Organized Chaos

My lifestyle has recently been dubbed “organized chaos.” I don’t like it. The person told me it was a compliment, but I don’t feel that way. To add insult to injury, there have been a plethora of articles in my mailbox and on FaceBook that discuss organization.

Weeks ago, looking ahead to the new year, I promised myself that I would work to gain control of the chaos in my home, if not my life.

My current chaos is the same chaos I have lived with for a long, long time. To the ordinary eye, it might have no rhyme or reason, but in my mind, it has validity.

So many times, I feel a need to get disorganized to get organized.

HUH?

Think about a junk drawer. It contains a lot of miscellaneous stuff thrown in without any thought of organization. (I don’t have one of these any more.) The tape measure picked up at the home show? Throw it in the junk drawer. The notepad that came with a advertising piece of mail? Throw it in the junk drawer.

When I’ve gone to gain control of the junk drawer, I’ve had to empty it all onto the dining room table so that I can group like things together. Then, I can put some of the things with other things like it. The things that don’t have existing groupings get left in piles on the dining room table. I have now created a new mess.

UGH!

I have created a plan for myself. I’m starting slow – a little bit a each and every day.

JANUARY

I sat down Sunday and listed in my notebook each and every surface that exists in my home: the dressers in the bedroom, the table in the dining room, the hearth in the living room, the breakfast bar in the kitchen just to name a few.

I’m calling my January “One Surface a Day.”

Each day as I write my agenda and list of tasks for the day in my “ONE NOTEBOOK” (something I started back in college before planners and bullet journals existed), I list the ONE surface I will clear that day.

So many times in the past, I have cleared a surface by tossing everything on that surface into a “junk” box so it can be sorted later. NOT THIS TIME.

The other task for January is to not go to bed with dinner dishes still sitting on the counters and things not put away.

Two things, just two, to get me on the path to a more organized looking house. The more order I create, the less stress I feel. Monday (I started my new year a bit early.) I cleared off the cedar chest that sat in my dining room. Tuesday, I cleared off the stuff on the dresser in my bedroom that we use as a television stand. Wednesday (today), I cleared off the cedar chest that sat at the foot of my bed. This evening, we moved the cedar chest from the bedroom to the living room to function as a coffee table and moved the one from the dining room to the foot of our bed because it is lower.

Three days and I have three cleared surfaces in addition to a few surfaces that were already clear.

How are you trying to get organized in the new year?

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Thanks for reading.

AND

As you move through your day-to-day activities and responsibilities, please remember to

Live Life –

Keep Things Simple –

Look for the Positive –

AND

Smile.

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