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What You Lose When You Buy Something on Sale by @cluttershrink

December 19, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske Leave a Comment

The True Cost of Sale Itemsby Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor 

Most of us get a short burst of adrenaline when we snatch up a bargain. So many of us even brag about how little we paid for coveted items. We respond to compliments with, “Thanks. I can’t believe I only paid $10 for this designer sweater.” Have you ever found yourself texting a picture of your fabulous find to a friend because you want her to share in your excitement too?

Sale items are often impulse buys. According to the Impulse Shopping Fact sheet, “88% of all impulse purchases are made because an item is on sale.” We walk out of the store with a bag in hand doing our mental math, smiling to ourselves and calculating our savings.

Are we really saving though? Are the items we’re buying on sale things we even need? If we don’t need them in the first place, wouldn’t we all be better off financially if we just didn’t buy them at all?

Don’t worry. I’m not judging. I’m a sucker for a good sale just like the rest of us, but I think my job as a professional organizer has given me a different perspective on how and why sale items often cost us more. More what, you ask? More time, more space and certainly more money.

How does something you buy on sale end up costing you so much more?

Sale items often cost us more because they lead to other purchases. Most of these purchases are also impulse purchases. We figure we save so much money on the sale item that we have a little extra to spend on something else. Perhaps that extra something is a $4 beverage with a jolt of caffeine. Maybe it’s the same item in a different color. The thrill of the find often results in a quest to find more bargains. The next thing we know, we’re walking lopsided in the mall suffering with back pain due to the weight of our shopping bags. Sale items = more money spent.

When you eventually make it home, you’re faced with the task of where to put all of your new purchases. It’s time to make space, and if you’re like most of my clients, storage space is something you really wish you could find on sale. I can’t even count the number of times a client has said to me, “I have to keep that. I got it on sale.” or “Do you know how much that would have been if I paid full price? I’ll never find it on sale again.” At least 60% of the time though, the sale items are in unopened boxes or still have price tags on them, probably because the items were never needed in the first place. Sale items often cause storage problems. Overcrowded storage often leads to misplaced or damaged items. When you can’t find or access what you have, that’s when you’re more likely to buy duplicate items, and there you are, spending even more money – again. Sale items = more required storage space.

If you bring things into your home, you then have to take care of them. If they’re clothes, you wash them. If they’re decorative items, you dust them. Electronics, small appliances and exercise equipment all require maintenance and cleaning too. When you buy any item, you may feel like you’re giving yourself a gift, but what you’re really giving yourself is another job. The less you have, the less you have to maintain. That’s why you’ll rarely hear a minimalist telling you that she is spending her weekend cleaning out the garage. Sale items = more time required for maintenance.

I’m all about finding a great price on something I need, but after organizing for others for 13 years, I have seen the financial, physical, and emotional toll that too much stuff can have on people.

“I have too many items I bought on sale” is a common common theme for most of the clients with whom I work. If you stop to evaluate how sale items continuously drain financial, space and time resources, it’s easy to see how they often cost us much more than we ever anticipate when we take out our wallets to make a purchase.

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines.

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Featured Contributor, Money & Finances, She Owns It Tagged With: clutter, maintenance, organizing, sales, saving money, storage space

10 Pre-Holiday Organizing Tasks for Business by @cluttershrink

November 17, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske Leave a Comment

Organize Your Business Before the Holidays So You Can Enjoy Your Time Off

Organize Your Business Before the Holidays So You Can Enjoy Your Time Off

by Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

The chaos of the holiday season can be stressful enough on its own. When you compound the shopping, party planning, cooking and traveling with running a business, it is highly possible that your stress level will increase due to the amount of pressure you feel to get it all done, especially while you’re busy trying to keep your family and clients happy too.

What you want for the holiday season is simple–a few days off to spend with family and friends. After working hard all year, that’s not too much to ask, is it?

The best way to create that opportunity is to organize some of your business responsibilities now – as in right now, the weeks immediately before and after Thanksgiving. It’s time to do some pre-holiday organizing with these 10 simple tasks.

