Our Work What we Do About Us Blog Join Our Network Contact Us

The Best Ideas for Getting Organized with Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks

The Best Ideas for Getting Organized with Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks

by

Hundreds of women came together in The Motherhood to get tips and tricks for getting organized from the brilliant Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks, Christine Koh of Boston Mamas and Meagan Francis of The Happiest Mom.

 

The biggest organizing challenges for everyone?   Paper clutter, kids’ arts supplies, kids’ outgrown and out-of-season clothes, family schedules, and finding time and inspiration to actually get organized.

 

From the wildly inspiring conversation, here are the Top Twenty Tips for Organizing Your Life:

 

1.  Simplify: 1) don’t organize more STUFF than you need to. (Declutter first.) 2) don’t organize more FINELY than you need to. (Don’t create files if a shoebox will suffice.)   – Asha Dornfest, Parent Hacks

 

2.   The key to getting organized isn’t finding that one true perfect system.  It’s creating A system. Any system. And then doing it!   – Meagan Francis,  The Happiest Mom

 

3.  Papers have a way of attracting more papers, toys more toys, junk more junk, etc. Attack it before it has a chance to grow! BE RUTHLESS!   – Meagan Francis

 

4.  I put a recurring Outlook to-do reminder to reconcile my paperwork every month. Since I love checking off to do items, it really helps! – Christine Koh, Boston Mamas

 

5.  For old papers you don’t want to part with – but aren’t sure where to store – use the scanner out and convert it to digital clutter! – Homa24

 

6.  I try to consolidate as much of that stuff as I can, right away.   So, for example, instead of hanging on to the school notices, I enter the information into my calendar/notebook right way and then ditch it. For bills, I have two pockets that stick to the wall – one for ‘to pay’ and one for ‘recently paid. –  Meagan Francis

 

                      (Photo: Wren)

 

7.  Hang clipboards like these to categorize and keep track of paper piles without taking up desk space. – Christine Koh

 

8.  If it’s not tax related or if I can get it online in the event I need it, it goes. – saracarl

 

9.   Make photobooks out of the photos of her kid’s art. They love looking through them. – Homa24

 

10.  The kids all have boxes to keep the papers they want to keep.  If they don’t put it in their box, it gets recycled. – Brandie

 

11.   Coupon binders are awesome! You get a binder and the baseball card holder plastic sheets {know what I’m talking about}. One coupon in each slot, then you always can see exactly what you have when you shop! – Brandie

 

                                      (Photo: Christine Koh, Boston Mamas)

 

12.  One of my key strategies to establish household harmony is getting stuff BEHIND DOORS. – Christine Koh

 

13.  We do bi-annual consignment sales for the kids’ clothes/toys. – loranstefani

 

14.  Think in terms of the concept that the more space you allocate the more you will fill it.  We have one cardboard box per grade to store art/papers from school and one large plastic bin for clothing. When space is limited, it forces you to trim down and only save what you really want to save! – Christine Koh

 

15.  Absolute necessity as you undertake getting organized: a calendar and a to-do list. Whatever format works for you…use it and keep it with you every day.   The important thing is to get into the habit of writing things down.  Initially it feels like more time taken away, but soon this amazing feeling of clarity comes. – Asha Dornfest

 

16.  We have one of those huge desk calendars hanging on the door to our garage.  Everyone has to write down anything they want us to know about on that calendar.  – Brandie

 

 

17.  My kids have trouble in the morning. Not morning people. So I write down their routines with them and they draw pictures, then they can check the chart to make sure they are getting through it all. – Julie Pippert.

 

18.  Jedi to-do list trick: You WILL be interrupted throughout your day. So add rough time estimates to your to-do items (5 mins, 15 mins, 1 hour, etc.). That way, when your kid throws up and your three hours of writing time gets reduced to 15 minutes, you can plug something into that open slot. – Asha Dornfest

 

19.  You do NOT need to do this alone, nor should you. Delegate to your partner, your kids, and to paid help if need be. Swap organizing ‘services’ with a friend. – Asha Dornfest

 

20.   I look at organizing as a PRACTICE, not a process. There’s always going to be setbacks and do-overs when you have kids. Embrace the endlessness! – Meagan Francis

 

Thanks to the great advice, we are itching to de-clutter our own desks and homes!

 

Asha of Parent Hacks shared a link to an organizing resource page.

 

You can find Asha, Christine and Meagan, the fantastic hosts for the Talk, here:

 

Asha Dornfest, Parent Hacks, @parenthacks

Christine Koh, Boston Mamas, @bostonmamas

Meagan Francis, The Happiest Mom, @meaganfrancis

 

Be sure to check out the full transcript of the “Getting Organized” Talk for tons more great tips and advice!

