Math for Grownups
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NEW YEARS RESOLUTION

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Getting organized bit by bit

“My house is a disaster.”

How many times have you uttered these words or heard someone else say them?  You and they are not alone.  Getting organized is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions.  But like losing weight, it’s easier said than done.

But how do you manage this daunting task? If you’re inclined to take a week off of work, with high hopes of a sparkling, organized home after five long days, you may want to reconsider.  If you’re not already organized, why would you want to spend so much time cleaning out your linen closet and kitchen cabinets?

On this point, the experts agree: a little goes a long way.  So most suggest that devoting only 15 minutes a day to organization can yield big benefits.  Let’s take a look at the numbers.

If you devote five days, for (let’s be generous) 10 hours a day, you’ll end up working 50 hours total, right?  (That’s 5 days x 10 hours or 50 hours.)  And you’d probably also have a sore back and a week’s worth of vacation lost to your label maker and plastic bins and lids.

But what if you committed to 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week?  How much time will you have spent?

15 minutes x 5 days = 75 minutes

75 minutes ÷ 60 minutes = 1.25 hours (or 1 hour and 15 minutes)

Gosh, I spend more time in a week figuring out what’s for dinner.

So what if you started on January 1 and stuck with it throughout the month?

There are 22 weekdays in January

15 minutes x 22 days = 330 minutes

330 minutes ÷ 60 minutes = 5.5 hours

That’s less than the time it would take for you to watch the first two films in the Lord of the Ringstrilogy!

So let’s take this a bit farther.  If you managed to keep this resolution for an entire year, how much time will you have spent organizing?  Let’s assume there are 250 workdays in the year.  (You’re not going to organize on a holiday are you?)

15 minutes x 250 days = 3,750 minutes

3,750 minutes ÷ 60 minutes = 62.5 hours

So by devoting a mere 15 minutes a day to organizing, you can end up spending more time over the year than if you took a week off and worked on the task for 10 hours a day.  Plus, I guarantee you’ll be much more relaxed.

But what can you accomplish in 15 minutes?  Here’s a short list:

  • Cleaning out your junk drawer
  • Going through seasonal clothes and deciding what to give away, toss or keep.
  • Alphabetizing your spice rack.
  • Culling through your kids’ artwork and filing or scanning special pieces.
  • Scanning your bookshelves for titles you’re ready to part with.
  • Setting up a spot for your mail, keys, purse and jacket.

By the end of one week, you could have a tidy junk drawer, trimmed summer wardrobe, room on your bookshelves and a regular spot for your keys.  By the end of the year?  Who knows what you could accomplish!

Have any organizing tips to share?  Post your ideas in the comments section.  I’ll bet I (or someone else) can find the math in that technique!

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In Math at Work Monday

Math at Work Monday: Janine the professional organizer

Either A&E Television is super smart or I’m easily manipulated.  On January 1, the cable channel ran a marathon of Hoarders, the documentary-style television program that shows extreme hoarders getting help to deal with their illness and their (often disgustingly) cluttered and dirty homes.

I watched several episodes.

Let’s get one thing straight: I am not a hoarder.  But like most folks, I do have a clutter problem.  Hoarders makes me feel better about my own issues, while learning a bit about how to let go of material things.  And besides, professional organizing has always been a fascinating career.  The process of helping someone get organized — their spaces, their collections, their time! — is akin to waving a magic wand.

Getting organized is one of the most common New Years resolutions, so I’ve invited professional organizer Janine Adams, who owns Peace of Mind Organizing in St. Louis, Missouri.  Not surprisingly, she uses math in her work.  Here’s how.

What do you do for a living? 

I help people create order in their homes and their lives. I specialize in working with folks who are overwhelmed by clutter and for whom getting organized is a lifelong challenge. Though no two clients are alike, I typically help in the area of decluttering, then creating systems to help people function smoothly in their homes. My special skill is in gently guiding people who have a special relationship with their things so that they can let go of stuff and feel okay about it.

When do you use basic math in your job?

