Organization Quest

Martha Stewart Provides Attitude Check

Sometimes, I think I make cleaning harder by thinking of it as yucky, time-consuming, and boring, and so it was no small stroke of luck that I happened upon Martha Stewart on the Oprah Winfrey Show last week.  Her job when she was in prison was cleaning carpets and waxing floors.  "It was so dirty!" she exclaimed.  "But you know, that place was sparkling when I left."  It was the first time I actually envied prisoners. 

Forget the elaborate cakes and hand-made crafts; what I really want to know is how, exactly, Martha Stewart came to have such a good attitude about what any sane person would find intolerably menial.  "I had the best time!" she said when describing how she learned to run an industrial rug cleaner. 

This weekend, I tried a little of Martha's attitude on for size.  Instead of draaaaaaging myself up and lamenting every minute spent wiping the counters and mopping the floor, I said to myself:  I'm having the best time! I didn't entirely fool myself, but it did make it a little easier.

 

The Universal Trait of the Persistently Tidy

 

A while back when I wrote about the whole dishwasher dilemma, I talked to--who else?--Stacy, the Designated Neatnik where I work.  I thought I'd get points for being all concerned and worried about how to effectively convey whether the contents of the dishwasher were clean or dirty, a fantasy that faded as Stacy furrowed her brow in bewilderment.  "What's there to 'convey'?" she said, a little petulantly I thought.  "Wouldn't it just be easier to put the dishes away when they're clean?"

Obviously, she just didn't get it. 

Or could it be:  I'm the one who doesn't get it?  And I realized that I'd stumbled upon the the Universal Trait of the Persistently Tidy:

Neatniks Are Simpletons

I know:  I'm misusing the word "simpleton"here.  Oops!  But you know what I mean:  Neatniks keep it simple.  They don't make e-l-a-b-o-r-a-t-e strategies for, say, indicating whether the dishwasher is clean or dirty.  They unload the dishwasher and move on.

They have a do-it-now approach.  They don't assume they will have "more time later" to do the task at hand.  In fact, they feel the opposite:  they don't know when they'll have another chance to do the task before them, so they figure they might as well do it now.

Neatniks are results oriented, rather than process oriented. They aren't interested in comprehensive "systems" or rituals that require time and energy to maintain. They don't have to have an item on their "To-Do" list (written on special paper!  or input and categorized on their Blackberry!) to do the chore. When bills come in and they have the money, they write out a check and deduct the amount from their account, simple as that. They don't require special pens or stamps or for their desk to be perfectly tidy in order to do the job. 

They don't backtrack:  if they do something that's not on their list, they don't go back and write it down so they can cross it off. The Naturally Tidy that I know aren't interested in keeping logs and lists, schedules and who-did-what-when-and-how-much record-keeping.  Because they keep things simple, Neatiniks don't build up a huge store of dread about doing what needs to be done, which in turn makes chores easier to do.  

Contrary to popular belief, Neatniks aren't perfectionists.   They value timeliness over so-called "perfection."  If they don't have time to shop for the perfect gift, they give a gift card.  If they don't have time to pull out all the furniture when vacuuming before guests arrive, they vacuum the heavily-trafficked areas nonetheless.  Neatniks avoid an all-or-nothing approach.  They figure something is better than nothing.

The idea that being organized is actually easier than being a slob is perhaps the hardest to swallow and yet that's exactly  what professional organizers like Regina Leeds promise.  Certainly if you are not among the blessedly, naturally tidy, you have struggled enough with this issue. If you're like me, maybe the break-through you need is to think of getting organized as finally abolishing pointless routines, non-value-added rituals, and over-stringent standards.

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Photo by Alpay Ulku.

This Week on the Quest: How Neatniks Do It

 First a preamble:  if you were hoping the "it" in the title above refers to some naughty business, you can stop reading right here.  This is an organization blog, folks.  We keep it clean here on the Quest. 

Or rather:  try to keep it clean.  And organized! But you know, it's a struggle.  It is.  More than a year on the Quest to get and stay organized, I sometimes feel like I'm getting there.  But staying there is a whole different matter. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly said, "the rich are different than you and I" which is pretty much the way I feel about Neatniks. What is it with their tidy desks, their crisply ironed shirts, and shiny fixtures? Don't they get bored of all that filing?  Don't they have anything better to do than scrub out the microwave with an old toothbrush?  Do they just have a high tolerance for tedium? Or have they really got things figured out?

