Archives for Interviews
Unclog your commute
There’s nothing like entering a jam-packed freeway to add stress to your early morning. Catching a train is great — if you have one in your area. Although, even in places considered to have good public transportation (New York City, Paris, DC, San Francisco), the roads are still clogged with cars.
What can we do to take cars off the road and help unclog everyone’s commute? Private and public efforts are being made across the country to make our roads less cluttered spaces.
Last Thursday, I got the chance to talk to RideSpring founder, Paul McGrath. RideSpring is an online service that helps employees find ride share opportunities with other employees at the same company. We discussed McGrath’s journey from employee to entrepreneur, in his current pursuit to offer web-based alternative commute solutions.
He got the idea in the mid-1990s when he worked as an electrical engineer for a 200 person company in Scotts Valley, CA. He enjoyed an 8-mile bike ride up a narrow, snaky two-lane highway to and from work most days. On driving days, though, he wanted to ride share. “For the days I wasn’t biking,” says McGrath, “I thought it would be good to find a carpool partner.” Why not socialize with a co-worker during the ride and tread more lightly on the road and save a few dollars on fuel?
But, as many commuters know, finding a carpool buddy isn’t always easy. McGrath sought public carpoolings systems first. While he wouldn’t mind sharing his commute information within his company, he didn’t want to post it on public sites. “I looked for a product within companies but it didn’t exist.” This led him to search for (and eventually create) a solution.
He dove into market research and found that regional services attracted very few users, which dramatically limited good ride-matching opportunities. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, frought with highly congested highways, an organization called 511 exists for the public, but fewer than 1% of commuters have signed up for the system.
His research squashed a number of myths about commuters. “It’s a myth that people aren’t willing to leave their cars at home,” say McGrath.
What he discovered is “There’s a shortage of drivers willing to accept passengers, rather than the other way around.”
Another myth he his company is helping to debunk is the notion that carpooling doesn’t work. However, the US Census reports that carpooling for Americans remains the second most popular way to get to work. This is second only to driving alone to work.
After his data collecting, McGrath could see the need to develop an easy-to-use method for commuters.
Rides
McGrath wanted to get cars off the road and make commuting more enjoyable. With his technical background, he launched a web-based system through RideSpring targeted at companies of 500 people or more. When companies subscribe, co-workers can drive to the same company together. The RideSpring system searches possible ride matches through it’s web process that scans zip codes for people riding in their areas across the US.
The statistics are promising. Some of the companies that subscribe to RideSpring show a nearly 60% sign-up rate for the service. People are actually using it.
Rewards
There are intrinsic rewards that come from finding an alternative commute. You get to do your part for the environment, have a good conversation with a coworker, or even get some important work done. With the US Census reporting that 77% of American commuters drive alone, many companies offer financial and other rewards to encourage people to free up road capacity and reduce CO2 omissions. This allows employers to contribute to the environment, reduce the need for new parking lots, and make their employees happier.
McGrath summarizes RideSpring’s services by saying: “What we deliver is effectiveness. We show companies our proven approach to get people signed up. We make it fun and easy to use and employees will actually use it.”
What do you do to unclog your commute? Does your company offer incentives to commuters who carpool or use public transportation? If your company had (has) more than 500 employees, would you consider using a program like RideSpring? Why or why not? Do any of our readers already use this or a similar service?
Sue Brenner is a regular contributor to Unclutterer. She offers her own eZine at www.actionsymphony.com and if you want to hear her voice, she gives free, monthly goal-success tele-seminars.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Unclutterer on Carrie and Danielle’s Style Statement website
Online now is a fun interview I sat for with the lovely Danielle LaPorte, who is co-author of the book Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design. Danielle and her partner in all-things stylish, Carrie McCarthy, run a fantastic website that includes a daily question to their readership and interviews with people who they find inspiring. (I’m not sure how I made the list, but I’m truly honored they think so!)
The reason I’m linking to my interview and daily question on Unclutterer is two fold: 1.) The daily question I pose is all about clutter, and I know that many of you have great responses that you can share on their site, and 2.) I really appreciate their Style Statement philosophy. The idea is that the better you know yourself, the better choices you make. And, inevitably, you fill your life with less stuff and more meaning.