When someone has too much stuff to fit into their space, we sometimes have to figure out what percentage of their things they might need to part with in order to be able to store everything. So the client might agree that he or she needs to part with three of a particular type of item for every one kept, for example. When creating storage systems, I typically try to subdivide spaces using bins, so I use simple math to figure out how many bins will fit on a shelf, for example. When working with clients on creating habits and routines and time management, we break down the day into small increments and try to figure how long things will take and what can actually get done in a given amount of time.

Some organizers do a lot more space planning than I do (I’m spatially challenged, so I don’t do space planning). I imagine they use more complicated math!

professional organizer

On the financial side of my business, I use math all the time, calculating my fees (I typically charge by the hour) as well as in calculating what I owe my subcontractors. I pay sales tax on any items I buy wholesale, but sometimes I round up or down to a whole number when I’m charging the client. Then, for bookkeeping purposes, I have to calculate the base price and the sales tax on it so that they equal the whole number.

Do you use any technology to help with this math?

I use the calculator on my iPod to check my math when I’m calculating what I’m owed (or owe subcontractors). I want to make sure I get it right. I also use a calculator when I’m figuring out sales tax. I use Quickbooks to help me with my bookkeeping and appreciate its math functionality.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

If I didn’t know how to do basic math, I wouldn’t be able to run a business. I think it’s that simple. I feel like I’m constantly calculating fees, expenses, time available. Math is essential!

How comfortable with math do you feel?

This is very basic math. I’m comfortable with it!

What kind of math did you take in high school?

I was in an accelerated math program, but stopped at second year algebra, in 10th grade, because I didn’t enjoy it very much, to be honest. But I felt pretty good at it. I also took accounting classes, which have helped me in my two businesses (writing and organizing) and with home finances. What’s interesting to me is that I’m much better at basic math (the kind I use in every day life) than my husband is and he majored in applied mathematics in college.

Do you have questions for Janine?  Ask them in the comments section.  And be sure to come back on Wednesday and Friday.  I’ll show you exactly how you can use math to help yourself get organized.

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In Health

One Little Word, One Big Clue

 you’ve read a women’s magazine or watched one of Oprah’s weight loss shows, you know a thing or two about how to shed those pounds.  Move more, eat less, right?

You probably also know how easily we can be fooled by diet companies and nutrition labels.  One of those bags of chips you buy at the gas station between errands? The package may claim 250 calories per serving, but the bag may actually contain 2.5 servings.

It’s that tiny little word — per — that screws us up.  It’s so little, you might not even notice it.  But it can make a big difference between reaching your weight goal and wearing a muumuu on the beach this summer.

If you think back to your elementary or middle school math classes, you may remember your teacher explaining that per means each.  And if you think even harder, you might remember the operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) that is indicated by the word per.

Yep, it’s good old division. Think of it this way:

Charlie has six Star Wars figures, and he’s playing with two friends.

“But I want all of them,” he screams. To which you calmly reply, “I know, but that’s not fair. How can we be fair?”

“They can have none, and I can have all of them,” says Charlie, stubbornly.

This is why we teach kids division, you think.

In that situation, you know without a doubt that dividing the Star Wars figures evenly between Charlie and his two friends is not only fair but easy: Because there are six toys and three friends, each friend gets two figures.  In other words, there are two figures per child.

You did that in your head, but the math works out.

6 toys ÷ 3 friends = 2 toys per friend

Now, look more carefully at the above statement.  Toys per friend translates to 6 ÷ 3 or 2, right?  And that means that per means to divide.

Got it?  Good.  Now you can apply this any time you see the word per. In fact, this is precisely what I did on Wednesday, when I was figuring out how long it would take me to lose 25 pounds.

