True Confessions Wednesday: Deadlines and Piles

True Confession #7: When I get busy, I get stuck in a push-pull between things that are deadline-driven and things that aren't.

My dining room table is currently in serious need of intervention. We went away the weekend before last and have another trip coming up in the near future. My dining room, which sits in the center of our house, has a lovely table that is supposed to be used for eating but is currently too full of my various piles of things to perform that function.

It started small, as I began preparing for our trip to the beach, which collided with midsemester assignments and warning grades. Papers to grade, grading sheets and class prep information took up residence, then disappeared gradually as I finished grading and returned the papers to their rightful owners. I dropped a few odds and ends -- extra grading sheets, blank copies of exams -- and ran, assuming I'd return all of those items to their various homes shortly.

Then, we got home from the beach, picked up the mail and started unpacking (not necessarily in that order). Nonessential mail (magazines, catalogs) landed "temporarily" on the table, keeping the school odds and ends company. Late last week, I went shopping for prizes for my Facebook party last weekend, and laid all of those things out on the table because I need to see things. After the party, I packed them up and took them to the post office but, again, a few stray items remained.

Now, we're planning a trip to go see our daughter at college. As I come across things I want to take along, I put them in a pile -- you guessed it -- on the dining room table.

Every time I walk by that table, I cringe. I also aim to pick up something and put it away every time I pass but, no sooner do I clear off a space than a new I need to see it task arises and something else gets dropped into that freshly decluttered location.

Meanwhile, life moves forward. New tasks with deadlines arise and the old task of clearing off my table (which has no external deadline) gets pushed aside as the clutter expands.

And therein lies the problem.

I rarely miss a deadline of someone else's making. While this may be admirable, professional or whatever else you may call it, it often happens at the expense of deadlines I've set for myself. And, when things get too busy, I stop setting personal deadlines altogether. Stuck in survival mode, I keep moving forward only to drag hot spots like my dining room table along behind me like so much baggage. Sprinkle in a few surprises like an unexpected crisis, illness, or phone call and that baggage just gets heavier. Or, worse yet, it gets abandoned in favor of mindless television or something equally non-demanding.

Just me?

I wish I could say I had an easy answer to this, but there is no easy fix. I can try not to let things pile up in the first place and, to an extent, I do. I can make sure I finish one task before starting another, which is something that's a major challenge for those of us with a drop and run organizational style. I can try not to overbook myself, bringing myself one step closer to finishing what I start,  but I can't control the unexpected interruptions. All I can do is decide whether or not to engage in them.

Once the clutter gets dropped onto the surface, there is nothing to do but chip away at it and do my best not to add to it. These are the times I employ Give it Five!, or pick up one thing every time I walk past, or tackle the table one pile at a time.

Life happens. And for me, the more that's going on, the more likely I am to end up with piles. As there is nothing in my life I want to get rid of (cooking dinner notwithstanding), all I can do is try to keep on top of the habits that create the clutter and, once it appears, tackle it one stack at at time.

3 Keys Thursday: 3 Keys for Returning to the Real World

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

We had a lovely long weekend at the beach and now I'm back and completing Day 2 of Return to the Real World.

It's overrated.

While vacations, long weekends, and school breaks are a wonderful break from routine, they can often make it difficult to get back into a routine. Since my Return to the Real World adventure kicked off on a Wednesday, I've had my share of hopelessly confused, primarily of the "what day is this?" variety.

Here are three key things I'm doing to find my way back and to (I hope) make Return to the Real World be more of an adventure than a nightmare.

Start with my week-at-a-glance. It's tempting to think that since this is a short week I can forgo my usual week-at-a-glance cheat sheet, but that would be a mistake. Stationery hound that I am, I chose a different week-at-a-glance sheet for this week since I was starting my week in the middle. I opted for one that has more room for lists, and I appropriated the Monday and Tuesday spaces for my to-do list as well, which is good because it leads me to the next step....

Consolidate my reminder notes and to-do lists. Leading into the vacation, I made lists. During the vacation, I made more lists. When I got home...you guessed it. All of these random pieces of paper with reminders on them spell disaster unless I put them all together on one list. And, as an added bonus, I get to cross off the stuff I already did which means that the whole list will be smaller than the sum of its parts.

Use my styles strategically. As someone with an I need to see it personal style, it's tempting to just unload the reading material and things to do that came back from vacation onto the nearest flat surfaces, but too much unloading leads to visual overload. Yes, the mail I need to sort is on the dining room table, along with some of the reading material that didn't get read. Everything else needs to go away, and, if piles are inevitable, they need to be all in one place. My poor dining room table is my go-to at this point, so that means the kitchen counters and the mudroom surfaces need to remain clear.  Scattered piles on multiple surfaces leave me feeling frantic and edgy. If it's all in one place, I know where to look and I'm motivated to create more clear space, even if I can't do it all at once.

