Use Printing Services to Streamline Your Photographs

Posted by Marie on October 9, 2008

Photographs are meant to be seen. With digital technology these days, we are all free to take as many pictures as our memory cards and camera batteries will allow. This change in how we document our special moments has created a different organizational challenge.

Rather than boxes and boxes of unlabeled and unsorted photos, so many of us are ending up with a computer full of image files with mystery names like Picture 082. Or perhaps you are one step ahead and all these photos are on discs with Summer Vacation 2008 sharpied on them.

This is great! but there is one problem isn’t there? You don’t actually look at anything on the discs ever again.

To deal with this problem, I still get my pictures printed out and placed into albums. I will flip through my albums. I won’t start up a random slide show on my computer.

Instead of wrestling with photo paper, ink, paper cutters, and color printers, I use the online services. You just upload your files, and they mail the set to you when the photos are ready.

I find the online services helpful because:

1. I don’t have to buy, maintain, and store all the photography equipment in my home.
2. I don’t feel guilty that I’m not printing out pictures because everything I need is right there.
3. Since every print costs money, it forces me to really think about which images I want to have represent my experience.
4. Once I go through that decision making process, I know the rest are inferior and can be deleted.

Voila! Less clutter on my desk. Less clutter in my computer. I have physical prints that I actually look at and can share with others. I am not keeping things for which I have no need and will never use.

Of course now, you have to get those prints labeled and into an album. :) I think that’s a topic for another day.

In my experience, Snapfish gives me top-notch quality for the lowest price. Are there other recommendations out there?

Keep Your Own List to Determine the Benefit of a Personal Assistant

Posted by Marie on October 2, 2008

Most of us daydream about how our lives would improve if we had an assistant around to help us in any way possible. Here’s a method to take your planning out of the dream stage and into reality. Calculate just how much benefit you will really receive by keeping a log for a week.

For seven days, every time you think about something you need to do but …

1. don’t want to,
2. don’t know how,
3. or don’t have the time,

write it in the log. At the end of the week, take a look and see how many of those tasks you would have eventually completed yourself. How many caused you to miss opportunities or waste valuable time?

Keeping track of your needs for a week will show you truthfully whether or not to look for a personal assistant.

Organization is a Process

Posted by Marie on September 27, 2008

My life does not always look like the picture.

You may be surprised that I, as someone who helps organize others, would admit something like this. But to me, organization is not about things or spaces; it’s about procedures.

If my glasses are not on my face, I know they are in one of three places. When I come home, my bags and keys get dropped at the same location each time. My filings tend to sit in one “to file” pile until it gets bothersome enough for me to do it all at once.

I know how my brain categorizes and processes information so I figured out the best ways to store my stuff—which may mean in temporary piles.

My closet used to be subdivided by color. My CDs used to be in alphabetical order. These systems did not work for me. It turns out that I don’t choose clothes by color, and I don’t figure out music via the alphabet.

Trying to work someone else’s system—one that feels foreign to you—will seldom succeed in the long run. As an organizing professional, I try to figure out my clients’ routines and how they process information. Then I can suggest improvements and modifications that feel natural and easy.

If you have trouble staying efficiently organized, please give Detour Services a call. We offer free telephone consultations and a money back guarantee on our services. Try us out and we’ll figure out a system that will work for you.