Me Vs. The Pile

 Over the past few weeks, I’ve been chipping away at a re-organization of my office, a task that was kicked off by my trying to find a home for a single discovered object. As I write this, I’ve created enough clear space to make me feel as though I’ve made progress, but the remaining piles remind me there’s still work to be done.

One pile in particular silently rebukes me every time I walk into the room, and rightfully so. It has mostly been gathering dust, as well as having things added to it in order to consolidate everything that still needs to be sorted. I looked at it this morning, winced, and said aloud, “This pile overwhelms me.” 

 

And then I had a thought. But what if it didn’t?

 

That sounds silly, I know. I can’t possibly take a pile from overwhelming to approachable just because I want to.

 

Or can I?

This is where the “T” in STYLE comes in: take small steps. I don’t have to do it all at once. 

 

I just have to start.

 

A favorite organizing game (yes, I play little games with myself to get stuff done) is to choose a set number of items to be dispensed with. “Dispensed with” means they can’t just be moved from one pile to another. I can do that, but those items don’t “count.” Once I’ve removed the designated number of items – sometimes it’s 3, sometimes it’s 5, sometimes it’s a single item every time I walk past the pile – I can walk away. 

 

Or, I can set a timer. Give it five is one of my favorites. When the timer goes off (after 5 minutes), I can walk away.

 

The thing is, most of the time, I don’t walk away. I keep going after the timer goes off or after I’ve met my designated number of items because what’s overwhelming isn’t the items themselves, but the pile.

 

Wait. Isn’t that the same thing?

 

Sort of. But almost always, taken one item at a time, the pile is less intimidating. And, I can choose which items I dispense with. Today, for example, I uncovered a piece of mail – an advertisement – that I’d kept for no reason I can recall. That was an easy one. It went directly to the trash where it needs no further attention.

 

Another of my favorite tricks for dispensing with piles is flipping the pile over and starting at the bottom. (I can’t take credit for this one – I learned it from an HGTV show). The bottom is typically where the oldest items live and the oldest items are often the easiest to make a decision about.

 

In January, I wrote about a project I couldn’t get started on. In that case, I was dealing with a bigger, more abstract task and I needed to decide which “pile,” if you will, to start with. 

 

The thing is, when it comes to organization, both the projects and the piles can feel overwhelming. And, when we feel overwhelmed, we often get stuck. Projects gather dust, piles remain untouched, and we feel frustrated. 

 

Whether it’s a project or a pile, finding the small step that works for you is key. Small steps provide us with a way in, give us momentum, and reduce the size of the task. Even better, they can reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed that can loom even larger than the task itself. Once we puncture that balloon, the job gets easier.

 

While it might seem silly for me to pick up a single item every time I walk past a pile, it feels manageable. It’s a small challenge that tests my creativity – which item can I find the right home for? – and helps me feel as though I’m making progress.

 

At least as long as I don’t add anything to the pile in the meantime.

 

Wouldn’t it be easier just to bite the bullet and sort the pile all at once? Maybe. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with some piles – at least not for me. If it were, I’d certainly have a lot less clutter to deal with.

 

I love to organize – I find it fun – but I know most people don’t feel the same way. If you don’t share my love for this particular pursuit, that’s okay.

 

But it’s all the more reason to make a game out of it. Especially when the piles start silently rebuking you.

A Plethora of Planners

 Maybe you've donated to a number of organizations, and you've gotten them in the mail. Maybe they were 75% off after the new year, and you couldn't resist a bargain. Or maybe you have an I love stuff personal style and just had to bring all the pretty planners home with you.

No matter the cause, you somehow seem to have acquired a plethora of planners and calendars.

Well, have no fear. There's more than one way to press a planner into service.

There's the traditional use, of course -- keeping track of appointments. If you use just one planner and/or calendar, that might still leave you with a small pile of extras. You could:

Use one to keep track of your progress. Perhaps you set a goal to drink more water, take more steps, or read more books. Jotting down your accomplishment of the day in the designated box can help you stay on track. Better yet, it can help you see the big picture (and your successes) on days when things aren't going so well.

Use one to log time spent on your favorite hobby. When it comes to my writing, this has become so important that I don't wait to see if I have an extra planner on hand. I buy one for this purpose. The one I use now is from the dollar store and gives me space to log my time as well as jot a few notes to myself: what I did, and where I want to start in my next session, for example. 

