Four Gadgets for Keeping Track of Things

Here are four new gadgets to help ADD'er (and anyone else) keep track of their stuff. Which one will work for you?

The Find One, Find All

($24.95; FindOneFindAll.com)
This Finding Essential is a battery-powered, radio-controlled homing device that you attach to the two items you never want to lose — your keys and wallet.

Put the fob on your keys and the credit-card-sized device in your wallet. When you press a button on the locator, the devices ring like a cell phone (as long as they’re within a 10-foot radius).

The EZ-Find! 25 Item Wireless Locator

($66.50; at amazon.com)
Have lots of items you tend to misplace? This consists of 25 colored fobs and a remote. Hook the fobs to things you need to take with you — or have trouble finding around the house (you can even hook up your pets or a small child).

The Dane Elec 4 GB Capless USB Drive

($19.99; at buy.com and target.com)
Want to keep track of valuable computer data? This allows you to keep your files with you at all times, and the sliding-top design means there’s never a cap to lose.

No larger than a fingernail clipper, the flash-memory device can carry up to four gigabytes of data/files, and it comes in a variety of colors, for those who like to make a fashion statement. Bonus: It doubles as a key chain.

Remote Play’s TagAlert 200

($59.95; remoteplay.com)
If you lose things outside your house, you may be the answer. Attach the "monitor" fob to your belt loop or key ring (or keep it tucked into your pocket) and attach the "alert" tags to two valuables (such as your wallet and cell phone)

Happy New Year!

I can hardly believe that another year has flown by. On this New Year, I had the pleasure of celebrating with my darling husband and my two brothers here in New Jersey. We enjoyed a fabulous party at my youngest brother Peter's really good friend Brian's gala New Years Eve party.

I am not a believer in New Year resolutions. I am more comfortable making resolutions throughout the year that are more realistic ones that I will stick to. So far, I have not made any new resolutions to date. One that I feel compelled to write about now is that I will write more blogs in 2010 that will be useful to my readers.

I look forward to working with many of my regular clients and working with new clients and their organizing challenges. This year will hold many new and exciting challenges for all of us.

If there is an organizing challenge that you have, please post it here and we will discuss it. If it is private, please email me at: rlyman@ahelpinghandforyou.com.

ADD Holiday Survival Guide

With the holidays fast approaching, I want to share some useful information to help you through the holiday season.

To budget for all the wonderful gifts you plan to buy this holiday, here is a well known website where you can order your credit report. Log on to annualcreditreport.com. You’re entitled, by law, to a free credit report once a year from each of the major credit-reporting bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

Another useful bit of information is a wonderful survival guide offered by ADDITUDE magazine. Here are the first three tips. I will send out subsequent tips in the next few days.

1 REPLAY YOUR GREATEST HITS

Make a list of all the activities your family did last year—everything from attending a religious service to seeing local light displays. Have each family member rate them on a scale from 1 (very important) to 3 (unimportant). Do your best to fit in the 1s and some 2s, and forget about the 3s.

2 SAVE THE EARTH—AND YOUR WALLET

Set a date on your calendar to send out cards, and make the job fun and easy by using your computer to send cute, interactive e-mail cards.

3 STREAMLINE GIFT-GIVING

Keep shopping simple by buying everyone varieties of the same thing, such as books, gift certificates, or clothing from the same catalog or website. Stock up on decorative candles or bottles of wine to give out as hostess gifts, too.

These simple tips might save you some time and stress. Happy Holidays!

Power of Positive Thinking

Therapists and ADHD coaches tell ADDers to practice “self-talk.” There is great value in talking to ourselves, assuming that we speak as we would want others to speak to us. Unfortunately, that’s not what typically happens. In revisiting the various events of our lives, it is the 20 percent we did wrong -- not the 80 percent we did right -- that we remember and castigate ourselves about.

No Use Being Negative

The negative words we reserve only for ourselves are counterproductive. Did you know that the unconscious mind does not compute negation in language? That’s right -- the deepest recesses of the mind don’t process the word “no.” Therefore, when we say, “I will not fritter my time away on the computer today,” the words are read as, “I will fritter my time away on the computer.”

