MY EARLY ATTEMPTS AT ORGANIZING

When did you start to try to organize - your home, your stuff, your life, your office?

When I was a child I was not organized.  A true family joke is that I lost the first report card I got.  I was in first grade.  I folded it up - in half, in quarters, in eighths - and stuck it in my pocket.  Somewhere between school and home - it disappeared.  It was not fear of my grades that it made it disappear.  It just did.  Into thin air.  It was there and then it was gone. 

When I was 5 my parents had my sister and they bought a house.  A post WWII suburban tract house that was built for them.  A room of my own!  (I shared a bedroom with my parents until just before my sister was born and then I slept in the living room.  It was a small 3 room apartment.)  I now had space for my stuff in my room and in the basement too!  Wonderful. 

In short order my bedroom was a mess.  Stuff out all over the floor and the furniture.  As this went along my mother would periodically tell me that it was time to (let’s hear it from all of you) -  “Clean up your room”.  Generally this was when company was expected and they might come upstairs to the bathroom and see my room across the hall.  It had to be neat in case anyone saw it.

Now, no one ever thought to tell me how to clean up my room.  Most people need a little help getting started in this area.  My version of cleaning up my room was to throw out a few things, attempt to find a home for the others, and then toss everything onto the closet floor and shut the door.  This served the purpose of making the room presentable for anyone looking in.  It was only a case of hiding the mess.

After a while mom figured out what I was doing and had a new instruction for me - “Time to clean out your closet”.  I would take everything off the closet floor - clothing was hung in it by mom, so it was not a problem and the only place I could reach was the floor, so that was all I could mess up and all I could clean.  I would look through what was there and, again, toss a couple of things, and then put the rest back trying to make it look neater.  I remember that around May or June I would come across my Trick or Treat bag with most of the candy still in it, on the floor of my closet and toss it.

Of course no actual cleaning up was done in any of this, just stuff moved around, rearranged, and hidden.  My family tended to have a clean, fairly neat house, but there were areas of disorganization and messiness just from day to day living and lack of time to put stuff away.                     
Then I got a little older - in junior high school.  I started reading teen girls magazines.  One of them had an article on organizing your clothes. It told me that I should sort my clothes by type and color.  The clothes should all face the same way.  I did so.  I should explain that I am short and - ahem - chunky, so clothes that fit me are hard to find so I don’t have lots and lots of clothes and keep what I have as long as it stays wearable.  I have been the same height since 5th grade.  (I had a jumper which I know I had in 6th grade.  When I got married 15 years later, the jumper came with me.  My husband politely pointed out that it was not something someone of my age should wear and it finally was donated.)

I started following the rules for my hanging clothes.  Blouses together, sorted by color, pants, skirts, dresses - ditto.  I still do this.  It is one of those areas of my life and house which are organized.  I have added some categories and rearranged where the categories hang, but they are the same.  My husband thinks it odd for each clothing item to have an “assigned” space in my closet, when I have a stack of clean clothing to be put into drawers on one side of my dresser, and a stack of clothes worn, but waiting to be worn again on the other, but I do.  When I take a blouse or other piece of clothing out of the closet the hanger goes back where it was and is waiting for the item to return “home”.  (Blouse is a polite term - most of what I wear is tee shirts.)

This does not mean, however, that from junior high on my closet was organized.  Noooo!  Just my hanging clothes were.  The floor was as bad as ever and by now I could reach the top shelf, which was also a mess.

How about you?  When did you first get the idea that things needed to be organized better?  What did you try? 

Organizing books don't work for me.

How about a bit on organizing books and how I have found they don’t relate to me?  Do you find this to be true?

I have read my way through all sorts of books on organizing, decluttering, etc.  I have found that none of them really seem to apply to me and my situation.  I am guessing this is true for many people.                         

My house must be the smallest one there is.  For example, my bathroom is, according to several organizing books, smaller than the average closet.  It has no counter, one small drawer at the bottom of the cabinet, no room for permanent storage to be added to the bathroom.  It has a cabinet and sink so small, that when we went to replace them to the current ones we have, we had a choice of almost no sinks or vanities.  The ones on display in various stores did not fit into our bathroom.  And this is our larger bathroom!  This is far from the extensive bathrooms described in books. 

