The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I organize my refrigerator by function -- so that I can find things easily and food doesn’t go bad. My refrigerator is always completely stuffed.  This is apparently hereditary -- there is never any space in my mom's refrigerator either -- even when she was single!  Now granted, some of her stuff expired, like 6 years ago -- my husband would never let that happen in our fridge.  But here is the biggest problem with having a completely stuffed refrigerator -- I can't find things and I don’t remember what is in there.  And that means that food goes bad.  So, I needed a better system. I went looking for ideas on how to organize my fridge.  I found plenty, but all of the organization systems seemed to be geared towards preventing food from going bad -- certain things shouldn’t be stored in the door, put eggs up high, meat down low, etc.  I rea...

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...

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 how if changed my philosophy about keeping stuff.  This is the first of a 2 part series.  A couple of years ago, we had our basement finished.  Before renovation, it was about 3/4 storage.  Since I was decreasing that to about 1/4 storage, I really needed to get rid of some stuff.  And I was sort of frozen with overwhelmedness, so I picked up this book to give myself some inspiration.  And it worked!  Let me tell you my takeaways.  The book was a true sensation for a couple of years when it was released.  I would recommend reading it— but here is the main and most important point of her system. You have to change your whole philosophy about the stuff that is in your life.  So, I come from a family that, let’s say, KEEPS things.  Not hoarder-level keeping, bu...

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 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 share the apps and systems that I use for paperless note-taking.  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.   I'm not sure what initially drove me to be semi-paperless in my personal life. It was probably a combination of being overwhelmed by all of the paper streaming into my home, wanting to have access to my files where ever I was, and the giant technological advances that made it not just doable, but also pretty appealing. Whatever it was, once I got my iPad, I stopped relying on paper. Evernote My primary note taking app is Evernote. It is cross platform, which is a recurring theme and a priority to me. It means that I can access it from my iPhone, iPad, any web browser, or Windows software on my computer. It started out with rudimentary functionality, particularly the mobile...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll discuss how I use the AnyList app for shopping lists and errands.  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. I'm the head procurement officer in my house.  One of my many quirks is that I absolutely HATE grocery shopping. I'd rather clean bathrooms than grocery shop -- really. Because of this, I only do it once a week. I will go to extreme lengths to avoid going more often than that.  I also have issues with running out to do a single errand. It feels like a giant waste of time. This must come from my childhood when we carefully budgeted gasoline and did our errands all at once and infrequently.  Because of these quirks, I require a good list system to remember the things we are running out of and errands that I need to run, so that I can do them all efficiently in one ru...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll review all of the systems and apps that I use for reminders.  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 -- if you've seen other videos in this series, you know that I use a bunch of systems to help me remember events, tasks and correspondence.  I rely heavily on three tools: Gmail (single stream email), Google Calendar (scheduling), and Toodledo (task management).  I commit to checking these 3 apps daily and keeping up with my commitments for each.   But even so, some things were still falling through the cracks. So, in some cases I needed additional help to plug the holes.  Timers Okay, so I'm very distractable. If I put a load of laundry in, it could be days later when I realize I haven't moved the wet clothes to the dryer. Yuck.  Partially for ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you about the system I use for task management.  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 -- so, I have a video that gives an overview of my organizational processes and apps. Then I have a video that describes how I use Gmail to funnel all of the digital information coming into my life into a single stream.  This video discusses one of the core elements of my organization system -- task management. I am a list keeper -- always have been.  One of my weaknesses is in working memory, which is the ability to keep more than 2 things in your head actively.  I was a waitress for a couple of summers and I was a perfectly good waitress if I had a pad of paper to write everything down.  But things really fell about when customers asked for things as I was rushing th...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in this video I'll talk about using Gmail as a single stream funnel for the electronic information that enters my world.  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. If you've watched the overview video of my organizational apps, you know that I use Gmail as the central funnel through which all electronic data enters my world. Kind of like having one single inbox to check and work through. I just wasn't keeping up well when I had four different inboxes to deal with. Let's walk through what that looks like for each kind of information: Landline voicemail - okay -- this is archaic and I know a bunch of people who never check their landline voice mail. But I have a couple of old school relatives in my life who would be none too pleased if I never responded to their urgent voicemails. Verizon is the provider ...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and today I'm going to share an overview of the organizational tech systems I use to compensate for my ADHD forgetfulness and distraction.  I come from a long line of folks afflicted (and blessed) with ADHD Inattentive type. Everyone in my family of origin has some degree of ADHD and I've passed it down to both of my kids. They are, as you can imagine, eternally grateful. I've never been diagnosed and I don't take medicine for it, but I definitely have many of the symptoms: distractibility, organization problems, forgetfulness, and tragically bad working memory (or the ability to keep more than 2 things in your head at one time). Even though I didn't have a label for what I was dealing with early on, I knew I needed to compensate for my clear deficits in these areas, just to get stuff done and not be constantly apologizing for not responding, missing appointments, and forgetting things.  The wa...