The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'm going to share the second part of my policies and methods for semi-paperless filing.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   In the first video on paperless filing, I talked through my policies for recycling paper and which files I physically keep.  I also shared that Evernote is my main service for paperless filing and that there are three cool tools that I use in conjunction with Evernote.  The first was the built in photo attaching tool.  The second is . . . Scannable app - Okay -- if the document that I want to save electronically is longer, like say 5 pages long, I will usually save that as a PDF using Scannable.  I love this app that was created to work beautifully with Evernote.  You don't even need to snap the picture, just hover over the d...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'm going to share Part 1 of my policies and methods for semi-paperless filing.  This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   Okay -- when I say that I'm paperless, I'm not talking about being an over-the-top nut job about it.  I do not scan everything that comes into my house. That would be time consuming and crazy.  But -- if I think I may want to have access to that piece of information when I'm out and about -- I store it electronically.  So, really I have 3 options, pitch, physically file or electronically file.  Let's go through each.  Pitch I come from a family who, let's just say, keeps things, so the advent of the  Internet has really helped me get rid of things.  My basic policy is -- if I can access it online easily, I get rid of it. That p...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I use Google Photos to electronically keep kids arts, memorabilia and old photos.  This is part of a series on Organizing and Accessing photos digitally.  Those of us with small children or crafty older ones can find ourselves overwhelmed with the products of our kids talents -- paintings, drawings, crafts, 3D sculptures, pinch pots, etc.  Maybe you have an extra annex to house all of that stuff, but I do not.  I quickly determined I needed some policies for purging and saving.  Thankfully, my kids' egos seem to be able cope with watching me immediately recycle some of their treasures, but some are particularly dear to them or nice enough that it seems reasonable to keep them in some way.   Just like with non-artsy paper, there are 3 options: Pitch, Keep Physically, Keep Digitally.   Pitch  - I'm a little merciless in this area. ...

Hi, everyone!  It's Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel. In today's video, I'll show you how to use Google Voice to turn your iPhone voicemails into emails or texts.  Has this ever happened to you?  You happen to open your phone app and realize that you have 6 voicemails you haven't listened to?  Some of these could be days old since you haven't been checking regularly.   If you've watched my overview video on the processes I use to cope with my ADHD brain, you'll know that I try to use Gmail to single stream all of the information that comes into my life.  So, that means getting voicemails into my email inbox. For my landline, I use a digital service that Verizon provides, but I needed to be more creative for my iPhone voicemails.  Essentially, what you are doing is replacing the indigenous iPhone voicemail service with Google Voice's service which is more feature rich. Frankly, I don't entirely understand all of the services that Go...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and this is the 4th video in a series about the processes and tools I use to organize my photos.  In the previous videos, we've covered storing centrally, simple physical organization and using Picasa to manage and group photos.  In this video, I'll discuss using Google Photos to access my photos anywhere and share them with friends and family. Access Anywhere I realized early on that I wasn't going to be able to store all of my photos on my iPhone.  I don't have unlimited storage after all, who does? -- and I don't like having to delete a bunch of photos so that I can make room for more.  Having central storage on my PC solved that issue (see Parts 1 & 2 of this video series for more on that).  Every time I do my quarterly photo chores, I transfer all of my photos to my PC and clean off my phone so that it is empty.  Great!  The problem was -- I still wanted to be able t...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and this is the third video in a 4 part series about organizing and accessing your digital photos. In the first 2 videos, I covered storing my photos centrally and physically organizing them simply.  In this video, I'll talk about how I manage and virtually group my photos using Picasa.  I've been using Picasa for photo management for years now. To give a brief history, Google acquired this desktop software in 2004 and then started phasing it out in favor of Google Photos.  By early 2016 Google had completely stopped providing support for it and its online component -- Picasaweb. So, why do I still use it?  Simple -- even though Google stopped updating this software, they haven't built all of its features into Google Photos yet -- so I will continue using Picasa until they do. I also use Google Photos, but more about that in a later video.  What does Picasa do?   Photo Viewer ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today's video is the 2nd of a four part series where I share my tools and processes for organizing and accessing photos.  In the first video, I covered pruning and centralizing quarterly onto my PC.  In this video, I'll talk about how I organize simply.  I know myself well enough to know that whatever organization system I adopted better be simple or I would have a hard time sticking with it for the long term. What that means to me is, I can't have a bunch of nesting folders with designations that won't make sense in the future. I'll throw my mom under the bus and give her complicated organizational schema as an example.  She came up with (what I consider to be) somewhat arbitrary top level groupings (family, friends, grandkids, church).  Then under these files, she has folders for events that are sometimes labeled by date, but sometimes just thrown in willy nilly. Some have subfolde...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today's video is the first of a four part series where I share my tools and processes for organizing and accessing digital photos.  In this first video, I'll cover an overview plus Step 1 - Prune and Centralize Photos Quarterly.  Okay -- trying to figure out how to organize your photos is not a new problem, but with the massive numbers of digital photographs that we all have now, it can be a pretty daunting one.  I am not particularly creative or artsy when it comes to photographs.  You won't catch me scrapbooking and I don't take hundreds of photos for every occasion.  But I do want my pictures to be organized, I don't want them taking up a ton of space on my phone, and I want to be able to access them anywhere when I need them.  Most importantly, I don't want to spend a ton of time futzing with a super complicated system.   A couple of notes: PC  - I'm a PC user....

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in this video, I'll talk about my system for dealing with all of the paper that comes into my house. This is part of a series on my ADHD brain and all of the systems that I use to compensate for a lack of internal structure and organization.   In the overview video of this series, I mentioned that information comes into my life in one of two ways: electronically and by paper. I spent the last six videos talking though my apps and systems for dealing with digital or electronic information, which is by far the bulk of what I receive. This video will be a shorter and a little more obvious and will deal with how I handle paper information. It eventually feeds back into the same systems.  Single Stream How does paper come into your house?  Probably the same way it comes into mine:  Snail Mail Stuff from the kids' schools Paper detritus from everything else (flyers, business cards, chec...

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video I'll talk about the system that I use during the hours I have to work over the summer to keep my kids busy, make them do some chores, and reward them at the end of the week.  I am mostly a stay at home mom, but I do work part-time anywhere from 6-15 hours per week. Summer presents a problem for lots of parents.  When the kids were really little, I hired high school babysitters to help out several times a week so that I could get my work done in peace. Once they got a little older -- at the age where I could, occasionally and for short periods, leave them home alone, it started to feel weird to hire babysitters -- particularly since I was right there working in the house. Plus, they were old enough where I really felt like they should be expected to respect my work time and also get some of their own chores done.  So, the summer when they were 8 and 10, I introduced the Summer Poin...