I've never been an organized person outside of work

When I'm at work, I'm super-organized. And actually, I like organizing wherever I am. I like the feeling that everything has a place that I can put it in and where it lives.

But here's the thing: I severely dislike the upkeep, and so in my personal life, all my stuff tends toward entropy. Having a cat (ie: an agent of entropy) doesn't really help the fact that I tend to just stack stuff up within arm's reach of wherever I am--the side of the couch where I usually sit, my desk, the bed*.

Job stuff requires neatness and organization, and I love a clean workspace. But I haven't had a job outside the home in almost four years, and I don't have a dedicated workspace at home, so things get...blurry. The dividing line between life and work, business and pleasure, all of it sort of grades into each other. Most of the time that's great. I'm making what little living I have doing things I like to do***, but sometimes I just look at this nest of things I've built and it about drives me crazy.

It's a constant struggle for me. The battle between the fact that I need to see everything I'm working with to remember that it's there, and the fact that if you can see everything, it's probably not put away in any sense of the word.

So here's what I'm doing:

I'm going to make work stations. I'm going to find cheap tables that I can work on, and I'm going to carve out a space just for writing, independent of the computer, where I can lay out pages and notes and whatever else. I'm going to carve out a space for crafting on another table, and keep all the crafting stuff--yarn and paint and piles of papercraft stuff--in a clear drawer thing under it, so it's there and I can see it, but it's where it needs to be. If I can fit a third table in this tiny room, I'm going to set up my sewing machine, because I've been itching to get back to my quilt that I've been working on for literally a decade.

I'm going to chuck everything I know--or have been told--about organization, and I'm going to come up with my own system that balances the need to be able to grab what I need without searching for it, the need for space to work on, and the need to not be a total mess all the time.

And then I'm going to share what I learn about the whole process.

I've already got a pretty good system for day-to-day scheduling--between my journal being full of to-do lists, the schedule page I make up each Sunday or Monday for the week, and the calendar pages where I track my monthly writing goals, what I did each day, and how I felt, it's a pretty smooth system, as long as I remember to stick to it and look at it. Now it's time to figure out a way to keep the rest of my life in line.

How do you keep organized?




NOTES:
*Or whatever I'm currently using as a bed. Right now, the room I'm in doesn't have space for a bed, so I sleep on the couch like a transient house-guest in my own place.**
**I actually like sleeping on things that are not beds, and I love having more than one surface I can sleep on in a house...but I do miss a real bed, so I'm working on that problem.
***Making nail polish and selling it to lovely girls and the occasional boy all over the world! Writing stories! Blogging! Watching those monster-babies! Crafting!

I Made This - Earring Holder and Display

So I have a million earrings (approximately). And they've been living is a bowl since I moved up here--it's a great bowl, but it's not the best way to know what earrings you have or whether you still have two of the ones you're looking for.

So I made a thing!

Yay!

It took somewhere between and hour and an hour 1/2, and here is how I did it:

Supplies:

- a wood picture frame. I got this one from the As Is clearance section at the craft store without glass or a back for cheap.

- A ruler

- Flat thumbtacks or furniture embroidery tacks

- Scissors or pliers with wire cutters

- Wire; this is floral wire because I wanted it lightweight.

- Pencil or pen

- Cat getting in the way is optional

And this, which I forgot about until I needed to use it:

First: decide how far away you want your wires and mark them out:

Next, figure out how to get your pins in. I pushed the first few, but that made my fingers hurt so I switched to the hammer; that also required me to move to the kitchen floor because its the only place in the house that isn't carpeted, and therefore the only place where the frame didn't rebound when I used the hammer.

NOTE: Thumb tacks are not meant to be hammered. I squashed a bunch flat and had to start over. I bashed my fingers a lot before I started holding them in place with my scissors and wishing I had needle nosed pliers after all.

ALSO NOTE: Don't hammer them all the way in:

Go all the way around on all four sides. Replace pins that flatten, break or pop out as you go.

Start wrapping the wire. I started on the long side and went up and down first, wrapping every other or so around more than once to hold the wire in place as I went:

NOTE: Floral wire kinks easily and also breaks easily, so try not to twist it up too much or force it. I used the spool like a shuttle and only unwound about six inches or eight inches at a time to avoid damage to the wire.

Once the whole thing is wired:

Hammer those pins flat to hold the wire down. Replace any that you break or mash in the process:

Then do the other direction, weaving in and out so that the wires hold each other up and form a really loose sort of mesh:

This is where things might get tricky as you run out of space. Thankfully, feet are useful for holding:

Them you hammer in those pins, wipe off fingerprints and floor-dust, hang the whole thing on the wall and get those earrings where you can see them!

Of course, a rectangle of window screen or some chicken wire would make this much easier, but I didn't have any of that. You could also paint the frame or use a fancier one, but I liked the cleanness of the black. 

What do you think? How do you organize your earrings?

Wednesday Worksheets: Dreams, Travel, Obligations and Bonus for being late

This is part of a series of weekly posts featuring worksheets to help you organize your life and live it better! To see more, click on the Wednesday Worksheets tag!

This week has been one of those weeks, and so I didn't get to post these yesterday. Since I'm a day late, I'm giving you four worksheets instead of the usual three!