  1. Schedule your social media posts for the week before, during and after your scheduled days off. If you aren’t a big fan of scheduling social media posts (as I am not), then at least write the content for your social media posts in advance so you’re not scrambling to come up with ideas at 5am when you are prepping a turkey or doing some last-minute gift wrapping.
  2. If you need to schedule meetings or phone calls with clients or prospects for dates in January, do it now. Presumably, they will be very busy or on vacation in the upcoming weeks as well. Save time playing e-mail or voicemail tag, and relax knowing that any outstanding issues will be discussed during the January meetings.
  3. Notify your clients of your vacation plans at least two weeks in advance. Ask if they have any outstanding requests. Set expectations regarding what your response time will be to requests that are made while you are taking time off. You don’t want clients to interpret the lack of an immediate response from you as a reason to question your ability to handle their needs.
  4. Gather up any business receipts for the current tax year. If you don’t have time to organize them by month, type or client, store them in a secure envelope or box so you can sort through them before you prepare your taxes.
  5. Sort your e-mails by sender. If you have an overloaded Inbox, divide and conquer. Over the course of three days, sort through e-mails from senders whose names start with A-K. Then, work on L-S, and finally T-Z. Delete or archive e-mails that are not relevant to current or upcoming projects.
  6. Pay all business expenses for the current tax year. You don’t want to wake up on January 1st and realize you missed out on claiming some of your expenses as tax deductions.
  7. Purge your business files. If you find documents that are not needed for tax purposes, warranties, client records or future projects, recycle or shred them. Set up new files for the upcoming year. 
  8. Organize your desk. 
  9. Set up an autoreply e-mail and change your voicemail immediately before vacation. Clearly state how accessible you will be via phone and e-mail, if at all, during your vacation days and when people can expect a response from you. 
  10. Don’t forget to thank your clients for their business with a card, personalized e-mail or discount/coupon offer for future product or service purchases.

When you finally have the time to relax, do you really want to waste time thinking about meetings that need to be scheduled and piles of papers on your desk? Wouldn’t you rather be eating apple pie, hanging out with your family, sleeping in late or reading a good book?

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines.

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Business Relationships, Entrepreneurship & Business, Featured Contributor, She Owns It, Social Media Tagged With: business organizing, organizing

Manage Your Interruptions. Be More Productive. by @cluttershrink

October 7, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske Leave a Comment

Manage Your Interruptionsby Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

You woke up with great intentions, didn’t you? You were planning to grab a cup of coffee and tackle your entire to-do list. Today you were going to be so productive…until you got interrupted, over and over again.

Interruptions in the form of telephone calls, e-mails, co-workers, text messages and snack and bathroom breaks stop us in our tracks. We hear that beep on our phone and suddenly lose focus on whatever else we were doing.

Did you know that it takes an average of 25 minutes to regain concentration on a task after an interruption occurs? (Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at University of California, Irvine)

If you are interrupted just three times a day, you lose over an hour of productive work time. Imagine how much time you lose if you have to deal with 12 interruptions a day. Half of your work day! All that time you planned to spend getting through items on your to-do list is lost.

Often, we cannot control the source or timing of interruptions. We do, however, have the power to minimize them. Yes, we have power and some of that power involves our own willpower.

Try these simple strategies to manage interruptions.

Before you check your e-mail or answer voicemail in the morning, spend at least 30 minutes working on an “urgent” task. If you are interrupted later in the day, you will at least have a jump start on your most important project.

Turn your phone on silent or Do Not Disturb, especially when you are trying to beat a deadline. If you must answer the phone, don’t just say, “Hi. Crystal speaking.” “Hello, this is Crystal, how may I help you?” will prompt the caller to tell you the purpose of the call and minimize opportunities for endless small talk.

Work in intervals of 30-45 minutes, allowing yourself a scheduled 5-10 minute break in between to grab a snack, run to the bathroom or check voicemail. When you set aside time to take care of the necessities, you are more likely to stay focused knowing there is an upcoming mental break in the near future.

Avoid playing phone tag by scheduling phone call appointments. Then, you won’t need to drop what you’re doing when you finally get the call from someone you have been trying to get in touch with for the past week. Prepare an agenda prior to each phone call or meeting so participants don’t waste time trying to determine what the key issues are.

If possible, set up your desk or work space away from the kitchen. You won’t be tempted to take frequent snack breaks, and if other people work with you, they won’t stop at your desk to chat when they are on their way to or from picking up their own snacks or coffee.