Planning a long-term project. One of my friends gave me a beautiful planner that I use to plan writing projects. While the daily (favorite hobby) planner focuses on the day-to-day and keeps me accountable, this larger planner with tons of open space and BIG blocks lets me do the global planning. When I can give each chapter, character, or concept a full-page spread of its own, I feel less constrained and better able to brainstorm.

Categorized lists. Cross out the month and replace them with a category. I used the monthly layout at the front of my goals planner to keep and track a running list of books I've read, organizing projects I want to do, and 22 things I want to focus on in 2022. (I also used one page to list all the good things in 2021). The page devoted to organizing projects is both a work-in-progress (I add to it as new projects pop up) and a way to keep track (I put a date in the corresponding box every time I work on a project). Because each project gets its own box, I can see the big picture without trying to cram everything onto one list. Depending on your styles, this might not matter to you but, as someone with an I need to see it personal style, once I started doing this, I wondered why it took me so long to try this approach.

A penny (or square) for your thoughts. Or prayer requests. Or anything else you want to get out of your head and onto the page before it floats away. Again, for someone like me with an I need to see it personal style, giving each item its own square keeps things visible in a way that's less overwhelming than a traditional list.

You're probably wondering why this counts as a frequently asked question. You might have guessed (correctly) that I don't have a lot of people asking me what to do with an overabundance of planners. But deciding what to do with an overabundance of anything is an integral part of getting (and staying) organized. Sometimes it's easy. We can look at an item and determine we don't need it or we'll never use/wear it again and we can toss/recycle/donate it accordingly. Or, we can decide we simply don't have the space for something, and decide to give it a new home either through donation or resale.

But a lot of times, it's not so easy. And when something we like and want to keep can honestly be pressed into service in a new and useful way, that can be a win-win. Not only are we getting to keep the thing we like, we're reducing waste by pressing an already manufactured item into service.

There's one final style caveat to consider. If the thing you love is a poor fit for your styles, it might be better off brightening up someone else's space. My primary personal style is I need to see it but, when it comes to stationery items, I definitely have a generous dollop of I love stuff, which makes me more likely to find 1000 excuses to keep all things stationery. But, because planners are an excellent I need to see it tool, it makes sense for me to hang on to them and press them into service in a new way if the planning space is generous enough. Those little year-on-a-page and pocket-sized planners? Not keepers.

So, if you've been staring down that pile of planners and calendars taking up space in your kitchen or office, take a moment and look at them through the lenses of your styles. What abstract ideas or looming projects can they help you organize? How can they help you keep track of your successes and your small steps? What thoughts, dreams, goals and ideas might benefit from being corralled into a collection of 365+ squares separated into 12 months or categories?

And, if the answer is, "they can't," then perhaps the best home for them is the recycling bin. With a clear conscience.

I Love to Be Busy?

  When I was younger, I loved being busy. In high school, I filled the lion's share of my free time with music and theatre, not just because those activities gave me the opportunity to perform, but also because that's where my people were -- friends who shared my interests. 

In college, I stayed busy, too. At first, it was to win a bet. A high school friend bet me that I'd come home frequently; I countered by saying I'd stay at school (four hours away from home) until Thanksgiving.

I won the bet. This time, it was mostly music that kept me occupied and helped me adjust to being far from home in a brand-new place. 

As a single young adult, I continued to look for ways to fill my time. Although I loved living alone and having both a space and a schedule I could call my own, it could get lonely at times. When I discovered a little theatre an hour from my apartment, busyness became a way of life once more.

A few years later, marriage, and then parenthood, kept me busy in new ways. By the time COVID brought up-close-and-personal activities like theatre to a screeching halt, my work responsibilities also shifted, moving out of the classroom and onto the computer, creating a whole new kind of busyness.

You’re probably thinking that I love to be busy is my primary personal style but, actually, it isn’t. It is, in fact, my least dominant of the three personal styles, partly because the others just describe me better and partly because I no longer love to be busy. These days, my idea of a perfect weekend is no appointments and no commitments – a far cry from what I wanted back when I was a single twenty-something. 

When I talk about personal and organizational styles, I’m often asked if someone can embody more than one of them -– or even all of them. My answer has always been that while it’s possible to have traits of different styles, one style tends to stand out and lead the way. And, from a “getting organized” perspective, it’s worthwhile to identify that dominant style so we can use it to identify workable strategies and press them into service.

