Testimonials: Columns
“Angela Hoxsey is an organizational Maven. She is fast, efficient and a pleasure to work with. Angela makes getting and staying organized easy with her helpful tips, tricks and knowledge of organizational products. I hired Angela to help me prior to and after a large home remodel. She helped me to declutter, purge and organize multiple rooms in my home. I loved working with Angela, she helped me streamline my home and I enjoy the organizational benefits everyday! ”
Susanne Hudson, Napa, CA
“I’m thrilled with what you helped create. It totally blows my mind how quickly you work and I love your thought process. Fantastic!!”
Dona Bonick, Kopol Bonick Photography, Napa CA
“Angela is always thinking about my organizing issues and often sends suggestions and helpful advice and ideas, even when she is not physically on the job with me. She comes up with unique solutions completely customized to my business, home and personal style—things that I never would have thought of on my own...”
“I can totally trust Angela’s taste and rely on her honesty about what’s working and what’s not with regards to my wardrobe. That said, she is always respectful—if I say I want to keep something, she respects my wishes...”
“I have a lot of “stuff”, and Angela has always been non-judgmental about my collections, while helping me to make smart decisions about how to lose things that I do not need. I value her wisdom, her experience and her perspective. She is a joy to work with, I look forward to our time together and dread to think what my home, closet, garage, life would look like without her expert guidance!”
T. Beller, Verve Napa Valley
“Angela is my dream girl! I was referred to her to help me prepare to move after living in one house for 27 years. She was fantastic in helping me get organized and declutter years of gathering too much of everything...!”
“Angela took me from panic, and an overwhelming moving experience, to an organized new home. She is a pleasure to work with, has lots of energy, while always maintaining a positive attitude. I think she is "THE BEST"!!!”
Sheila Sosnow, Piedmont, CA
“Have you ever accidentally run across someone who just COMPLETELY changed your every day life for the better? And you couldn't imagine your life without them? That's how I feel about Angela. Angela came into my fairly organized but slightly hectic life completely by chance. I wasn't looking for anyone to help me organize or streamline my life because I didn't really think I NEEDED it. And just in the same way that she seemed to just quietly float into my life, she helped me with such kindess, grace and ease.”
Lindsey Wiseman, St. Helena, CA
“Angela has a real gift for seeing what needs to be done and pulling it all together. I have worked with many organizers in the past, but none as efficient and focused as she. From my office to the garage, Angela has helped create a system that works
for the long term!”Karen Schuppert, Napa, CA
“Angela Hoxsey was the best referral that I have ever gotten. Needing to get my house ready to sell and declutter the 20 years worth of accumulation was no easy task. She was fast, efficient and a joy to work with. The best part of working with her was her cheerful yet no nonsense way of getting you to decide 'keep, trash or donate'. . . Love it!”
Cherie Melka, St. Helena, CA
“We spent four hours organizing an enormous amount of paperwork and I feel like I just got a massage!”Joanne Maher, St. Helena, CA
“Whether you are prone to chaos, pretty organized yourself, or a combination of both, Angela Hoxsey can help you bring order to your home. Yes, you could do it yourself, but most of us have so many competing demands on our time that organizing tasks easily fall by the wayside. Angela has brought her professional touch to my home, demonstrating every time
the lasting value of an expert.”Karen Saeger, Ph.D., Berkeley
“You can smell the sanity. Angela is worth her weight in diamonds.”
Masako Takahashi, artist;
San Miguel de Allende/San Francisco
Columns
It’s a Date
Knowing where something is situated in time is as important as knowing where your stuff is space-wise when it comes to being organized. When my clients and I sift through stacks of paper or get into a box in the garage, the most important things I need to know are when the item came into their lives and when was the last time they looked at it. If the item is not dated, it becomes a time-consuming process.
The following very simple habits can make staying organized a whole lot easier.
Regarding bills and incoming mail, such as bank statements, keep a yellow highlighter handy and immediately highlight the dates.
• Date everything. Even if it’s a grocery list on a Post-it note, start by dating it in the upper right-hand corner. If you keep the practice consistent, you will never waste precious seconds scanning notes for the date or a clue to the “when” of the item. This is especially important for compulsive “to-do” list makers. If we know which list is freshest, the others can be tossed without worry.
When you create a file on the computer, consider adding a header or footer that automatically posts the date (and even the time) each time the document is opened or updated. That way, when you print you will always be able to identify the latest version. Don’t rely on your brain to remember changes you made — let the computer take on that task by showing you the date/time and free up your brain for more creative thinking.
• Synchronize religiously. I use the cordless “cloud” to synchronize information from my computer calendar to my phone calendar so that I always have the latest version on both devices, but occasionally technology has let me down. I still have to plug my phone in from time to time to be sure everything has synced properly.
Also, make sure you have the latest version of your syncing software downloaded at all times. I ignored downloaded notices for new versions, thinking, “How much could it possibly have changed from Version 10.1.21 to Version 10.1.23?” The changes were enough to keep my devices from syncing and necessitated an inconvenient trip to the Genius Bar at the Apple store.
When printing photos, date stamp them or write the date on the backs right then. This will save you loads of angst later when you are organizing photographs or attempting to create a photo album with a semblance of chronological order.
If you tear articles out of magazines, highlight the date or at least write the month and the year on the article or photo with a pen. When you are ready to cull through your reference or reading files later, knowing the date can make the difference between “keep” and “toss.”
For items in storage, I encourage clients to put dates on the boxes when they put them into storage. If something has been in storage and not looked at in one, five, or 10 years, why are they keeping it? Also, if a client has items, such as memorabilia, clothing or paper archives that they do not want to look through yet, we box them and date the box. We then set a future date by which the items must either be sorted,