True Confessions Wednesday: Organizing is Fun

True Confession #12: Organizing makes my short list of fun things to do when I have a day off.

No, that's not sarcasm, which is probably why I spend so much time writing about this stuff. And, as I've said before, the organizing and the writing feed each other. When I write about my problem areas in a blog post here, I get motivated to wave my magic organizing wand and make them disappear.

Unfortunately, there is no magic organizing wand. It's all good ideas (and some bad ones) and elbow grease. And time -- the most elusive ingredient of all.

After last week's blog post, I made it a point to take the time to properly organize the student papers that were littering my dining room table. I had them stacked by class but, because of the way I'd collected the assignments, some of the piles had multiple assignments in them. Writing last week's post nudged me to grab three cardstock filing bins (green, blue and yellow, for those of you color-coding at home), separate the papers by assignment and turn the stacks and piles into neatly (color-coded) paper-clipped stacks all contained within one file per class. I'd been putting off doing this because I'd had my blinders on, careening forward and "accomplishing things" instead of stopping and taking the time to put things in an order that would reduce my stress.

Just me?

The thing is, I really enjoy organizing. I'm not wild about cleaning (unless it's cleaning a newly cleared space) or cooking, but organizing? Lemme at it!

Last Sunday, I had papers to grade so, of course, I cleared off the counter in my office. (Did I mention that organizing is also a procrastination technique of mine?) Since then, every time I walk into the office, my eyes light on that newly cleared space and I smile. There is still work to be done as well as projects I'm eyeing up in other parts of the house, but that space makes me happy and more likely to spend time in my office.

When we get busy, it's easy to put off organizing. We run from one thing on our to-do lists to the next, claiming we don't have time to stop and sort. But, if you're like me, when you finally make the time to do just that, the act of taking stock and putting things into order can be just the stress relief we need. Sorting all those papers on my dining room didn't reduce the number of papers I had to grade, but it allowed me to get a better idea of what was actually there and corral what looked like haphazard piles. Suddenly, I was in charge, running the task instead of the task running me.

hudsoncrafted via Pixabay

Over this Thanksgiving break, I hope to express my gratitude in multiple ways. One of them will be getting rid of outdated and excess things so I can truly enjoy what I have. I won't get rid of all of them, but I have a few spots I want to dig into. I gave my students the assignment of savoring something over their break and I can't think of a better way to savor what matters than to remove all the stuff that gets in the way of my enjoying it in the first place.

Happy Thanksgiving. I will be taking tomorrow off to savor time with my family. See you next week.

STYLE-ing My Way to the End of the Semester

The semester is drawing to a close and the semi-annual paper blizzard has begun. Fortunately, many of these papers will be returned to my students but, in the meantime, keeping things in order is a bit of a challenge. When it feels like the stuff is overwhelming the systems, it's time to go back to STYLE.

• Start with successes. I have folders for all of my classes, so that's my starting point. When the papers begin to overrun the folders (like when 25 students turn in five page papers), I start stacking and I keep my piles together with paper clips or binder clips that match the color I've assigned to each class. That way, I can see at a glance which papers belong to which classes, even if I move my piles into open-top files.
• Take small steps. When the papers start to pile up, they end up on my dining room table, which is not where they belong. Taking even five minutes at a time to sort, clear and move the piles to a more appropriate location makes a difference not just in terms of clear space, but also in terms of peace of mind. I know. I've tried it.
• Yes, it has a home! Except when that home is too small. Time to pull out an extra file bin and press it into service.
• Let it go! This one will be easy. The majority of the papers will be returned to their rightful owners. What remains can be sorted into file bins that house materials for each of my classes.
• Easy upkeep. Luckily, I've been teaching the same classes long enough that I've developed working systems and, once the paper piles shrink to a manageable size, the upkeep is easy.

Chipping away at my piles gradually, reminding myself that this is a temporary state of affairs, and keeping what comes next in mind helps me make progress and keep my wits about me. As the piles grow smaller (and leave my house), I feel a sense of accomplishment that almost makes this temporary state of affairs less annoying.

