“You Actually Did it, Mom.”
I have been on a major organizing kick. I have been buying magazines for a couple of years that mention “organizing” on the cover. I got a quote from a professional organizer. And we decided to give it a go ourselves first, to see how far we could get. I bought a book that I liked and I have been following the author’s steps of: Sort Purge Containerize Equalize I worked in my office all last week and got it up to speed, and this week I am working in the boy’s room. It’s a big job. I worked on Xander’s side of the bed on Sunday and we got a good start. I’m going to try to do one side of the room each day. Today I worked on their Lego table. I had looked at it yesterday and I’d been asking them how it might make sense to organize it. Emerson said by color and shape. I was driving by Target and I had some time so I went in to look. I found some plastic bins in 2 sizes. I got 12 small bins that stack and 6 large bins that stack. I thought we could use the small bins for the Legos themselves and the large bins for unfinished work and projects since they are always working on something. I also got a label maker, as recommended by the book. I brought everything home and went through the mess of Lego. One of the hardest parts of getting everything organized is letting go of feelings of inadequacy or shame that I haven’t done this sooner. Anyway, I sorted every Lego into a box by color, and the organization system started to emerge. I got my label maker and labeled every container and every section. The label maker was very satisfying and fun. I tried to think about what might work and how to make it a useful system. I was lucky that I had a block of time when the...
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