Get Ready for GO!

Just a Linear Thought to chew on for the holiday season...

While you're surrounding yourselves in good cheer now, the time is coming soon to stop and think about what you want to accomplish for the new year.

2009 is the Year of the Ox. "The ox or the buffalo sign symbolizes prosperity through fortitude and hard work. Those born under the influence of the ox or buffalo are stable and persevering. The typical ox is a tolerant person with strong character. Not many people could equal the resolution and fearlessness that the ox exhibits when deciding to accomplish a task."

So here's your mission: When you're thinking about your resolutions, be an ox this year.

What do you wish were different in your life?

Do you want to stress less and live more in the moment?

Do you want to simplify and be in control?

Do you want to succeed at work and relax at home?

Do you want to save money?

Do you want to streamline your to-do list and meet/exceed the goals you set for yourself?

Do you want to enjoy the free time you have and find even more of it?

Then you want to GET ORGANIZED. The average person wastes six weeks a year looking for lost items, and spends up to $500 replacing them. Free space in your environment translates into space in your brain -- for new challenges, for new experiences, for happiness, fulfillment, success. But first you need to edit your life.

Linear Thoughts Organizing can make it all happen. We offer hope for the overwhelmed, empowering the frazzled to learn how to control their environments. We provide the hands-on help and long-term motivation you need to succeed.

A thought process continues beyond its inception -- to complete it takes time and commitment. But our systems, once in place, work to simplify the amount of effort you have to put in to get organized. That's what Linear Thoughts is: a process that teaches you how to change, how to learn new behaviors that get you to where you want to go.

We're launching a six-week program in January (Get Organized Month) to help our clients change their lives. Stay tuned, I'll tell you all more soon! And if you can't wait, email me at linearthoughts@comcast.net.

In the meantime, enjoy your holidays!

LT

Flurries in the Forecast

Nope, not snow -- not yet, anyway...

I'm talking about paper: receipts, bills, gift wrap, shopping lists and holiday cards! They all add to the frenzy we whip ourselves into over the holidays.

So for this installment of LT's Tool of the Week, we found a product that will harness the receipt chaos. The "Receipt.catcher" ($11.95, http://www.solutions.com/), is small enough to fit in your bag but mighty enough to handle the influx and simple enough to make sense, even for the least organized of you out there. It has categories for purchases and a slot you can even fill in for yourself.

Often when we're looking for a receipt to make a return, we find everything but, floating around in our purses. This is how we end up with clothes in our closets and items in our homes that we won't wear and don't want. But lost receipts are lost cash!

Also, for those who have to track and file work receipts for reimbursement, the challenge of keeping hold of those tiny, shiny papers is even more important to our bottom line.

If you know what you've bought and have the receipt, you are also building a foundation for a budget, which will help you to get on track financially -- or at least start the process for 2009. Another lofty goal, but well within reach.

Any lucky reader who e-mails linearthoughts@comcast.net will be registered to win the products we feature. A drawing will be held once a month and winners will be notified by e-mail.

Happy filing!

LT

LT Wants to Hear It

OK, now -- I know you all are waiting for the holidays to get a little closer before you start focusing on what you want for yourselves in 2009. I definitely don't blame you.

But here I am, thinking ahead and planning the next steps to help you as effectively as possible. So here's what I need:

Tell me what are the four spots in your house that drive you the craziest. Think for a few minutes about what you would change in your life, in your spaces and in your processes. And then shoot me an email at linearthoughts@comcast.net and lay it on me. Give me some deets and I will give you the tools to fix it.

I'll even give you a little preview: Sign up for LT's New Year's Resolutions (by emailing me with that in the subject line) and you'll get a free six-week plan for changing your habits and conquering your clutter. Make organizing a goal of yours for 2009, too! You'll be in great company.

