On getting organized…

I thought I’d channel Kahlil Gibran with that title. If you never read “The Prophet” there’s no better time than now.

Back to the subject…

I’ve posted a little bit about my organization efforts. I’ve been reading “Organizing From the Inside Out” and decluttering a little at a time. For the most part, I’m pretty organized now. I still have a lot of things in a tiny little house and as I go through “OFIO”, I’ll get proper storage for my space. She’s already mentioned having to go vertical with space in small dwellings, so that’s what I’m prepared to do.

Here’s a funny story about just how unorganized I used to be:

So, you’re wondering just how unorganized I used to be. Well, at one time I filled nearly 10 extra-large rubbermaid totes with stuff from inside my house. 10! It was a disaster in here, I literally had paths to be able to walk through my house. Yeah, it was bad. But that’s not the funny part… it’s about the organizing book I mentioned above. I received it one year for my birthday. I thought, “this is great, I really can use this.” But as time passed, later on that evening, I came to realize that I already had that book (or so I thought. I was pretty sure that I had already purchased it for myself.) but when I got home, I couldn’t find it (which was expected. I couldn’t find anything in my house! That’s how I ended up with half-a-dozen hot glue guns… lol.) Sometime later, I was cleaning out my locker at work (I worked at Hobby Lobby at the time… easy glue gun purchase there… lol) and damn if if it wasn’t stuck at the back of my locker underneath a ton of other stuff. Thank God I’m not that unorganized anymore.

Oh, but be careful when you’re decluttering, too. We had this steam cleaner (you know the portable one’s you see on TV infomercials) that we NEVER used, ever. I think DH played with it once on the day he bought it. It sat in my laundry room for nearly a year. So during one of my recent purges, I packed it up and took it down to the local thrift shop. Damn if that man didn’t need it for the first time ever last week! And not for cleaning, mind you, but for work to be able to take wallpaper off. Ugh! I lied, and said I didn’t know where it was, being pretty sure that I had already purged it from the house but hoping that it was still here. So, after becoming fully aware that I no longer had it, I ran down to Walgreens (that’s where he bought it from) hoping that they still sold them. Blessings to them, they had 1 left! AND lucky me, they have a $10 rebate for it in their catalog this month.

BUT, at the same time, I’m also trying to organize my time. Having not yet read “Time Management From the Inside Out“, I’m doing what I can with what I know now. I already have the family calendar in place on the fridge (been doing that for years now, and I’ve found the best ones have large spaces to write and a pocket at the bottom for storage). I’ve had a *paying bills* system in place for quite a few years now, too. But it’s all these little odds and ends that I need/want to wrap-up into one place and one system. The Master Plan is that place and that system.  It has a place for everything!  Really!  And if you do have something that you’d like to add, you can do that because it’s fully customizable.  I’m sure Julie would also love feedback for her future editions.    I love that it’s an interactive PDF, which means I can edit many of the pages and save them to the planner, then print them out if I so choose.  It even has homeschooling and unschooling planning pages!  You rock, Julie!

It’s on sale HALF PRICE this month!  Take advantage of that!  Julie said it will only happen once a year.

So, with The Master Plan, I can finally start to get all of those details organized and start my on pursuing my goals full steam ahead!