Feel welcome to head over there and check out the discussion about clutter. I’ll be following it through the day, and I hope to see you there!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Interview with organizing legend Julie Morgenstern
After reviewing Julie Morgenstern’s latest book in my column on Real Simple’s website, I asked her publicist if I might be able to do an interview with Julie here on Unclutterer. Schedules were lined up, and we had the opportunity to talk about many of the details from her insightful new book. Below is a transcript of that interview, and I hope that you enjoy it as much I did. Also, a special thank you to Julie Morgenstern for taking the time to speak with us!
Unclutterer: In your book When Organizing Isn’t Enough, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life, you define clutter as “any obsolete object, space, commitment or behavior that weighs you down, distracts you, or depletes your energy.” I believe that most of our readers will agree that objects and spaces are prone to being or collecting clutter, but commitments and behavior may not immediately come to mind as clutter. Can you explain how a behavior or a commitment could be cluttering up one’s life?
Julie: Commitment clutter takes the form of unfinished projects and to-dos, unfulfilled obligations, and cumbersome roles which bog you down, make you feel bad about yourself, de-energize and deplete you. They occupy space in your schedule that would be better used for something else. By behavior clutter, I am referring to bad habits such as perfectionism, procrastination, chronic lateness, mindless escapes, and workaholism. These habits drive us to mindlessly pad our schedules with activities that provide little or no value. Bad habits steal hours every day, not only from actual time lost watching endless hours of TV, or coming up with (yet another) excuse for being late for example, but the energy you spend beating yourself up over it. All of that self-flagellation is clutter too—expending energy, effort and time that could be freed up for something energizing, productive and useful.
Unclutterer: You identify times of transition (retirement, new baby, career change, loss of a parent, etc.) as being moments when the desire to SHED is strong. Do you believe that life transitions are an integral factor in wanting internal and external changes? Why do you think this is the case?
Julie: When we are in transition, we feel a loss of control—and SHEDing allows us to take control where we can—our homes, our stuff, our schedule, our own behavior. Also, we each have a certain amount of stuff and activity that anchors us. Transition, whether internally driven or externally imposed, is a time of movement, we feel the natural need to lighten up, and lift anchor so that we can move forward.
Unclutterer: You address that clutter often comes from the past, but can it ever come from the future? Can unrealized goals or inaccurate self perceptions also be clutter?
Julie: Sure, but when you think about it, these are really connected to old beliefs from the past. They are beliefs or goals we adopted in the past, and which no longer fit.
Unclutterer: In your chapter “When Organizing Isn’t Enough,” you recommend that people set “treasure guidelines” for deciding which objects, behaviors, and activities should stay and which should go. I love the example you provide that likens selecting treasures to choosing photographs for a wedding album. How can a person set his or her specific treasure guidelines?
Julie: Before diving into the pile of clutter, picture your theme, and ask yourself, “If all of this were to go away, what are the one or two things I would want to keep? That really would serve me now and as a meaningful memento of the past?” It is essential to write your list of treasure guidelines on a post-it, or piece of paper, and lay it on top of the pile, or the box, or the folder so that when you actually go through the pile of stuff, you are simply evaluating every item based your list of treasure guidelines. If it’s on the list, you keep it, if it’s not, it goes. And, if it’s something you hadn’t even considered, you go back to your theme, and ask where and how this would serve you moving forward. SHEDing goes very fast once you have established and written out your treasure guidelines.
Unclutterer: At the end of the book, you describe the “30 percent slip” to define the sliding that can take place back into old habits and routines. I like the advice you give to start over again and reassess themes. Would this process also work if someone gets stuck halfway through the SHED process? What might a mid-SHED adjustment look like and how would you recommend the do-over?
