July 18 2019

Organizing Your Computer

When was the last time you replaced your computer? When you switch computers, whether it was by force or by choice, you usually find yourself wishing you were more organized. I knew a new computer was on the horizon eventually, so I had to make a list of the programs that I use regularly that do not come as standard issue on most computers. It helped that I could look up my registration key or license code on the old computer while I was setting up the new one. Sometimes it is a matter of remembering your username and password to log into a website and download the software.

I was more than willing to make the switch and endure the trials and troubles that might come while setting up the new computer because none of our computers was less than six years old, so it was past time to update. One of the first things we did was setup Dropbox and One Drive. This gave me access to backups of my files once I got the programs installed. Downloading all the software took some time. I want to be very organized with the new computer because I know that history dictates that the new computer and I will have the next five to seven years minimum to become good friends. So I am trying to set up folders and files in a logical way. I realize it would be easier to just copy the old computer hard completely, or at least all the non-system files, but I know this is also a perfect time to make sure everything is backed up to our external hard drive and only add the files I will actually use on the new computer. There is no point in moving digital clutter with me to the new device.

Are your digital photos saved in a safe place? Are they organized by date? Subject matter? Person? Place? Event? It doesn’t really matter how you sort them, or even if you name all the files. What is important is that you DO sort them by some method that makes sense to YOU. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. This is a project you can work on over time when you have a few minutes. Backup all the ones you have stored on all your devices into an external device or location on the cloud. Start with a clean slate on your new device. When you download new photos on the new device, sort just that batch into some semblance of order. If nothing else, create a folder called “Photo Backup July 2019” then when you have some extra time, go into that folder and rename the files to something that tells you what you will find when you open the file. Maybe these folders will be the start of your whole photo storage system. If you don’t think the system you set up to begin with is working for you, you just change it the next time you add photos to the computer. Any system, as long as it isn’t dump them all in a big folder together with generic names, will be better than nothing.

Have you ever organized your email into folders? I have a folder called Receipts Emailed and another calls Memberships. Guess what goes into those folders? You can have three guesses and the first two don’t count. Sometimes I create a folder for a new group I am joining so I have a place to put the few emails I think I must keep for that particular group. I have a folder called Cooking where any email with a recipe, cooking idea, or tip goes. Speaking of recipes, I have a folder on every computer I use called Recipes. Inside that folder are loads of other folders with names like Chicken, Pork, Beef, Sweets, Vegetables, etc. If I save a new recipe, I decide right then and there which folder it goes in and save it there. On rare occasions, I save a second copy in another folder because I couldn’t decide which category the recipe fit into. It could be a chicken recipe that cooks in the crockpot, so it goes in both the chicken and the crockpot folder. I am willing to use a little extra storage space to make it easier to find by putting it in both folders when appropriate.

How do you organize your digital files? I am always willing to entertain new ideas, so please share in the comments below. Are you willing to organize your digital files and photos?

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Willing
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Learning, Organizing | 2 Comments on Organizing Your Computer
July 11 2019

Cheap Summer Fun

Did you miss my post last Thursday? Sorry about that, but I decided to take the day off from my usual writing routine being as it was Independence Day here in the US. Hubby and I also decided to take the time to do something we haven’t done in quite a while. We decided to work a puzzle. This is a great way to spend some quality time with your loved ones and it doesn’t have to be expensive. I bought this puzzle at our local Goodwill store for $2.99. It was one of two identical puzzles they had but for whatever reason, the other one was marked at $4.99 and the back of the box said “3 missing”, so I took it as a sign and bought this one. Now you might turn your nose up at a “used” puzzle, and ask how I could be sure that all the pieces were there. Well, I had to take a chance that they were and decided to ask if it could be returned if we found that it wasn’t all there. Shockingly, I was told I could return it with my receipt within 14 days. So that kind of motivated us to get busy and work it. The 90-degree temps we have had here in the midwest lately was motivating too, along with the new ceiling fan we install in the living room. Note we pushed the table with the puzzle directly under the said ceiling fan and did so mostly for the lighting, but knowing we could stay cool didn’t hurt either. As we began sorting the pieces to find all the edges, I decided this had the potential to be a sharable experience, so I took photos along the way just to share with my readers. It occurred to me that maybe not everyone works puzzles the way we do, and if you don’t perhaps this will help you rethink the way you have always worked them or encourage you to start working them for the first time.

