A home can overflow with the ins and outs of a family.
I like to be organized.
Even when I’m at my most disorganized, I’m making a list or a chart of how I’m going to get organized, I love to file papers, make schedules, and put things in alphabetical order. Give me a blank Excel screen and I’m a happy camper.
But keeping an organized office space and keeping an organized house are two different stories.
As much as I try to keep up by buying and using color-coded containers, stacking bins and baskets, my son’s shorts will end up in my daughter’s dresser, I can never find the dental floss I just bought, and the DVDs end up in the wrong cases.
There's just so much stuff that comes in and out of a house. You just get everything in its place and new things crop up.
Someone once told me the way to deal with organization is to deal with each thing right away. For instance, when you bring in the mail, you probably do what most of us do – toss it on the kitchen counter. At dinnertime you move it over to a desk. A day later you leaf through it and make piles for bills to pay, things to throw away and things to give to someone else. A day after that your piles have been covered with other mail and papers that you’ve handled the same way and before you know it, you have a pile of papers neck high, your electric bill is late, and you’ve missed the deadline for the discounted yearbook at school.
Now rewind to that first day you brought in the mail. When you walk back you’re your mailbox, stop by the garbage can and throw in the mail you don’t want. When you get to the kitchen, open up the rest of the mail, throw away the envelopes and deal with each piece of mail right then.
With all the home organization systems out there – from the smallest containers to the largest closet organizers – there’s really no excuse.
Now, those DVDs are another story . . .
