Decluttering: for life, not just for Christmas?

Christmas is a great time for promoting your goods or services. "The perfect gift" will help out many folks desperate to find something more interesting than socks - or whatever your usual standby is for somebody special.

If you're selling 'things', you'll know your market. Whether it's clothes, jewellery, personalised gifts, wine, chocolate or whatever, you can target the necessary audience to attract the people you want as purchasers. Advertisements in local publications, special offers on your website, announcements on Facebook or Twitter.

Services are a little different. We might all benefit from services, but do we want to admit to that need - or do we all enjoy them? A voucher from a beauty therapist can be a lovely idea - but what if your mum (like mine) only ventures to the hairdresser because she has to, and really rather dislikes that kind of attention? No good giving theatre tickets for the panto if the recipient can't imagine anything worse than a chorus of "He's behind you". And we might all say from time to time "I'd love somebody to come and clean my house", but would the response be "are you saying my house is dirty"?

And that's my problem when it comes to my decluttering services. It sounds wonderful: give a decluttering day for a Christmas gift. But I wonder. In my experience, decluttering sessions are at their most successful when the person suffering from the clutter has made that decision for themselves. The daughter that says "My mum needs your help", the friend who says "My friend's house is a tip", and asks me to help out, might be acting with the best of intentions; but the mum, or the friend, are more likely to feel (a) threatened, (b) insulted or (c) terrified - or some combination of the three.

When my clients have reached the decision to get professional help with their clutter - whether it's an office, a wardrobe or a house - it's not (I'm told) any of these things. Liberating, enjoyable, fun, inspiring - all these things have been said about the process of Getting It Sorted.

However, these have all been people who have come to me of their own accord. They've reached a point where they feel that the help of an outsider will be of benefit to them; a fresh pair of eyes, some ideas on storage and the use of space, and (dare I say it) a bit of gentle nagging; inspiration, motivation, support and sympathy. But none of this can happen until they've come to that conclusion for themselves.

It's the old joke: How many counsellors does it take to change a lightbulb? One - but the lightbulb has to want to change.

So that's why I don't promote decluttering sessions as a gift. If somebody has discussed it with a loved one and between them, they've decided that that's the gift that is wanted, and one pays for the other, that's absolutely fine; but like the panto-hater getting the ticket for Jack & the Beanstalk, if it's not what they want, it will be a wasted gesture - no matter how much you may think they need it.

Decluttering is a gift: but it's one you're more likely to need to give to yourself.

Phone numbers on Facebook

Here we go again. I've seen this one doing the rounds before, but it's just come back...

YOUR PHONE NUMBER IS NOW ON FACEBOOK!! NO JOKE... Go to the top right of your screen, click Account then Edit Friends. Go to the left side of your screen and click Phonebook. Everyone's phone numbers are now being published.

Well, for a start, this is nothing new. Here's a revelation: If you put something on your Facebook profile, and allow your details to be viewed by your friends - guess what? They'll be able to see it. Amazing. (That's a bit like being surprised if people read your profile updates.)

If you visit a friend's profile, click on the Info tab and scroll down to Contact Information, you'll be able to see their phone number, email, website address etc. - if they have chosen to post it in the first place. This has been the case for simply ages. The Facebook 'phone book' is no more than a compilation of information that you already have.

Check your profile settings. (They default to Friends Only, as a rule.) Click Account>Privacy Settings. Have a look at Contact Information in that list. If (as seems reasonable) you want your Friends to be able to see this, but not Friends of Friends or the whole world, make sure that's the setting.

If you don't want anybody to see your phone number, not even a friend (in which case, what are they doing on your Friends list in the first place?) then take it off your Facebook profile entirely. (I'm assuming you don't need it there to remind yourself what it is.)

And please don't just repost these warnings without thinking about it. By and large, they are calculated to frighten and panic people. If they were calculated to inform, they'd be written in a far less inflammatory fashion. Next time you see something like this, please take a few minutes to check it out; find out the real story; and if you think there is something still in there that is worth knowing, edit it before you post it.

Oh, and this post - both on Facebook and here on my blog - is made available to Everyone. In case you were wondering.

A challenge for my techie friends

OK, guys. My head is spinning on this one, and I would value a bit of input from any of my other geek-colleagues.

This is all about my contacts and my emails. Across the years I've come to a few conclusions:

• I like to have my emails on a local machine-based client (e.g. Outlook Express, Thunderbird or whatever). I check my mails using MailWasher before I start and then bring them in; if I'm away from home, I use webmail to look at the inbox and delete rubbish, but leave it on the server until I get home and it can all go in one place.
• I enjoy Microsoft Outlook for two reasons only: its ability to act as a source for a mailmerge (vital for Christmas card labels) and the silly, tiny convenience of being able to pick up an address from the relevant button in Microsoft Word when creating a letter or invoice. I haven't used it for email since I stopped working in an office, five years back.
• I keep a separate Googlemail account for convenience, for an alternative, and for giving out to shops that need it. But when it comes to contact details...
• ...since getting an iPhone, I adore the ease with which my online address book on GoogleMail synchs with the phone - also, therefore, ensuring I have the whole shooting match in at least two places in case one goes belly-up.

