Penelope Loves Lists » Assignments

Assignment: purse de-clutter, or do this now, you’ll be glad you did later

Meredith — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:42:47 +0000

This a re-post from an item originally published in January. Several people (like, a lot of people) emailed me at the time asking that I post this assignment a couple times a year as they found it useful. So, here goes…

Today’s assignment is super quick but makes a huge difference as you go through your week.

Take just 5 minutes right now and go through your purse or bag.

throw away trash and old receipts, etc. that have accumulated
make a pile of things that need to go elsewhere and put them in their places
make sure that every single item you carry around with you is something you really need. Ask yourself, have I needed this in the last year? If not, put it elsewhere.

See? Don’t you feel better? Lighter, more organized? Yes, you do.

Penelope Tip: get a brightly colored wallet. I know we’ve heard this before, but it really does help. Mine’s red and I can always find it in the dark center pocket of my purse.

I think the secret to this is really keeping your purse filled with just what you need, which really isn’t a lot. But, if you find you just can’t be minimal, consider using a Purseket, which can keep your purse’s contents more organized.

: Purseket Tool for Organizing your Purse

Now, for some fun. If you love purses and bags, and need some help keeping the ones you’re not using in check, Jeri over at Jeri’s Organizing & De-cluttering News has written a great post. She includes several products that will help keep your bags organized in your home.

: Closet Rod Hanging Handbag Organizer

Assignment: 10 minute cleanup of your front porch

Meredith — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:00:15 +0000

I know most people enter their home from the garage, but I don’t. (It’s a weird thing I have about being attacked in my garage or back yard. Don’t ask. Ok, you can ask, but don’t expect an answer that’s sane.) I enter my house through my front door. So, one of the best small tasks I can do over a weekend is a quick cleanup of the porch area. Makes an unexpectedly huge difference in such a short time.

Even if you don’t ever go through your front door, the rest of the world enters that way. Do it for them. Heck, do it for your mailman. He needs a pick-me-up.

So, 10 minutes to a nice, tidy front door/porch area:

Grab a broom and sweep the porch. Move fast, don’t take a bunch of time to make it overly perfect. Yes, I said it.
Use that same broom and sweep around the frame of your front door, clearing all cobwebs, etc. Do the same for the walls around the porch. Just a few quick motions is all you need here.
If you have a window in your front door, grab some window cleaner and a cloth and give that glass a swish. Same thing for the door handle and the lock.
Look around your porch area and make sure there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be. Is it July and you’ve still got the Easter Bunny hanging out? Ditch that.
Give a quick swish to any furniture you have on your porch.
Make sure your front porch light is in working order and not covered in bugs and dust.
Finally, swish your mailbox with a cloth if it lives in that general area. I’m forever surprised how many cobwebs are attracted to that thing. And how spiffy it looks when I’ve given it just a bit of attention.

Step back and admire your work. Looks better, doesn’t it? Good job, Penelope.

Assignment: quick desk clean-up

Meredith — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:00:24 +0000

Last week, we got our keyboards nice and clean. Now, we need to give a little love to our desks as a whole. This assignment applies to you whether you work at a formal office, a home office or at a nook in the kitchen.

Let’s take just 8-10 minutes and see what we can do. Move fast and don’t get distracted. This shouldn’t take a bunch of time or be a big struggle.

Take everything that’s not plugged in off your desk.
Get a damp cloth and wipe down the entire surface of the desk.
If you haven’t already cleaned your keyboard, take a minute to do that.
Gently use a dry cloth (or these handy anti-static monitor wipes) to dust your monitor.
Wipe down your phone and other items you’re constantly putting your hands on with a Reckitt & Benckiser 1920076650 Glass Plus Wipes" target="_blank">Glass Plus Wipes towelette. Look at the handset of your phone where your ear goes. Isn’t that gross?
Quickly glance through your pencil cup and make sure you’ve only got pens, etc. in there that you really use. Remove anything that shouldn’t be there. (For example, you probably don’t need that half of a red crayon in that cup, right?)
Now start to put things back on your desk, but use this opportunity to ditch anything that doesn’t have to be there. A less cluttered desk = a less cluttered mind.

I realize that there are many more things you could do to fully clean every item on your desk, but, for our purposes here, we’re just looking for a good, simple level of clean. I think if we feel that we have to get into the nittiest of the gritty in tasks like these, we’re less likely to actually tackle them. So, for now, this is good enough.

Now, step back and admire your handiwork. Feels good, doesn’t it?

Good job, Penelope. Now back to work.

ANNOUNCEMENT: If you’ve always wanted a Penelope button to put on your blog, well, today’s your lucky day! Now’s the time to tell everyone you’re a Penelope and you’re proud of it. You can grab the new buttony goodness here.

How I Learned to Love My Spencer Pratt Chores

Meredith — Sun, 23 May 2010 16:00:42 +0000

Image courtesy Real Simple

As a Penelope, I like to clean, most of the time. Sure, when I’m tired I don’t feel like it, but mostly, cleaning is fun. I like a tidy, fresh living environment and my husband and kids do, too. We pitch in and generally, we’re pretty proud of our little abode.