Our vacation was lovely. Now I'm working to make Return to Reality pleasant, too.

Vacation Spaces

 True Confession #6: I love hotel rooms and vacation spaces. 

Aside from the fact that being in one of these places usually means I'm taking a break for fun and/or learning, I love how easy it is to be organized in these spaces.

First of all, the sheer amount of stuff I have with me is minimized, limited to only what I could fit in the suitcase and various tote bags I packed specifically for the occasion. Hanging my clothes up is something I want to do because the alternative is to leave them crumpled up in my suitcase.

Not cool.

Second, these spaces are compartmentalized. There's the closet (for clothes), the desk (for my laptop and other work materials), the bed (for sleeping), the bathroom (for toiletries and makeup), and, if I'm lucky, some sort of reading chair/sofa/side table combination (for leisure). Figuring out where everything goes is easy which means that most of the time, everything is either where I packed it (where I left it last) or where it belongs. Everything. Nothing is homeless and, as long as I packed it, it has to be in the room somewhere.

I also designate spots for things like chargers (the one for my laptop is with my laptop and the one for my phone is usually on the desk as well) and my room key. Putting things in the same spot each time saves search time and, in addition, helps to create the habit of taking what I need with me when I go.

Last weekend, we were at the beach. We stay at the same condo complex each time and the number of rooms and their composition/layout are pretty similar from one unit to the next. This allows me to do the same type of organizing in this much larger space as I do in a hotel room.

While it might seem silly to focus on organization while I'm on vacation, for me, this predictability and consistency (not to mention knowing where to find my things) contributes to a sense of relaxation. It's not really surprising that that is the case since the same thing is true at home. The better organized I am and the less stuff I have laying around, the less stressed I feel.

How about you? When you take a vacation, do you take a vacation from organization as well?

3 Keys Thursday: 3 Key Tools that Aren't Style-Specific

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

If you've been reading this blog for more than five minutes, you know that organizing by STYLE is about choosing the strategies that work with our personal and organizational styles. But, sometimes, there are super strategies -- ways of doing things that work across all (or at least most) personal and organizational styles. 

Here are three of my favorites. 

Consistent locations. One aspect of my mom's favorite organizational maxim ("a place for everything and everything in its place"), logical, consistent homes are time savers. If we know where it goes and we get in the habit of putting it there (no matter what "it" is), we don't waste time and energy searching every nook and cranny for the thing we need.

Give it 5. Have an overwhelming task? Set a timer for five minutes and tackle it. You won't finish, but you'll make a dent, and, once you get started, you just might keep going and get more done than you expected. Getting started is often the hardest part, and promising ourselves to work for just five minutes can help us clear that hurdle, 

Backwards to-do list. Some days, we have to make a special effort to focus on our accomplishments. Those are backwards to-do list days -- days when, instead of writing down what we need to do, we write down what we've accomplished as we accomplish it. A load of laundry in the washer? Jot it down. Dinner in the slow cooker? Add it to the list. One shelf in the closet reorganized? Write it down. At the end of the day, instead of having a partially checked-off list, we have a list of everything we've done. It's a small difference in list-making that can make a big difference in motivation and that can help us to focus on what we've accomplished instead of what we've left undone.

How about you? What's your go-to organizational strategy?

True Confessions Wednesday: Packing it In

True Confession #5: I'm a pack-as-you-go kinda girl. 

In the first year seminar I teach, we watch Adam Grant's TED Talk about "originals" which includes the concept of precrastination -- that laudable habit of starting in on something right away, as soon as possible. 

Yeah. I don't have that. At least not most of the time. 

But, when it comes to packing for a trip, my husband comes pretty close. Sure, he doesn't start packing the minute after the reservation is confirmed, but he usually begins his preparations at least a week in advance.

I do not do this. I'm a procrastinator under many circumstances, but packing probably tops the list. As someone with an I need to see it personal style, my packing plan can be loosely described as, "it gets worse before it gets better."

I suspect that my approach makes him uncomfortable, and I know his approach pricks at my conscience. If I'm not careful, it can also get the shoulds rolling.

But I've learned over time that my method works -- or at qualifies as workable, at least -- for me.

The first step in my packing process is the mental list -- thinking through what I want to bring along. Sometimes I do this at night before I fall asleep, which kinda rules out making actual lists. Other times, I do it during normal waking hours and actually write things down.

Right now, we're preparing for a trip. Earlier today, I seriously considered packing only clean underwear and toiletries in my suitcase and bringing my dirty clothes in a laundry bag. Then, I can  wash them when we arrive and, voilà! Outfits.