And we wonder how we manage to find ourselves, once more, firmly stuck in those black holes. We talk ourselves into them! No amount of “but I said...” changes the fact that we have commanded ourselves to do the very things we want to avoid. And we beat ourselves up over our transgression. What is this telling us about the path we must choose for our positive growth? we must head towards the positive.

The bottom line to all of this is that we are our thoughts. If we think negatively, we will be in a negative state. If we think positive and speak positive, we will be and do the positive. Our intentions are within our powers. Speak the positive and see what happens.

As an ADHD coach, I steer my clients to the positive. If you are interested in ADHD coaching, please contact me at www.ahelpinghandforyou.com.

(Portions of this wonderful article are excerpts from ADDITUDE magazine, Peggy Ramundo, Kate Kelly, Winter 2009.)

Thanksgiving In New Orleans

I am so glad to be spending a week in New Orleans with my husband, brother, brother's girlfriend, my niece and nephew. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving withg everyone. The other great thing is to be taking some time off from organizing. As much as I love my business and my clients, I really needed some time off. Fortunately, I have been very busy and working like a maniac. So, it is really good to be taking some time off and visiting the Cresent City.

We were supposed to go on a walking tour of the Garden District this morning. It was cancelled, so we will be taking that tour tomorrow morning. This morning, George and I took our dog Sammy for a walk in the French Quarter. We took a carriage ride and the carriage driver conducted a tour, which was quite good. I also love walking down Royal Street, checking out the wonderful antique shops, not that I want to buy anything. I love the crystal chandeliers and beautiful jewelry in the shops.

This afternoon we went to Cooter Browns (cooterbrowns.com) for oysters on the half shell. Boy were those oysters good. Cooters has at least four hundred different beers. George enjoys drinking Dixie Blackened Voodoo and Abita Turbo Dog.

This evening, we are going to the Mid-City Rock & Bowl (rockandbowl.com) to bowl and hear some really great Zydeco music. We will be rockin' at Mid-City. It's good to be on vacation...

When Hoarders Make Life Miserable

I read a Wall Street Journal article that was good on one hand and slammed professional organizers and the therapeutic community on the other hand. From the point of view of a child of a hoarder, they are tired of having the hoarder get all of the consideration while the children are ignored. This might be a common scenario for the child of a hoarder. They might have been ignored by the hoarding parent or parents and are still being ignored by their parent/s. That article can be found at: file:///Users/admin/Desktop/When%20Hoarders%20Make%20Life%20Miserable%20for%20Others%20-%20WSJ.com.webarchive

The person that made many good comments was Elizabeth Nelson, who is the spokesperson for the website "Children of Hoarders" http://www.childrenofhoarders.com.

She makes the point that the hoarder is portrayed as the victim in most situations, and all those involved in the life of the hoarder tiptoe around the hoarder. She advocates action against the worse cases of hoarding to protect the hoarder. There has to be a middle ground, and that is what I am exploring. Please weigh in on this issue.

Life of your dreams

"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams." This was a quote from Oprah Winfrey. What is the life of your dreams? It is a fascinating question and one that I would like to spend a day or a week or a year going around and asking all that I meet "What would it mean to you to live the life of your dreams?"

For me, I've always dreamed of traveling around the world. Having the time and money to do such a thing is a dream of mine, as far off as it might seem. I can't imagine having the freedom and/or the money to just take off with George and travel the world. Where would I want to start that journey? Maybe I'd start with Australia, or maybe Italy, since I have not been to either of these locations.

I can imagine traveling to many exotic locations. I would have a wonderful time sightseeing and trying to discover the out of the way places that would give me a true sense of what it was like to live in the location I was visiting. I do look forward to a time when I can afford to do that kind of traveling. Right now, it seems like a very far off dream.

I think of this traveling around the world as living a dream, but in my current reality, I am too busy running my business and learning new ways of helping my clients live a simpler, less chaotic life, filled with joy. I live a joyous life and I get great pleasure in doing meaningful work with my wonderful clients. That to me right now is living my dream. I can wait for the traveling at a later time.

If you are interested in world travel, there are some really good travel sites such as: http://www.iexplore.com Check it out.