Super Organizer Gives Tips on Kicking the Clutter Habit
The mail has been stacked up on the desk for weeks, dust is lining the shelves instead of books and something in the refrigerator is approaching a life form.
It’s hard to juggle a career, housekeeping, social life and personal time. Eventually, you can be left holding the laundry bag with six weeks’ worth of dirty socks inside.
But champion organizer Ronni Eisenberg can fix all that.
“This is what I do for a living,” said Eisenberg, who lives in New York. “I teach people how to organize their lives. I turned something I do best into a living.”
Eisenberg, who for 10 years has been teaching individuals and businesses how to better organize their time, said getting a handle on all the details is one way to ensure an efficient, productive life.
“The most important way to think about organizing is ‘time is money,’ ” she said. “If you’re organized you don’t always have to go back to the things you left undone. I think it costs a lot when you’re not organized.
Stress Big Block
“Stress is one of the biggest blocks to creativity, and when you’re overwhelmed with not getting things done, it’s total chaos. It also costs you a lot in friendships, in personal relationships and how you feel about yourself.”
Eisenberg has put together a few hundred suggestions on how to keep one’s life orderly and free of clutter--be it material or emotional--in her book, “Organize Yourself!” (Collier Books, $7.95 paperback).
Chapters cover such matters as keeping track of financial records, shopping, travel planning, personal agendas and household matters.
Eisenberg said the most common problem that confounds people is paper.
“The No. 1 reason why people call me is paper,” she said. “We have an information overload these days, the mail, the desk, the files, it keeps on coming and coming.”
Eisenberg had the following suggestions for those who find themselves overtaken by the “paper monster.”
“For bill paying, get yourself an expandable household affairs file. In the section for unpaid bills, put all of them there, not stuffed in your couch or in a shoe box.
Helps at Tax Time
“Whenever you pay bills, pull them out, attach them to the paid receipts and put them in corresponding slots in the file folder, medical, business, whatever. This is going to save your life at income tax time.”
To get a leg up on all that unfinished reading, Eisenberg has come up with a system she calls the “rip-’n’-read method.”
“Most of us are inundated with magazines,” she said. “When the periodicals come in, go through the table of contents, decide which articles you really want to read, tear them out and put them in a file folder.
“This is your ‘on-the-go reading’ file and you take it with you. You can read while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office or in the supermarket.”
Buying several items at a time and mail-order shopping are ways to save time, aggravation and money, she said.
“Buy in bulk. When you’re at the post office, buy six books of stamps instead of one. If you’re planning on making meat loaf, make three and freeze two,” she said.
“Buy a lot of items you can store and keep as gifts, anything unusual. Create a ‘gift closet’ or drawer at home where you keep the gifts, the wrapping paper, all-occasion cards. When something comes up, you always have it on hand.”
With all of the demands placed on one’s time, blocking out personal time is “the most important of all,” Eisenberg said.
“You need time for yourself or you’re not good for anyone else,” she said. “You deserve it. If you want that time, you have to make a commitment and never give that time up.
“Even if you say to yourself, ‘OK, I’ve got 20 minutes and I’m going to do whatever I can in 20 minutes.’ The idea is something is better than nothing.”
Does getting organized lead to obsessive compulsion, conjuring up images of the fanatical character Felix Unger from “The Odd Couple”?
“The only time I’ve ever heard remarks like that is from people who need to be organized,” Eisenberg said.
