Designing an environmentally friendly office demonstrates social and financial wisdom.  By caring for the earth’s natural resources, you impact the environment in a positive way.  You also save money by consuming less energy. 

Before starting an office design project, educate yourself and others.  Research local sustainable offices, and find ideas and techniques that work for them.  Invite your employees and clients to share their favorite eco-friendly tips.  Write a press release that outlines your environmentally friendly design plans.  Work in partnership with the office community to reduce your carbon footprint in various ways. 

Lights

By replacing traditional light bulbs with eco-friendly bulbs, your office remains well-lit and environmentally friendly.  Available in all sizes, shapes and watts, LED light bulbs allow you to transform existing or new ceiling fixtures and desk lamps into eco-friendly lighting. 

Water

Conserve water by installing a water sensor system that notifies you of water leaks.   Install low-flow toilets and infrared faucets to reduce the amount of water office personnel use.   

Waste 

Encourage employees to recycle.  Place recycling containers alongside trash cans, and post signs that list the types of materials that can be recycled.  Designate a collections area for used ink cartridges.  Purchase rechargeable batteries, and rely on computer files rather than printed paper. 

To protect the landfill and water sources from harmful chemicals, separate and properly dispose of hazardous or chemical-laden items used during the design process and in daily office use.  Batteries, foam, tile, and paint should be disposed of separately from the regular trash.

Materials

Whether you replace the office furniture, repair the floor or repaint the building, purchase materials with low VOC ratings.  Use secondhand or recycled building and furniture materials whenever possible. 

Electricity 

Reduce your office’s energy consumption and your electric bill by turning off electronics and all lights overnight.  Instruct employees to unplug non-essential technology tools before leaving the office for the weekend.  When purchasing new printers, computers and other equipment, choose options with high energy efficiency ratings.

Temperature

Investigate geothermal options when choosing a heating and cooling system for your office.  Geothermal choices utilize the ground’s energy and decrease your energy consumption.  Alternatively, purchase an energy efficient system or install additional insulation to aid the existing system in maintaining a comfortable office temperature. 

Air

Install air purifiers to reduce allergens that aggravate asthma.  Clean the air and provide a healthy work environment for employees and clients.     

Design an environmentally friendly office, and save natural resources and money.  While the initial cost may be high, the long term savings to the environment and your budget make installing eco-friendly products worthwhile.  Choose to invest eco-friendly equipment, materials and practices for positive, long-lasting results.   

I officially finished working for corporate America on May 28, 2010.  Though I launched Arranging Order full time on September 1, 2009, it took several months to create a pipeline of sustainable business in which I could use as a foundation of business before becoming entirely self employed. 

A Designer Spot – an interior design blog resource based out of New York recently started covering events in Chicago and they asked me to provide coverage for them!  Head over to the Chicago version to see read about some of the exciting events I’ve attended, as well as images and commentary from the  events.  Thank you to A Designer Spot and Alin Boicu for the opportunity!

We’ve also started working with two new clients over the past few months in the virtual assistance category.  I’ve recently started working with Circa1856 and Alton Jamison (professional speaker). 

Circa 1856 reimagines antique and vintage pieces and turns them into wearable modern jewelry.  Remembering the past, and updating the style allows us to preserve the important history.

Alton Jamison speaks to individuals, educational institutions and businesses spreading the message on the importance of a positive mentality, while emphasizing the power behind removing imaginary handcuffs that prevent you from being your true self.  

We are also working on expanding into California - more on that later.

Finally – Arranging Order joined the Chicagoland chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO).  In doing so, we have seen an increase in the organizing side of our business. 

AO would like to thank our clients for their business, our friends and family for their support, and Lennie Rose for her unconditional mentorship.  Thank you for taking this journey with us, and best wishes for a successful and productive 2011.

Why would I ever use a virtual assistant?

A recent article I came across suggests an emerging trend in where and how people work.  If you've been working in "Corporate America" for any length of time recently, you've most likely noticed this fundamental shift. 

Our bosses aren't working in their offices most of the time, they are working out of their cars, their homes, and in Starbucks on their blackberries.  Gone are the days of fax machines, and snail mail, replaced with .pdf's and e-mail.  These changes have caused us to conduct business in a manner in which everyone is adapting, some more quickly than others.  For example, you know you've come across an e-mail at some point where the sender wrote their eloquent message in all capital letters, and you've discovered you barely want to read what they've sent because you're annoyed. 

