Yesterday, Today and Next Week in Organizing News

Yesterday, I did a Facebook Live on the CatholicMom.com Facebook page and I had a blast! I did a sort of show-and-tell with organizers to help parents think about getting kids organized for back to school. I used to do something similar in the classroom with my fifth graders, and I immediately got back into the swing of things.

Unfortunately, I swung right past my blog post. It was bedtime by the time I remembered I hadn't posted anything. 

So, today, in keeping with the theme, I'm sharing another one from the vault: 3 Kid-Friendly Keys (to getting organized). By this time next week, I hope to have all of my "Organizing with Kids" posts gathered together so there's one-click access for parents looking for that information. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll check out the Facebook Live video. Need an incentive? There's a giveaway -- with a deadline :-)

Have a great weekend!

Christmas in July and a Better Basement

Today's post begins with one from the vault (December 2015), but it's kind of a mash-up: a little bit Throwback Thursday, a little bit of a Then & Now post and a tip for digging into an overwhelming space. The original post is in italics below; today's update follows it.

When my daughter was small, we started a book tradition at our house. I can't remember where I found the idea -- it might have been Family Fun magazine -- but I do seem to remember that it was just a front-of-book snippet by a parent. "Just" a snippet turned into a tradition that, at our house, lasted until my daughter was into her teens. And when a writer friend posted the photo below on her Facebook page , it begged to be shared.

Photo from Magic 106.1 FM, Guelph, Canada
via Facebook

The process is a bit time consuming up front, but very simple. In November, gather all of your child's Christmas-themed books. Then, sometime before December 1, wrap each book individually. Beginning December 1, your child can open a book a day (or a book a week, or somewhere in between, depending upon the number of books you have available). Secretly purchasing new books I could add to the pile was fun, too, and less expensive than it would seem, as many old favorites endured for years.

My daughter loved coming downstairs each morning and opening a "new" book, and, as a bonus, it started each day with reading. Although mornings worked well for us, you could just as easily do this after dinner (or before dinner to procure some late afternoon peace and quiet), or at bedtime.

Once all of the books have been opened and the season has passed, gather them up again when you gather up the decorations and put them in a special box (labeled or unique so you can find it quickly when the time comes to do it again). If you're feeling really industrious, you can wrap a few (or all of them) before you put them away, saving yourself some time at the outset, but choose carefully. You may find that your child deems some of this year's books too babyish next year.

What does this have to do with organization? I'm glad you asked :-) It's a reminder that managing our stuff doesn't always mean getting rid of things. Sometimes, it means rotating the things we take out from season to season so we can keep and enjoy more of what we love, without creating organizational mishaps along the way.

minfl3 via Pixabay

You may be wondering why I'm posting this in July. I have two reasons. First, the idea can be easily adapted to summer. You can use summer-themed books, long-neglected former favorites, or even library books. You can use picture books, or have the next book in a series available when the previous one has been completed. Wrap them (or not) and leave them at your child's place at the table. (It might be confusing for small children if you wrap library books that need to be returned). 

While readers will likely dig into the book along with breakfast every day, reluctant readers may not, and that's okay. (You can lead a child to a book, but you can't make them read it). If they're enthusiastic about the idea, keep it going (you never know which book will be "the one"), and set aside a basket where they can easily pick the books up if and when they want to read them. At the end of the summer or when the basket is full, you and your child can decide which to keep and which to donate.

haderer17 via Pixabay

The second reason for this post has to do with a place in my house which would convince you that I have no business writing about organization, ever. That would be our basement, where all good (and some not-so-good) things go to collect dust and be ignored. On more than one occasion last week, I attempted to use Give it Five! in the most cluttered section of my basement, but I was stymied.

I had no idea where to start. Me. The Queen of "Take small steps" and "Start with Successes." Well, the successes were hidden behind piles and every step seemed like an enormous one.

The solution didn't come to me immediately but, when it did, it was so obvious.

I needed to define my small step. If starting with a random pile wasn't working, I needed to start with something specific. Based on the rest of this post, you've probably guessed what that was.

Books. 

I set a timer for an hour and dug in. If it was a book, I needed to decide whether to keep it, donate it or toss it (old textbooks were the only ones that made that pile). If I decided to keep it, I had to decide where to store it. 

If it wasn't a book, it could wait for another day.

