Organize Your Life Before Moving

I can be quite the unorganized person at times when it comes to my workspace and my home. In fact, I think my wife and I are pretty messy people regarding the things we leave strewn about the living room and our bedroom. It may seem a little reminiscent to college days or a high schooler’s bedroom, and we’re often ashamed to admit that, yes, we’re too lazy to pick up the place.

This is quite funny to me considering how particular I can be about cleanliness with things. When it comes to our dishes, I absolutely can’t stand having more than a certain amount of dirty dishes sitting in the sink. If it means dropping everything I’m doing at the moment to tackle some dishes, I’ll do it. And I think that’s because I view food as such an integral part to my life, so I don’t tolerate taking more time to do dishes that become even dirtier. The griminess of them after a few days just . . . bothers me.

So perhaps I should look at other aspects of my unorganized life the same way. I know one thing we could truly benefit from is having some more organization tools on hand. For example, last year we acquired a whiteboard for our kitchen. This allowed us to put up deadlines and some chores that needed doing. Unfortunately, we seem to ignore it more often than we actually use it. Considering that office and shipping supplies like this can be huge on the organization in one’s life, I think it’s just a matter of doing it, just like doing the dishes or picking up loose items.

It’s funny how so much of this revolves around willpower and just finding the grit to tackle what needs doing. Too often we pass off things as too time intensive or too hard to do when in actuality, it’s neither of those things. It’s just humans being lazy and saying they don’t have the time. Or in other words, making up excuses.

So I definitely see a lot more of these similar office and shipping supplies in our lives for the coming few months, if only to right our bad habits so that when we purchase our first home, we’re doing things the right way right off the bat. There’s nothing that scares me more than buying a home and leaving it trashed at all times when we should be respecting the new property and keeping it in clean and pristine condition.

Starting Your Own Side Gig Business

At times when I get to thinking about side gigs that I could reasonably take on, I always end up telling myself that it wouldn’t be worth my time or that I wouldn’t be able to tackle such things because of my lack of business knowledge. I mean, contracting out work regarding writing and editing is one thing. But trying to do some sort of other small business venture? That almost seems impossible and unreachable when I give it serious thought.

But then you hear about people opening their own little online boutique shops with zero business experience, and you wonder how in the world they can do it. Overall, it simply boils down to putting the time and effort into it at first and making sure that things are running smoothly on all cylinders during the first few months. By expecting things to go wrong and dedicating the time needed at the early cycles of the business, people are able to get it up and running on its feet. And that’s about all it takes.

But when you envision it as some sort of monster of a project that is simply impossible, yeah, you’re bound to fail. It’s just a matter of shifting your perspective to one of success instead of failure and impossibilities. There’s enough business acumen to gain out there online and from peers if you search hard enough and sit down for coffee with the right people. All it truly takes is just applying yourself and your skills. The time investment? Yeah, that’s something where you’ll have to iron out a set schedule for yourself during evenings or weekends when you’re not at the main job. But if you can keep yourself honest with your work, you’re bound to flourish.

So if you think about starting your own little online boutique, make sure you focus on things that will make your customer base remember you and want to come back for more. Perfecting the little things, like what shipping supplies you opt to go with and what inserts you can put in to make your customers feel valued, will go a long way for a new business. Of course, we can’t blame you if you choose subpar shipping supplies to save money at first, but it’s worth noting that this will make you seem inexperienced and unprofessional compared to other companies that go with quality supplies. It all boils down to how you come off to your customers. If you think you can pull it off with cheaper materials, you better have a good reason for it.