Not only are we changing our communication, our workplace locations, and our technology, but the business industry is changing as well.  With the fall of our gigantic corporate conglomerates (Enron, Lehmen Brothers, etc.) we have begun to see a new crop of employees taking their financial security into their own hands, and becoming entrepreneurs. This not so subtle shift has led to a new set of challenges, needs, and business options.  Hence - the invention of the business service category of Virtual Assistance.  Was there a need for virtual assistance back in the "Mad Men" days?  No - your secretary sat outside your office waiting to assist you with your every need.  Do we need assistants sitting at desks outside the offices our bosses are never in?  No...  We need someone who can assist us in a new way, that is flexible, understands technology, is able to work on our timeline, not theirs.

So what is a virtual assistance?  The International Virtual Assistants Association explains:

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services. Utilizing advanced technological modes of communication and data delivery, a professional VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise from his/her own office on a contractual basis."

Why is this industry growing in popularity? Well - given that we have a changing workforce, our needs have changed.  Gone are the days of the need for a salaried employee who drains your company financially with payroll taxes, benefits, health care and equipment.  Now you can find practically anyone within the virtual assistance community who can do what you need, faster, cheaper and better than your traditional employee who needs to figure out how to accomplish this new fangled task you've requested of them, before being able to undertake the task.   An example of this is - a small office has 3 employees, one of them works the accounts at the firm - whether it is calling, selling or working on an account, while another takes care of the books and office needs, and finally the third person is perhaps the owner, the professional, etc. who oversees everything but doesn't touch the daily needs of the business so much.  Now in this example - the 3 person company decides they need a web-site.  They have one of two options:

1) Ask the person who handles the office needs to learn how to build a web-site, build it, and then launch the site.  This person now needs to learn how to drive traffic to the site, how to measure the statistics of the site, and be able to alter the site when needed.  This likely takes up a considerable amount of time, on top of the already assigned job duties.  This project also likely takes a long time to complete.

or

2) Hire a virtual assistant skilled in building web sites.  Contract the project out to the virtual assistant, and project launches within a reasonable amount of time, while normal working environment continues.

Which option costs the organization less?  Option #2.  Basic economics - the opportunity cost of utilizing the existing employee to do something outside of what that employee is qualified to do is simply too much.

While this way of working is foreign to us...so were blackberries, e-mail and the internet.  The key to business is adapting.  If you can adapt quickly, you will survive and thrive.  Do you want to not only survive but also thrive?  Of course you do - so start adapting and out source your business to someone who can help.

Have no idea where to turn?  Good news.  The Virtual Assistant Chamber of Commerce is just the place for you.  Head on over there to get started.  Not only will they educate you on what else a Virtual Assistant does, but you'll be able to choose one of two ways to get started working with someone - either a "quickie gig" where you will have a fast turn around time or you can submit an RFP (Request for Proposal) to the Chamber of Commerce who will invite their assistants to bid on your project. 

Good luck and happy hunting.

I've often heard that bathrooms and kitchens are the best return on investment you can get when putting money into your home.  I've never given it much thought, but I always assumed this was true (especially because HGTV says this quite often...).  However, before I embarked on this little "project" of mine, I wanted to be sure we were spending our money wisely.  What I found was this little nugget by The Money Pit.

Interesting return-on-investment question, to which my answer would be a definite maybe! Bathroom remodels usually have a high return on investment and are generally considered one of the smartest home improvement projects you can do. The 2008-2009 Cost vs. Value Report done by Remodeling Online shows that an upscale bathroom remodeled delivered better than a 70 percent return on investment. This means that if you sold your house within a year of doing the improvement, you'd probably get 70 cents on the dollar for your trouble. 

Whew!  What a relief!  A bathroom or kitchen remodel is quite expensive, and the assurance of knowing that our investment is adding to the bottom line of the value of our home made me feel comfortable in forging ahead with the bathroom.

Below on the right is an overall view of the completed bathroom. My goal was to design the room in a way that it was not only beautiful, but also fit in with the overall feel of our home.  I know we've accomplished this.

Our contractor Mark (whom I referred to in my last post), and his employee Mike were fantastic - from start to finish.  Mark worked with us every step of the way to ensure we were able to find the products we wanted within our budget.  Mike, who was on time each day, was not only courteous and respectful of our space, but he was efficient and took extra care in taking care of our home, and cleaning up at the end of each day, which I was most appreciative of since we were still living in our home.

I want to explain why the decor decisions were made.

We went with dark chocolate custom cabinets that I designed and were made by Royal Kitchen & Bath Cabinets. The color - "dolce" was chosen because of the contract to the white and for overall continuity with the other dark wood in our home.