Set expectations with clients, co-workers and vendors. Tell them what you are working on and when it will be completed. Hopefully, they’ll understand your declaration to mean that they shouldn’t contact you for a status update every hour.

Establish rules to filter your e-mail. Stop your daily deals from showing up in your Inbox so they don’t distract you from your work. Wait until your lunch break or until the end of the day to check your fun folders.

Keep your desk organized and don’t put personal items on your desk. That picture of your mom just might inspire you to call her. Although she would appreciate the call, doing so would interrupt your productivity. Focus on work at work, and call your mom later.

When someone walks into your office or workspace, stand up. People are less likely to sit down and talk your ear off if you don’t stay seated. If they don’t get the hint, start walking toward the restroom. If you work from home and someone rings your doorbell, step outside to continue the conversation. It’s easier to get a guest to leave if she isn’t invited inside.

Interrupt yourself. This is when willpower becomes important. If you find that your habit of scrolling social media posts or shopping online is the main reason you’re losing focus on work related tasks, walk away from what you are doing for 5 minutes. For the most part, social media is much like a soap opera. Without seeing it for several days or months, you can still go back to it and find out what you missed in a matter of minutes. Keep that in mind when you’re tempted to start scrolling. If you are totally desperate, try an app like Rescue Time to help you track your productivity and block sites that cause you to get distracted.

What strategies have you tried to minimize interruptions?

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines.

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship & Business, Featured Contributor, She Owns It Tagged With: e-mail, interruptions, voicemail, work from home

Intentional Procrastination – How I Beat My Work Deadlines by @cluttershrink

September 3, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske 3 Comments

Procrastination

How Putting Off What I’d Rather Do Led to Being More Productiveby Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

by Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

“If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” – Rita Mae Brown

Some people get an adrenaline rush when they procrastinate. The thrill of beating a deadline is reason enough to put off a dreaded task. Others think they do their “best work” when pushed against a deadline. The rest of us….well, we would just rather spend as much time as possible doing anything but the tasks we have to do.

Do Work or Get Ready to Go to the Beach?

Just recently, I had eight work related deadlines within a two-day period. I also had to pack for my family’s upcoming, week-long beach vacation.

The organizer in me typically takes the exercise of packing to the extreme. I create lists upon lists of items to pack, errands to run, and house related maintenance responsibilities to complete. I also use packing as an opportunity to empty everything out of and reorganize every closet in my house. This is also when I change out our summer clothes for fall clothes. I turn packing for a week into a three-week endeavor. Yes, it’s time consuming, but it’s something I’ve always done. It’s the designated time I set aside to organize our closets.

To be truthful, if I had only had one or two work related deadlines, I would have torn my closets apart and feverishly sorted through all items, tormenting my children as I went along by forcing them to try on all their clothes. After all, I like organizing! I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I’m done. Who wouldn’t? I reward myself for my hard work by going on vacation, and then I get to return home to beautifully organized closets.

It Was Time to Do the Smart Thing

Eight deadlines at the same time, however, gave me a reason to pause. I knew if I started organizing and packing, I’d use that project as an excuse not to do anything else.

I invoked the power of intentional procrastination. I made the conscious choice to put off doing what I enjoy, packing and organizing, until the very last minute. I came to this decision after I weighed the possible outcomes of delaying my work responsibilities against my packing for vacation duties. Failing to meet a work deadline would have greater negative consequences than leaving my closets in a less than perfect state and forgetting to pack a toothbrush. I told myself that I would wait to pack until the day before vacation. The closet organizing would have to wait until I returned from vacation.

I was left with almost three weeks to focus on my work related tasks.

Here’s what I learned:

  • I don’t need three weeks to pack. I was actually a lot less stressed prior to my vacation because I wasn’t looking at clothes that needed to be sorted or partially packed suitcases for almost a month.
  • I conquered my work related deadlines one at a time, in order of importance, by devoting a day or two to each task.

The result? I completed everything in advance of the deadline. What a great feeling that was!

Dr. Joseph Ferrari’s research discovered that 20% of people are chronic procrastinators. If you find yourself procrastinating, check out these tips to stop procrastinating from Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project or try what I call intentional procrastination – putting off the things you enjoy so you can be more focused on doing the things you don’t. You just might surprise yourself with how productive you can be.

