Tag Archives: organize

WHAT WOULD TINA RECOMMEND ABOUT OVERWHELMING CLUTTER?

She’d say, “Take it easy. With baby steps.”

• Pick an area that needs de-cluttering. The corner of a room. Your home office. A closet.
• Discard or put away two items. Then stop.
• Discard or put away two items every day from now on (okay, take the weekend off, or at least Sunday).
• If you’re on a roll one day and feel like doing more and have the time, go ahead until you want to stop.
• BUT, the next day, discard or put away two more items. No resting on your laurels.
• Repeat until done.

Then you can pick another area to work on.

To keep the clutter permanently gone from the areas you’ve worked on, be sure to discard or put away any items that have accumulated in that spot before you go to bed every night. After a while this will become such a habit that you won’t be able to go to bed without having everything put away.

This is how I do it. I have two hot spots. Home office and kitchen. I make sure all surfaces are clear before I head off to bed every night. The rest of the house I keep up with as I use the space—the closet, for example, or the table next to my chair.

I hope this will help anyone who has trouble with excess clutter. Let me know how it goes if you use this system. And if you have any other tips, please leave a comment.

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CREATIVITY AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Not many people have an old-fashioned wife anymore. I’m talking about the one who managed the household without any help from a spouse and who was also totally supportive of that spouse’s work, to the determent, often, of her own creativity and desires.

Not only that, but the world of communication has gone crazy. We are plugged in to everyone and everything. If we allow it, there are constant interruptions from phones, email, regular mail, other people, pets, and the lure of electronic entertainment on televisions and computers/tablets.

So the creative person has to struggle to manage it all. Without a plan, and without some basic organizational skills, we will either go nuts or just never finish anything we’ve started. Or at least it will take us twice as long and be twice as stressful as it has to be.

The basic life plan for a creative is to find the best time of day for work and make it sacrosanct. That means no interruptions from anything, unless there’s “fire or blood.” (I don’t know who said that first, but I love it.)

This means the creative is in a room with the door shut and without access to phone, email, the internet or any other potential interruptions because they are either turned off or the person has enormous willpower when in the zone.

The creative has to have a regular life, of course, both for mental health and to feed the creative mind. It won’t produce in a vacuum. Therefore, it’s also best to figure out just how much time can be devoted each day to creative endeavors, and unless there’s fire or blood, do so.

To further this goal, the creative also should set up systems so that tools are at hand and no time is lost in setting up. Best to clear everything up at the end of the session to be ready for the next day.

So, set a minimum amount of time at a certain time of day and have a place where you won’t be interrupted. When done for the day, do everything needed to get a good start the next day. For example, if you’re a writer, do a quick spell check, back up your work, write a few notes about what you did that day and/or want to do the next, put in a little research. A painter, it should go without saying, needs to clean brushes, take care of the medium she’s using, etc. A crafter should put tools and supplies away for easy access the next day, and clean up any mess. And so on.

Put away that knife!

I know some people say they can live in chaos and create. They are probably in the genius class. Since most of us (me included) are not, it helps tremendously to be organized. Actually, even the genius would probably benefit, as well.

Do you have a set time of day and a place where you do your creative work? If you do, please share in the comments.

DO LITTLE THINGS THAT WILL SAVE YOU TIME LATER

Small things can make a big difference. When you have the mail in your hand, for example, stand or sit next to the wastebasket and discard all the junk mail, unopened. Next open the rest, throwing away all the outside envelopes and junk. You now have a manageable pile to work with. Going even further, if you have set up a good filing system, simply file away the papers you don’t have to do anything further with. The trash can and file drawers are your friends.

Other suggestions:

  • Empty your purse every evening and throw away used tissues and other trash, and remove sales receipts and anything else you won’t need later.
  • When you call someone new, business or personal, whom you think you will need to contact again, be sure to enter the info into your phone directory immediately so you don’t have to go hunting for it later.
  • Put away things when you’re finished with them. Always. You’ll be amazed what a difference this can make
  • The day before garbage collection is the day to empty all the trash cans in your home and go through the refrigerator to throw away anything that’s green that isn’t supposed to be green.
  • Arrange everything you own into categories and store them all together. Everything you use to do your hair, for example, should go in one container or drawer. Same for stuff for your nails, for the beach (yes, put the suntan lotion with your bathing suit and towel—you’ll always know where to find it), for baking anything you bake or cook often, for working on a craft or hobby, etc.

If you open a drawer or cabinet and see something you haven’t used in years, consider throwing it away. Once a year, go through each space and discard anything that’s broken, never used and no longer loved.

Every time you bring something new into the house (except for groceries), discard something old. In other words, if you can’t resist a particular decorating item and end up buying it, then pick something out you no longer like as well as the new purchase, and get rid of it. Same for clothing. Even better, if you have a lot of clutter, get rid of two items for every new one you bring home. Donate, give to someone you know who wants/needs it, or if necessary, simply throw it in the trash.

Little things can make a big difference when it comes to organization.

LET’S GET ORGANIZED

Organization takes planning. To plan, you need a few tools. For me, the most basic are a calendar/planner, some small, legal-sized notebooks and a pen.

When buying a planner, I’d look for a binder that holds both a yearly calendar with blocks on each day to write in, plus a few pockets for miscellaneous pieces of paper and some of your business cards, and, very important, a place for a small legal pad. If you can’t find anything like that, you’ll have to stick with a separate calendar/planner and some small legal size pads.

The calendar part of planning is obvious. Put down appointments and other important things you have to do each day. Another trick is, at the end of the day, write one line about the most significant thing you did. You can keep these as a kind of quick and dirty diary to look back at, if needed, or if interested, later on.

The notepads can have a cover or not. Have one for each project. Right now I have:

  • One for daily stuff—to-do lists, to-buy lists, notes about anything I find important, miscellaneous stuff. This one is with my calendar.
  • I also have one about writing. I jot down ideas for this blog, other ideas about writing, anything I need to remember about writing in general.
  • Another one is full of notes about organization; many of those ideas from that notebook will probably be expanded on for this blog.
  • Yet another one now is for plans being made for an upcoming road trip. To pack, ideas for sight-seeing, towns to stop in along the way and so on.
  • I write short stories, so I keep a notebook handy to jot down ideas for those.
  • Suggestions for others are: hobbies, reading, genealogy.

You’d think I’d have one for my novels. But I make all my notes about my current work-in-progress right in a document (saving it as: <Title> Notes.doc) in my word processor.

A single, large or small notebook can also serve the same purpose. With tabs for each individual project, you can keep it all together and quickly find what you need. Since I am on my laptop a good part of the day, I find the smaller, individual notebooks easier to handle.

Have you found a different system that works for you to keep the areas of your life separate? Please share them here in the comments section. I’d love to hear them.