Organizing

We brought a bunch of stuff to Goodwill today. I didn't count or anything, but in the pile was the pair of roller blades I got from freecycle months and months ago. They didn't fit and I meant to return them back to the freecycle world but never got around to it. So they sat and sat and sat. Why do I still wait so long for things like that? Dunno. Never will I guess. It's just me.

In other news, I've moved on more to organizing instead of decluttering. Now, let me be frank, I still have clutter. I'm happy though. My house will never be minimalist because that's just not what I want. I do want to get rid of more clutter but I'm also really happy with the way it is now. I guess you had to have seen it a few years ago to understand why. But I'm happy.

So now, the past few months, I've been working more on the organizing aspect. First of all, organization is what stops it from being re-cluttered.

It also helps me clean. I used to be on Flylady. I'm not anymore, but I got a lot from her and from the sisters she got her methods from. I'm definitely one of the Sidetracked Home Executives and nowhere near Born Organized. I don't have a brain that automatically knows what to do. Instead, I have a brain that sees a mess and panics and ends up overwhelmed and running away. That doesn't help so much.

So, after years on and off Flylady, I have my own chore sheets that work for me. I have a list that spells out what to do every day of the week. I have zones (a la Flylady) that tell me what deep cleaning to do every week (deep cleaning day is Wednesday and I usually clean an hour or 90 minutes tops). I even have a daily schedule for laundry which I don't always follow but works great when I do.

The organization has begun to spread into the other areas of my life too. I resisted it for so long but I gotta admit, life has been going so much better since we go to sleep the same time every night, wake up around the same time every morning, shower the same time every day, have dinner the same time every night, etc. This weekend I realized I need to make a schedule for grocery shopping on the weekend. And bills. Oh yeah. Paying bills. It doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank if you don't actually send it to the people you owe it to. Oy.

Anyway, this weekend I decided to make my chore sheets into an actual control journal in a notebook instead of just printing them out new every week. My daughter watched me putting it together and said "You're so organized!". Little does she know it will probably take me another week or two to get around to actually printing the sheets. Yeah, that's me. I guess that's why structure is good for me. I don't seem to have any in my brain.