One thing I'm always trying to drum into my IT and decluttering clients is the wisdom of keeping single-source data. You can see from the above description that I'm not following my own dictum here. I've been existing on a complex combination of merges and imports for some while now, and it offends my sense of efficiency.

• I want to keep my contacts on GoogleMail for keeping in synch with iPhone, but I don't like the GoogleMail interface for emails (yes, I know I can set up POP3 accounts on it, but I don't want to do that).
• This means that I have to put email addresses into both Thunderbird and GoogleMail when I get them.
• I like using Outlook for the minor tasks described above.

Now, the challenge:

I discovered Soocial the other day. A very neat system (chargeable, but not excessively) it nearly takes care of this problem - but not quite.

• GoogleMail and the iPhone are synching with each other already, so I only need one of those sources to store on Soocial. No problems there.
• Outlook won't synch to Soocial, because it only supports 2003 and 2007, and I'm still using 2002 (Outlook XP) - and I really don't have any other reason to upgrade the damn thing at extortionate cost.
• Thunderbird seemed to synch to it at first, using a rather complicated plug-in called Funambol. I got the initial set of contacts from there into Soocial, no problem. However, since then it's refused to update again - and when I looked at updating Thunderbird from version 2 to 3, discovered that the Funambol plugin isn't available for that version.

So am I looking for the Holy Grail?

• Would it work if I replaced Thunderbird with Windows Live Mail - as that's one of the connections advertised as working on Soocial? Any opinions on that one? I only ditched Outlook Express in favour of Thunderbird, some years back, as I was having an anti-Bill Gates strop at the time.
• Would GoogleMail synch contacts direct with WLM - in which case I wouldn't need to use Soocial as part of the process at all?
• And do I ditch Outlook completely, and accept that I need to export contacts to CSV at Christmastime to make them the source of a mailmerge?

My brain hurts, and I'm sure yours does now. But if any of those friendly geeks out there can come up with a really good solution, I'd be eternally grateful.

Don't panic!

As we know, Facebook often introduces new 'features', ideas, rules and all the rest. Some are positively beneficial, some less so. However, I'm a bit worried by the amount of warnings that fly around the place about these things which are, in themselves, inaccurate. So this is a quick plea to check it out before you go striking fear into the hearts of all your friends!

The latest culprit is the 'Places' Feature. Put simply, this enables you to post your location to Facebook - if you want to. If you 'check in to a place' using this feature, your location will be displayed. (For anybody who uses FourSquare, it has roughly the same effect - it's your way of saying 'this is where I am right now'.) It doesn't happen automatically "when you are logged in", as this posting puts it:

IMMEDIATELY!!!! Facebook launched Facebook Places yesterday. Anyone can find out where you are when you are logged in. It gives the actual address & map location ofwhere you are as you use Facebook. Make sure your kids know. TO UNDO: Go to "Account","Account Settings", ......"Notifications", then scroll ......down... to "Places" and UNCHECK the 2 boxes. Make sure to SAVE changes and re-post this message!!

This isn't accurate. The only way people find out where you are is if you actively use the Places feature to tag yourself in a place - not whenever you log in to Facebook. And, like all other features, you can choose whether to publish this (if and when you use it) to everybody, friends of friends, just friends or a selected list.

Not only that, but Places isn't yet available outside the USA anyway!! So those of us in the UK can't use this feature yet even if you wanted it.

And finally, following the instructions above wouldn't help in any case, as they would only stop you being notified of other friends tagging your location... it wouldn't stop the tag from happening. If anything, stopping the tagging is more of a security problem, as it stops you being alerted when somebody else has tagged you. [NB: you can also change your settings so that other people can't tag your location. See the link below for this explanation, too.]

For the real story (rather than the run-round-in-circles-panic-knee-jerk version) have a look at this very simple explanation on the Facebook help page.

And next time you read anything like this - before you repost it - please take thirty seconds to do a bit of research. You could save us all a lot of raised blood pressure!

PS: How do you spot something that's likely to be a hoax / inaccurate / deliberately designed to cause panic? In my experience, the more inflammatory the language and the higher the usage of exclamation marks, the less likely it is to be worth taking seriously...

To Do

I love 'to-do' lists. Sad, but true. I always have, right from the days of organising homework. [Oh, don't stop reading now. I really do have a life these days, honest.]

They are useful things - providing that you keep just one, all in one place - multiple lists are the best way to challenge your sanity. [Unless, of course, you count the Shopping List as a To-Do List, in which case I'd prefer to keep buy onions separate from phone mum or do invoicing.]