Julie: A Mid-SHED feeling of being stuck is really what I refer to as the WALL OF PANIC, where, once you have heaved a bunch of obsolete stuff—you get a little panicked—who am I without that stuff? (Or that role? Or that habit?) The impulse when facing this sudden openness is to either reach back from what you got rid of, or lurch forward to fill the empty space with anything to fill the space—without taking the time to see if it is a fit for you. The solution is to find the courage to stay empty-handed. You need to give yourself a “decision-free” zone, a period of observation where you don’t do anything but get centered with yourself. The best thing you can do right now is take advantage of this unhampered moment to reconnect with the things that you make you, “you,” no matter what—your unique character, experience, strengths, resourcefulness, intelligence, and contribution. In the book, I provide a series of practical and introspective ways to uncover and hold fast to who you are. Your period of observation can last a few days to a few months, and is an exciting opportunity to study and strengthen your confidence, discipline and receptivity to find the best opportunities for yourself as you move forward.
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To learn more about the basics of the book, be sure to read my review of it on Real Simple’s website.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Interview on The Happiness Project
Yesterday, I was interviewed by the wonderful Gretchen Rubin who writes the inspiring blog The Happiness Project. Gretchen spent a year auditioning every major “principle, tip, theory, and scientific study [she] could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah” to see which ones worked, which ones didn’t, and how she could use them to help her be happy. She has a book coming out in late 2009 chronicling the year she test-drove all of the theories, and her blog also details these experiences. You may recognize Gretchen’s blog because she also is a member of the LifeRemix network and writes a column for Real Simple’s Simply Stated community in the Life section.
When Gretchen asked if I would sit for an interview, I dropped everything to do it. The topic of the interview isn’t directly related to getting rid of physical clutter, but it definitely touches on the bigger-picture idea of mental clutter that can prohibit a person from being happy. Check out the article if you’re interested!
Popularity: 11% [?]
Bringing in a pro: What professional organizers really want you to know
I want to start by saying that we are on the verge of launching the Real Simple widget on our site so that we won’t have to write these notifications as separate posts any longer. Look for it to go live tomorrow or Thursday. The amazing community manager at Real Simple set up a personal RSS feed for my writing, which makes the programming a breeze now. Three cheers for Melissa! And, three cheers for the awesome programmers at Unclutterer who are creating the widget. Woo hoo!
Today on Real Simple is an insider’s look at hiring a professional organizer. I had the joy of interviewing some power houses in the professional organizing community for this piece, and was blown away by their advice. It is very educational and I recommend you give it a look:
Should You Hire a Professional Organizer?
photo: Tara Striano
Popularity: 15% [?]
Organized interior design advice from Decor8 editor Holly Becker
If you followed the link yesterday to the new Real Simple website, you saw that we have a partner in the Home and Organizing community. Holly Becker, author of the electrifying blog Decor8, writes about interior design and style on the days when we’re not discussing organizing. Since this is the month of sharing at Unclutterer and Decor8 is one of our favorite blogs, we asked Holly to share some of her gifted design advice with us on the topic of organization. Holly provides many incredible links in her interview, so be sure to follow them for artistic motivation. Our appreciation, too, goes to Holly for taking the time to talk with us!
Unclutterer: “Inspiring” is a word that often comes to mind when I read your site. The images and articles you present help me to imagine great things for my space. What are your favorite pieces of inspiration you’ve written about on your site?
Holly: I’m very curious and extroverted and I naturally enjoy meeting people, so I have to say interviewing creative men and women who are following their dreams (always inspiring!) along with shop and home tours of decor8 readers are the pieces I really enjoy writing. Mari Eriksson, YippieYeah, Enna, Nest Decorating, and Selina Lake are a few of my recent favorites. I also love to write random decor-related pieces, like Power Poufs, Doily Love, and I Dream of Cake. I like to mix things up, so I don’t adhere to strict schedules and run very few “regular columns” with the exception of Etsy: Take Five Tuesdays and Color Me Mondays. I don’t want to make things too formal, when I wake up in the morning it is then that I decide what I’ll write about. Very little is prepared in advance, it’s all on a whim just as I believe blogging for me should be - creative journaling. It’s a blog afterall, not a magazine.
Unclutterer: How can color be integrated into an organization system?