In some ways, this plan seems so much easier -- I mean, my clothes in the laundry bag aren't mud-encrusted or gross or anything -- and I'd avoid generating new laundry. Though I'm leaning toward something more traditional, I'd be lying if I said I'd ruled out the laundry bag plan entirely. The second step in my somewhat organized personal packing plan (the one that involves only clean clothes) is, after all, making sure everything I want to pack/wear while I'm away is clean. That's part of the purpose of planning what to pack.

Conger Design via Pixabay

Sometime over the next few days, I will get serious. Clean, seasonally appropriate clothing that can be mixed and matched will make it into a bag. I will wait, though, because the longer it's in the suitcase, the more wrinkled it becomes, and my make-up and some of my toiletries (the ones I haven't pre-packed) will be the last things to go in the bag.

Do I forget things? If I'm honest, the answer is yes, I sometimes do, but I usually don't forget the
really important stuff. That's the stuff that makes it onto a list or gets packed first.

There are lots of reasons for my approach to packing, but that's another post. As for this trip and this approach, I'm currently at the plan-and-pile stage.

Seems only appropriate for an I need to see it girl.

3 Keys Thursday: 3 Key Organizational Ingredients

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

It's hard for me to believe that the first kiddos I introduced to Organizing by STYLE are now seniors in college but, alas, that is the case. Back then, I set out to not only help them get organized, but to help them have faith in themselves as well.

Those goals have never changed.

When I retired and began teaching Organizing by STYLE in community education classes, I was pleased that my silly style names appealed to adult audiences, too. As it turns out, they needed the humor and low-key approach just as much as the kids did -- maybe more. A lifetime of feeling like Plan B in a Type A world takes its toll. Despite studies that correlate disorder with creativity, adults who struggle with organization feel self-conscious and somehow flawed. And in a world where Type A organizers feel justified intruding into a co-worker's space and tidying up, the feeling of being a second-class citizen is intensified.

Not everyone is a Type A organizer. More important, not everyone needs to be. If you can function effectively in your space, health and hygiene issues don't arise as a result of clutter and you can find what you need when you need it, your organizational system is probably functioning just fine.

Aside from the tangible organizational choices we make -- containers and locations for our stuff and planners and lists for our time -- there are some non-tangible things that are important for all of us to keep in mind, regardless of our specific personal and organizational styles. We all need:

• A plan that works for us. My husband swears by file cabinets. I think file cabinets are where old papers go to die. Clearly, his plan doesn't work for me, nor does mine (open top file bins) work for him. As long as the plan works, allowing us easy access to our stuff and affording us the ability to find what we need when we need it, the specifics of the plan don't really matter.

Twelve years in the making.
Never say never.

• An appreciation of what works for us. Traditional tools (e.g. binders, file cabinets, pocket folders) don't work for everyone, yet we often equate organization with traditional systems. Chasing after something that doesn't work wastes time and money, and can leave us feeling a little like one of Cinderella's stepsisters trying to squeeze into that coveted glass slipper. Why covet the traditional when there are so many other choices? Knowing what works and what doesn't and choosing accordingly protects our time, our money and our confidence. 

• Patience with ourselves. Organization is a process, and one that can be painfully slow for some of us. The good news is that once you create a system that works for you, it becomes self-sustaining, and you can move on to the next organizational challenge. Some days, it feels as though all we're doing is running from one pile to the next -- and some days, we are. Be patient. Creating systems that work with your style (let alone transfer to family members with other styles) is time-consuming, but well worth it.

When we stop thinking of organization as a one-size-fits-all proposition and start honoring what comes naturally to us, organization can actually be -- wait for it --

Fun.

True Confessions Wednesday: The Devil is in the Details

True Confession #4: I am a global thinker. I love the idea stage, the blank page, the place where everything is possible.

It's the details I hate. Whoever said the devil is in the details had it right. It's the details I stress over. Afraid I won't get it right, or I'll miss something or head completely in the wrong direction, I waste my time on worry and end up draining the energy I could have spent on  the details avoiding them.

It's a vicious circle.

One of the things I love about style-based organizing is that I don't have to immediately get the details right. I can observe and experiment, playing with possible solutions until I find the Goldilocks solution -- the one that's "just right."

This frustration with the details is exacerbated by my lack of patience. When I have plenty of time or the stakes are low, I don't really mind working out the details. But, since the big picture is my strong suit, I rarely find myself in that position as avoiding the details comes much more naturally. Determining the details takes so much time and energy that I want to just throw my hands up and abdicate responsibility of the detail-determining to someone who's good at it.

Like my husband.

You might think that it's good that a global thinker is married to a detail-oriented person and, sometimes, you'd be right. Other times? Well, you know how it works with oil and water.

How about you? Would you rather determine the details or delegate them?