To catch you up if you’ve missed it! : The last 5 weeks, I have been blogging alongside my friend Emily to share how we organize various aspects of our lives! We call the series “How we do it.” I hope it’s been a practical guide – a peek into the nuts and bolts of our lives. Here’s what we’ve covered so far, and here’s what you can look forward to!

Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Emily’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Life: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
TODAY: Em’s post on Work
February 20: Relationships
February 27: Spiritual Life
March 6: Kids

My aim for today is to give you an overview of how I approach my work as a business owner, and I how I keep things organized practically. This is going to be a doozy! Last time I blogged this, I divided it up into two parts. In an effort to simplify things, I’m going to keep this brief yet thorough, including all the most important points under the roof of this one post. Let’s dive in!

Side note: I’m really excited to hear from Emily today. Since I own my own business and since she’s part of an amazing team, we will surely have ways we differ in organizing our work. And just FYI, we don’t collaborate at all on the content of our posts – we just dive in and then read each other’s perspectives! This is gonna be good!

Organizing my work

Organizing the Big Picture with EOS! - I am a big picture kind of person. I have to understand where we are headed for my day to day work to make sense. That’s why the the Entrepreneurial Operating Systems (EOS) always comes up in these discussions – it has given me a vision and track to run on that helps me see exactly where we are going in 5 years, 3 years, and in the next 12 months! Want to learn more about it? Read the book Traction and you’ll have everything you need!


VTO / Vision Traction Organizer 


On a two page document, the VTO clearly describes our 5 year plan, our 3 year picture, and our 1 year goals. It also outlines our Core Purpose, our Core Values, our Target Market, our financial targets, and the clear things we should accomplish in order to gain traction and more forward.

Quarterly Rocks


Every 90 days, we set “rocks.” These are the things we much accomplish to keep the business moving forward. You can read more about them here.


Weekly Level 10 Team Meeting


Our team meetings last for 90 minutes. We follow the same format every time, and we leave with action items and a clear understanding of where we’ve been and where we are going. At the end of the meeting, we rate if from 1-10, ALWAYS aiming for a 10! (In the world of NRP, it *only* gets a 10 if we start on time, end on time or early, if someone cries, and if there is delicious food.)


Weekly Scorecards


Scorecards are like weekly report cards for the business. Each team member is responsible for filling out the numbers they are in charge of. We have target numbers each week, and it’s the perfect way to concisely check in and see how the business is doing at a glance.

Daily Organization - Now that I have 5, 3, and 1 year pictures, along with our 90 day rocks and our weekly meetings and scorecards, it’s time to break it down for TODAY! 


My to do list


I have a running to do list that is filled in the pages of my Simplified Planner. When I get overwhelmed or aren’t sure where to begin, I take a blank white sheet of paper and do a big brain dump of all the things I need to do. Then I write them all out for this week and next. (There are bigger project to do lists within different Google Docs.) Anything that doesn’t get done just rolls over to the next day or week.


3 Priorities


Every day I set 3 priorities / tasks to accomplish. I do this FIRST THING IN THE MORNING! This is vitally important. This practice had really changed my work life. Organizing my tasks in order of priority BEFORE I begin my work has helped me accomplish what’s important and has left me feeling satisfied at the end of the day, knowing I did what I should have. When setting these priorities, I always make sure to check in with my 90 day rocks. A least 1 of my priorities should be working toward accomplishing my rocks. The other 2 priorities are decided based on what’s most important and urgent that day.


One thing at a time


I do my best to block my days off in 1 to 2 hour increments, focusing on one thing at a time. Two things can interrupt my work and I’ll happily stop what I’m doing: their names are Milly and Lyndon :).

Organizational Practices, Systems and Tools that hold it all together

Emails


Be an email ninja, have a thorough filing system, use unroll.me, and aim to keep you inbox at zero.


Clients


As a wedding and family photography studio who serves many leads and clients throughout any given day, we highly recommend using a Client Management Software system. We are in process of switching from ShootQ to Dubsado. In addition, we have client folders that we take with us on a wedding day, which includes their questionnaire, contract, important emails and notes.


Photos + Work files (Drobo)


We use a Drobo – a multi-hard drive base that connects to all of our computers via Wifi. We have an extensive file folder system to organize all of our photos and business files, and the Drobo automatically backs everything up. We back up all final galleries online, and we have additional portable hard drives for back ups as well.


Equipment


A cubby system inside our studio closet organizes all of our cameras and lenses. Shelving units organize our bags, aprons, and film.

