IT'S THAT SIMPLE

Do you ever wonder where names come from? How did Uber get named Uber? What’s the reasoning for branding a coffee shop “Starbucks?” It doesn’t even have “coffee” in the name! Snickers? There’s nothing funny about a million calories in two bites. Still scratching your head over why someone would name a computer company after the forbidden fruit? There’s no mistake on “SimpleWorks.” We make things too hard, and nine times out of 10, “simple” is the answer to what frustrates us on a daily basis. Sometimes, when you get to the least common denominator, the answer is pretty simple! Let’s focus on some simple solutions for challenges we all face from time to time.

• Hanger trick. Every season we review this simple method for cleaning our closets. Start the season by hanging all of your clothes with the hanger head pointing “out.” After you wear it, turn the hanger head as you normally would with it facing “in” towards the wall. At the end of the season, you can easily see what you did or didn’t wear. What is still facing “out”—out it goes for good!
• Clear the clutter. Walk into your room or survey your desk and immediately remove five things that need to be moved to another part of the house, put in the trash, recycled or donated. This works great in getting kids to clean their room. Depending on how much clutter you started with, five days or three weeks of doing this simple exercise can make a huge difference in the appearance of your space.
• Donate box. Place a box in your garage so that your items to donate have a “home.” This makes letting go of things much easier when you have a place to move them out of the way.
• Garbage can. One of the simplest things, yet most overlooked, is to have multiple trash cans at home. Think outside the box of an office and kitchen. Laundry rooms, garages, even bedrooms could all benefit from adding a place to immediately throw something away.
• Unrollme.com. A great tool to declutter your inbox. So simple.
• Spiral notebook. This simple tool can be used for everything from a grocery list to notes at a board meeting. Paper still rules from most people, and having a simple spiral notebook to capture the random thoughts swirling in your head is genius. Nothing is simpler than pencil and paper.

We make life too hard; we make it too busy; we create drama out of life. Think of a funnel: You pour your challenges into the wide end of the funnel and what comes out of the tiny end may be the simplest answer of all. It’s that simple.