Wellrich Organizers new Website and Blog

Wellrich Organizers is now boasting a new website.  Our blog is now contained on the website and you can follow us there.  Click through for more information and tips on how to keep your office organized, yourself more productive and your world a little calmer.  Looking forward to seeing you there.

Tax Time Loomith

Many of us are planning for the holidays and looking forward to some downtime after a busy fall.  Great idea.  What's top of your list when you get back to the office in January?

With a little forward planning, by the time you get to April, you'll be focussed on those new clients having signed off and sent off your annual tax return.  If you are still working on a paper-based system, consider booking time with yourself in your 2012 calendar, before it gets booked with client appointments, to sort the receipts.

An accordion file makes a great receptacle.  With 13 pockets it can stand on a shelf, in a file drawer and be labelled by month to receive receipts, invoices and any other relevant paperwork.

Calendar Options

With the new year looming, most people have already picked up their calendar for next year.  Some of you are die hard e-calendar types and just keep scrolling on down the screen while 2012 comes up to great you.


The rest of us are not and still prefer the paper version.  It has been my experience that many individuals with a strong kinesthetic preference for learning and digesting information, still benefit from the writing and page turning of a paper calendar to anchor schedules and time frames in their minds.  If you fall into this category, it is important to understand that you are using a modality that works for you.  It may be necessary to use a second e-calendar for work if your company business practices require one.


On the other hand if you are cyber-savvy and tied to your electronic phone/tablet/laptop you may be a good candidate to consider moving to an e-calendar.  Individuals in this category likely email appointments to colleagues and family members including teacher interviews.  Some even share common calendars on cyberspace through email providers.


Whichever you choose, the most important criteria, is that it works for you.  There is no point in using an e-calendar if you don't have a devise with you all the time or perhaps can't share with your co-workers, colleagues or family calender information they also need.  

Tax Prep in the SOHO

Are you staring at a shoe  box of receipts?  Here's a quick and inexpensive way to get those receipts tamed.  Pick up an accordion folder at the local office supply store with 12 sections, one for each month.  Label the sections.  Start by filing the receipts by date into the appropriate section.

Some people prefer to file by category.  Date or category, it doesn't matter.  They all have to be accounted for at tax time and how you group them is up to you and based on the volume of receipts.

If it seems overwhelming, consider contacting a local high school student whom you trust and offer to pay the them to file the shoebox of receipts for you according to month.  This is a great opportunity for the student to learn the benefits of organization and practise some basic filing skills.  In addition, what you will need to pay the student is tax deductible and much less than your accountant is likely to charge you to accomplish the same thing.

Office Annual Review

Before working as a professional organizer, I spent several decades in a corporate environment.  Those of us who have ever worked for someone are familiar with the annual review process.  But have you ever considered applying this concept to the organization of your office?  If you were giving your office an annual review, how would it fare?

• Are the position description and expectations clear and understood?
• Are there annual goals and objectives that are in line with the company's (yours) strategic objectives for the year?
• Do the annual goals and objectives meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited)?
• Did your office meet all its performance targets for the year?
• Did you office meet all its goals and objectives for the year?
• What recommendations do you have to offer?

Try this out on your office space whether your run a home office or a corporate environment.  And remember - there should be no surprises at performance review time.  Regular feedback on adjustment to performance of your office will ensure that those goals are met by the end of the year.

Hoarders Among Us

Do you think you could tell if you worked beside someone who is hoarding?  Would their work behaviour reflect hoarding behaviour at home?
Probably not - people who hoard do not normally brag about their hoarding behaviour. In fact, most of them are very private and often have not let anyone in their home for many years.  Normally they can not be identified from anyone else walking down the street or sitting at the next desk.
 Professional organizers do not normally go public with the names of their clients ~ client confidentiality is a key ingredient and ethical imperative in the organizing business.


So this situation is really unusual. I am currently working with Bruce Kirkland, senior entertainment writer for Sun Media. Having been interviewed for an article on hoarding, the reporter, Rachel Sa approached Bruce about participating in a series of articles to publish our work in hopes that other people struggling with hoarding behaviour would see there is hope, and help, available.


I invite you to follow our work and Bruce's progress. This is a very brave thing for Bruce and Rachel to do.

The Wellrich 10 Percent Email Solution

As a professional organizer I am frequently asked how I recommend people stay on top of their email.  There are a variety of strategies for managing the actual email when you first open it.  Use folders to file information and flagging action items for example.  When it comes to the emails that have been left in your Inbox too long here is a process I call the 10 percent solution.

1. Pick a time of day to commit 10 minutes to email management.  Stick to this commitment until that Inbox is under control.
2. Change the sorting order of the Inbox.  If you normally sort by date, try sorting by sender or subject.  This has the impact of immediately changing the context of the emails.  With a different context sorting is easier.
3. Check the total number of emails and then identify what 10% would be.  This is your target; the number of emails you are going to file or delete in your designated 10 minutes.  For example, if you have 1000 emails sitting in your Inbox, try and remove 100 at the first sitting.
4. Quickly scroll through the list and try and delete as many as possible i.e. the easy ones you know are no longer needed.  If you get stuck or bogged down, switch the sort again and keep going.  Try sorting by email topic.  This will sometimes allow you to delete the backlog of emails on one particularly topic and then the last one, with all the accompanying conversation, will be the email to file.

You will be surprised how easy it is to remove 100 emails when you have changed the context.