True Confessions Wednesday: Pile or System?

True Confession #22: My drop-and-run systems are often just piles in disguise.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a place to store my daughter's gluten-free stash without doing a major kitchen storage overhaul. My eyes lit on the bins underneath my mail counter, two of which were only partially full (room to grow), so I reached into the middle one, pulled out a pile of magazines and voilà! Problem solved.

Except now I have a pile of homeless (and probably outdated) magazines.

For now, this pile is on the steps leading to the second floor of our house. Last weekend, I was good at picking up a new magazine every time -- okay, many times when -- I passed the piles but as the week got busy, the pile got neglected.

I could just add it to one of the (many) other piles of reading materials I have but I keep holding out hope that its current location will catch my I need to see it eye so that I solve the problem rather than compounding it.

Getting back to my original confession, the concept of piles in disguise is not entirely bad. After all, when you think about it, most organizing systems for papers are organized piles. Binders. File cabinets. In/out boxes.

My magazine bin.

The trick is to keep the pile organized in whatever way works for your styles. I have one bin that is all catalogs so that when I get the mail, every catalog either goes there or gets recycled immediately (Don't put it down, put it away). When I'm looking for a catalog, I look in the bin (the home for catalogs) and when it gets full, it's time to go through the catalogs and get rid of duplicates (two from the same company) and anything outdated. This is a pile in disguise (the bin being its disguise) but, since it's not haphazard, it's also an organized pile. The bin contains everything, matches its neighbors and leaves things looking better than a random pile of magazines would.

As for the pile sitting on my steps? Now a random pile, it was an organized pile before I sacrificed my bin for the greater good. How was it not random in the bin? Only certain magazines got slipped into that bin so that if I were looking for one of those issues, I'd know where to find it.

As I've mentioned before, this blog is therapeutic in that writing about what I need to do often gives me the nudge I need to do the thing I wrote about. With some time off next week, maybe I'll tackle that pile and not only get rid of it, but read its contents. Or maybe tonight I should just take the whole thing back in the family room and get rid of whatever's in there that I know I won't read anyway, assuming those items actually exist. Either of those would be progress.

Stay tuned.

3 Keys...Friday?? 3 Tasks, Once Each Day

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

'Tis the season...for an overabundance of responsibility! It's easy to push the panic button, or, alternatively, curl up in the fetal position and avoid it all. Or, if you're stubborn  (like me), you create a plan, preferably one that's easy enough to guarantee successes, no matter how small.

So today's post, while still in keeping with my "Three Theme," isn't so much "Three Keys" as it is "Three Things." And, since I deviated from the schedule this week and am posting this on Friday, I figured it was a good opportunity to change things up a little bit.

Next week, the posting schedule returns to normal. I think. Meanwhile, I will...

Take one step toward Christmas. I wrote about this in Wednesday's post on The Porch Swing Chronicles. Overwhelmed by all that needs to be done for the holidays on top of everything else that needs to be done, I decided that simply moving forward slowly was better than standing still and stressing out. A side benefit? I'm savoring things a bit more.

Do one thing to promote my new book. Like it or not, promotion is part of the territory when you're an author. Fortunately, I enjoy the promotion aspect, and, since I have a list (of course), taking things slowly now means laying the groundwork I need to tackle the events themselves when January rolls around and my teaching schedule is less demanding.

Tackle one pile. Yesterday, it was accumulated mail. The day before that, it was a project in the playroom/man cave that freed up space for a Christmas tree  -- one that will reap clear space benefits in the new year. My standard for selection? Whatever's bugging me that day.

What's your plan for managing December with your sanity intact?