Parental Controls Bootcamp with DadLabs’ Clay Nichols – Today @ 1 pm ET

by

Join us today for a Talk that can’t be missed. DadLabs creator Clay Nichols will be leading an all star line-up for Parental Control Bootcamp: eProofing the Kids’ Technology. Clay and his co-hosts will share their tips and insights on how to actually put into place all the great parental control mechanisms the geeks build into our gadgets and we parents don’t know how to use. We’ll let Clay tell you himself (you’ve got to watch his class intro video – it ROCKS!):

http://youtu.be/MbhNO6z1vHg

 

Please join us TODAY at 1 pm ET for Parental Contols Bootcamp with Clay Nichols!

Great Live Talks Happening in The Motherhood This Week

by

 

 

We are super excited about the Live Talks this week!  Here’s a quick run-down. Be sure to join us!!


Today, 1pm ET/10 am PT: Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks will share her BEST home organizing tips.

 

Tuesday, 1 pm ET/10 am PT:  DadLabs’ creator Clay Nichols will talk about kids and their technology – and ways you can manage their digital lives and where to put limits.

 

Wednesday, 2 pm ET/11 am PT:   Gabrielle Blair, Design Mom and Alt Design Summit co-founder, will share highlights from the Alt Design Summit.

 

Thursday, at 1 pm ET/10 am PT:  Amy McCready will lead a live on what to do if your kids won’t listen.

 

Our Talks are all-text, so no call-in numbers or speakers needed.  Just head to the Live Talks page in themotherhood.com to see the full schedule and dive into the conversation on the page.

 

The Women Entrepreneurs Festival

by

The Women Entrepreneurs Festival 2012 this week was a huge high.  Founded by the incredible Joanne Wilson, Gotham Gal and Nancy Hechinger, NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program, the WE Festival brought together 300 women, all entrepreneurs, entrepreneur hopefuls or investors.

 

 

Talk about inspiring.  I met the most astounding women with ideas ranging from creating circuit breaker toys for kids, to crowd-sourcing the weather to making beautifully designed products for people with disabilities.

 

Some of the commentary and themes that stood out for me:

 

Co-founder Joanne Wilson gave rousing remarks to kick off the Festival.  Here’s a quote from a Gotham Gal post that gets to some of the points she made:

 

I’d like women to stop apologizing and to never utter the word I am sorry for the decisions that they have made in their careers.  I’d like women to stop starting their sentences with I think.  Just get in there and speak your mind … [And] we need to stop judging each other for the choices each of us have made and instead start applauding each other for who we are.

 

Caren Maio of Nestio got the room laughing when she said, “The definition of entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down.”

 

Joanne Lang of About One said that fundraising shifted for her when she equated finding investors with finding a husband.  Instead of hoping to convince investors to put their money in her company, she interviewed them to find investors who would ‘love me forever and support me.’  She took control of whom she wanted as partners and the investors started lining up.

 

Also on the subject of investing, the Investors panel talked about how women need to ‘lean forward into’ their pitches to investors and how women can tend to want affirmation and approval from their investors while men are more likely to present their plans, hear the investor feedback and then run their businesses as they see fit.  They said the latter is preferable.

 

Arianna Huffington told us we need to get enough sleep and take care of ourselves.  She said that men tend to brag about how they can get by on so little sleep, which she finds ridiculous, and how after hearing from a dinner partner at an event how he got by on so little sleep, she thought, “Well maybe if you got five more hours of sleep a night, you’d be more interesting.”

 

Arianna also talked about the many ways that women’s interests are leading coverage on the Huffington Post, including mindful living, divorce (“marriages come and go, but divorce is forever” and the newly launched Global Motherhood initiative (see Cooper’s post from yesterday).

 

Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, talked about how men’s careers more often follow a straight line.  Women tend to stitch together their varied experiences and parts of themselves, all the bits of fabric of their lives, to create a beautiful tapestry, and it’s only down the road that we can look back and see all the pieces coming together into a whole that makes sense for us.

 

On my panel, Amanda Hesser of Food52 talked about branding and how she and Merrill deliberately didn’t want to go down the ‘easy chicken’ road – that they never wanted to choose recipe categories that would get the quick bumps in search traffic, but create interesting, valuable, new foods for themselves and their communities.   Our fellow panelists, Barbara Pantuso, Hey Neighbor, Tereza Nemessanyi, Honesty Now, and Allison Floam, The Fix, each shared their unique, interesting takes on building online communities.  Here’s the WE Festival’s overview of our Community Makers Panel.

 

Lastly, an important stat:  By 2018, women entrepreneurs will be responsible for creating 5 million new jobs nationwide, according to according to new data projections from The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute.  That’s more than half of the 9.7 million new jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects small businesses to create.