We chose a color called "Harbor Haze" by Benjamin Moore to keep the space light considering that though the bathroom is quite small, it is also the main bathroom for our home.  I wanted the room to feel as bright and open as it could but also be a complimentary color to the dolce color on the cabinets.

All of the fixtures are Kohler, and were purchased from Home Depot.  For those of you who are not familiar with Kohler products; Kohler products are beautifully designed fixtures that last a long time and perform well. 

The vanity top was custom ordered from Home Depot.   The top is a Pegasus solid surface vanity top that is both scratch resistant and repairable, that comes with an under-mounted marble sink. The sink overall was a great valued item.

Finally, leaving the best for last, hands down - my favorite part of the bathroom project.  The shower, (pictured right).  We chose a basic subway tile style from The Tile Shop here in Chicago. If you have never been there; this place is amazing!  Rows and rows of beautiful tile in every style possible.  For our accent tile, we chose a basic 12 x 12 sheet of horizontal mini subway tiles in various shades of brown with a glass blue.  I love it.  We used the white subway tiles for the majority of the shower space and 12 x 12 ceramic pieces of tile that are both textured and unique for the flooring.  The Tile Shop was a fantastic experience, and we were able to find a beautiful product at an extremely reasonable price. So, in summation:

Ah.  It's done - it's beautiful, and it very much is a cohesive complement to our home.  Let's hit the highlights of the project:

• Repaired older shower plumbing
• Maximized vertical space with taller cabinets, and shower tile extending to 14 foot ceiling.
• Updated features throughout, reducing previous water waste (leakage) throughout the space.
• Increased storage space by a third.

When you live in a relatively small space, with little storage options, it is important to make your space feel as large and livable as possible.  I'm convinced we were successful in achieving this with the bathroom remodel.  We now have an updated bathroom that is both harmonious and functional in style with our home.   Thanks to everyone who helped us create this space, especially Mark and Mike from Len Home Services.

We live in the heart of downtown Chicago, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever experienced.  Our home was built after the great Chicago Fire of 1871, having been completed in 1882.  If you do the math, that's a bit more than 125 years old.  While I quite adore the "charm" of our historic vintage home, and the history that comes along with it, the frustrations of owning a home of this age can be stressful to say the least.  For visual purposes, here's an exterior shot of my home that I took right before we closed on our condo.

A few months ago we had a plumber come in and evaluate our pipes in our master bathroom.  He believed that we had a leak in our shower pipes most likely was resulting potential/possible damage to the unit below ours.  Not good.  Since we never liked the bathroom to begin with, and had always planned to remodel it at some juncture, we decided it was probably best to have the project start sooner rather than later. 

We interviewed some contractors, and ended up hiring a wonderful guy named Mark DeBartolo.  Mark is President of Len Home Services. We sat down with Mark and determined a budget, goals, and discussed the desired design before making a plan of attack. Mark, my husband and I determined a date for bathroom demo and commenced work on January 11th.  For reference, here is a picture of our hideous bathroom BEFORE.   (Yes, that is my cat Rylie sitting on the toilet, also known as his favorite perch).

It's 10 days later and our entire bathroom has been gutted.  Mark's crew had to remove our old cast iron tub down 3 flights of stairs as well during the demolition.  I'm sorry about that Mark!  They began by removing everything in addition to the bathroom tub.  At the end of day 2, here's what our bathroom had become.  A scary, barren shell of a room.  It was quite interesting to see the bricks that had been constructed over 125 years ago in my bathroom, still holding up and doing their job.  However, reinforcements were needed and in addition to rebuilding some of the floor after my husband stepped through the rotted wood; new wood, plumbing fixtures and drywall were installed.  We even had to do some improvising when installing the plumbing fixtures - our contractor had to literally chip away old brick to install the new fixtures, (see image on the left). I came home a few days ago to a bathroom covered entirely of red brick dust...

At this point we are done with the demolition, and interior wall rebuilding, and I'm starting to feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I've been showering in a neighbors home this past week and a half and as nice as Donna has been in letting us do so, I'm ready to shower in my own home again.  Drywall installation was completed yesterday, and the tiling work began.  Here is an image of the beginning of the end - drywall installed! 

I will be documenting the rest of the remodel real time hopefully.  I'm very anxious to see how it turns out and will happily post a gallery of before and after images upon completion. 

A final note - we are approximately 45% of the way done with this project, and while I have heard many nightmares regarding working with contractors, this experience has been mostly stress free.  Aside from living in chaos and showering at a neighbors home, we have been smooth sailing... I feel lucky that we hired Mark and his team for this job, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final product.  I definitely will keep you posted.