I decided to seek out a few Neatniks and ask what the deal was:  Philosophy, attitude, strategies, and tips, please. I talked to my sister, who is the cleanest, tidiest, most organized person I know.  I talked to Stacey, the Designated Neatnik at work.  When I came upon accounts of happy Neatniks in literature and pop culture (Anais Nin, Alexandra Stoddard) I took notes.  In terms of general philosophy, strategies, and attitude, a pattern is emerging.  Tomorrow:  A Profile In Neatnik Behavior.

Above:  if only being organized was as easy as keeping markers tidy.

Creating a Quick, Organized Day Pack of Travel Essentials with free GWP Bags

On a ride from central Cappadoccia to the area airport a few weeks ago, there were exactly four people in the van: Alpay, me, and a woman and a man we hadn't before met.  The guys cordially nodded  and proceeded to ignore eachother for the ensuing 45 minutes, going so far as feigning sleep to avoid engaging in conversation, while within minutes the woman and I had exchanged names, histories, and email addresses, looked inside eachother's purses, and offered to share snacks.   

Perhaps because my own mother's purse was Strictly Off-Limits, few things are as gratifying as looking in another woman's purse--with permission, of course.  On the ride to Kayseri, when the woman opened her bag to offer me some nuts, I commented on how organized her bag looked.  In the habit of tidy people everywhere, she was happy to show off her tricks and opened the bag right up, the better to examine the contents, which we did, piece by piece. Of the things I noticed right away:  there were no loose items at all--not one.  Everything was in its own little a bag or case or canister of some sort--passport, sunglasses, cell phone and ipod.  Even her lipgloss was stowed away in a little bag of travel essentials, which is where I got the idea of creating my own travel essentials bag with one of the free gift-with-purchase bags I'd brought along. 

Contents of my essential pack from top left: ibuprofen, 2" x 3" notebook, pencil, hand sanitizer, tissues, moleskin (to cushion blisters), wallet with cash, ID, and credit card, hand wipes, epi-pen (for allergies), (free, GWP) lipstick, ponytail holder, sun block, bandaids, and mirror/bronzer.

It all fits nicely in a little clutch.  After pulling this together, I was ready for anything!  And my bag was a lot tidier, too.

  

2,000 Uses For WD-40?

A while back, I was talking to Stacy, the Designated Neatnik at work, and she told me her Dad told her that WD-40--a substance I've always regarded with vague suspicion (what is WD-40, anyway?  The manufacturers won't say) can be used to actually clean things.  "Like what?" I said, trying not to narrow my eyes because it's rude to do so and it's best not to alienate people at work in the event that, you know, you need to borrow their stapler or something down the line.  Still, I was skeptical.  As far as I knew, the sole purpose of WD-40 was to fix creaky door hinges.  "Like, it can clean shower doors," Stacy said.  "Oh come on," I said, but Stacy stuck to her guns.  "There's websites," she said.  "There's websites with hundreds and hundreds of things you can do with WD-40."

Thus filed under the category, Research When I'm Desperate For a Post Topic, I came upon the note I'd made and googled "cleaning with WD-40."  Imagine my astonishment when I saw a WD-40 fan club (!) listing not hundreds but two thousand uses for WD-40, many of them having to do with cleaning.  So what if most of us don't have a use for "cleaning gum from chicken feathers" and "removing peanutbutter from dog hair"? There's something for everyone here.  Among (many) other things, you can use the humble and hard-working spray to:

• Clean metal figurines
• Remove crayon from carpet
• Clean newspaper ink from tables
• Polish scratches on countertops
• Remove rollerblade marks from kitchen floors
• Remove grime from grout
• Remove petroleum stains from clothing
• Clean (I'm sure they mean remove) food stuck in and around refrigerator
• Remove glue from carpet
• Clean clogged inkjet nozzles
• Clean pigeon droppings from cars
• Clean Plexiglas
• Remove paint from windows
• Remove fingerprints from glossy magazines and book covers
• Clean dice
• Remove river sludge from boat hull
• Shine diamonds
• Clean gummed-up soap trays
• Pre-treat laundry to remove roofing tar stains

I owe Stacy--and Stacy's Dad!--an apology. I'm a WD-40 skeptic no more. 

Yuck-free Sponge Storage and Sanitization

Years ago, before we bought our first car that didn't require duct tape to hold it together, I'd never heard of the particular model we ended up buying, perhaps because the idea of being able to distinguish the make and model of one car from another is only slightly more appealing than, I don't know, memorizing pro football stats. I mean, sure, a person could, but what would be the point? So it took me by surprise after we bought our car that I started seeing it everywhere, and moreover, that I should notice or care. Seemingly overnight, the world was populated by our car, although sometimes in a different color, and it seemed impossible that I hadn't noticed this before.

