If you often find yourself inundated with one-time codes, political messages, and marketing texts on your Mac, there’s an effective way to declutter your Messages app. With just a few simple steps, you can easily remove those unwanted texts and create a cleaner messaging experience.
Mastering the Starred Feature in Gmail
If you’ve ever taken a deep dive into your Gmail account, you may have stumbled upon a long list of starred emails, often with no clear memory of why they were marked. As I work with clients to declutter their inboxes, this is a common scenario. Today, let’s explore the best ways to use the star feature in Gmail and how to keep your inbox organized.
Switch to Priority Inbox in Gmail and Change Your Life!
Mastering Mac's Finder: Finally understand where and how to organize, save and find your files
Do you need help keeping your files, folders, and documents organized on your Mac? Fear not, because Finder is here to help! But let's face it, most of us need help figuring out how to use it.
When I first got my Mac last year, I was overwhelmed by my Mac's Finder. How do I know where something is saved? What do all those icons across the top mean? How can I get to my favorite folders?
After figuring out some tips and tricks, Finder became soooo helpful. In this blog, I'll show you how you can use Finder to better organize, declutter, and find files on your Mac.
How to Declutter Your Digital Life
It's time to organize your digital life!
I was recently featured in a Vox article about ways to declutter your digital life. Whether you're trying to figure out how to organize your phone or how to clean out your Gmail inbox, the Vox article is chock-full of super PRACTICAL strategies. You can find the full article here - Easy ways to organize your digital life, from photos to emails.
Below are some highlights from the article, including my favorite ways to jump start your digital decluttering and get your digital life under control, fast. Consider this your digital declutter checklist.
Quick Wins: Easy Decluttering Projects for the Post-Holiday Lull
Your Last-Minute Holiday Gift Guide
How to Shop Smart on Black Friday
This isn't typical for me ... but I'm getting a leeetle bit excited for Black Friday.
I've got a few favorite companies and products that I've got my eye on. I wanna know what great deals they've got cookin' for the season. And luckily, it feels like the days of people getting in line for Black Friday and waking up at the crack of dawn are mostly gone. (Anyone remember the Cabbage Patch Kid frenzy??) These days, you don't have to shop for Black Friday deals in person. You can shop, mostly from home, in your comfy jammies. (Except for giving love to your local small businesses!)
Here are my top 5 Black Friday tips for how to shop smart during this day/week/month of great sales:
5 Tips for a Holiday Season with Less Stress and More Joy
I love the holidays as much as the next person, but I get a little worried when I start seeing that familiar ol' frenzy kicking in.
We're already stretched thin in our day-to-day lives. Toss in an ongoing pandemic, flu season and THEN cooking, shopping, decorating, wrapping, a small (or large) dose of family drama, and it's a recipe for a total meltdown.
So, this year, I'm taking a beat. I'm sharing with you the 5 things I'm going to do this holiday season to have less stress and more joy. Let's get those holiday ideas started!
Try this at home: The 20/20/20 (with freebie!)
It can be SO hard to stay on top of the daily clutter in our lives. We spend all weekend getting the house “just so” only have it all fall apart by Tuesday.
There’s a simple tool that can help. It’s called the 20/20/20. Here, I’m going to teach you how it works AND I’m going to give you a worksheet that you can print out to create your own.
Here’s how it works. Each day, around the same time, you’re gonna set a timer for 20 minutes for three separate chunks of time: Reset, Prep and Rest.
Get a one-way ticket out of Should Land.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard me talk about “fun & easy.” Here’s the basic premise:
When we spend too much time doing things that: a) we hate doing, or b) we aren’t very good at, we expend a lot of energy that could be going to much better things. We are living in the Land of the Shoulds, the land where you are supposed to just suck it up, and the land where you bang your head against the wall a LOT of the time.
How to pack for your summer trip (even longer ones!) with nothing but a backpack
Last summer, I got radical with my packing. I was sick and tired of dragging half of my earthly belongings with me on every trip, AND (back when we were still flying), I was sick of paying extra money for luggage.