Front entrance hall? Another example.  Just about every organizing book I have read has an extensive section on the front entrance hall of the house.  The latest book I have read talked about what needs to be in the front entrance hall.  Maybe it would all fit in Downton Abbey’s entrance hall, but not in my front entrance hall.  There is a small closet.  There is a small mirror on one side of the front door and the door bell mechanism on the other side.  There is no room for a shelf or piece of furniture. With either one will not be able to walk through this tiny space.  Even more unlike the description of this room in books, we do not come into the house through it.  Our kitchen door is immediately adjacent to our driveway and much more convenient so that is what is used.  There is no mud room or other room when one enters through the kitchen.  When one walks in, one is between the stove and the counter.  No place for items waiting to go out (unless they are hung on the door knob), keys, shelves, storage etc. 

Alternate ideas had to be found and they were found more by logic than by suggestions from books - this is an important idea one must use logic in organizing.

Next week, I will tell you how I got started trying to get organized and my early efforts.

Getting Started

I know, you look around and think that you can never get rid of the clutter and get organized.  So much all over and no time to work on it.

Here’s an idea - stop adding to it all.  Don’t try to start with the past stuff (by the way I use the word stuff to describe everything in your house, much as George Carlin did, I was questioned on this by someone) which overwhelms you, start with what is coming into the house TODAY.  By not letting anything else accumulate you limit what you need to deal with.  I will explain this using the mail, but it works with anything coming into the house.

When you bring in the mail today, look through it, don’t just drop it somewhere.  Look through the mail.  If it is junk mail get rid of it now.  I personally shred any mail which has our information on it, but if you don’t have a shredder, for now just rip up the identifying info into teeny tiny pieces.   If you recycle, decide where you will be putting your recycling from now on and put the mail - without the identifying info - there.  I am lucky enough to have an enclosed entrance outside the kitchen door and I stack the recycling to the side of the door on an old work table we put there.  (On Monday night, it goes out to be picked up for recycling day on Tuesday.)

Sort what is left - magazines in one stack, bills in another, invitations and event notices in another, and so on.  Then deal with each as far as it is possible to do so now.  Mark the date and amount due on the outside of any bills, sort by date order (the ones due first on top), any invitations or events sort by date of RSVP or the event. Add in any prior ones you have around.  Put a rubber band around each type. Put the magazines where you read them.  Unless it is a type of magazine you need to keep for an extended time, recycle the last issue if you have finished it (if not, why not?).  If you can or need to deal with any now - do it now!  One less thing to deal with in the future.  Put the rest of the bills and such in a box labeled as TO DO and put it in a place you will remember - on your desk if you have one. 

Tomorrow do the same.  While you may not be clearing away what has accumulated, you will stop adding to it.  Tomorrow add the bills, invitations, etc. to the ones from today, also dated and in the same manner and combine them into yesterday’s stacks.  Check the ones at the top of the pile and deal with what you can or must do. 

Afterwards, pick up some mail from before - sort through it and deal with it in the same manner - then you will have 2 days of mail semi organized and as well as some mail from before.  

If you continue you do this, your incoming mail will be dealt with on a regular basis and you will start getting rid of your older mail.  You will not clear all of the older mail out in one swoop, but it will start diminishing and you will not add to it.  (There will be more about mail as we go along.)

In the same way, if you buy something, put it away (such as you can if there is a lack of space for same) right away. If you have no place for it, make a temporary one. If you get into the habit of doing this then you will start to get  organized and reduce your clutter.           

To Start - A bit about me and disorganization

To start this conversation, I wanted to tell you a little about me and my disorganization.

As a child I lived with my parents in a 3 room apartment.  The entrance door to the apartment led to a long hall which ran the length of the adjacent apartment.  It was lined with metal shelving units which held all sorts of items including books and my toys.  Towards the end of when we lived in the apartment, there was too much stuff and it would fall off the shelves constantly.  I have been dealing with too much stuff ever since.

Our house holds what we have accumulated over the decades.  We both work from home and also have some hobbies - more about this as we go along - which add to what is in the house.

While to anyone’s eye (even mine) the house looks terribly disorganized, there are areas of really organized stuff, areas of organization in progress, areas that look totally disorganized, but I can find most stuff.   I believe that a house does not have to look like a designer magazine. It needs to meet one’s needs, be clean, one must be able to find stuff, and it must serve the purpose you  need.

I will share ideas which have worked for me, ideas which have not, and what I am doing as I go forward.  I hope to hear from you also about problems and questions you have and what has worked for you.