Blog Calendar


Callie and I plan out the blog calendar 3-4 weeks in advance on a shared Google Calendar. All of the posts are written and populated with images and links the week prior, and scheduled. That way content is consistent and timely!


Slack


We LOVE Slack! It’s the best communication tool for our team. We organize all our conversation threads regarding different work projects within Slack. We have conversation threads for our new website refresh, our Dubsado migration, any feedback we get (good and bad), TIL “today I learned”, and a general studio thread. We can also message each other privately. It’s completely eliminated the use for emails within our team!


Google Docs 


This is a great place to create documents that we can all access and update from anywhere. Google Docs is where we host a lot of copy for email sequences, website projects, and course launches.


Dropbox


Dropbox is where we share files easily for posting to Instagram, where we host our Scorecards (so we can update them remotely), and where we save files when we are working from different locations on a big project. Side note – it’s also where I back up my personal photos!




I hope this has been helpful! Next week is Organization in Relationships, and I’m pretty excited about it.

Don’t forget to read Em’s post today too!

The last few weeks, I have been blogging alongside my friend Emily a fun new series all about How We Do It: a series on organization! I hope it’s been practical and helpful – a peek into how we do life. Here’s what we’ve covered so far, and here’s what you can look forward to!

Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Emily’s post and Nancy’s post
Today: Personal Life (read Emily’s post HERE!)
February 6: Work
February 13: Relationships
February 20: Spiritual Life
February 27: Kids

Today we are sharing how we organize our personal lives. The last time I blogged about this, I didn’t have any babies, so I debated if the better title for me nowadays would be “how to organize my family life.” However, after much thought, I think personal life is best because it encompasses everything we do as a family as well as everything we do with friends, travel, home decor, and everything in between. Also, I hope when our children are gone from our home we still have a strong personal life to sustain and maintain, because we’ve kept it strong through the years!

So here’s my biggest piece of advice when it comes to having a strong personal life full of rest and deep friendship and family memories:

SCHEDULE EVERYTHING. It call comes back to the schedule!!

I plan our calendar consistently:

Before the year begins
At the beginning of each month
At the beginning of each week

During these times, Will and I touch base about what’s most important, what we should keep, and if there’s anything we need to drop. The Year discussion is most time consuming, but the monthly and weekly talks are brief.

I use two tools in scheduling our personal events:

My iCal for big events and recurring dates (like birthdays)
My Simplified Planner for the weekly and daily planning (I prefer the weekly edition)

I do have my iCal categorized by color: Home (yellow), Work (green), Ministry (purple), Booked Shoots (grey). Will and I share the home calendar with each other via Google.

You might be thinking: “Nancy, doesn’t this fall more in the category of how you organize your time?” And in a way, you’re right. But here’s the thing: I’m not a very spontaneous person. I don’t usually call someone up to have coffee that day. I’m a planner, and my work and life really requires me to plan ahead. So if I want to hang out with my friends, we just have to get a date on the calendar and then it happens! If I want to go for a run, or have some “me” time – I MUST plan it, or it just won’t happen.

So disclaimer: many people who have more of a relaxed personality or love adventure and spontaneity might be weirded out by this, or maybe you just won’t relate. That’s okay! I just know I won’t have any friends or family memories or half marathon goals if I don’t plan for time spent doing those things in my ACTUAL calendar. I know because it’s the way I lived life for many years (with NO life) and I don’t want to go back there!

Okay so let’s break it down! Here is how we do it:

Yearly Personal Calendar

What are the most important memories I want to make this year? Specifically referring to the trips and vacations and goals and events that take a little extra planning? Will discuss this and we always put these in our calendars FIRST. Here’s our list for 2018:

Minki getaway
NRP Team Retreat
Return to Rest
Making Things Happen
Milly’s Birthday
Half Marathon
Our 10th Anniversary
Annual Camping trip with Thomases (Yes, Emily!!)
Marriage Retreat
Lyndon’s Birthday
Beaufort – Father’s Day
Myrtle Beach
Nashville family visit
10th Anniversary trip to Europe
1 Month Sabbatical
Will’s birthday
Thanksgiving in Mountains
Nancy’s birthday

It is also at this time that I choose the 12 books I plan to read for the year. I even assign them month by month! This is a hugely important piece of my personal growth and my life as a whole!

