The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll give you some tips on organizing and outlining your writing assignment. I did a video a little while ago that shows the step by step process of writing a research paper, but what I don't cover in detail, is how to outline and organize the paper itself.  This video may not structure your paper for you, but it should provide some tips to get you started. There are really two types of writing: creative writing and analytical writing.  Most of the assignments that you will receive fall into the category of analytical writing.  When I was in undergraduate, I used spend A LOT of time working on a really creative introduction, literary writing, and snazzy transitions between concepts.  It turns out, I was spending my energy in the wrong place.   This is my second time going through graduate school, but during my first master's, I had my husband read and ed...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my method of organizing my notes and highlights from the assigned reading for graduate school using Google Sheets. I'm in a grad school program and there is a lot of assigned reading.  Since I now rent my textbooks, marking them all up with highlights and notes isn't really an option.  I suppose I COULD rewrite each passage that I would have highlighted in a notebook or something, but despite the fact that it probably would help my memory retention, it would take FOREVER and seems like busy work.  So, I've taken to renting my textbook digitally when at all possible.  That way I can highlight passages in the digital textbook and then export them, so that I'll have those highlights forever -- even after I return the textbook. So, let me start by telling you how I organize these notes and then I'll go into how I export them.  First, Organizing ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, we’ll talk about the benefits of scheduling 15m of organizing every weekend.  I am someone who functions best with my chores scheduled in. I do financial chores on Tuesday, pay bills on Friday, laundry on Thursdays, fold clothes on Fridays, and on Saturdays I do 15m of outdoor chores and 15m of organizing.  I realize that this seems utterly oppressive to some people. I get it — different strokes for different folks, but let me make the argument to you why I think you should do 15m of organizing a week, whether it’s on the same day each week like me, or just has a place on your weekly to do list. First, let’s talk about Organizing burnout I typically have A LOT of energy for a project when I first get started.  For example, I love rototilling and planting my garden in the spring — then I lose steam and have less energy for weeding and maintaining my garden throughout the s...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll tell you how I use Google Sheets to organize my citations and sources for papers and research projects. I'm in my first year of graduate school and we do a lot of writing.  References and citations are very important, as they are for any discipline.  I supposed if I was writing a dissertation with a hundred citations, I would feel the need to pay for and learn a whole complicated citation software, but since I'm not, I prefer to use tools that I already use and know well.  AND despite the fact I'm not writing a dissertation, I have written some papers that have had over 25 sources, so I do need SOME kind of system to organize and manage my citations.   I started out, as most people do, with kind of a hodge-podge system of just cutting and pasting URLs from the Internet and sticking them at the bottom of the Word document of the paper.  Or, if I'm doing r...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll talk about how I deal with mundane household chores.  I'm someone who enjoys a good project, but I’m not great at routine maintenance tasks.  Unfortunately, life is FULL of mundane maintenance tasks that need to be done, but aren’t very exciting.  When I started staying at home with my kids, I gave up all of my interesting projects at work and was faced with the grinding monotony of a mountain of household chores.  Laundry that needed to be done, folded, and put away on a daily basis in a never-ending cycle was honestly enough to make me want to run screaming.  I once worked on a temporarily basis at a large government Library.  This is a job I thought I would love — after all, I love libraries. However, I would no sooner get back from shelving a cart of heavy Dewey decimal ordered books, when there would be no fewer than FIVE more carts to shelve — they...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share the second part of my system that I used to overhaul my own closest, get rid of stuff, and figure out a personal style.  In the last video, I shared some tips that I got from reading the book The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees.  In this one, I will cover the wardrobe system I developed using an app called PM Pro.  Here's where we left off.  I had taken a billion full length selfies of all of the outfits in my closet.  I wanted a better way to sort and categorize these photos on my iPad or iPhone, so I went looking for something that met my criteria and found the  PM Pro App. That stands for Photo Manager Pro. So, here are the things that I like about this app: Stores photos locally  - rather than just being another app lens through which to view the pictures already on my Camera Roll, this actually makes a local copy of the photos and ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my system that I used to overhaul my own closest, get rid of stuff, and figure out a personal style.  In this first part, I'll share some tips that I got from reading the book The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees.  In Part II, I will cover the system I developed using an app called PM Pro.  In trying to prune down my belongings, Marie Kondo-style, I found myself totally overwhelmed by my closet. I have some tendencies that make it difficult to have trim, stylish closet. First of all, I’m cheap — meaning I tend to prioritize quantity over quality.  I really don’t like to shop — except at Marshall’s where it frankly feels more like a treasure hunt. And even then I have a outside limit of a couple of hours before I’m done.  I’m super reluctant to get rid of things AND I don’t like to spend much mental energy on what I’m wearing.  BUT I do feel better w...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share how I use Google Sheets and Toodledo to throw our annual party with a minimum of fuss. I used to feel kind of intimidated about throwing a big party, but now I’ve got it down to a science.  We throw a big annual night-club themed dance party since we both love to dance and we’re too old and suburban now to go to actual night clubs.  Our party is NOT going to end up in a magazine spread, but it is easy to pull off year after year.  And I find that I can actually enjoy myself when I'm not being a slave to perfection.  Here are some of my requirements for our annual party: Large  - I actually prefer large parties since I get stressed out about narrowing down the guest list for smaller parties.  I will definitely enjoy the party less if I’m worried about hurting people’s feelings. Easy  - Hats off to people who seem to effortlessly throw bea...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share some of my tips for getting organized over the holidays using Google Sheets and Toodledo.  I love the holidays, but like everyone else, I frequently feel overwhelmed by all of the additional tasks during holiday season — decorating the house and tree, ordering and sending holiday cards, and buying and wrapping Christmas presents.  All this amid lots of late-night seasonal festivities and, for us, holiday travel.  My very first order of business is that I cut myself some major slack around the holidays. I would highly recommend doing an analysis of what is critical to you and what is not and then prioritizing accordingly. For example, weekends are hectic for us at this time of year — my husband travels, my kids have a bunch of activities.  It was getting increasingly difficult to plan enough time on a weekend for all of us to go out, get a tree, put it up, and...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll talk about Marie Kondo’s book the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and 5 tips that I find really useful.  This is the second of a 2 part series.  In the first video, I talked about how reading Marie Kondo’s book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up changed my overall philosophy about keeping things. In addition, I found 5 really great ideas that I still employ: Cull, then organize  - maybe this goes without saying, but a lot of people (including me historically) start by buying a bunch of organizing stuff and then make decisions about what to keep later.  The first step is getting rid of stuff. Once you have a smaller pile, then you organize.  Getting rid of stuff is the hard part. Do it first.  Cull constantly  - I tend to think of organizing like a project. When it’s done, it’s done!  Wrong. It is a process. Stuff wears out, goes out of st...