Almost.

True Confessions Wednesday: I Need Saturdays

True Confession #11: No matter how much I try to keep up with it, all the house stuff drops to the bottom of the list during the week.

Lately, my weekends have been busy. Mostly, they've been busy with good things, but they've been busy nevertheless. Blocking out a Saturday here, a Sunday afternoon there and occasionally, traveling one or more days during the week has begun to take its toll and has brought me to a clear realization.

I need Saturdays.

On Saturdays, my priorities shift. Rather than being crammed into the nooks and crannies of the day as they are during the week, house stuff and writing stuff top the list on Saturdays. My students, with few exceptions, stop sending emails sometime Friday afternoon and resume sometime Sunday, making it easy to step away from work emails and grading. My family is home and the house isn't always quiet, making it the right time to do tasks like clutter-busting and re-organizing.

Without my Saturdays, things fall apart rather quickly. While I can pick up as I go or toss a load of laundry in on a weekday, really digging in to the things I want to do around the house just doesn't happen.

This Saturday, for the first time in nearly a month, I will have time at home. While there will be some grading to do, I'm ready to dig into the piles that have popped up around my house during the weeks when my Saturdays were spoken for.

I can't wait to dig in.

Friday Feature: Routines

Funny story: This post doesn't belong here. It belongs on my other blog, The Porch Swing Chronicles. But, since routines go with Organizing by STYLE and because the irony of it all does not escape me, I'm leaving it here and posting it there as well.

One caveat, though. I'm not "here" (on this blog) Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I post here on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The past few weeks have been peppered with a variety of things that have wrecked my routine. Some were mundane, others more serious and needing immediate attention, but the end result, once everything had been taken care of, was me feeling overwhelmed and off-kilter.

This week, I've been trying to fall back into my routine, but everything from sloth to interruptions to an unanticipated need to recover from all of this routine-busting has created a pile-up of obstacles. Yesterday, my husband came home sick and spent the day resting in order to recuperate. I had a list of things I'd intended to do to get me back on track but, once I'd finished the ones outside the house, I quickly fell into a rest-to-recuperate cycle of my own, accomplishing only a fraction of what I'd set out to do. Even this blog, a regular part of my week every week for over a decade, was one of the casualties.

Once upon a time, I equated routine with boring, something that becomes increasingly less true as I get older and crave the sense of calm (and accomplishment) that routine can bring with it. Routines, as it turns out, are good for us not only in terms of productivity, but also in terms of creativity. Putting some things on autopilot, or on o a perpetual to-do list keeps us from having to worry about when -- or whether -- they'll get done. They can actually be an important part of our mental health as well, easing anxiety and keeping us focused when simply staying focused requires more energy than we have available.

If you're a regular reader, I apologize for disrupting your routine by making this post unavailable on its usual day. If you're finding me for the first time, I hope you'll drop by again. I'm here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

It's part of my routine.

3 Keys Thursday: 3 Keys to Organizing When You Don't Have Time to Organize

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

We all have them. Those weeks (or months...or longer) when it seems as though everything is piling up and nothing is getting done. I need to see it folks leave reminders everywhere, I love to be busy people have more list items than hours in a day and I love stuff people feel inundated by their treasures. Cram and jammers are overstuffing their spaces, drop and runners are leaving visual trails and I know I put it somewhere folks are "restoring order" in ways they'll regret when they go in search of the things they just couldn't stand to look at any longer.

Now what??

This is the time for taking small steps, mostly because we probably don't have the time to dig in and tackle everything at once.  Here are three ways that work for me.