There are a few chores, though, that I really dislike. I’m not quite sure why, I just hate doing them. They annoy me. These are what I’ve come to think of as my “Spencer Pratt” chores.

I decided to spend a week timing how long it actually takes me to do them, just to get a sense of how truly onerous these tasks are:

Wet mop my hardwood floors (12 minutes)
Cleaning the shower (10 minutes)
De-crumbing the toaster and cleaning around it. (5 minutes)
Paying bills (9 minutes)

WAIT! So, I spend more time dreading these tasks than it takes to actually do them? How dumb is that?

I challenge you to choose 3 tasks you really dislike either at work or at home and time how long they really take. Once you know what your time investment actually is, you might find, as I did, that you can re-frame the task.

Rather than thinking “Geez, I really hate doing this, but, here goes…grumble grumble”, I now say “I’m going to take 12 minutes and then I’ll have floors that are nice and clean”. OK, that sentence is obnoxious and I want to smack myself, but you know what I mean.

It’s amazing what a little perspective will do for you. (I still loathe Spencer Pratt, though. That ain’t changin’.)

For more tips on doing some “dirty jobs” around the house, see this feature from Real Simple.

How Penelope Got Her Groove Back: Become an Expert

Meredith — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:00:37 +0000

Penelopes often don’t like change. We like to stick to doing things we’re good at and stay with predictable routines. Makes us effective, and in control. And, after a time, royally bored.

Have you become too comfortable with your life? Are your routines old, your hobbies stale, your relationships zingless? Time to get out of our rut. We’re going to learn something new.

Today’s assignment:

Watch: Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams or Read: Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" target="_blank">Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

Or Think: What project can you take on that’s like the one Julie Powell did? What can you do that would get you out of your comfort zone and/or enable you to learn new things?

Some ideas:

Get the list of the 100 best movies of all time and work through them. Maybe do this as a part of a film club, instead of a book club. Oh, that’d be fun! Once a month, you get together with some good friends, and eat, drink wine and watch an iconic movie. You could even do food themed to the movie. Am I going too far?
Read the most popular novels of all time. You can also choose from this list of reader favorites.
Read every book by a particular author that has always fascinated or eluded you. (Charles Dickens? Agatha Christie? Alice Hoffman? Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Alexandre Dumas?)
Eat at the best 25 restaurants in your area.
Learn to cook like Thomas Keller from The French Laundry Cookbook" target="_blank">The French Laundry.
Listen to every Mozart concerto or Beethoven symphony. For extra credit, read a biography of that composer and put some context to the music.
Take a class at your nearest college or junior college about something that both interests and stretches you. Shakespeare? Art History? Come on, you know you love homework.
Take a dance class. You loved ballet or jazz dance when you were little, right? Why not now? Have you seen the cute ballet/dance clothes there are out there now? It’s not just tutus, girls.
Learn a new hobby. Knitting would be my suggestion, but there may be other hobbies.
Take an online class to increase your skills at work or you ability to make small talk at parties.
Visit the top 10 wineries nearest you, or, if you’re not near a wine region, go to your nearest wine shop or BevMo and have them help you work through one of the Top 100 Wines of the Year lists. Don’t love wine? Do the same thing with beer. Or tea. Or honey. The internet makes the possibilities nearly endless.

Do: Choose a subject that appeals to you on an intrinsic level and get deeply into it. No more skimming here and there. Pick something and expand yourself. Become an expert. You’ll be changed and broadened (hopefully, just mentally) and you’ll surely be less bored.

For my part, I’ve decided to work my way through all the books written by the Bronte sisters. Some I’ve read and will be re-reading, some will be new. I love me some Victorian angst.

What do you think? Any of this sound interesting to you? Are you up for the challenge? Please weigh in with other ideas that can be added to the list.

Challenge: do one thing you don’t feel like doing

Meredith — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:00:54 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slipstreamjc/ / CC BY-NC 2.0">Today, a not-so-easy challenge, but a short one:

Look at your overall To Do List and scan down to the bottom. I’ll just bet that those items are the ones you really don’t want to do. Could be for a good reason, could be you’re blocked for some small, stupid reason.

But those items are the ones that niggle at your sub-conscience. They’re the ones that weigh you down and wake you up in the middle of the night feeling vaguely uneasy.

Today, choose one and either do it completely OR take one single step toward getting it done. If you take that single step, put on your calendar that one week from today you’ll take another single step.

When you’re done, you’re gonna feel loads better. Promise.

Here’s mine: I have to rent a small, ancillary space for my day job. This is annoying and, more importantly, feels like something that’s taking time from things that are more important. Nevertheless, it must be done for a couple different reasons that aren’t going away. It’s been bugging me for days. Today, I called the rental agent and set up a meeting. It’s on my calendar and I feel better.

If you’re up to sharing in the Comments, I’d love to hear what that one thing was and how you kicked it’s ass.