Three hours later (once I got started, I wanted to keep going), I had three medium-sized boxes of books to donate and two similarly sized clear bins with books I wanted to keep (one reference, one children's). I'd cleared some floor space (by sorting through the bins that were there), reduced some piles, and cleaned off shelves to make the "I think I want to read this one" books easy to find. In addition, I not only know where to find the books that made the cut, I can see what's in my bins without even pulling them off the shelves. 

In the process of this de-cluttering, I came across a stack of books from the last Christmas we did the book unwrapping and yes, they were wrapped. 

Those were my daughter's to sort.

I'm actually kind of excited to tackle the basement again, sooner rather than later because now I know just where to start. I still a few books to go through, and I have another category at the ready, should I need it, but my adventures in decluttering last weekend created the momentum I need to keep chipping away at this overwhelming organizational project.

I know I always say "start anywhere," and I stand by that statement because it doesn't really matter where you start. But, when "anywhere" is as overwhelming as the task at hand, getting really specific can shine a light on the place where we can make progress.

OBS FAQs: Why Can't I STAY Organized?

It happens to all of us. We get frustrated with the clutter, we dig in, we get organized....

And much too soon, we're back to where we started.

Why is it that we can get organized but we can't stay organized?

Often, it's because the systems we put together when we're in a hurry aren't as well thought out as the ones we come up with when we can take our time and really think about what works for us on a day-to-day basis. As a result, we end up using whatever we have on hand, or stashing things wherever there's space without really thinking about the desired end result, which is easy upkeep.

How do we get there? There are two answers. One is by using our styles -- something I'll address in a future FAQ post -- and the other is approaching our trouble spots with STYLE.

• Start with successes. When we're overwhelmed, it's hard to see what's working because so many things are calling out for our attention. Take a step back. Where is the eye in the center of the storm? Your successes are probably hovering close by. These are the systems you want to replicate so that you can stay organized for the long haul.
• Take small steps. Taking even five minutes at a time to sort, clear and rescue clear space from within the clutter yields a huge payoff. Trust me on this. Even better, the more we do this, the more likely we are to only need five to fifteen minutes to dispense with the clutter.
• Yes, it has a home! Or, if it doesn't, you've found a starting point. As you sort, cluster similar homeless items together. That will make it easier to determine the size of a home these things will need and which home works best for you (see successes, above) because it makes it easy to both put things away and retrieve them when you need them.
• Let it go! People tend to find this one either terrifying or cathartic. Keep in mind that letting it go doesn't have to mean throwing it away. It can mean selling it, donating it or passing it along to someone else who'll love it as much as you did (Ask first! And be prepared to graciously take no for an answer). When you sort, give yourself the luxury of a "maybe" pile so you can part with those tough-to-let-go-of items gradually.
• Easy upkeep. The goal. Didn't reach it in a single session? I didn't expect that you would. Easy upkeep arises over time when we find homes that work for our personal and organizational styles for all of the things in all of our piles. How does this happen? By replicating our successes so we know what kind of home-hunting we want to do in the first place.

It's a process. Want to know more about your styles? Take this quiz. 

Throwback Thursday: Imperfect but Improving

Nothing like a Throwback Thursday post (on a Friday) to remind me that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Much as with the post below, I actually had a post planned for yesterday. It just never made it out of my head and onto the page.

Boy, it's a good thing I'm not a perfectionist, or the lateness of this post would really bug me! (Just a smidgen of sarcasm there....)

The sad thing is, I had it all sketched out yesterday, and thought I'd have it posted long before now. But after I finished teaching for the day, I hit the wall, and nothing was possible before a nap. Nothing coherent anyway.

Which brings me to today's post, which also happen to connect to perfectionism. On tap today? Three keys to thinking in terms of progress instead of perfection.

Work in short bursts. It's impossible to complete a big project in small block of time -- and that's the point. If you know going in that perfection is not achievable, it's easier to set that perfectionistic mindset aside (easier being a relative term, of course). Better to Give it Five! and see progress than let things sit (or get worse) until you have the perfect time block in which to organize them perfectly. Pat yourself on the back for perfectly completing your time block -- whether it's five minutes or an hour -- instead of beating yourself up for not making the space look perfect.

Use the not-quite-right thing until the perfect thing comes along. It's easy to put off tackling that problem area until you have the right containers, but the longer you wait, the more out of control the space gets. Grab the nearest almost-right container and remind yourself it's temporary, then dig in. Tell yourself you're doing research, because you are. The parameters of the temporary container will help you to determine exactly what you need for that space. Besides, temporary restoration of order really is better than chaos until the perfect container crosses your path.