Holly: Through labeling! Adding fancy hang tags to storage boxes and labeling magazine files with colorful labels is pretty and helpful. (For fancy hang tags, shop Elfrida.) Some like to organize their book spines by color, not the best way to locate your books but it sure is pretty and all the rage right now! Use “day of the week” clips to organize your work, Susy Jack makes some great ones. You can also cover your boring corkboard with a favorite fabric or wrapping paper. Use canvas storage boxes with handles like these from Hable Construction for concealing and storing bottled water in the kitchen. Wire and clothes pegs help to organize photos and cards on a wall or add your favorite wallpaper to empty oatmeal containers to store odds and ends. Try chalkboard paint and colored chalk so you can write your schedule directly on the wall … The list goes on and on. Look at everything you own twice before you donate it to charity — see if it can be used for something other than what it was intended for.
Unclutterer: What is your favorite organization tool? (A tool can be anything that helps you to achieve a more organized life … it doesn’t have to be a tangible object.)
Holly: Finding a schedule that works for you and sticking with it. I am working on practicing what I preach! As fas as advice goes on getting organized, hire out for help if you’re in over your head. I’ve done this in the past and it saved me. Hire a cleaning lady or a personal organizer, even a decorator, if you need to clean the slate and start from scratch. Sometimes you just need another person to step into your space and give you some encouragement and advice. Once they leave, you can get started on maintaining things which, based on my own personal experience, is a lot easier than starting a project on your own.
Unclutterer: Images you post that are representations of the shabby chic even appear to be organized and purposefully dressed. Do you find that good design (of any style) and an uncluttered environment go hand-in-hand?
Holly: Not always, I have visited apartments in Paris that were over-the-top cluttered but somehow worked. I’ve also worked with some of the most brilliant executives in Boston who manage to work successfully despite the layers of endless paperwork and books in their office. They knew where everything was in their paper mountains and that’s all that seemed to matter! An uncluttered environment may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly the best for me. Shabby Chic, Eclectic Bohemian, Mid-Century Modern, Hollywood Regency, they are by no means minimalistic, but the key is that everything you see in photos from your favorite magazines is styled to perfection. All items are arranged well, so clutter isn’t termed clutter anymore if it’s pulled together according to a theme on a mantel or credenza. It’s only clutter if it’s thrown around without any thought put into its placement or has no practical reason for being there. Having less isn’t always the goal in some of these styles, having less clutter is.
Unclutterer: A lot of our readers are parents who are looking for ways to keep their kid clutter at bay, but still make their homes a place where their children feel comfortable. Do you have any suggestions for these readers?
Holly: I’m not a mother but I am a daughter and from experience as a child — please parents let the kids be kids. I can’t stress how important it is to allow them the space needed to be creative and explore their inner artist. It’s also important to train them to be organized, but not to be so concerned with perfection that it stomps out their creativity. Carve out spaces in the home where the kids can make a mess - a play area in a living room, a nook in the kitchen, or if you have space, an entire playroom. Of course, their bedroom should be where they play, so most of their toys and such should be kept in their bedroom. Make clean-up time fun — have mini contests (see who can clean up first), or create charts with chores and boxes where they can check off what they’ve done that week — the end of week the chart is reviewed and if all the chores were taken care of then the child is awarded with a trip to the zoo, park, or something else where the parent can spend time with them. When it was time to clean in my house, my mother made it fun. She’d play music and sing - just like Cinderella! It was so cute but it motivated me to get involved.
Unclutterer: Of all of the jobs that you could have, why have you chosen to blog about interior design? What is it you love about this subject?
Holly: I didn’t select blogging as a job, I think it selected me! I started blogging before design blogs were running ads and became a source of income or a hot new business. When I started blogging, I only knew about a few blogs (3 total) and that was it. It was an exciting way for me to catalog the finds I sourced for my design clients back then, and it grew into being a source for design aficionados all over the world to tap into. It’s exciting and though I earn a living through blogging now, I don’t consider it a job. It’s still my creative outlet where I can be myself and enjoy the company of other creative types online and for me, that’s all that matters.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Transforming inherited jewelry
I’m currently doing research for an upcoming series of posts on inherited clutter. Constantly thinking about the passing of loved ones is emotionally draining, however, and I’ve been seeking out frequent diversions from my serious research.