Assignment: organize the bookmarks in your browser

Meredith — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:15:38 +0000

We’re all online all the time and we find so many yummy things that we don’t want to forget about. If you’re like me, those bookmarks pile up and you start to forget why you tagged them at all. All that clutter isn’t helpful. The good stuff can be lost that way.

Assignment #1: Take 10 minutes (just 10!) to organize the bookmarks in your browser.

Decide on 5-7 main categories and start putting links into those. You can sub-categorize later if necessary. And don’t be afraid to use your delete button. Maybe that recipe you loved a few months ago doesn’t match your eating goals now. Zap it!

Assignment #2: if 10 minutes didn’t get all your bookmarks organized, set a reminder on your calendar to do this once a week for the next month.

Ten bucks says, after that, your bookmarks will no longer be such a tangled mess.

Penelope Tip: After I started this website, I naturally wanted to start keeping up with more and more blogs. Given that they all offered different ways of keeping informed about their latest posts, pretty soon, my blog follow system was inefficient and frustrating.

Finally (I know, I’m so late to this party!) I discovered that iGoogle makes it really easy. You just create your own iGoogle page and then you can enter any URL and it will update you on the posts for that site. I’ve now switched completely away from MyYahoo for my daily news/celebrity gossip fix and am using iGoogle exclusively. I have a page for “News” a page for “Entertainment News”, a page for “Business” and a page devoted to my favorite blogs. I love having a one-stop shop for all of these important links.

Assignment: Computer Desktop de-clutter, or, do this now, you’ll be glad later

Meredith — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:15:02 +0000

Today’s assignment:

Take just five minutes to clear off some of the accumulated items on your computer’s desktop. This short period of time may or may not clear it completely, but it will help.

trash any files you don’t need anymore
put into folders any files you do still need
ideally, your desktop wouldn’t have more than 10 folders on it, everything else should be in sub-folders within those.

If your desktop is a real mess, do this again for the next five days. Put it on your calendar with an alarm to make sure you do it. And remember, spend JUST five minutes.

A cluttered computer desktop is just as anxiety-producting as a cluttered real-life desktop.

Penelope Tip: reward yourself for having cleaned up your computer’s desktop by downloading some pretty “wallpapers”. I like this website. Dig into the archives. There are some really pretty ones there.

And here’s a look at the desktop of one of my three computers, just because people are asking about it. (I had no idea people would be so curious!)

Meredith’s Desktop

I really do try to keep my desktop very clean. If I have an item outside a folder on my desktop temporarily that’s fine, but I deal with it and either trash it or file it by the end of my work day. That’s just a Penelope trait of mine. I know lots of people who get a ton of great work done who don’t keep such spare desktops.

What about you? What does your computer desktop look like?

Assignment: purse de-clutter, or do this now, you’ll be glad you did later

Meredith — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:00:22 +0000

Today’s assignment is super quick but makes a huge difference as you go through your week.

Take just 5 minutes right now and go through your purse or bag.

throw away trash and old receipts, etc. that have accumulated
make a pile of things that need to go elsewhere and put them in their places
make sure that every single item you carry around with you is something you really need. Ask yourself, have I needed this in the last year? If not, put it elsewhere.

See? Don’t you feel better? Lighter, more organized? Yes, you do.

Penelope Tip: get a brightly colored wallet. I know we’ve heard this before, but it really does help. Mine’s red and I can always find it in the dark center pocket of my purse.

Purseket Tool for Organizing your Purse

Closet Rod Hanging Handbag Organizer

Assignment: Pre-Christmas de-cluttering, or: do this now, you’ll be glad you did later

Meredith — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:15:31 +0000

Given that the kids are off school this week, I started thinking that it’s the perfect opportunity to spend some time in each kid’s room, making piles of toys, books, clothes and shoes that can be donated this year. (It’s also a good chance for you to do the same in your own closet.)

This doesn’t have to be a huge thing, this is a busy week. Just set the timer for 20-30 minutes and see what you can get done. If you’re working from home while your older kids are off for the holiday, assign this to them. Give them a large black plastic bag and tell them they need to fill it with things they don’t use or wear anymore.

This assignment serves two important purposes:

we know there’s a tremendous need at all the donation charities, this year more than ever. Get those outgrown clothes, books and toys into the hands of people who can use them. Click here to find your local Goodwill.
this clears out room in your house for the gifts your family will receive for Christmas.

Parent alert: If, during this process, your kids balk at giving away toys you know they’ve outgrown and don’t play with, go through that pile together and let them choose 3 toys to keep. You’ll still be way ahead of the game. And take that opportunity to talk about how much other kids will love playing with those toys. It’s a great teachable moment.

Or, and I’ve totally done this: have your husband take the kids out to see a movie and get hot chocolate and go through their stuff while they’re gone. Sure, you’ll look like a crazy person madly trying to get this task done before they return, but 5 bucks says your kids don’t notice the stuff is gone. Your choice. Whatever feels right…

Taking the time to do this task early this week will make things much easier when it comes time to find homes for all the new Christmas gifts your family received. It’ll keep the clutter down and make the new stuff easier to enjoy.