Organizing

Every year, about this time, I make a deal with myself that the coming year will find me a bit more organized.  It’s a good way to start out the year – full of hope and good intentions.  I have the same thoughts about taking care of my body as I do my house, yet neither gets the full attention they deserve.

Upon entry, our house doesn’t appear to be in nearly the disarray it really is.  No one knows what lurks behind our closet doors and closed drawers.  I don’t have just one junk drawer - I have one in every room of the house.

I’ve had it on my to-do list for three years running to clean out just one of those drawers, and I’ve yet to accomplish the task.  It’s so overwhelming when I open it, I don’t know where to start.  Where do I put all those things that are there in the first place because they have no designated home to begin with?  I guess they should be called “homeless drawers” rather than junk drawers, as the majority of the contents really isn’t junk.  But there are a fair share of items in there unknown to the common world – pieces of things that no one can identify, and surely, if I threw them away, we’d discover soon thereafter we needed that piece for something in the house that was missing it.

Some of the closets in our house take all my body strength just to close their doors.  This is never a sign of an organized person. But on the upside, the closets sometimes clean themselves, as the avalanche that occurs when I open the door has a way of grabbing my attention.  Then and only then do I start to throw out all those things I’m saving for the day they may find another use.   I’m sure I border on being a hoarder, but at least my hoarding can be contained within the closets – so far anyway.

There are baskets and bins all over our house so “everything has a place” but the minute I fill up a bin, I forget what’s in there.  I often can’t find something I know I have, even with this great organization attempt of mine, so I end up buying another one and when I think about where I should store it, when I put it there, I find the very thing I’d just purchased right in that same spot.  I hate when that happens.

My office is filled with piles of papers and stacks of items for various projects.  It’s embarrassing really, but it works for me.  I tried filing papers, but once they go in the file cabinet, I can’t find them again.  If they stay in a stack, I can retrieve them instantly.

The only saving grace in this disorganized life of mine is my computer.  If it weren’t for that “search” function, I’d never find a thing.  Now, if someone could just invent a similar feature for my house, it really would be a Happy New Year.