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines. 

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Conferences & Events, Creative Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship & Business, Lifestyle Tagged With: organizing, procrastination

Why I Thought Hiring Help Would Be Like Eating Shellfish by @cluttershrink

August 9, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske Leave a Comment

Why I Thought Hiring Help Would Be Like Eating Shellfish

Why I Thought Hiring Help Would Be Like Eating Shellfish

by Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

I admit it. I am a professional organizer who has been in business for over twelve years, and until recently, I have avoided stepping out of my comfort zone to hire any outside help. My personality and profession demand a certain level of control. To give up control would be like eating shellfish and waiting for the worst to happen, or so I thought.

My tastebuds stand up in protest every time I take a bite of seafood. They always have. Friends, family and chefs have prompted me to “try just a little” over the years. Same result every time. Gag! One “try just a little” plea in 2006 resulted in an allergic reaction that lasted for days. I had eaten a BITE of crab, but I attributed the hives and the slight difficulty breathing to either bed bugs or sand mites from our vacation rental house. I swore off visiting that beach town again until…..

Years later, in 2009, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease and digestive disorder linked to gluten that damages the small intestine. The diagnosis led to additional allergy testing, and that’s when I learned that I’m highly allergic to shellfish. I finally had a legitimate excuse to refuse the “try just a little” pleas I had been fending off for years.

Now I must confess. I have been avoiding other “try just a little” suggestions too, and I’m not referring to illegal drugs. Clients, mentors, family members and friends know that I don’t stop working once I leave a client’s home or office. I send e-mail reminders, homework tasks and information that pertains to each client frequently. I donate and sell items on my clients’ behalf and perform all of the administrative tasks related to my business. I don’t get much sleep. In many ways, I’m not different from a lot of other business owners.

When people suggested hiring sub-contractors or employees to help with the physical or administrative tasks related to my organizing business, the physical reaction that occurred  in my body was almost on par with eating shellfish. I was filled with anxiety. It became difficult for me to focus, and while I didn’t break out in hives or lose the ability to breathe, I felt very uncomfortable and looked for every opportunity to get out of the conversation as soon as possible.

I have worked hard to build my reputation in the organizing community as a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is professional organizer. The very thought of giving someone access to influence my community of clients is extremely scary, but I recently realized that if  I continue running my one woman show at the pace I’m used to, my family will forget who I am. I may just end up buried in my own office under my own pile of papers because I’ll never have time to file them.

So I did it. I hired help. A few weeks ago, I asked a friend to help me with some minor administrative tasks like research and copying articles I’ve written. I hired a virtual assistant to help me put together a telesummit, something I’ve never done before and know requires a lot of work. I still feel a little bit of angst imagining what’s being done on my behalf without checking in on every little detail. I’m not quite ready to relinquish any work directly related to my clients, but I will continue to step outside my comfort zone and delegate activities that I either don’t have time to do or don’t know how to do well.

The idea of hiring help always seemed as dangerous as eating shellfish because I couldn’t predict the exact outcome. I finally looked at the reasons why clients hire me and discovered why I needed to hire help myself.

I am employed as a professional organizer not because my clients don’t know how to organize but because they don’t have time or know the best way to do it. I know that I don’t have time to do everything in the most efficient way possible, and this is why I need help too.

In a few short weeks, I have learned that eating shellfish really has nothing in common with hiring help. I have handed over several tasks to people who are more prepared to manage them. Hiring help is going to help me keep my business alive. For me, eating shellfish …..well, that just isn’t going to end well.

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines. 

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Business Relationships, Entrepreneurship & Business, Featured Contributor, Lifestyle, Mindset, She Owns It Tagged With: allergy, business, entrepreneur, organizing

Why I Said Yes to Adoption and How It Changed the Way I Do Business by @cluttershrink

July 17, 2014 by Crystal Sabalaske 9 Comments

Why I Said Yes to Adoption 2

by Crystal Sabalaske | Featured Contributor

At least once a week I read an online article touting the power of learning to say “no”. It’s one of the top time management strategies experts are advising people to consider. The notion is that if you can get comfortable saying “no” to tasks that aren’t aligned with your personal and professional goals you will have more time for tasks that are.