Also, for anyone who has the time and inclination (it only takes a minute or two), go to www.bomoms.com and check me out there as Ask the Expert. I'd love to field some questions there -- just scroll down to the middle of the home page and click the blue "forums" button. Then click on my name under Ask the Expert. I'd love to know what you all are dealing with out there!

Thanks,
LT

Make your list, check it twice

Before the season grows from a faint "oh yeah, the holidays are on the way" somewhere in the distance to front-and-center frenzy, the best advice I can give is this: Learn to make a decent list.

Are you hosting Thanksgiving dinner? Plan your menu and make a grocery list. Do you need to bring your tablecloth to be pressed? Put it on the to-do so you don't forget altogether. Do you always neglect one or two people that you want to make sure you have holiday gifts for? Make a gift list and give yourself time to be thoughtful. No one likes last-minute junk ... not even the mail carrier.

These are the things that can take a perfectly wonderful day and turn it into a nightmare. Running around trying to manage the minutia while still steering the big picture takes huge time and effort, and when we don't get things done the way we envisioned, aren't we so hard on ourselves? So rather than set yourself up for failure, arm yourself for success, whatever it takes to meet your own standards and be happy. That means managing your time well.

Try to teach yourself the discipline of list-making and make it a habit, once a day, three times a week, even just to see if it can simplify your holiday season. List the things that absolutely will wake you up in the middle of the night in a cold, sweaty freakout if you don't accomplish. You will get so much more done. My favorite list-making pads are by Knock Knock. They feature just the right amount of irony to seem less obnoxious and Type A, thus qualifying them as LT's Tool of the Week! (www.knockknock.biz) $7 per pad.

Your greatest accomplishment will be centering your life and exorcising the "remembering panic" that inevitably follows forgetting. When you have a plan for your day, your week, your month, the important things are done with more finesse and the less important things won't be a study in chaos theory.

Then hopefully you will find time to actually celebrate the season, instead of being relieved when it's finally over.

Any lucky reader who e-mails linearthoughts@comcast.net will be registered to win the products we feature. A drawing will be held once a month and winners will be notified by e-mail. Good luck!

Successfully planning for the holidays

It always happens right before Halloween. Someone pushes the fast-forward button and all of a sudden, we're smack in the middle of the holidays. My family's fall-to-winter switch is always a whirlwind. Halloween gives way to our daughter's birthday the middle of November. Two weeks later come Thanksgiving and our wedding anniversary. Then Christmas and New Year's. My husband's birthday in the middle of January marks the end of the craziness.

The only way I can survive the pace and demands of the season is to prepare, focus and stay organized. And by preparing, I mean seriously purging. That means going room to room and honestly assessing what's there, what still works and what's just uselessly taking up space. Needless to say, this is a big project! But its benefits are countless come the holidays, because when the "stuff" of the holidays starts to arrive, there's always enough room. My home doesn't feel cluttered with the addition of holiday decor, and we've made space for anything Santa might bring.

It also makes me feel more centered, knowing that letting go of my old ways creates opportunities for any new adventures and challenges that might arrive with the new year. It gives me space and time to create new goals for myself and to consider whether I succeeded in reaching last year's goals.

What do you do to prepare for the holidays? Do you zoom through the season -- shopping, visiting, wrapping, cooking (with the accompanying bitching, moaning, sweating, panicking and freaking out)? Wouldn't you love to actually enjoy the holidays? It's possible, I promise.

The best way to face the challenges of the season and still have time to make gingerbread is to make a solid plan. Do you need to make room in your home? Just set a date and go for it. Be ruthless. (Make sure you budget enough time, so you don't make a huge mess and then not have time to put it all back together. That is defeating and frustrating.) Making room for new before the holidays will give you peace of mind, and open you up to a new way of enjoying the season. Do you need to downscale the shopping this year? Make a list and cross it off early. Is making true quality time for friends and family a priority? Then only do what has to be done and pare down on the rest. Let your real holiday wishes guide the level of frenzy you will tolerate. Let whatever you do be enough for once!

Good luck with all your seasonal projects.

LT