One of my diversions has been to look for creative ways to use old things in new ways. For example, I’ve discovered an artist who takes old costume jewelry that people never wear, modernizes and reworks it, and creates stylish, fashionable, new pieces of jewelry. Since outdated, costume jewelry is the majority of what I inherited when my maternal grandmother passed away, I find this process brilliant.
I wanted to learn more, so I contacted Sara Bradstreet, the artist I discovered who most deeply captivated my attention, for an interview. Thank you, Sara, for talking with me. (The necklace pictured on the right is a broach she trasnformed.)
Unclutterer: What inspired you to become an artist who brings new life to old jewelry?
Sara: I wanted to create art with little waste and satisfy my desire to sniff out the diamond in the rough. With jewelry, there is little waste. I use most elements of the piece. Sometimes, I will buy a not-so-attractive necklace just for the clasp, or a bag of buttons for the few rhinestone buttons at the bottom–even things as random as old silverwear find their way into my collection. I find much beauty and integrity in old things and hate to see beautiful gems in a dumpster.
Popularity: 25% [?]
A man in uniform
MacUser points us to an article by design academic Steven Heller in the AIGA journal about Steve Job’s wardrobe. Heller imagines a fictional interview with the Apple iCon in which he only has one question:
Heller: Mr. Jobs, it’s not easy to get you to sit for an interview, so I’ll make this short. Why do you always wear blue jeans and a black turtleneck?
The question’s never answered in the “interview,” but in the comments Heller suggests that Jobs understands that he is part of the Apple brand and therefore brands himself consistently whenever he’s acting officially. I think that might well be part of it, but here’s a recent photo of Jobs at one of his kids’ soccer matches — he’s wearing jeans, a mock turtleneck, and presumably white New Balance shoes. So it seems he always dresses like that.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Peter Walsh answers questions for Unclutterer.com
Peter Walsh is an organizational giant. His books It’s All Too Much! and How to Organize Just About Everything, his television show Clean Sweep on TLC, and his radio show every Friday on XM Satellite Radio (XM156) inspire people to live uncluttered lives. Walsh is an essential resource for anyone looking to bring more order and less chaos into their world, and he is a bit of a hero in these parts.
Peter Walsh recently took time out of his busy schedule to participate in an interview with Unclutterer.com. His answers are informative and motivational, and we hope that you find them as wonderfully inspiring as we do.
Unclutterer: In your book It’s All Too Much!, you indicate that you have walked away from projects when people value their possessions over their relationships. Isn’t this type of unhealthy prioritization at the root of most people’s clutter problems?
Peter Walsh: Clutter comes in many forms and the reasons why people hold onto it is similarly complex. There are two main types of clutter: Memory Clutter – which reminds one of an important person, or achievement or event from the past – and I-Might-Need-It-One-Day Clutter – this is the stuff held onto in preparation for all possible futures that one might encounter. Keeping things from the past or sensible planning for the future are great things – it’s when the objects take over that there’s a problem. With many of the people I encounter, their primary relationship is with their stuff. Instead of owning their stuff, their stuff owns them. This clearly is not only unhealthy but also a real stumbling block to happiness and a fulfilling life. If your stuff is causing problems in your life or relationships it’s time to do something about it!
Popularity: 24% [?]
Police drummer Stewart Copeland enjoys simple life
In a recent Reuters interview, Police drummer Stewart Copeland talks about his simple living:
I have one house (in Los Angeles), I drive a Jeep Cherokee, I live very simply. I discovered in life that I have the same joy in divestment as I once got as a young man in acquisition. I have the perfect house. I’m never leaving this house that I’m in. I might trade my Jeep in for some environment-friendly vehicle of some kind. But I’m not into fancy cars. My watch is a Casio. I live very simply, and I’ve discovered that half of the so-called luxuries that people strive for do not provide happiness. My happiness comes from my children, my wife, my house that I love that I live in.
Here at Unclutterer, we like to encourage people to find joy in divestment and discourage needless acquisitions. I’m sure as a young rockstar Mr. Copeland had his fair share of needless acquisitions. It is nice to see he has found joy in simplifying his life.
Popularity: 12% [?]
