screws – and they can be useful in almost every room of your home: behind the bedroom and bathroom doors for bathrobes and towels: the laundry room door for hang-to-dry garments: the guest room door to enhance visitor storage capacity: outer doors for coats and hats. I even put them on the door in the finished basement for ‘hoodie’ style sweatshirts that your teenager will inevitably leave lying around.

Hint: If the top of your door fits very snugly into the frame, it might not close with this hook on top. So buy a cheap single plastic hook and test it on your doors. Note that the further the hook is from the hinges the less it interferes with closing the door. Then go back and buy the metal multi-hook models (they tend to be thinner in the bracket in any case) for doors that will close no matter where the hook is placed; and two or so single hooks for those doors that will only accommodate hooks placed a distance from the ‘hinge’ side.