Expert Series - Organizing With the Experts

Happy New Year Everyone.

We're kicking off a new series of interviews with experts! Our first series will be on organizing experts - people who help others get organized for a living! Our inaugural guest is Krista Colvin. As owner of Organize in Style llc, she helps women organize their homes and offices. As the creator of www.TheShebang.com, The Smart Woman's Guide to Doing it All, she inspires women to get it and keep it together. Krista is the lifestyle expert for AM Northwest, & co host of The O Myth, a Blog Talk Radio show. She is a guest blogger for Working Mother Magazine and Online Organizing.

[Qlubb] What do you do and how did you get started being a professional organizer?

[Krista]I'm a lifestylist and organizing maven... which basically means I believe in organizing the whole shebang! Simply put, I help people get it and keep it together based on their personal organizing style.

After teaching high school for 13 years I decided to take what I dubbed my "Domestic Diva" leave of absence. After about a year I got antsy and discovered via many hours of HGTV that professional organizing was a 'real job'! From there I launched Organize in Style my consulting and hands-on organizing business then later developed The Shebang- The Smart Woman's Guide to Doing it All!, which is an online lifestyle management program.

[Qlubb] Why do people need to be better organized?

[Krista] Being organized takes the 'overwhelm' out of life's craziness. A simple clearing of a paper pile may be all one needs to feel in control or a complete office re-do may be the answer. I believe we each have our threshold and when it's out-of-whack, we feel it.

[Qlubb] What have been the top three favorite tips you've found help someone get organized?

1. Piles are just flat files- if you loathe filing consider tossing the paper in a box. This works best with financial statements or bank statements or paid bills. They will still be in chronological order and you'll easily be able to reference them if need be.

2. Create paper systems based on your organizing style. I believe people are filers, pilers, or into binders. Determine which style suits you and the task at hand, then create a simple system.

3. Just because your mother did it that way, you don't have to! For example, there's nothing wrong with keeping the peanut butter with the bread if you make PB&J's everyday.

[Qlubb] Many of our members are balancing work, family and their group activities. What advice do you have for them to stay organized in three separate, busy contexts?

[Krista] As much as we'd like to keep our work, family + group activities separate, that rarely seems to be the case. We don't lead 3 different lives, so the key is to integrate and manage them the best we can.

work- Make the best use of your time. Asking yourself "is this the BEST use of my time?" will have you knock out the "Must Do's" instead of the "Could-Do's."

family- Create routines and have simple systems in place. Implementing a daily 5 minute pick up-clean up session for the entire family is the key to staying organized.

group activities- Keep it simple! Make sure everyone has the needed information in a clear and concise manner.

[Qlubb] For our team leaders and organizers, what tips can you offer for them to help get someone else in the group to be better organized? What "buttons" do you push to help someone get organized and most importantly, stay organized?

[Krista] Organizing someone else... hmmm always a can of worms :) First remind yourself that we each have different organizing styles so what works for you will not always work for someone else. I suggest setting the system up for the end user. Create something simple. Don't go crazy with the details.

Setting deadlines to include specific time due, for example, Tuesday at 11am, helps keep your group members on task. Most people know what they need to do but put it off until the last minute. When setting the deadline consider that some will need to push out the due time as they may have underestimated the amount of time to complete the task.

[Qlubb] Thanks Krista. We really appreciate your advice. Happy New Year to you and all of our readers!

Happy New Year, Now Let's Get Organized!

Happy New Year to everyone!

After a wonderful and busy holiday, I am so glad to be back in full-force. 2008 was good, but I am really look forward to an awesome 2009.

Though New Year's resolution are often broken with the first few weeks of the new year, I always find the resolution-making process to be an entertaining and inspiring process where I can set lofty, aspirational goals - hey a girl can dream!

As many of us draw up resolutions, a good one is to add a bit of order into our lives. So many of us have so much going on at any one time that we often find ourselves a little less connected, a little more frazzled and ultimately, scrambling to stay on top of our lives.

So to help jumpstart our resolutions to get a little more organized, Qlubb would like to offer you the chance to receive Sprinkles Cupcakes. All you have to do is refer a friend to Qlubb. If he/she creates a Qlubb with 5 users, we will send you a gift card to Sprinkles Cupcakes.* So it's not great for the losing weight resolution, but oh those red velvet cupcakes... So, what are you waiting for, refer a friend now!

* If you do not live near a Sprinkles, no need to worry. We will send you Sprinkles cupcake mix, made with the same high-quality ingredients and with their signature toppings.

Here's to a wonderful and ORGANIZED 2009!

New Calendar functionality

Hello fellow Qlubbers.

We rolled out the beta version of our new 30-day calendar functionality. Due to popular demand we released a month by month calendar view which should help you visualize your upcoming events.

PLEASE HIT SHIFT-RELOAD when you are on the Qlubb pages to make sure your browser cache is updated. Your browser will often store a copy of the javascript browser code on your browser so that it doesn't have to reload it each time. This is a performance advantage however, when updates are made to the code, your browser may be using an old copy of the cache to access our new functionality. All you have to do is hold down the shift key as you click on the "reload" or "refresh" button on your browser. That will force your browser to get the new code from our servers.

Also in this release, we have introduced a new panel called Act Now. In this panel it shows all of the things you should respond to, such as RSVP's not yet responded to, tasks that you can volunteer for as well as reminders for tasks you have already signed up for.

We hope you like our new layout as well. It's meant to increase function. If you've embedded videos and done other formatting you may have to make a few slight adjustments given the new layout. Please let us know at help@qlubb.com if you have any questions!

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Group Organizers Can Go On Auto Pilot

Hello Fellow Qlubbers!

We're happy to announce a new "autopilot" feature which enables group organizers to put their whole schedule up and then let the reminders and delayed invitations/RSVP's do all of the work. Book clubs, soccer teams or any other group that has an upcoming schedule of activities can publish all of their events on their own Qlubb website and then set up timed invitations to invite people throughout the year.

For example, if there's a monthly game, a timed invitation can go out the week before asking them to RSVP for the game and to sign up for the various volunteering spots for that game. A final reminder can go out the day before to make sure everyone is reminded of the game.

We know that this feature will help many organizers do all of their upfront planning so that they can sit back and let the reminders tell them what they need to do and when.

If you have any questions, as always, please let us know!

Qlubb Goes Dance Fever!

We recently spoke with the Divine Dance Academy, a wonderful dance and fine arts school based in Olds, Alberta, Canada. Divine Dance Academy offers a range of classes in dance, music, voice, musical theatre and drama from beginners (as young as three years of age) up to competitive students. Their 130 person school has adopted Qlubb as their primary platform for communication. To see more on the story, please see our press release we distributed last night.

We especially thank Patricia Simoneau (the studio's webmaster among many other things) and Trish deCoverley (the studio owner) for sharing their story with us.

We were also extensively reviewed by Nichelle Strzepek, a performer and dance instructor who taught at private studios, community colleges and one major University. She is also a blogger extraordinaire for her Dance Advantage blog. Her review is very thorough and detailed! And for those who might be wondering, we'll be introducing that 30-day calendar soon ;-).

We're happy to see such a vibrant community of performing artists getting organized with Qlubb!