I also have these recurring dates that repeat yearly in my iCal:

Monthly traditions
January 1st – Declutter / clean out
February 1st – Decorate for Valentines’ Day
April – 1st Spring Cleaning
May – Mother’s Day Strawberry Picking
June 20th – Decorate for July 4th (We’re BIG on Independence Day)
October 1st— Get Pumpkins at the Farmer’s Market
November 1st – Gratitude Chalk Wall
December 10th – Goal Setting for Next Year

(In honor of our How We Do It series, I had to include this camping pic from last year with my little fam and the Thomases!)

Monthly Personal Calendar

At the very end of the month or the very beginning of the month, Will and I look ahead and briefly touch base about what life looks like. What weekends will we be gone? When do we need childcare? When are we going to go on our date? When do we need dogsitting / housesitting help? We chat about the things we need to do,

Will and I are more task people than people people. So we touch base about how many social events would be good for us each month, make sure they are on both of our calendars, and make sure we have childcare lined up! Things we always discuss:

Which Sundays I lead worship (and have worship practice)
Date Nights
Travel plans
Plans with friends
Rest Days + Home Nights

Photo by Gina Zeidler

Weekly Check Ins

By now, we have our month planned out. But life changes, plans come up, and sometimes we just forget. It’s always good to check in with each other once a week (we usually do on Sundays) to discuss the upcoming week. We always try to do 3 things:

Go through our weekly questions for our marriage
Choose our Sabbath day for the week ahead
Make sure our calendars line up for the week

My favorite part of our weekly check ins is our weekly questions for our marriage. I’ll talk more on this in our upcoming post – How we organize our relationships! For now I guess you’ll have to wait 😉 But don’t miss it because they change the game in the best way.

In addition to my chat with Will, I personally decide and schedule two very important things that also affect my personal life greatly:

My reading goals
Exercising at least 2x

I write both of those in my calendar. Goodness I hope those two things don’t get lost in this giant blogpost because they are SO fulfilling and so important for me as a wife, mama and woman! Exercising and reading are just SO important in keeping my personal life fulfilled and feeling whole.

I keep my current book beside my bed for easy access, and on the days I plan to exercise, I get dressed in my exercise clothes.

A few Daily Thoughts

I can’t fail to mention the importance of staying close to the Lord in my personal life, day to day. It’s the foundation of everything for me, which is why another blogpost devoted entirely to organizing my spiritual life is coming up, too!

I don’t shower every day. Well – that’s not totally true. I do a quick “bod-show” every day (Nancy talk for body-only shower), but I only wash and style my hair twice a week. That’s a real time saver!

Tidying my home and kitchen on a daily basis also brings me great joy in my personal life. We always have the kitchen clean and the coffee made before going to bed, which allows for a wonderful fresh start each morning.

We do laundry once a day. This keeps things from piling up, which is so nice now that we are a family of four!

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I’d love to hear – do you do any of these? What do you do in addition? How do you keep your personal life in order?

Don’t forget to read Em’s post if you haven’t yet!

To catch you up to speed in case you’ve missed it, the last two Tuesdays were a little different than the lovely photography posts you typically see around here. I’ve been blogging a new series all about Organization alongside my friend Emily, and so far we’ve covered:

Organizing our Time (Em’s Post and Nancy’s Post)
Organizing our Finances (Em’s Post and Nancy’s Post)

Today, I’m really excited to talk about Organizing our Homes!

Let me be the first to say I feel rather unqualified in this realm, for a few reasons: first, I am nostalgic about everything. I keep more things than I should because of fond memories attached to them. Second, I hate waste. So it’s hard for me to throw something away when I feel like I might have a use for them one day. But I’m learning that in order to have the clutter free home I want, I have to take authority over the stuff and get it out of the house!

TBH, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on my home before children. I read over my original home organization post from a few years ago, and a smirk came over my face with a hearty… “Mwahahaha oh what it was like before children!!” Now I’m two beautiful little girls into motherhood, and it’s another level of home organization that you have to keep up with, and wayyyy less time to manage it. (CanIgetanAMEN?) But instead of letting this defeat me, I want it to inspire me to do more about my home’s organization on a more consistent basis than I ever did before. But let’s be real: I’m still working on it. (I.E. nursing a baby takes up allll my time.)

While I do have some simple things that have helped me through the years, I humbly want to point you in the direction of 3 valuable resources that will help you get your home organized if you feel it’s out of control. If you’re anything like me, you need a solid pep talk and at least 10 reminders that stuff is only STUFF and it’s time to deal with it!:

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up
A Simplified Life – Reading this now. The first chapter makes me want to clean out my home a million and one times.
2 Second lean – a business book (FREE audiobook!) that has really changed the way I think about my home’s management!