This week, we have:

• Dream Journal: You write out your dream in the middle space, in whatever order it comes to your recall, then, in the spaces on either side, you note where you missed a detail, or where an image shows up that you've dreamed before, or what you think may be the meaning or the cause of a part of the dream. Then, at the bottom, I've given a little space for musing on the dream to see what meaning or sense you can make of it. 
• This one works best if you periodically return to these pages and add notes as you have more dreams and more knowledge of your subconscious to help interpret.
• The point is to make a running and usable database of your own mind's interpretations so you know why you're dreaming--and to collect any inspirations and story ideas and whatever else you can get from them.
• Print out a stack of these and keep them and a pen close to your bed so you can always have them on hand!
• Travel Journal: There's space for an overview of what you meant to do in the day, then a large space for what actually happened (all your memories and stories go here), and at the bottom, space for you to make notes to yourself, to have a little reaction to the day's events, and a space for souvenirs--either actual things stuck to the page, like ticket stubs or whatever, or space to list what keepsakes you collected that day.
• It's made for a page a day; simply print out one for each day of your trip!
• Monthly Obligations: A straightforward listing of each day, with space to add bills, paydays, meetings, birthdays and anniversaries, parties, trips, appointments, and whatever else you need to remember on a month-view page!
• BONUS: In-Reading Notes: Sometimes as you're reading, there are things you want to copy down or make note of. Here, you can! At the top of the page is space for all the info so you can find or cite the book again, then a large open space for you to make annotations and copy out quotes or note pages, or whatever else you may need to keep. Then, at the bottom, a little space to give an overall impression of the book.
• This is great for research, too, since you can note arguments, quotes and the like easily.

So here are the downloads!

• Dream Journal
• Travel Journal
• Monthly Obligations Sheet
• In-Reading Notes

If there are any worksheets you'd like to see, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do!

Links: 9-8-2012

Science: Dark Galaxies of the Early Universe Spotted For the First Time: Galaxies from before stars -- how awesome is that?

Life: Stop Aging

Life: 10 Questions To Help You Stop Thinking and Start DOING

Food: Vintage Food Posters over on Two Men and a Little Farm -- ones that apply really well today, too!

Happiness: Gretchen Rubin's Happier At Home book giveaway!

Life: Should you combine your many passions or choose one? -- I love the decision-making help she gives here; I'm still on the fence whenever someone tells me not to combine, though she does say focus-and-then-add, which most of the other business advice doesn't say.

Happiness: A French Weekend -- David Liebovitz always makes me want to visit France.

Organization: Stop procrastinating with Unscheduling

Happiness: Find 'comfort foods' for your mind

Happiness: We Are What We Remember

Life: Cultivate A Shrine

organizing

I've been slowly organizing my life since I got back from Res (which in my head sounds like The Res, as in Reservation, but whatever).

I've always been sort of a whim-based person. I grew up not liking schedules and hating to-so lists because they restrict the options: I can't do whatever I want because I have to be here at this one specific time* and I have to do this one specific thing, followed by all the other things that need to get done today. I blame it on being an air sign: you try to keep the wind from blowing where it will and see how angry it gets! I never did anything I didn't want to do until it became unavoidable. Even now, I tend to not plan things and to put off the things I don't like, like housework and homework and suchike.

But as I've gotten older, though, everything is becoming more unavoidable, and I've come to rely on lists to keep my brain from flying apart in a million different directions (the air-sign in me again: all the molecules want to be equally as far apart from all the others as they can!). I have official to-do lists for the week, and long lists that are part additional to-do, part things I want to know, things I need to follow up on or remember to check out, things I need to get or find, things I want out of life, ideas I need to remember... pretty much anything that needs to be recalled goes on the secondary lists throughout the week. And I love my schedule because somewhere along the line, I had a perceptual flip: they don't limit what I can do, they define what I have to do so I can actually physically see all the time I have to do what I want!

I cleaned out my Book (where all this junk is supposed to stay) yesterday, and realized I've been keeping the lists and collecting worksheets to track all my projects for almost two whole years now, and the folders for each month have gotten fatter, but my life has gotten freer and calmer and better: I hardly ever overdraw my bank account anymore, paperwork gets done on time, bills get paid when they're due. I found DIY Planner and The Organized Writer and they've done miracles in my dysfunctionally-right-brained world.

But it wasn't enough when I had to start being a full-time writer and a full-time student again, too. So I've rearranged. First thing in the morning, I write, and at least one day out of the week is devoted to reading, as well as a minimum of a chapter from something required before bed. And I've been physically cleaning up. J, a new friend from the Res, pointed me in the direction of FlyLady.com, and I'm not anywhere near the devotion I need for that, yet, but I've been doing little things she suggests along the way, and it's starting to work in just little ways that make me feel like I'm getting somewhere. I keep getting amazed at all the time I have between these two systems.

And it's getting better. I think I can do this. Eventually (and I think this will be a sooner sort of eventual, since I'll be all alone in the house for most of a year soon), I'll have everything in it's place, physically and mentally, and my life will make sense. Which is all for the best, since I'm finally devoted to getting it somewhere good and getting on with it.