In many cases, this is a valid strategy. If we attempt to take on every business, volunteer or personal request from others, we will undoubtedly become more busy-  busy helping our coworkers, friends and family achieve all of their goals. Even if we feel really great about ourselves for being so selfless, we eventually reach a point of exhaustion and frustration. If we are too busy helping others pursue their dreams, our own opportunities to pursue ours dwindle. So, when we find ourselves in the quandary of managing repeated requests for help, it seems wise to follow the advice of the most popular time management experts. Gain the confidence to say “no” and free yourself from the undue stress of trying to do it all.

It wasn’t until my daughter asked me to adopt an African Dwarf frog that I began to examine a different approach to this strategy. After a school lesson on frogs and crabs, each student had the opportunity to bring home a critter. My daughter approached me with, “Mom, you always say no, but this time, can you please say yes?” Then she handed me the permission slip, which she had filled out herself in the affirmative, to bring home a frog. I glanced at the paper and gave her a look that apparently screamed a big fat NO. She then launched into a fifteen minute lecture on how I’m known in school as the overprotective mom who always says no – no going on trampolines, no riding a bike to a friend’s house. So what choice did I have but to pause and question if she was speaking the truth?

Then I thought, what would happen if I said yes? I would have to spend some money on food and a habitat, about $35 total, invest some time in cleaning the tank, and witness my child smiling from ear to ear – for days. There was also the possibility that my reputation as the “no mom” would change and move me up a notch or two in my daughter’s eyes. I thought about the “risks” (not many) against the benefits, and that’s when I decided to say yes to adoption. I agreed to adopt an African Dwarf frog.

It wasn’t even a full day after the signed permission slip went back to school when I started to ponder how my business could change if instead of concentrating on practicing how and when to say no, I altered my focus to decipher when to say yes. If I began to weigh the pros and cons of every one of my business growth ideas and requests for help from outsiders, could I be selective and say yes to things that would propel me closer to reaching my goals, enhance my reputation as an expert, and help others?

It’s often easy for entrepreneurs to lose focus when so many ideas seem viable, creative and life-altering. I know that my brain is always in overdrive. If I question if something is a “yes”, I not only force myself to slow down to evaluate all the details, I also make sure that I choose to do the things that offer the greatest opportunities for deeper connections, better life-work balance, increased profits and enhanced satisfaction with the work that I am doing.

What’s the worst that could happen if you say yes? Could you fail? Possibly, but if you do, you will still acquire insight and resources to assist you in determining what your next “yes” adventure will be. Could a “yes” situation leave you feeling a little uncomfortable, like maybe you don’t have what it takes to be successful? Probably, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

The best way to simultaneously ensure that you don’t waste time on tasks that keep you from reaching your goals and focus on activities that put you on a path to achieving them is to adopt an approach that empowers you to say “no” and “yes”.

Have you had a “yes” experience that has led to amazing growth in your business?

(Update: We ended up adopting two African Dwarf frogs who prefer to hang out in a fake log. I have lost the title of being the “no mom”, at least temporarily. If she comes home asking for a trampoline, she’s out of luck.)

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Crystal SabalaskeCrystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices since 2002. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines. 

Crystal’s philosophy about organizing involves making simple changes based on an individual’s needs at work and at home. While she is committed to getting job done, she’s not at all serious and tries infuse the process of organizing with a little bit of fun.

Being organized saves time, money, and relationships, and when you maximize the potential in those aspects of your life, you have more time to focus on doing things that truly make you happy. For Crystal, those activities involve singing, reading, taking walks, spending time with her family, making up twisted tunes, brainstorming about her next business idea, and drinking iced tea.

In addition to hands-on home and office organizing, Crystal shares her passion for organizing by offering virtual coaching for individuals and workshops for business and social groups. She also offers relocation organizing services and thinks that after moving 18 times, she knows what it takes to get the job done right. If you really want to get Crystal fired up, just ask her to speak about organizing your kitchen for food allergies. She helps her family manage 19 of them!

Crystal is always enthusiastic to share organizing tips and strategies via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

Crystal Sabalaske

Filed Under: Blogging, Entrepreneurship & Business, Featured Contributor, Mindset, She Owns It Tagged With: business goals

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