Getting Organized: Insights from Janine Sarna-Jones

Today is Organize Your Home Day! In honor of this day, I have an interview with Janine Sarna-Jones, a talented professional organizer. And since many New Year's resolutions are about organization and de-cluttering, I interviewed her on this topic to help all the readers and learn about organization from a non-feng shui perspective.

AC: When you see a disorganized home or office, how does it hold people back?

JS: I do not judge a space by what I see. I can only determine that a home or office is disorganized by how the person feels about their space. Disorganized spaces hold people back in thousands of ways, both logistically and emotionally. Sometimes it is as simple as not being able to find stuff; in other cases the individual feels deep shame and incapable of inviting people into their space.

 What is the biggest benefit you've seen after organizing someone's home or office?

It’s hard to pick just one benefit, but one of the biggest is the realization of an organizational system that is in tune with the way that individual thinks and operates.

What are areas that are often overlooked?

The key to getting organized is to start in the places you actually use. In my experience, rather than overlooking areas that need to be organized, people tend to focus their efforts on the least important areas. For example, begin organizing their attic rather than the desk they sit at every day.

How have you created a holistic space for yourself in your home or office?

For me, this is a work in progress. Living with my family, as I do in a New York City 2 bedroom apartment, creating a holistic space involves creating homes for everything and jettisoning things that are no longer useful.

What are three simple tips that you can offer readers in beginning to organize their homes or offices to create a holistic space?

1. Stop thinking about organizing as a task you put on your To Do list and block off a Saturday to accomplish. Start working on small organizing projects, for example, one drawer. Daily!

2. Evaluate what you are keeping in your “prime real estate” areas. For example, do you have clothing you consider memorabilia (and you would never consider wearing again) hanging in your closet? Then put it in a container and move it to a less accessible place. 

3. Let go of items that have outlived their purpose and/or no longer serve your needs.

by Anjie Cho

Janine Sarna-Jones is founder and president of Organize Me Inc. She is a Certified Professional Organizer® and an Evernote Certified Business Consultant and has been helping people get organized at work and at home since 1992. Janine has achieved the distinction of being a member of the Inaugural group of Certified Professional Organizers® (2007) and attained a CD Specialist Certificate from the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD). As a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) since 2001, Janine has contributed her expertise in a variety of leadership roles. In 2007, she was elected to a three-year term to NAPO’s Board of Directors and served two terms as President of the NAPO-New York Chapter from 2005 to 2007.

Declutter Your Way to Feng Shui

featured this month on PublicStorage.com

Incorporating aspects of the Chinese feng shui philosophy at home has become increasingly popular in the West to help us relax and feel more in control of our busy lives. While the practice of channeling energy flows may seem like hocus pocus to some, the more practical benefits of minimizing clutter to reduce stress and negativity is something everyone could use, especially during the busy holiday season!

We turned to feng shui specialist, architect and interior designer Anjie Cho of Holistic Spaces for a quick introductory guide to help you get started with incorporating some basic ideas into your living space. Even the photos of her feng shui home featured here are relaxing!

Anjie said a simple way to start with feng shui is to declutter, because feng shui is all about allowing positive energy to flow through a space. “If you have so much clutter and 'stuff' in your environment, it can begin to hold you back and also create a sense of stress,” Anjie says. “Although not everyone is consciously aware of it, it does affect you. Like a stone that has water dripping on it lightly for years, clutter begins to wear you down." 

...read full article

by Anjie Cho

The Tortoise and the Yoke with Lodro Rinzler

Last week I shared part of my interview with writer, teacher and Buddhist practitioner, Lodro Rinzler. And here’s the rest!

AC:  How do you create holistic spaces in your life?

LR: I’m reminded of my teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, when he said, “the environment is a support or deterrent for everything we do." It’s really that straightforward. When you wake up in the morning and you have clothes everywhere, on the floor, on your chairs. You go to use the bathroom but you end up tripping over your computer. Then you’re cursing…and all of a sudden, your mental state entering that day isn’t going to be one of joy or mindfulness. It’s going to be one of aggression. In that way, I’ve always taken care to create a clean environment free from clutter so that when I wake up, I feel uplifted by entering into it.

