Peace of Mind Organizing

Vote!

4 November 2008

November 4 is finally here. It feels like it’s been a long time coming. The top thing on my to-do list today is to vote. I expect there will be a line (Missouri doesn’t have early voting), and I don’t care how long the line is. As long “Vote” is checked off my list I don’t care what else gets done today.

No matter who you’re voting for, this presidential election feels critical. Voter turnout is expected to be the highest since 1908, when 66 percent of the eligible population voted. Here’s an interesting article from National Geographic’s website on the history of voter turnout in the last century.

You can be a part of making history. If you haven’t already, please go out there and participate in the process.

If you don’t know where you’re supposed to vote, you can find out here. It will also tell you what you need to bring to the polls.

Taking a day for myself

3 November 2008

Yesterday I had what we call around our a home a Lazy Day. We had that extra hour, due to the end of Daylight Saving Time and, as I said I would on Friday, I used that time to knit and watch TV. It sure didn’t stop at an hour, though. I knit so much yesterday that my shoulders started hurting by the evening (so I stopped). Incidentally, here’s the pattern I’m working on, taken from Kim Hargreave’s website:

Valiant, by Kim Hargreaves

I’m making mine in a beautiful light blue, called Cloud. The yarn, Rowan Cocoon is 80 percent merino and 20 percent kid mohair, and it’s a delight to touch and knit with. So working on this sweater is relaxing and enjoyable. (Some patterns and yarns feel more like work.)

My point here is this. I did little yesterday except knit and watch TV. (I watched The Queen again, caught up on the shows on my DVR, and watched a lot of political coverage.) I finished reading a novel and took a nap as well.

Part of me was feeling guilty about doing nothing productive. But the sensible side of me squashed that. I know how hard I’ve been working. I know that I needed a break. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking a day to relax. No, there was no laundry done. No cleaning done. No organizing or decluttering. No administrative for my business. And that’s just fine.

I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have the opportunity to take a day completely for myself. My battery is recharged. I have a long to-do list for the week. And, thanks to my relaxing Sunday, I’m able to hit the ground running.

I love baby gifts

31 October 2008

I’m 46 and I don’t have that many friends who are having babies. Before long, my friends will probably be having grandchildren, though. Whenever I hear that a friend is pregnant, I get very excited, because I love knitting baby stuff. It’s little, it’s soft, it doesn’t take much time.

Some old friends had a baby girl this month. When I heard she’d been born, I instantly started thinking about what I could knit her. Since I hadn’t sprung into action when I learned about the pregnancy, knitting something like a blanket was out. I wanted to be able to send the gift soon.

So I decided to knit a teddy bear. I’d made this particular pattern a few years ago, the last time a friend was pregnant. So I actually had the yarn in my stash (and it was easy to find, thanks to my Elfa yarn organization system. I did have to buy a ball of yarn for the bear’s sweater. And I bought some stuffing.

This yarn, called Oh My!, is amazing. It’s 100 percent nylon and when you knit it on smaller needles it feels plush, just like a stuffed animal. So here’s a photo of the bear, taken right before I sent it off to the baby.

So cute! Incidentally, if you’re on Ravelry, there are more photos of the bear in my notebook. My Ravelry name is kramerscout.

Changing the subject, Sunday marks the end of Daylight Saving Time. I am so happy about that. I’ve been having the hardest time getting up in the morning in the dark. The best part about going back to standard time is that we gain an hour on Sunday. I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to spend that extra hour. I could get an extra hour sleep. Or I could spend it working. Or decluttering. But I believe I’ll spend it knitting and watching something fun on TV. What a surprise. How will you spend it?

Happy Halloween!

A pocket of order

30 October 2008

This week, as part of my Level III certification program through the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, I analyzed the book Making Peace with the Things in Your Life, by Cindy Glovinsky (link at right).

I’ll write more about this tremendous book in a later post, but today I wanted to focus briefly on a concept she mentions near the end of the book. When you’re living in disorder and feel overwhelmed by all that has to be done to create order, Glovinsky recommends that you create a “pocket of order.” That’s one little spot you can clear out and organize in the amount of time you have available in your organizing session. It serves as a shining beacon of hope for you. And also an oasis of calm. (Please forgive all the metaphors.)