Do what you can do. My day today reminded me of this one. Many days, there's a big gap between what we want to accomplish and what we actually get done, and it's all too easy to beat ourselves up over that gap. Progress -- any progress -- really is a good thing, and learning to focus on what we've done instead of what we haven't done can make life a whole lot happier.

I'm getting better at conquering my perfectionism one project at a time. How about you?

Owning Your Lists

I may be struggling to get into a routine right now, but some things follow predictable patterns, like the list-making I talked about back in the summer of 2016. Read on for some strategies for the patterns I identified.

Then:

As an I need to see it person, I have a love-hate relationship with lists. Because I need to see things, I love dumping "stuff" out of my head and onto paper -- to a point. If the lists get too long, however, I start to get overwhelmed and I need to subdivide. As I wrote yesterday, some of that subdivision came naturally as I indented bullet points beneath topics that had more than one thing to do beneath them.

Does your list-making reflect your styles, or do you have a different style altogether when it comes to making lists?

• If your personal style is I need to see it, do you subdivide and color-code for visual efficiency?
• If you're a cram and jammer, do you cram as much as possible onto one page?
• If you're a drop and run organizer, do you make your list, set it down and forget about it, only to return to it later?
• If you have an I love stuff personal style, do you need to find just the right paper before you can write anything down?
• If you're an I know I put it somewhere organizer, do your lists go missing because you put them in a "safe place"?
• If you have an I love to be busy personal style, are you as efficient with your lists as you are with your time?

In my case, my list-making does reflect my styles. I've already revealed my I need to see it tendencies, and I do, indeed drop my list and run, only to return to it later on. Fortunately, the mere process of writing it down reminds me of the things I need to tackle, so when I return to my list, I've typically made some progress, even if I was in one place and it was in another.

Whether your list-making style mimics your personal and/or organizational styles or deviates from them isn't what matters. What matters is whether or not your list-making works for you. With lists, as with all other aspects of organizing, one size does not fit all. 

Bru-nO via Pixabay

And now:

Although one style doesn’t fit all, sometimes one solution—or, in this case, two—can be useful for multiple styles. What might those be?

Location and visibility.

Let’s start with visibility. No matter your style, there’s a good chance that all of the items on it run together, especially as the list gets longer. Taking a page, so to speak, out of the I need to see it playbook can be helpful in not only making items stand out, but also chunking the list so that it feels less overwhelming. Whether you opt to put headers on your list and group items by topic or location, number the items, in order of importance/priority, give each category its own page in a notebook or simply create the list and then highlight items in different colors to indicate priority or some other subcategory, making the key items on your list stand out is the end goal. 

You might want to experiment with this strategy to see what makes your list most clear and least overwhelming. Maybe highlight phone calls in yellow and errands in blue. Or, maybe highlight the top three items that you want to accomplish and then, after you’ve checked them off, highlight three more things. One caveat: while pulling out the highlighters and coming up with a color for every item on the list might sound great to some of us, this plan can quickly become procrastination wrapped up in pretty colors. Pay close attention to whether this is a practical time saver or a frivolous time waster.

Who needs this strategy?

• People like me with the I need to see it personal style who are probably already subdividing and color-coding because one long list quickly becomes more than we can visually manage without feeling overwhelmed;
• Cram and jammers, who cram as much as possible onto one page and sometimes can’t really see the items running up the side of the paper;
• I love to be busy folks, who profit from well-organized lists because time is at a premium.

Now let’s look at location. This comes down to simply choosing one or two spots in your house where your lists live. You can create a list anywhere and, if you’re like me, you probably have paper in nearly every room in the house so that you can write things down before you forget. The key here is not to stop writing it down when you think about it but rather to put the finished (or work-in-progress) list in a designated spot every time. My designated drop spots are the desk in my office and the counter in the kitchen. Typically, the desk in my office holds the master list that has everything on it and the short list on the kitchen counter holds all the things I must not forget to do that day. Why? Because I walk past that counter on my way to and from nearly every place in my house, including the back door, building an automatic memory jog into every trip.

Who needs this strategy?

• Drop and run organizers who make the list, set it down and forget about it;
• Those with an I love stuff personal style, who feel the need to find just the right paper before they can write anything down (give those special notepads designated homes!)
• I know I put it somewhere organizers whose lists go missing because they put them in a "safe place" which may or may not be the same every time.