SO, I challenged myself to pack EVERYTHING that I needed into one large-ish backpack. I even did this for a TEN-day trip to Florida.
Here’s how I did it:
I picked one color palette. I’m already kind of a minimalist dresser, so this one wasn’t too hard. In the summer I wear mostly navy, white and gray, with the occasional pop of color. That way,
Find the minimum effective dose.
I’m jazzed about a super practical and actionable article in the New York Times this week. It has videos for how to do 3 full-body workouts - and each of them is only SIX minutes long.
Now THAT’s my kinda workout.
I know what you might be thinking:
Six minutes isn’t enough to see real change, or
Six minutes? I feel like I can’t even get six SECONDS to myself. (Oh, I FEEL you.)
But this article is the perfect example of the “minimum effective dose”. I love this phrase, which I first discovered in Dr. Christine Carter’s book, The Sweet Spot.
Friction: What they didn’t teach you in high school physics
I am LOVING Atomic Habits by James Clear. Today, I am excited to share one big, fantastic nugget from the book - the idea of friction.
You remember friction from physics class, right?
If there's too much friction, that ball won't roll for very long. If there is little to none, that ball will keep rolling, and rolling, and rolling.
When it comes to having more ease and flow in our days, understanding the role of friction is KEY.
Here's how it works:
Yes, toilet paper CAN spark joy.
I do this work because I want to help people live simpler, more joyful lives.
So when I come across a product or company that is doing just that, I CANNOT wait to tell everyone about it.
(Ad nauseum. To the point where people are crossing the street when they see me around town.)
So today, my friends, I want to tell you about something that is sparking some major joy for me - my new toilet paper.
Yes, toilet paper. And it’s made by a company called Who Gives a Crap.
Hysterical, right?
Limit your inputs
Happy New Year! I LOVE this time of year because it feels like a fresh, clean slate. BUT, I often fall into the trap of trying to do TOO much. Can you relate?
Ryan Holiday’s new book, Stillness is the Key, has a whole chapter dedicated to “limiting our inputs”. Holiday says, “it’s very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information.”
Right?!?!
Never-ending news. Unlimited podcasts. SO MANY books. Endless emails, mail, and catalogs. Text chains galore.
A Step-by-Step Guide to 4D-ing your Holidays
Don’t panic! It’s just the holidays.
I’m here to help you map out a season with less stress and more joy. And I’ve even got a handy worksheet to help.
One of my absolute favorite tools to teach is the 4Ds, and the holidays are the perfect time to teach it. The 4Ds were pioneered by legendary professional organizer Julie Morgenstern in her book Time Management from the Inside Out, and they are MAGIC.
Mama! I’m like Kiki!
It’s going to be a short and sweet one this week because this month has been BONKERS! (I’m already 3 days behind schedule on posting, but who’s counting?)
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen that the joy sparks have been flying up in New York City. I am now officially a KonMari instructor, training the next cohorts of aspiring KonMari consultants. I’m feeling some major ripple effects in motion, as these lovely people prepare to spread out across the world and help so many people create lives that spark joy. Check out all the action!
You’ve got important work to do.
These days, there is a lot of important work to do.
There are wrongs to be made right.
There are children to raise into kind human beings.
There are lives to be improved.
There is beauty to be created.
We don't have time to be bogged down with physical and emotional clutter.
We don't have time to be surrounded by things, people, and activities that drain us.
Would you wait in line 30 minutes for that?
You’re in line at your favorite store. In your hands, you’ve got a scented candle, a pair of sunglasses, and a mug with a cute inspirational saying. (You should have gotten a cart.)
You’ve also got a shirt that you’re worried might be a little too baggy, or not quite the right color, but it should be fine.
An announcement comes over the loudspeaker that the registers are down and will not be up again for 30 minutes.
Would you wait?