Now that you have the best resources to give you a swift kick to the booty on home organization, here are the principles and habits we endeavor to live by in the Ray household!

Pursue LESS

For some reason, we always want more. I certainly fit in this category. I want the most adorable new trinkets from the Magnolia line at Target, even if I have no place to put them. I want a cute new striped shirt, even though I have 5. Why? I think it’s our culture and our lack of contentment. So we aim to pursue LESS in our home, making use of everything we own, and being generous with the things we don’t wear or use anymore. This is why I do my own contentment challenge at least once a year! You have to be intentional in this area and focus on all that you have – not the things you don’t.

1. Chase after contentment (and take the Contentment Challenge if you haven’t already)
2. Find a ministry to donate to regularly (Raleigh folks – we love With Love From Jesus)
3. Don’t sell anything unless it’s value is over $100 (just two weeks ago I spent the better part of my afternoon listing things to sell. I have now vowed I won’t do it again for such small items! I’d rather bless people who need it. There are better ways to spend my time.)
4. Keep a gratitude journal. It fosters a mindset of abundance instead of lack!

A place for everything, & everything in it’s place

This simple principle helps to stop me in my tracks several times a day, as I put things down in places they shouldn’t go because it’s convenient or easy. I realize it’s just making more work for myself later if I choose the convenient option in the moment! Now of course there’s grace – you better believe when the baby is crying, I drop everything into a giant pile on the kitchen table and/or floor. But for the most part…

• Every time I come in from the car, I bring all trash and bags with me
• Every time I come inside, I put the keys on the key ring
• When Milly gets home from preschool, I unload her backpack and lunchbox immediately and hang them up
• Dirty laundry goes in the hamper – not the floor
• Shoes go in the closet – not at the foot of our bed (I’m terrible about this)

Form tidy habits

Piggy backing off of the list I just wrote describing “putting everything in their place,” this is a list of habits we are trying to form constantly. This is so hard at first! But this, I believe, this the key to keeping your home organized. Here is a quick list of our habits: some we are still working on becoming 2nd nature, others we don’t even think about them anymore… we just do them!

• If something is sitting at the top of the stairs, take it downstairs. If something is sitting at the bottom of the stairs, take it upstairs.
• Put the car keys on the key ring
• Do 1 load of laundry every single day: fold and put away too!
• Immediately sort and file mail into our folders in our kitchen:
William
Nancy
NRP
To shred
To file
Bills
Coupons
• Once a week, clean out your kitchen files and put them in your main home filing system. We have a filing cabinet with the following folders and more: car insurance, bank accounts, life insurance, HOA, Winston, investments, giving, vacations, water bill, gas bill, etc.
• Donate on a regular basis

Stick to a Budget

As crazy as it sounds, sticking to a monthly budget decreases spending and unnecessary clutter in a big way. I have found that when your finances are organized, your home also follows suit. Call me crazy, but it’s true! You are intentional about your dollars and the stuff doesn’t accumulate so easily.

Finally, I’m bringing back “The Ray’s Unspoken Rules” because I think it’s helpful to identify what any unspoken rules might be for your household! We’ve added a few more since having kids!

The Ray’s unspoken rules:

The kitchen is clean and the coffee is made before bedtime every evening so we can wake up to a fresh start. We both pull weight to make sure this happens.

If something is left on the stairs, you grab it and take it upstairs. No matter who it is, no matter whose stuff it is!

If it takes less than a minute, do it immediately.

Always take everything out of your car every single time you come inside: water bottles, every little piece of trash, receipts, coffee tumblers, books, briefcases, photography equipment, jackets. Anything that goes in your car must come out!

Check your mail folders regularly.

Keep snacks in the diaper bag fresh by always putting them back in the pantry when you get home.

Always ask your spouse before throwing something of his/hers away.

If you are the one to eat the last of something, it’s up to you to put it on the grocery list.

Communicate about who is doing what household chores.

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I’m curious – what systems do you have in your home!? Or what system did you read today that might be new to you? Leave a comment!

And don’t forget to read Emily’s post on home organization! Last time I was at her house, I was eyeing her tupperware of party supplies in her closet. That girl GETS home organization!

Where we’ve been and what’s coming up:

Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Emily’s post
January 30: Personal Life
February 6: Work
February 13: Relationships
February 20: Spiritual Life
February 27: Kids