So here is the puzzle in its box. I have to tell you this is of the particular type that Hubby and I really enjoy working. It is a fun picture with so much chaos going on in it. Every time we work it, we will see different things.

So when I met Hubby’s family and they asked if I liked to work jigsaw puzzles, I said sure. Then they pulled out an assortment of every baking sheet and pan they owned and started laying out the pieces. I was in shock. Who does this? It changed the way I work puzzles. Hubby got the stack of six lined and matching cookie sheets from his mother as a gift one time. It is super handy to have all the puzzle pans the same size and stackable. The lining was needed because the pans are slick Teflon coated and without it, the pieces would slide all over the place. The white also makes the pieces stand out better in my opinion.

Just start setting the pieces out on the tray close together, keeping the edges out to work the frame first.

This is what a full tray looks like.

This was a 1,500 piece puzzle and six trays were NOT enough, even with the edges removed. So the pieces on the table are the edges we found. We thought this was all of them, but, of course, we were wrong. The ones left in the box would need to wait until we made room on the trays to spread them out too.

I personally gather a bunch of similarly colored pieces together and start trying to fit them together. In this case, I was looking for the sand colors. I have found that it really helps to turn them all the same direction. In the photo above, note that all the flat edges are up.

In the photo above we were looking for the puffs of smoke along the road. It would be easier to have all the sand color going in the same direction.

The basic frame is complete, or mostly anyway. We always keep the box nearby to reference, especially with the chaotic picture puzzles we like to work.

However you work the puzzle, from here on out, it involves searching the tray for pieces you need then looking at the next tray. This is nice because several people can be working the puzzle at the same time and everyone can be searching a different tray for the pieces they are looking for.

I began to wonder if it would be a good idea to kind of sort the various colors on different trays, so I made this tray of red, pink, orange and similarly colored pieces. it was a bit chaotic, and this drove Hubby crazy, but I kind of liked knowing that if the piece was even a little bit in the red family, it would be on this tray. I kind of tried to do the same with the greens and browns, but Hubby was on to me so I had to act like that was purely accidental.

As the trays got emptier, we condensed the pieces and set the empty trays aside out of the way. As the puzzle gets closer to being worked, it gets easier to find the right piece because there are so few to look through. In the case of this used piece, we kept thinking all the way until the end that there would be missing pieces. Two were missing when the trays and table were empty of loose pieces, so we looked on the floor and all around the area where we were working. Eventually, we found the other two pieces. We had many days and hours of puzzle time both together and individually. What a bargain! We will most definitely work this puzzle many more times over the next few years.

I almost forgot to tell you that when you take this puzzle apart, you take off the edge pieces and keep them separate from the rest of the puzzle pieces by storing them in a plastic bag or large envelope to make the start of working the puzzle again that much easier.

This has been my “take” on cheap summer fun. Do you work puzzles the way we do? If not, let me know what you think of our method, or share your way in the comments below. Maybe we can learn something new from you. Enjoy! If you don’t have a puzzle to work, you can always borrow one of ours, we have a couple dozen to choose from.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Take
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Depth Year, Family, Five Minute Friday | Comments Off on Cheap Summer Fun
June 27 2019

Organize Your Summer with Lists

It is that time of year again, summer, here in the northern hemisphere. If you are anything like most North Americans, then summer means at least one trip on the calendar. If not a trip away then perhaps you have an event to plan for. It might be a Fourth of July cookout, in which case you need to plan the menu and make a list of all the foods and drinks you plan to make. Before you can make the foods and drinks, you will need a grocery list or maybe even a to-do list to help you get everything done in the right order and in a timely manner.