Whatever you expect to lose in a week, the math is simple:

total weight lost goal ÷ loss per week = number of weeks

25 pounds ÷ 1 pounds per week = 25 weeks

So if you think you can lose 2 pounds per week, it’ll take you 12.5 weeks to lose 25 pounds:

25 pounds ÷ 2 pounds per week = 12.5 weeks

Remember, I also wanted to convert the number of weeks to months — because that’s how my brain works:

I already figured out that I can probably reach my goal in 25 weeks.  To find out how many months that is, I can just divide by 4 (the number of full weeks in a month):

25 weeks ÷ 4 weeks per month = 6.25 months

This works for a variety of calculations you may make when embarking on a plan to reach your fitness and weight loss goals.  If your trainer says you should exercise for 5 hours per week, you can divide this in a variety of ways:

5 hours ÷ 5 days = 1 hour per day

5 hours ÷ 4 days = 1.25 hours per day

5 hours ÷ 6 days = 0.83 hours per day (or 50 minutes per day)

And so on.

If you practice this skill, you’ll find yourself doing it all over the place — translating miles per hour to your estimated time of arrival, figuring out how many cheddar cheese goldfish are in a half-serving, calculating the exact number of stickers each of your triplets get from the package, and so on.

So get on with your bad self.  Use per to your advantage and don’t let servings trick you into eating more than you wanted to.

When do you use division (and per) to help with your fitness and weight loss goals?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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In Health

Watching the Weight Go Down

I suspect I’m not alone in one of my New Years resolutions: to eat better, exercise more and lose weight.  (Ack!  Did I just write that out loud?) Like other women in their mid-forties, I have found my metabolism screeching to a halt and my weight creeping up and up.  So last night, I launched my most recent — and hopefully last — attempt at getting into better habits.

But I’m not fooling myself.  This is a long process with a lot of little steps, some forwards and a few backwards.  My issue is staying motivated.  I do well for a while, and then I slip up — and eventually give up.  So, I’ve got a good plan that should allow me to make incremental changes and leave lots of room for mistakes.  And to accomplish this, I’ve got both measurable and soft goals.

Sure, I want to eat better (I can count each serving of veggies I eat or glass of water I drink.)  And I want to exercise more.  (I can count my hours at the gym or steps I take from my car to the grocery store.)  But for me, those are big changes that will include a lot of frustrating missteps.  In order to stay focused, the real measurement will be my weight.

My goal is to lose 25 pounds. And I’ll track this by weighing myself once a week.

So how long will it take me to lose the weight? This is where the math comes in.  Here’s what I know:

  1. I want to lose a total of 25 pounds.
  2. I will probably lose between 0.5 and 2 pounds each week.

Does this mean I’ll be sitting on a beach in a string bikini in August?  (That’s a joke.  I’ve never worn a bikini in my life.)  Let’s look at the math.

A half pound and two pounds is a pretty wide spread, so based on past experience and my inclination to be more conservative, I’m going to estimate that can lose about a pound each week.  So I can reasonably expect to lose all of the weight in 25 weeks.

Whatever you expect to lose in a week, the math is simple:

total weight lost goal ÷ loss per week = number of weeks

25 pounds ÷ 1 pounds per week = 25 weeks

So if you think you can lose 2 pounds per week, it’ll take you 12.5 weeks to lose 25 pounds:

25 pounds ÷ 2 pounds per week = 12.5 weeks

But there’s one more step I need to take.  I don’t think in terms of weeks.  My brain focuses on months. How many months will it take me to lose the weight?

Again, I’m going to estimate.  While there are approximately four weeks in each month, that’s not an exact figure (except in February during a non-leap year).  But since I’m not measuring out medication or figuring out how much to send into the mortgage company or solving problems for my eighth grade math teacher, I don’t have to be exact.  So I’m going to go with four weeks in a month.

I already figured out that I can probably reach my goal in 25 weeks.  To find out how many months that is, I can just divide by 4 (the number of full weeks in a month):

25 weeks ÷ 4 weeks per month = 6.25 months

Ta da!  I can reasonably expect to lose this weight in six months.  That means if all goes well, I should be at my goal by June.

Like me, are you hoping to lose weight in 2012?  Do the math to see when you’re likely to reach your goal.  And if you want to share, feel free in the comments section.  (It’s scary, but you can do it!)Save

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