In the same way, it had never even occurred to me to second-guess my choice of using a sponge in the kitchen, until the conversation I had with Stacy the Designated Neatnik at work. Suddenly, it seemed all I heard about on the news or on the radio was microbial contamination this and potential food poisoning that, all pointing to the once-innocent-but-now-suspicious sponge. Troubled, I asked my officemate if he used a sponge in the kitchen. By his reaction, you would have thought I asked if he offers lead paint chips as snacks to toddlers. Shocked in turn by his reaction, I said, "well, I use a sponge." This made him shudder. "The chances you take," he said then.

Thus fascinated and incredulous in equal measure, I proceeded to quiz everyone I know on their sponge usage. It's one thing for my officemate and for Stacy the Designated Neatnik to be sponge-shy: everyone knows microbiologists are scardy-cats. But horrifyingly, person after otherwise normal person denied using a sponge. It was as if everyone had gotten the proverbial memo but me. When did this happen? When did the entire world decide that Sponges Are Not Our Friends? Even my friend Just Chewy--who is neither a microbiologist nor particularly delicate--even he doesn't use a sponge, but uses dishtowels, which are frequently washed.

Feeling a little cowed and not just a little freaked out, I bought some dishtowels and gave them a try. I hated them. Wet, sloppy, too big and unwieldy, my re-occurring thought while using them is: you're kidding, right? I couldn't take it. Guiltily, I went back to my beloved sponge.

And then fortune smiled upon me: I visited my friend Ingrid, who is no slouch in the SuperClean category herself. Imagine my delight when I saw a sponge in her kitchen! Exactly the type I use, with one side scruffy and one side soft. I mentioned to her my sponge story and she laughed. Her trick: she keeps both her sponge and her scrub brush in the dishwasher, which she runs using the Sanitize cycle. Sponge and scrub brush are thus cleaned and sanitized with each wash. Ingenious!

Above, left, the sponge-in-dishwasher storage method. Above, right: What is that in the dishwasher?

The Law of Neatniks

It's a fact of life:  every office has a Designated Neatnik. The DN in our office is Stacy, whose desk looks like a Pottery Barn ad, complete with color-coordinated accessories and just enough files artfully arrayed to look convincing.

A while back Stacy shared with me her favorite card, which basically sums up her life view.  I pleaded with her to scan it so I could include it here, and she kindly obliged. 

Stacy is a Neatnik, But I Still Like Her

Everyone knows a Neatnik, those people with tidy hair who cross-reference their take-out menus by restaurant name, location, and cuisine. 

Neatniks have perennially ironed clothes, scrupulously scrubbed floors, cars that are washed on the outside and vacuumed on the inside.  Their favorite invention is paper towels, which they deem as essential as toilet paper.  They own stock in the company that makes Windex. 

Stacy is my co-worker and I like her, even though Stacy is a Neatnik.  She is one of the few people who didn’t look bored when I told her I was writing a blog about cleaning and organizing, and her restraint in questioning my credentials was admirable, but then discretion is one of her strong points.  Unlike my officemate, who makes a point of staring at the little knots of cat hair that cling to my clothes, Stacy pretends not to notice.  This goes a long way with me.

A week or two ago, Stacy and I were talking about cleaning the kitchen, and I said something about wiping down the counters, when Stacy interrupted me. 

“Sponge?” she gasped.  “You actually have a sponge in your house?”  This was said in the exact tone of one saying: “AK-47?  You actually put a fully loaded AK-47 in the toy box?”

At first I misinterpreted her comment as incredulity that I actually cleaned my kitchen, but no, Stacy made it clear that the sponge was the problem.

Stacy, being trained as a microbiologist, could not bear the thought of all that bacteria just collecting and multiplying in a used sponge, even if the sponge is just lying around.

Stacy concedes that she herself does in fact have sponges in her condo, but they are for one-use only.  It was unthinkable to use a sponge, repeatedly, under any circumstances, even if it was just used on the counters.  For that, Stacy uses paper towels.

“Paper towels?” I said, striving for the AK-47 tone but not quite getting it right.  “You use paper towels on your counters?”  Stacy interpreted this as environmental outrage on my part, which was convenient, since what I was really thinking was: how can you use a paper towel to scrub out three-day-old spaghetti sauce splatters? At the time, it didn’t occur to me this is not a problem for Stacy, because Neatniks don’t have three-day-old splatters.