• Pick up as you go. Every time I pass a pile, an item or a collection, I pick up one thing and put it where it belongs. I don't make as much headway as I'd like (or clear things as quickly), but I can still restore some clear space.
• Be strategic. If time is at a premium, I can't do everything, so I aim first for the places that matter most to me. Sometimes I start with the most visible spot -- the one people see first. Or, maybe I'll start with the one that's the least cluttered for the fastest payoff or the one that bugs me the most for the most rewarding payoff. Every improvement reminds me I can do this and nudges me to keep doing it.
• Finish what I start. This one is the hardest for me and it's a habit I am working to develop. As someone with a drop and run organizational style, I have a tendency to start a lot of things and then leave them out so I don' forget to finish them. Or, sometimes, I just run out of time, leaving the thing I started unfinished and visible. Forcing myself to finish one thing before I move on to the next doesn't reduce my clutter, but it keeps me from adding to it.

Busy times are frustrating -- sometimes even for those with an I love to be busy organizational style -- and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and disgusted with ourselves. But busyness is a part of life and if we have systems that work, they don't just disappear because we've been too busy or preoccupied to use them. Busy times lead us to appreciate our systems or, if they've become as overwhelmed as we feel, revamp them. Either way, we end up organized.

Eventually.

True Confessions Wednesday: Work-in-Progress

True Confession #10: I am an organizational work-in-progress. 

If you are a regular reader, you know this is something I blithely admit on a regular basis. Last weekend, however, someone else pointed it out to me and hearing it felt like a sucker punch.

The person who pointed it out to me was my daughter and the way she put it was, well, blunt. "Your stuff is everywhere, Mom."

My first instinct was to deny, but a quick look around the room where we sat made that impossible. Shame quickly followed, along with embarrassment and the sense that I'm a fraud. I mean, I write about this stuff. How could I have let this happen??

Life, that's how.

The past few weeks have been a succession of interruptions, quasi-emergencies and routine-busting crises. I've fallen behind in pretty much every conceivable area of life.

Now, approaching the other side of the tunnel I've been in, I can see the light, but it's shining on piles that reveal just how quickly even someone who knows her styles and knows how to use them can fall back into bad habits.

Every style has attributes and downfalls. While I was putting out proverbial fires, my downfalls were having a party and they didn't even have the decency to contain it to one room of the house.

When I set out to teach these styles to my students and, later, write Know Thyself, I had two goals. One of them was to help people who struggle with organization to find systems that work for them for more than two days. The other was to disabuse them of the notion that there was something wrong with them because they weren't flawlessly organized on a regular basis.

My daughter was right. At the time of her statement, I absolutely did not look like someone who writes about organization (that's not what she said, but it's so what I heard!) But, after my initial response, I needed to remind myself of a couple of things I already knew.

First, a temporary overabundance of piles does not mean I've fallen into utter, hopeless disorganization. And, second, the fact that this happens at my house from time to time is precisely why I write about this.

I'm not flawlessly organized. My house is not perfect 24-7 (far from it). My systems, which keep me organized most of the time, get overwhelmed sometimes.

And there's a good reason for that. I get overwhelmed sometimes and, since my systems are an extension of my styles (which are an extension of me), when I get overwhelmed, they do, too. Sometimes, it's simply a matter of resasserting control over my belongings. Sometimes, it's a matter of rethinking the systems. Either way, I need more than a pinch of a magic ingredient that has little to do with me, my styles or my systems.

Time.

I write about this because I get it. I know how hard it is to keep things together all the time. I'm not writing to lecture from on high but, rather, to share what I've learned in the hopes it will help you, your kids, your spouse or your seemingly hopelessly disorganized best friend. Together, we'll figure this out, stumble, acquire, declutter, figure it out again and make progress.

It's a process and, for some of us, it involves piles.

3 Keys Thursday: Wardrobe Staples

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

One night last fall, as I was hanging up the $17 Target cardigan I wear at least once a week between April and October, I got to thinking about wardrobe staples. I used to love shopping for clothes but somewhere between my 20-somethings and my 50-somethings I lost interest. Maybe it was the changes in my body. Maybe it was the fact that shopping for my daughter took priority.  Maybe it was because it's become so much easier to order things online and try them on in the privacy of my own home, where I can mix and match instead of wondering whether or not the new item will fit into the existing wardrobe.