  Rock on, women!!

 

Nancy Hechinger closed the Festival with an inspiring summary of the highlights and Red Burns, founder of the ITP program at New York University, read this poem:

 

Appolinaire said:

Come to the edge.

It’s too high.

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

And he pushed them, and they flew.

 

 

Weight Loss on a Budget: The Simple Diet with Dr. James Anderson

by

Dr. James Anderson was in The Motherhood today to discuss his new book The Simple Diet: A Doctor’s Science-Based Plan, which outlines a budget-friendly diet for losing weight.

 

Some ‘food for thought’ from the conversation:

 

Getting Started

 

Dr. Anderson said, “To be successful, many people need to develop a deep commitment to the importance of losing weight and improving health and mobility for their family and loved ones. One needs to have a HEART for weight loss.”

 

We’ve all fallen off a dieting wagon at some point.  “‘Simple’ is such a critical thing for me,” said Becki. “I don’t want to have to whip out a little booklet or an app on my phone every time I want to eat.”

 

Said Jenn of SuperJenn, “Making this a family commitment is a big part of success, as well.  When one person is going it alone it is more difficult.”

 

When You’re on a Strict Budget…

 

“One of the central features of the Simple Diet is the use of three shakes per day. We estimate that moderately obese people can save $75/week on the Simple Diet,” said Dr. Anderson.

 

According to Nicole of SAHM Reviews, “When we changed our eating habits, we realized that we spent less because we were eating less. Think about the cost of a steak … we used to cook two when we ate steak, but now we cook one.  That savings offset what we spent on produce. Coupon savvy moms need to remember that they can just transfer their savings from one product to another!”

 

“For a budget-minded dieter, I recommend purchasing fresh fruit and vegetables in season and preparing them with Splenda or non-caloric additives to be tasty,” said Dr. Anderson. “Canned fruits and vegetables also are good choices – rinse them to get rid of sugar and salt.”

 

The frozen entrees allowed in The Simple Diet help with portion size but still can be “more expensive than the cost of making my own foods,” said Rachael of Empowering Mommy.

 

But, as Christy of Quirky Fusion pointed out, “I think about how much my time is worth, especially during the day. I’d rather spend a bit more on a frozen meal during the day than carve out precious work time to cook. But I also like working more than cooking.”

 

When You Can’t Cook at Home…

 

According to Brett of This Mama Loves Her Bargains, when eating salad, “Dip your fork in the dressing, then put food on the fork – then your tastebuds get the flavor and not a ton of extra calories in each bite!”

 

“When I order at a restaurant I ask them to bring a box at the same time and before I even begin, place half of the meal in the box to take home for another time,” added Jenn of SuperJenn.  She also advised, “I’ve found that all of the cheese found on restaurant food can really hide the flavor of the meal as well… asking for ‘lite cheese’ can cut calories and increase the flavor of the dish.”

 

As a guest in another person’s home, politely maintaining your diet can be trickier.  Rachael of Empowering Mommy said, “My husband has learned to respectfully say, ‘I’m just watching my calories as I try to lose weight.’ He still tries everything, but small portions of the things that are high in calories.”

 

When You Don’t Have Enough Time…

 

The Simple Diet allows for low-cal frozen food options, which are a time-saver, but as Dr. Anderson says, “The sodium content of many frozen food entrees can be high. You can shop the hundreds of entrees available and find lower sodium ones.”

 

Double your favorite recipes when you’re cooking, so you can freeze the extra.  “I love making soups. Tons of veggies and plenty of leftovers to freeze for another night,” said Emily.

 

When You Just Want MORE…

 

“The Simple Diet relies on VOLUME,” said Dr. Anderson. “We recommend 64 oz of noncaloric fluid daily. Fruits and vegetables provide volume with only 15-30 cal/oz. Shakes provide volume with 10-20 cal/oz … People report initially that they cannot eat all the food.”

 

“Hydration can make such a difference in so many aspects of your health!!” agreed Jenn of SuperJenn. “Sometimes when we feel hungry, our bodies are actually thirsty, right?”

 

“On the Simple Diet we recommend eating fruit but not using fruit juices. The fruits, often with the apple, peach or pear skins, have more fiber and take longer to eat. Research shows that this is an important aid to weight loss,” said Dr. Anderson.

 

Here’s to a healthy New Year! You can read the whole transcript of the Talk with Dr. Anderson here.

 

Thanks to Dr. Anderson and our fantastic co-hosts for leading an inspiring and informative Live Talk:

 

Brett, This Mama Loves Her Bargains

Christy, Quirky Fusion

Jenn, SuperJenn

Nicole, SAHM Reviews

Rachael, Empowering Mommy