What that means for different people is obviously personal to them. For me, it means having art that I personally find uplifting; it means that everything has a proper place. There are basic Buddhist principles for arranging objects in one’s home where you hold certain objects up high and others down low. You could say it’s respecting the natural hierarchy of objects. Generally, in my environment I like to keep it clean and maintain things in the spaces, if that makes sense. 

In my work environment I have reminders of the Buddhist principles I want to cultivate. Right above my computer is an image. It’s a very traditional image reminding me how precious this human life actually is. Whenever I’m distracted or annoyed or whatever, I can look up and see a gentle reminder that I really should be so appreciative for this life that I do have. I think it’s nice to actually have inspiring art images and writing within your environment as constant reminders to wake up to what’s actually going on as opposed to being lost in your head.

What is the image mentioned that you have over your desk?

It’s an image of a tortoise with a yoke around its neck. Within Buddhist canon, this is used as an analogy for the rarity of a precious human life. The image is of a blind tortoise who lives in the ocean. This ocean is as wide as the world. He only comes up once every century, even though he lives many, many thousands of years. It is said that on the surface of this “world ocean,” there is a yoke. A yoke is what one would traditionally place around your ox or yak’s back. That yoke, with its little head-sized hole floats, on the top of this ocean. The odds of this blind tortoise who comes up once every hundred years, poking its head through that yoke… it is said that it is even MORE rare and MORE precious to have a human birth. Our lives are an incredible opportunity that we have. It reminds me that we should make the most of it.

What are some day-to-day meditation tips for my readers, especially for those new to meditation?

I think the most important thing in starting a meditation practice is to be consistent about it. I teach at Shambhala Centers, one could visit www.shambhala.org, to find a meditation center near them. Or just type your city and “Buddhist meditation” into your search engine and see what comes up. Most meditation centers have an open house night where you could learn the basic meditation practice for free or by donation. 

Once you receive the practice, try to do it consistently on your own at home. And there are many places that have regular open sittings where you can go and sit with a group and gain that level of support. As you engage your practice, starting to do it regularly, you don’t have to meditate for long periods of time. But you could pick it up in the same way that you would pick up a new musical instrument. 

If we pick it up once a month and play around with it, often we spend that time figuring out what we learned last time. But if we picked it up 10 minutes a day, it starts to become easier and easier to remember what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how it goes and we actually get better at it. 

Just 10 minutes a day for 11 days, breeds a sense of consistency into our being. It becomes more habit-like instead of just something that we’re trying out. It’s said that after 11 days of doing anything, it could be stopping smoking, it could be writing, it starts to become a regular habit. Our brain fires differently to actually incorporate it and it feels weird when we don’t do it. 

So, if someone really wanted to launch a meditation practice, I recommend that 10 minutes a day, 11 days in a row. Scientifically they say that after 11 times is when a practice starts to become a habit in our mind. After 21 days, it’s the fully formed habit. But you must be consistent and practice regularly every day.

by Anjie Cho

Lodro Rinzler is a teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and the author of the best-selling "The Buddha Walks into a Bar...", the award-winning "Walk Like a Buddha" and the brand new "The Buddha Walks into the Office." Over the last decade he has taught numerous workshops at meditation centers and college campuses throughout North America. Lodro’s columns appear regularly on the Huffington Post and Marie Claire online and he is frequently featured in Reality Sandwich, the Interdependence Project, Shambhala Sun, Buddhadharma, and Good Men Project. He is the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, an authentic leadership training and job placement organization, and lives in Brooklyn with his dog Tillie and his cat Justin Bieber.

For more teachings and articles by Lodro visit www.lodrorinzler.com
Follow Lodro on twitter: @lodrorinzler