They are ways of indulging a certain amount of the anally retentive: if you put something on your List that you've already done, you have the satisfaction of Ticking It Immediately. [Come on, own up - haven't you ever done that?]

Being not only a sad List person, but also a Very Sad Computer Geek, I've been exploring the world of Computerised To-Do lists. Getting an iPhone made the obsession even worse, as there is always an App For That. I thought you might enjoy the three I've found: they are all vastly sensible, useful and usable, but will work for different people. All three have online accounts and synchronise with the iPhone (hooray!).

The simplest

TeuxDeux: It couldn't be easier. A To-Do list where tasks are put either in a Day, or on the Someday list. If you click to strike it through, it stays on that day (so you can look back and see what you've achieved); if you don't, it automatically moves on to the next day. Drag and drop items between Days or the Someday list. That's it. Elegant, simple and beautiful.

The biggest

Evernote: Huge capacity. Upload scans, photos from computer or phone, handwritten notes, screenshots, web pages, voice memos; the possibilities seem limitless. Geek heaven.

I have tried both these, and loved them for different reasons; but eventually, I decided that neither of them was for me.

I needed just a bit more flexibility to sort, filter and categorise than TeuxDeux offered; my tasks definitely come under separate headings, different priorities, different timescales, and the beautiful simplicity of TeuxDeux was being messed up by my attempts at coping with these requirements.

The geek in me adored Evernote, with the ability to capture just about anything, any media, any place, any time; but eventually I had to admit that I just don't need that capacity. My life can be complicated, but not that complicated. I am quite capable of finding distractions in the normal course of events, without trying to find things to upload just to make Evernote look pretty.

I was therefore hugely relieved to find the middle ground. (Spoken like a good Anglican.)

Toodledo: has much of the simplicity of TeuxDeux, but with the options to categorise, prioritise, date and star. It's nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as TeuxDeux nor does it have the multimedia capacities of Evernote, but I love it.

I'm delighted to have pleased fellow Twitterer @jimdrew1968 with this recommendation: "Thank you @workingorder for recommending www.toodledo.com, I now feel in control again. Love ability to forward emails at it. Great tool."

Oh, and one more thing: anyone who loves to-do lists needs to read the wonderful, biographical book by the gorgeous Mike Gayle. And yes, it's called The To-Do List, and I recognise myself in there. Do you?

Packing SOS

A cry went out on Twitter just now: "@workingorder Please Cassie do you have any helpful tips for @DirtyEnid who is packing for house move? #packing #fail #SOS"

Thinks rapidly. Quick Google. Few ideas. Hope helpful.

• Label, label, label. An extra few seconds after sealing box up will save untold anxiety at the other end.
• Don't overfill boxes with heavy stuff. You'll break your back trying to move them. More small boxes much better than fewer large ones.
• If it's not already too late, be ruthless about chucking out stuff that you really don't need (my usual guideline being "if you lost it by mistake, would you [a la Katherine Tate] be bovvered?"). Or, in this case, "if you left it behind by mistake..." Charity shop / skip may be a better place for it than the removal van.
• Group, group, group. Don't mix rooms. If you know that everything from one box will go in kitchen, saves a lot of wandering around.
• Keep the kettle, milk, coffee, teabags (or whatever is vital to you) easily accessible. Do not lose sight of main items key to survival. Also include things like loo paper, headache pills, mobile phone.
• If you have to dismantle flat-pack furniture, put screws/bolts etc. in plastic bag stuck firmly to part of construction ready for re-assembly.
• Don't panic. Be systematic. Yes, I know it's easier said than done, but deep breath and count to ten may save some vital item from breakage.
• Need help? If you could use some professional input, see if a local member of apdo-uk is available to help you - at one end of the process or the other. A professional declutterer / organiser can not only be an excellent extra pair of hands, but will be able to stop the red mist from descending when it all gets too much.
• Found this item by thinking in advance? Check out HelpIAmMoving for a wealth of tips & advice.

If there's even one bright idea that has helped @DirtyEnid today, my work is done.

What could make decluttering easier?

This is not my list. While these are policies and suggestions I use all the time, brevity is not one of my skills; this is an excellent little summary which turned up in one of the updates I get in my inbox from the wise and wonderful Nina Grunfeld of Life Clubs, and I thought it was well worth passing on.

1. Find a timer and set it for 5 minutes of decluttering only. You’ve always got the option of ignoring it when it goes.
2. Get help. Other people can be ruthless with your things.
3. Don’t beat yourself up that you never went to that play or cooked that recipe. You did something else instead.
4. Trust your intuition – you’ll know if you want to keep something. Any wavering, bin it.
5. If you’re only keeping something to be tactful, get rid of it.

Any questions?