The Elephant's Child

Organizing Advice #2.

Stop putting stuff where it "should" go and store it or put it where where you're likely to dump it anyway. 

The best way to demonstrate this is by a few examples.  One of my Bibles is in a small cabinet by the front door with the car's ice scrapers, lip balm, the cell phone charger for the car, and the ashtrays. 

Weird place?  Maybe. But it sure makes Sunday morning easier because I don't have to walk across the house to the dining room (where I have another Bible stashed) for a Bible, because I've designated one solely for Sunday morning use, and it's right there by the door.  And it's one less thing to put away in the chaos of our arrival home from church.

I have two sugar containers.  One is small and right in the front of the cabinet for Mad Musician to use for his coffee.  The rest of the sugar is buried back in the back of the cabinet because I rarely use it. 

When I used to make bread, I had flour, small sugar container, small salt container, and my yeast all stashed under the work table where my bread machine sat.  No putting away after making bread because it was all right there anyway.

Coffee cups you use daily go right near the coffee maker, in the same place as the coffee and filters, not with the other cups.  Silverware needs to go wherever it's easiest to put it away out of the dishwasher, even if your Official Silverware Drawer is across the room.    

Trying to get your kids to neatly stash their mittens and scarves in the beautiful antique dresser you have in your entryway isn't going to work.  Best to just give in and put a large wicker basket right by the door so the items practically fall into the basket by themselves as they rip off their outerwear.

Clutter happens because stuff doesn't get put away.  And one of the reasons stuff doesn't get put away is because the "away" where the stuff is supposed to go is hard to get to or has to be thought about too much.

Organizing Advice #1.

Put it away. 

Now. 

Right now. Do it. No, don't set it on the steps to be put away later. 

Put it away RIGHT NOW.

Yes, you have time. It doesn't take as long as you think to put stuff away.  I used to think it took me a half an hour to fold a load of laundry. I timed it.  It's more like 6-10 minutes. So put it away.  

Now. Do it. 

It takes two minutes to run something upstairs and put it away.  It takes half an hour to clear of an accumulation of stuff stacked on the staircase. 

And that's without taking into consideration the intangible mental energy it takes to see your staircase cluttered with stuff. 

But "put it away" depends on having an "away" for all the things you use.  That's another post. 

Downsizing: Before.

This doesn't include the 3-5 blankets that are stacked by the couch in the basement.  It does include my stash of currently-not-in-use curtains. There is also one more bin (I think) in the attic which contains some throw pillows and another couch-sized slipcover.

Downsizing.

In the fall of 2005, Mad Musician and I moved, with Sparkle Kitty, from a five-bedroom well-kept house with five closets, lots of other storage, and a attic that was full of shelving to a house with three bedrooms and three closets, none of them on the first floor of the home, and only a little square of flooring up in the attic. 

I have gotten rid of so. much. stuff. in the last five years, and there's more to go because my linens still don't really have a place where they all fit.  "Piled on the office closet floor" may have been ok for the first year or two after our move, but I'm rather sick of it by now, more than five years in.  I have a linen cabinet built into the hall way, but it's very tiny; a couple sheet sets and a few towels and it's full.  Mattress pads, pillows, blankets, and guest towels don't fit.

We do, very occasionally, have house guests, so chucking everything that isn't for our bed or Sparkle Kitty's bed isn't an option.  Some of the items are lovely quilts that I want to keep even if they're not in current use.  My next house is going to have a  "linens room" with open shelves.  I adore linens.  Flannel sheets, soft fluffy towels, antique wool blankets, puffy down duvets.  Real linen dish towels.  I love it all.  For me, linens are the most difficult of all household miscellania to purge.

But I hate not being able to see the floor in the closet, and hate not being able to walk into the closet to reach what's stored on the shelves or the hanging pole.  So, purge the linens I must.

I'll try to remember to take before and after pictures.

The System I Came Up With.

I'm trying to get a handle on my photos.  I realized today that I hadn't uploaded and printed photos since March of 2009.  That's really sad.  And overwhelming, if you think about having to file all those pictures in albums.  I'm fine with getting the pictures off my camera - no trouble there - it's just remembering to have them printed in a timely manner so that I can file them in albums in chronological order and so that I don't have 100s to file at once.  They just don't get off my computer, and I don't have a good system of naming folders so that I can systematically order prints. *cough* That's probably why *cough* I avoid doing it.

So, I've come up with a plan that feeds off of a few the things I'm actually managing to do:

Upload pictures from camera into "Uploads" folder, then sort them from there into the folder for the blog or into a folder labelled for the current three-month period.  Folders labelled year first: 2011 Jan-Mar, 2011 Apr-Jun, etc. Estimated time: About 10 minutes per week, absolute max.  (I don't take a crazy amount of pictures.)

Four times per year, in January, April, July, and October, upload pictures from previous three month period's folder into Snapfish and order prints.  Also order any photo gifts needed for the next three months. Set reminder in Google Calender for the next three-month dealing-with-photos date. Estimated time: 60 minutes, because it includes shopping around the photo-gift options. If this works out, I'll be all set up to order *gasp* pictures for including in Christmas cards in October.  Oh, may it be so!

When photos come in the mail, file them in their photo albums while sitting in front of the computer so that I can use the "Date Taken" sorting on Windows Photo Gallery to make sure I get them in the albums chronologically. Label dates, events or people in pencil in the caption area in the albums.  Estimated time: 30 minutes while watching a TV show on the computer.

In January of each year, check that all photos have been uploaded and printed.  Consolidate all four quarterly folders into a one-year folder (i.e. "2011"), delete any doubles or bad photos, and make a CD-R back up.* Add CD-R to our emergency evacuation bags. Then move that year's folder into the "Photos Archive 06-10" folder and change the file name to reflect the correct range of years. Estimated time: 60 minutes while listening to Pandora radio.

Total time per year: 9 hours uploading from camera, 4 hours uploading to Snapfish and shopping for and ordering photo gifts, 2 hours filing photos in albums, and an extra hour in January for archiving and backing up.  16 hours a year.  Not so bad.

And now I've got it all written down, so I'll remember how I decided to do it.  Yay, me!

 

*Yes, I'm aware that data on CD-Rs has an uncertain lifespan. Photos also exist on my own computer, in online storage, and in real-life prints.  That's good enough redundancy for me.