For most of us, lists are as much a part of our daily life as breathing. But, like any other organizational tool, they should be used in our service, not vice versa. Getting into the twin habits of customizing our lists and keeping them accessible can be keys to making sure that happens.

3 Keys Thursday: 3 Keys to Storing the "Sometimes" Stuff

This week, I'm participating in a virtual writing retreat. Not only is it wonderful to get back into the writing groove, but it's so much fun just chatting with other people who "get it." 

This particular group is made up of college instructors and professors who've been riding the same face-to-to face instruction to fully virtual instruction to hybrid instruction merry-go-round I've been on for the last year and a half. Like me, many of them have found that their writing has taken a back seat and, as a consequence, simply putting their hands on their works-in-progress has been one of the challenges they've tackled this week. 

I'm sure we're not alone. The pandemic has flipped so many things upside down that the tools we use for our hobbies -- whether writing or sewing or crafting or knitting or something else altogether -- have gotten stashed away or tucked into a safe place that made perfect sense at the time. While this is especially true for those with an I know I put it somewhere organizational style, others of us have likely fallen prey to it amid the chaos as well. Whether we've needed to make room for something else (teaching at home supplies, anyone?) or have stashed it away because we haven't been motivated to do anything with it, we may find that when we finally set aside time to do that fun thing we've been wanting to do, we waste half of our time finding what we need.

Just how do you store the things you need more than occasionally, but less than regularly?

• Put your styles to work. I'm sure this one doesn't surprise you, but it's perhaps even more important for these kinds of supplies than for everyday items. When we don't access things on a regular basis, it's easy to forget where we put them, unless we have the luxury of a dedicated hobby space. Using style-friendly storage, whether it's clear drawers, labeled bins or baskets that serve as both storage and decor saves us time when we don't have time to waste.

• Build room to grow into the system. Whether it's beautiful yarn, unique notebooks or fabulous fabric, supplies for our leisure time endeavors seem to call out to us, so it's inevitable that a "just right" storage container won't stay "just right" for long. Accept the inevitable and leave a little room for that next irresistible item.

• Create a cheat sheet. Mine has saved me on multiple occasions, especially after I've overhauled a space (usually my office) and found new homes for things. Once you decide on that perfect spot, write it down and store it in a place you access frequently. That way, when a long time passes before you get back to that thing you love to do, you don’t spend half your time looking for the thing you need.

In the busyness of life, it's often difficult to carve out time for the things we love to do. If we store our supplies wisely, we can use every minute of our leisure time for leisure.

Throwback Thursday: When Life Hands You Chaos

This summer, I'm debuting a new feature: Throwback Thursday, slated to run once a month. Some months, I'll use an entire vintage post while for others, I'll do a little updating. Today, the intro and closing are new and the meat of the post came from deep in the vault: December 2015.

Spring semester classes have been finished for nearly a month, and I'm still struggling to get into a routine. I came close two weeks ago and I got cocky, thinking I could just iron out a few wrinkles and it'd be smooth sailing (and maybe I'd leave the clichés behind me as well). 

Yeah. Sure. 

As it turns out, for one reason or another, that first week came the closest to the routine I want to put in place. I haven't given up (it is only June, after all), but if I want to get serious and move ahead with purpose, I need to keep a few things in mind.

Keep it simple. Now is not the time to try fancy new plans. If it's not broken, don't change it. If it can wait, let it. Trying to do it all is overrated.

Keep it consistent. The same things go in the same places -- time wise and stuff wise. Predictability might be boring under some circumstances, but it can be a lifesaver when the road is bumpy, winding, and/or under construction. And for many of us, there's even something comforting about a routine.

Try to avoid making a contribution -- to the pile-up, that is. Strategies like Give it Five! and Don't put it down, put it Away! can keep things from getting worse. While it seems that putting one more thing on the pile won't make that much difference, that one more thing you set down now becomes one more thing you have to sort later. Put it where it belongs, or start a homeless bin for all the loose ends without a location to call their own. That way, you need to look in only one place to find that thing you put in a safe place.

Let's face it -- there will always be those times in life that defy routine. Figuring out how to simultaneously stick to basics while still moving forward can be the winning combination we need to take our organizing, planning and scheduling to a new and improved level. 

One step at a time.