I was visiting my bank yesterday afternoon when a woman walked in to inquire about their services. She was talking to one of the tellers across a table covered with plates of heart-shaped cookies, bagels and cream cheese, and freshly cut fruit. This was Valentine’s Day at the bank. As she spread cream cheese on a bagel wedge, I heard her ask for clarification when she was told the bank offer

UPDATE: October 24, 2013 – More than 1 1/2 years have passed since this post was written. Circle Bank has since been purchased by a larger “community” bank, and the changes in tone, values, and services have left me very unsatisfied. As a result of their transition, I made a change, too: I liberated another space and took my business to a local credit union. Happy happy! There I was in

Hot off the press is the January 2012 issue of Cole Hardware‘s Hardware Hotline, and my article, File Retention and Paper Purge 101. Here I share my tips to help you get through piles of paper and down to the essentials. These are the first steps towards organizing your household, small business, and family documents. If you seek some hands on assistance with this process, I’m ready to

Happy Halloween! While most people are doing their autumnal digging out of costumes and ideas for trick-or-treating and upcoming holiday festivities, my little organizer self likes the seasonal ritual of shedding. The trees drop leaves and begin to expose themselves to the cold while I exfoliate the underused or no longer relevant pieces to simplify and refine my wardrobe. It’s an activity I

Change is a bloom full of possibility and a wide river of uncertainty. It is a giant question mark, though in the case of the photo to the left, a question mark spray-painted on a piece of cast-off concrete. Change often rings of uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes all sorts of possibility. We are creatures of comfort. We get used to things just the way they are and when derailed from our norm

The ubiquitous junk drawer. It is the centralized repository where a plethora of useful and not-so-useful, like and not-so-like items seems to congregate. Think about it. Where else might you find a yo-yo with a broken string, rolls of tape, keys to unknown locks, full and half-used matchbooks, loose buttons, an undeveloped roll of film, outdated menus, loose change, and questionable batteries in