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Posts Tagged "Organizing"
I can tell I am aging from the way my brain works. It isn’t as flexible as it once was. I used to find it much easier to go with the flow…to let things happen and to make it all work. Now, I am more attached to my schedule, to having things the way I want them. I like having a plan. I don’t really want to be flexible. I want things my way. I see the change and I imagine it means I am aging, but I don’t really care. I like the more planned version of my former self. I love the way I can orchestrate my life to be about how I want it to be. This new-found desire to plan shows me all the places where I don’t have the time to plan, too. Like when we invited people over for drinks and Mel and I were both too busy to go and put the cushions out on the patio furniture and to make it all “nice” before they came. I realized that I don’t like the stress of entertaining in a half-done sort of way. But, with 3 kids, two dogs, two acres, full-time (ish) work and a myriad of friends and family, we don’t have the luxury of a well-organized life so I am still flying by the seat of my pants even though I desire a carefully planned life. I sometimes dream of retirement as if it is a kind of time porn—endless time to move slow, make decisions, talk over coffee, read the paper and feel in control. Instead I feel like a puppy tied to the back of a station wagon loping along behind trying to keep up with a life that pulls me along with a variety of the kid’s activities, work meetings, and social engagements. I keep up most of the time. Every now and then, I check myself. I look around at the chaos and think to myself, “this is as good...
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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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About a month ago I got a quote from a professional organizer on helping us in our home. The quote was a whopping $2400. We were surprised and when we looked around, we realized she was right. Somehow in the last 8 years of having kids and moving out of our house and then back into our house (we were on sabbatical and traveled), things stopped having a place. In that time, I have had 10 people working in my house, have had babies grow up and turn 8, have changed the use of almost every room, have had multiple clients here, and have closed a storefront, ending up with the leftovers of that business stashed here as well. My office was probably the worst room in the house. Now, I am not really a hoarder by nature, but there have been some lean financial times in my past and I have been hanging onto things because I knew they had value and I had paid a lot of money for them. But having a quote of $2400 gave me the incentive I needed to pare down. I have been doing some serious editing. I have gotten rid of a garbage can full of stuff, a recycle bin full of stuff and several boxes of freecycle stuff. I have done a great job. I feel proud and now everything has a place. I have been through everything except a file cabinet and 3 drawers and I will get to them this week. I have instituted a “Work in Progress” file where my ongoing projects are. It has several projects in it but I am looking forward to clearing those, too. It is a new system I am looking forward to working with. But I am left with 3 postcards from Graceland that I don’t know what to do with. I bought them 2 years ago when we went to Graceland. I bought them–Mel says I always buy postcards and never send them–but these are...
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I have been feeling really tired lately. Too tired to be effective. I can explain it–I have been busy. I had a coaching call about a month ago and I kept saying “If I can just get to vacation, then I will slow down…” Then I got to March break and worked really hard at my parent’s house (cleaned out their pantry, helped with taxes, helped clean out part of the garage) and I got even more tired. I came home and I added more exercise to my program and I got more tired. I felt like the more tired I got, the more my home life was spiraling. Things were messy and dirty and I was too tired to deal with it all and I just couldn’t keep up. But yesterday my daughter gave me a gift. It was one of those moments when we started cleaning one thing and then did another and then 4 hours later we had reorganized the whole kitchen. We went through almost every cupboard and moved things to new spots that work better. We got rid of things and made it work. She had strong opinions, I had strong opinions, we talked to each other and we listened and no one got angry or upset. There was kindness, there was gentleness and there was much needed progress forward in our home. I went to bed feeling both tired and very satisfied. I also realized just how much I helped my mother. Having another pair of hands and eyes in the decluttering was amazing and incredibly helpful. Thank you to Sela for the lovely gift of helping me in the...
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