Okay, you already know about Virtual Assistants. You think they’re great. You totally get it and would love to work with your own administrative consultant. But as with anything of value, it is going to cost something. So you hold off and keep slogging along by yourself wondering how you can afford to work with a VA. Well, let me show you…

When you work with a Virtual Assistant on an ongoing monthly basis as your right-hand administrative partner, you can get so much more done than you ever could by yourself. You free yourself up to focus on more important things. You also get all that extra stuff done in less time. Which means your business moves forward that much more quickly. And when you are accomplishing all those revenue-generating projects and goals you couldn’t get to before, you end up making more money than it costs you to work with a Virtual Assistant.

Let’s recap… By working with a VA, you:

• Free yourself to focus on revenue-generation
• Reduce your own workload
• Get more done
• Make faster progress

That extra time you create by working together is time you can use to:

• Take on more clients
• Write that book
• Develop that training program
• Create those passive income products

All of which increases your revenue. So the question really becomes, how you can you afford not to work with a Virtual Assistant?

Eventbrite (in their own words), "is a do-it-yourself event management web site that helps businesses and organizations of all sizes promote and sell-out their events. Eventbrite breaks down event management into 3 basic tasks and gives you all the tools you need to make your event a success."  Who wouldn't want a system to do that for them?

Going against the dreaded beast also known as Ticketmaster, Eventbrite offers an affordable solution for businesses like yours and mine.  Lower overhead with less headaches.  My favorite part is that they even turn your RSVP list into name badges!  How cool is that?!

Webware named Eventbrite one of their 2009 web applications of the year.  Their co-winners? Google, PayPal, Craigslist, etc.  So they are in pretty good company.  Check them out next time you need to gather together a group of people for your company. 

Screenshot below:

The shops became ready for the holidays even earlier didn't they?  Arranging Order came across an article by the Unclutterer, and we thought we'd share.  A little holiday gift for you all...

Piles aren’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as you are managing them (and not the other way around), they can actually be quite useful. But if you find that they are impeding your progress instead of supporting it… if you are constantly working around your piles instead of with them, it’s time to gain the upper hand.

First Things First

• Understand why you pile. Is your workspace really working for you? Do you need a larger area or more storage? A bigger or more efficient desk? Is it a case of needing more consistent, effective habits? Is there something going on in the business that is causing you to drag your feet? Identifying some of the root needs will tell you what your next steps should be.

Create More Workspace

• Utilize closet storage to keep clutter you don’t need or use every day (such as office supplies) out of eyesight.
• Install shelving to get books and other resources off of your desk.
• Use binders to group and store certain hardcopy information that can then be shelved.
• Use stack trays. Assign each slot a particular category of information (e.g., by client or project). Instead of taking up several spots across your desk, you are making more use of vertical air space.
• Get some wall slots. These are perfect as to-do bins, “In” boxes, or storing active client files. I happen to use magnetic ones that I place on each side of my lateral file drawer. Makes great use of of space that would otherwise go unused.
• Add more drawers. If your desk doesn’t have built in drawers, buy a roll-away file drawer. Drawer space is particularly handy for tickler systems and keeping supplies and info you need regularly at your fingertips, but out of the way.
• Write on the wall. Well, not literally. But whiteboards and chalkboards (I use a glass whiteboard myself) are great for instantly capturing those ideas and to-dos that flitter across your mind. Once completed, you simply wipe them off. A sure-fire cure for post-it clutter.

Instill More Productive Habits

• Put things away. Everything should have a place of its own. When you are done with something, put it back, if not right then, at least by the end of the day. Make this a habit.
• Observe the rule of “3.” When you start to create that fourth pile, you know it’s time to stop, regroup and clear out the clutter. Piles should be a productivity tool, not a default.
• Reserve piles for active projects. These piles might be comprised of any amount of paperwork, notebooks, reference books, etc., and sorted by project. Piles you aren’t actively engaged with need to be dealt with and dispersed.
• Don’t let Shiny Object Syndrome get the best of you. By all means, indulge those creative, entrepreneurial ideas. Store them in a hardcopy or online notebook. But better to finish existing projects first than to start new ones that will only add to your piles, overwhelm and inertia. Completion creates a positive forward momentum in and of itself.
• Use a tickler system. This is a set of hanging file folders numbered 1-31 (one for each day of a month). A ton of desktop paper clutter can be reduced and better managed with this system. Each morning, check that day’s folder. Keep out the work you can do that day. Move forward to the next day any work you can’t. Store notes and papers with dates and deadlines in the corresponding numbered folders. When that date rolls around, you have everything right there in the folder ready to go.