Once you’ve taken the time to create this pocket of order, it’s easy to keep it orderly. And then you have a place to look to reassure yourself that order is indeed possible. “No matter how exhausted, how overwhelmed, how inept, or how grief stricken you may feel, you can always create a small pocket of order in your world and in yourself, ” Glovinsky writes on page 240.

I love this. if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your clutter, give it a try. Even if you have just a little bit of time, find a spot and create some order. Maybe it’s your bathroom counter, the cupboard where you keep your dishes, or your car. Make it a place you see on a daily basis so that you can appreciate the peace it brings. Keep it tidy. Then select another place and do it all over again.

If you don’t have a huge block of time to declutter your house, creating little pockets of order will get you on your way. They’ll motivate you to keep going. And who knows—do it long enough and more pockets of order than pockets of clutter. Doesn’t that sound nice?

I should mention that Glovinsky wisely suggests that creating order will do you no good unless you change your habits with regard to your stuff. The book provides the tools to do self analysis to help you decide what habits to change and how to change them. So the pockets of order are just a small part of what she writes about. It’s just a little gem I wanted to share.

Serenity for the Self-Employed: Blog of the Week

29 October 2008

Serenity for the Self-Employed is a blog written by freelance journalist Heather Boerner, with whom I’m acquainted through the online writing community I belong to, Freelance Success. Her blog, which aims to help self-employed people maintain their serenity (and sanity), just yesterday started a 30-day organizing challenge so this week seemed like a good week to highlight it on my blog.

If you’re up for picking up some new organizing solutions while sharing your own challenges and progress with Heather and other readers of Serenity for the Self-Employed (and you don’t have to be self-employed to do it), check out Heather’s blog this month.

You might want to become a regular reader even after the organizing challenge is finished!

Playing for Change

28 October 2008

One of my husband’s cousin sent this link to a Bill Moyers piece about the documentary Playing for Change: Peace through Music. The filmmaker filmed people around the world playing music and edited the music together into one beautiful song, as though they were playing together.

If you have a spare five minutes or so, please watch. It’s absolutely beautiful and very moving. It speaks to the commonality of people around the world and really does give hope for peace.

The song, “Stand By Me,” starts at 4 minutes 30 seconds and there’s another minute and a half of “One Love” at the end of the segment. (If you have time, please watch all 17 minutes of the segment and learn about this great project.)

Click here to watch the story on this amazing documentary.

Declare a backlog

27 October 2008

One of the many strategies offered by Mark Forster in his time-management book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management (link at right) is the concept of declaring a backlog. (I wrote about some of his other strategies last June in the blog posts, Getting started and Keeping going.)

When you’re behind in your work, Forster suggests, declare a backlog and clear the decks. If it’s paperwork you’re behind on, gather it all up and put it in a box marked Backlog. Then make clearing that backlog a priority in the coming days, while processing the new incoming work in a timely manner. Same goes for old emails, old phone calls, any work that’s piling up. In Forster’s system, “a timely manner” means doing today all the work that came in yesterday.

I did this just last week. My pile in my inbox was large enough that it had become daunting and I found myself avoiding dealing with it. I dumped the whole thing into my “backlog” box: an attractive linen-covered box with a lid. I told myself I’d work on it 15 minutes a day until it was empty. I didn’t know how many days that would take, but knowing that I only had to work on it 15 minutes at a time made it seem very doable.

At the beginning of the day, I pulled out that box (which I stored in a closet with similar boxes), dealt with each piece of paper as I came to it and stopped when my Time Timer said the fifteen minutes was up.

The best part—and this happens most of the time, I find—is that it took a lot less time than I expected: only two 15-minute sessions.

Declaring a backlog help keeps your environment clutter-free so you can focus on what’s coming in. It also gives you a mechanism to deal with the backlog. And it employs the concept of doing a little bit at a time, but doing it often, as you chip away at your backlog.

If you find yourself falling behind, I heartily recommend giving it a try!