Now, after examining and writing about personal and organizational styles for more than fifteen years, I’d add another layer to that response. While I stand by my original answer, I’d add that different styles can become dominant in different seasons of our lives. Though my current predominant personal style is I need to see it, I think I might have had a different answer back when I was in my twenties, seeking busyness and considering it a worthwhile challenge to shoehorn as much as possible into an already full schedule. Interestingly, my organizational style (drop and run) has, for better or for worse, changed very little in that same time period.

The collision of styles (whichever ones they are) with one another and with life in general has an impact. Even though I no longer identify with an I love to be busy style, some of those traits linger and, when busyness takes over, the resulting lack of time sends my drop and run organizational style into overdrive. The combination – or collision – of these circumstances with my I need to see it style, along with the exhaustion that comes with excessive busyness, can drown my organizational systems at a time when I need them the most. 

 

The good news is that having identified the strategies that work for my primary styles has enabled me to put strategies into place that help me recover. When the flood of (now undesirable) busyness passes, I can easily find my footing. Once I’m relieved of the time shortage that triggered the downfall of tidiness, I can take small steps to restore order, putting wayward stuff away in its previously assigned locations, restoring both order and sanity in the process. It might not all happen all at once, but thanks to the fact that I have style-based systems in place, it will happen.

Eventually.

If you feel as though you’re on the cusp of a style change, ask yourself if it’s connected to a reason (a temporary circumstance) or a season (a shift in lifestyle). Then, consider taking the opportunity to consider the organizational implications of a different style. Investigating different styles and their related strategies can give us fresh ideas that breathe new life into our organizational systems, which can spark new ideas that help us individualize our organizational processes. 

Organization is a life skill, so it only makes sense that the way we approach it is likely to change over time. Staying true to what works for you, regardless of the label you put on it, and staying open to new ideas can provide the keys that unlock organizational successes that help us to navigate life’s twists, turns, and seasons.

Organizing to Go

 Organization can often be a frustrating game of trial and error. We all have those spaces in our house that refuse to cooperate, no matter which tools we try. But, every once in a while, we happen upon a tool that’s just right.

At our house we still use the old envelope system for budgeting — setting aside predetermined amounts of cash for groceries, books, clothing, etc. We adopted this method years ago to get our credit cards under control, and it stuck.

In this system, I’m the keeper of the cash. And, if we go somewhere where we need cash from multiple envelopes/categories, it can be a challenge to keep all the envelopes straight in an efficient manner. Sure, I can tuck a stack of envelopes into my bag – that part is easy – but by the end of a day of multiple transactions, what started out as an organized system has often become a crumpled pile of envelopes. 

 

Enter Poshmark and my Kate Spade card holders. 

 

The first one I found was the black and white polka dotted print – the one that matches both my planner and the bag I use for school – so it quickly became a “must have.” Then, I discovered that this cute little tool came in two other patterns – one floral, and one striped – both brightly colored. 

 

Eventually, I ended up with all three of them. 

 

At first, I didn’t really know what I was going to use them for (I just thought they were cute). But now that I’ve been using them for a while, I’ve assigned each little cardholder its own category so I can tell at a glance which “purse” I need. Since they’re all small enough to tuck away as well as being brightly colored enough that I can find them easily in a purse or tote bag, they work well under almost any circumstances.

 

While these cute and useful card holders don’t solve an organizational problem in my home, they’re great examples of the qualities of a good organizational tool: well-suited to their purpose, fun to use, attractive, and true to the style of the user (in my case, it’s my I need to see it personal style). All these attributes are key to finding solutions for any organizational challenge. And, while “cute” isn’t essential, it can be motivating; we’re often more likely to use a tool that’s attractive.

But do you want to know the best part? They truly put the fun in functional, and I smile every time I use them, which tells me they’re just right for me.

If you know, you know. 

Geralt via Pixabay

 For more than a decade, I've had the privilege of writing a column for CatholicMom.com called "STYLE Savvy." Many of the posts that appear here appear there as well and Barb, my fearless (and incredibly patient) editor did such a lovely job bringing this one to life that I'm sending you directly to it instead of reprinting it here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing (and researching) it.