Maybe your summer plans involve a trip away for a weekend or longer. First, you need to decide if you will be away long enough to need to do laundry during your trip or if you have enough clothing and luggage space to pack clothing to last you the entire time you are planning to be gone. Once you have that done, you can either be very general like I was in the list below or get super specific planning each day’s outfit down to shoes and accessories. You do you. Whatever works. Make a list and reuse it each time you go on a trip to save time and help you not to forget anything.

If you think of something you forgot to pack while you are away, add it to the list so you will remember it next time. My hubby has what he calls vacation rules. Basically, if you forgot to pack something that you really need, you have permission to go out and buy it. He joked about forgetting to pack the car when we flew someplace on vacation. I told him that was over budget. We have been known to go out and buy jackets while we were on a beach vacation because we forgot the evenings might be chilly. On that same trip, we decided we needed clothespins because it was so windy the beach towels were in danger of flying away. Unfortunately, the grocery store we went to didn’t have clothespins so we bought a bunch of chip clips with magnets on the back instead. We still have and use those chip clips to this day, so it was a good investment and certainly cheaper than replacing the beach towels would have been had we let them blow away.

When it comes to making lists, I really like using Google Keep. The list below is an example of a list with checkboxes. When you have added the items to your luggage, you can check the box. The items go down below the list and when you need the list again, you just uncheck the boxes. I use this sort of list for my grocery list all the time. You have the ability to drag the items to rearrange the order of the list. You can tag the list with search terms or color code it, like make the background green if it has to do with money or whatever you like. Lists are very handy for helping you organize your summer activities. What is your favorite listing apps?

 

Category: Organizing, Planning, Travel | Comments Off on Organize Your Summer with Lists
June 27 2019

Question (Five Minute Friday)

When our nephew “B” was four years old, he went through a phase. The phase was one we thought would never end. He would ask a question and we would answer it. He would then ask us, “Why?”, and we would try to explain and then he would ask again. No matter what we told him he just continually questioned us with, “Why?”. Over and over and over it went that way. It must have been his favorite word just then, or maybe it was his questioning phase. It got to be so obnoxious, that we would eventually get to the answer, “Because I said so, that’s why!”. You guessed it, he would ask, “Why?”, even to that answer. Eventually, we just began avoiding him and eventually the phase passed like so many other phases kids go through. Maybe he outgrew it or just realized everyone avoided talking to him for a while. I was never so happy to have a phase end as I was that one. Did your kids go through a questioning phase like our nephew? I don’t remember our own kids doing this, but maybe they did.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Question
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Family, Five Minute Friday | Comments Off on Question (Five Minute Friday)
June 20 2019

Goal (Five Minute Friday)

This year I decided NOT to set yearly goals. My bullet journal has been rather ignored compared to previous years because I have no goals I need to track in it. This is my depth year. I am supposed to go back to things I previously tried to get into, but never quite did. I should also be trying to dive deeper into things I barely scratched the surface of in previous years.
I feel like the year is basically going well, but it feels a tad unfocused without the goals to work toward. Goals used to be something I made a list of around the beginning of each new year, posted to one of my groups and promptly forgot about until the holiday season was again on the horizon and I wondered how I had done. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I usually managed to accomplish a few of the goals from my list, but not very many and those were completely accidental or a matter of choosing goals I knew I would do in the first place. This ignoring the goals and thinking they will magically happen is a bad plan, it is really a non-plan.
I think I will be setting some goals for 2020, maybe not as many as in previous years, but at least a few. There is just something about marking my progress in the bullet journal that really motivates me. I am enjoying the lazier year and not having to record everything or feel like a failure. Who knows, maybe I will set one bog goal for the year or each quarter and break it down into manageable steps.
Do you have any advice to share that you have found works well for achieving goals? Oh, please share them. I can use all the help I can get when it comes to goals.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Goal
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Goals | Comments Off on Goal (Five Minute Friday)