Or maybe it was a little bit of each of these.

In retrospect, I think a switch flipped the year I retired. For more than a year, I had no need to shop for work clothes; my existing wardrobe was more than sufficient for my new stay-at-home mom status. In addition, as I transitioned from a well-paying career to a smaller income, and I couldn't justify buying new clothes.

Though I've since transitioned into a new career, I've kept the ease of building on simple pieces. Here are my three key tops and bottoms:

Tops:

• Solid color tops in varying sleeve lengths (although the older I get, the fewer long sleeves I prefer since I use these primarily for layering)
• Cardigans. While my $17 Target cardigans (one in navy, two in black and one in white) are traditional button-downs, my favorites are a flowy, unstructured rayon blend that resist fading and wrinkling and can be dressed up or down.
• Solid sweaters, tunic length

Runner up: Print tops to dress up jeans or black pants

Bottoms:

• Jeans (of course) -- some of my dark wash jeans even work for work.
• Black pants -- nearly everything goes with jeans and nearly everything goes with black.
• Print slacks -- Five years ago, I had none of these in my closet. Now they're edging out some of the solid color khaki-cut slacks I swore by. Less boxy and made of softer fabrics, they are comfortable and easy to pair with a solid sweater. Most of mine are in prints that pair with a black top.

Runner up: It's a tie between leggings and khakis. Khakis would have made the cut (top 3) a few years back, but I'm finding it harder to find khakis that are comfortable and flattering.

nietjuh via Pixabay

If I had to, I could get dressed for months using only these items and a few pieces of jewelry. These
days, when I shop, I look for replacements or for pieces that will complement these basics, many of which I routinely have in duplicates or multiple colors.

Sometimes, I worry that I look the same every day but, when this starts to happen, I know it's time for a new accent piece or accessory. In addition, this concern is assuaged by the ease that these foundation pieces provide. If something in my wardrobe doesn't perform well with these basics, it's easy to let it go to a new home where someone will love it as much as I love my staples.

How about you? What are your wardrobe basics? Are they more basic than mine?

True Confessions Wednesday: Loving My Styles?

True confession #9: I don’t always love my styles. No, I am not renouncing everything I’ve been saying all along. I’ve learned to embrace my styles, to utilize them, and to create strategies that work with them. All of these things have contributed to me being much more organized with much less effort.

But, when I am overwhelmed and time is short, I revert to their less useful side. I start to drop and run. Instead of trusting my well-crafted lists, I allow reminders to collect in piles because there is a certain solace in seeing what needs to be done and an even greater satisfaction in putting it all away just so when the tasks are complete.

Still, it frustrates me that things aren’t perfect, leading me to overlook a not-so-obvious fact.

Every style has both flaws and attributes.

On the plus side, my I need to see it personal style has led me to take color coding to a whole new level while recognizing my drop and run organizational style has removed my guilt over not using tools like binders and file cabinets well. More important, understanding my styles has brought me to a larger conclusion: that things like binders and file cabinets are simply tools. I they don't work for me, I’m not broken. I just need a different tool.

This is true for the other styles as well. Those with a cram and jam organizational style are great at utilizing space – especially small spaces — and consistently putting things in the same place.  Learning to transfer those concepts to organizational systems that don’t leave things squished and smashed and torn allows cram and jammers to put what comes naturally to work.

Those who put things in safe places (those with an I know I put it somewhere organizational style) have the basic concept of putting things away and need only to become more methodical in that practice. People who embody the I love to be busy personal style often manage time very well; working toward managing their space with the same efficiency and utilizing small pockets of time to do so polishes that strength. Finally, those with an I love stuff personal style have the gift of seeing treasure in mundane things.

When piles abound or we can't remember what safe place we put something in or our things are wrinkled and torn from being stuffed into a too-small space, it's hard to embrace our styles with acceptance and gratitude. But, the more we work with our two-sided styles instead of trying to fight against them, the easier it becomes to be thankful for them, warts and all.

And the better organized we become.