Organization Quest

Tonight: Getting Ready to Go Back to School

 

Tomorrow starts a new quarter at school.  I'm taking Rendering, which turns out to be Grown-Up Speak for coloring, the only

subject at which I excelled in kindergarten, so you can imagine my excitement. 

When I went to kindergarten, I got my very own pencil box.  It ended up holding not only pencils but erasers and gum and lunch money and stickers and broken crayons and little twigs I especially liked that I found on the playground, which is more or less what ends up in my current pencil box by the end of the quarter. 

These days I like to empty out my box and go through supplies before a new term.  I weed out the dirty, the dried-up and the worn-away, and stash or toss the curious little whats-its that have accumulated. 

I sharpen all my pencils, try out all the pens to make sure the ink still flows, wash out the box itself and wipe down everything going back in.  I do the same thing for the items in the portfolio I carry--the triangles and templates, paper and drafting brush.  Next quarter I'll be taking AutoCad and suspect a laptop will take the place of many of the manual drafting supplies I currently carry with me.  For now I enjoy my before-quarter cleaning ritual, which both serves to clear my mind and prime me for the challenges to come. 

Time for a Treat: Aisling D'Art's Clutter Journal

  
 

One of the strongest motivations for getting organized, I think, is a yearning for beauty: the way the light hits gleaming hardwood floors or gem-colored bottles on a window ledge;  how a sheaf of scrapbook paper or box of watercolor pencils neatly arranged by color arouses one's creativity. Order invites expansion, enjoyment, and relaxation. It makes it easier to assess, reflect, experiment, and play, whether at the drawing board, in the kitchen, or in the garden. 

When I need a little beauty to kick-start my motivation, I love to look at home-made art journals.  You can imagine my delight when I discovered the wonderful Clutter Journal by artist and teacher Aisling D’Art.

The Clutter Journal is a mixed media extravaganza:  part collage, part traditional journal, Aisling combines found objects (found, no doubt, in the decluttering process) with writing, drawing, painting, rubber stamping, torn images and pasted text from magazines. 

Filled with quotes from such disparate icons as organizing luminary Karen Kingston, financial wiz Suze Orman,and humorist Quentin Crisp, the Clutter Journal is at once hilarious and heartbreaking. It offers a visually compelling record of one woman's organizing odessey during a time of great personal upheaval.  

All images used with permission, copyright by Aisling D'Art.

 

 

"Clean Enough": Finding the Sweet Spot

This morning I was delighted to read the following comment from reader Patricia Balinski, which is just too good to keep buried with a post I wrote last February ("Why I Can't Fly with the Flylady"), and so I'll quote it in its entirety below: 

In reviewing the preview of Flylady's book, I thought of the many New Year resolutions begun in earnest and fallen to the wayside within hours, days, maybe even a week of making them. Like yourself, a daily regime of chores, whether done until completion or broken up because of side-tracking to do something else within the room, can not be done without frustration of having to do the same thing so repeatedly, day in and day out. At 23, I willingly accepted the wisdom of two women in my life. Thereby, reducing stress and possibly adding years to my life. They were: "Saying you have to clean or do mandatory cleaning routines is true to you now; that is, until something else in your life takes precedent." And, "Let your house be clean enough to be healthy; yet, dirty enough to be happy." Now at 68 1/2, I reduce clutter by redistributing loved treasures to various family members. Still can see them, but they have to clean it. I spend minimal time several times a week to spit polish "hot areas" and use the extra time to volunteer my services where and when I find the most enjoyment. Finally, when the time comes to sweep angel dust under a cloud, I know my children will remember the happy times they had in growing up and not having to live each day in a "white-glove inspection house".

This is exactly what I needed to read this morning. 

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how the Quest somehow got away from me, or rather, that at times it has taken me away from what I had intended to be my focus:  making room for the important things in life. It's the "subtitle" I chose over any number I considered when starting the Quest, because I wanted to keep the thought front and center--the reason, above all others, why bother trying to be organized at all.

It's time to reclaim the Quest for its original goal and purpose.  The intended goal was never perfection but communion, a leavening of spirit by making it easier, not harder, to get through the day.  "Clean enough to be healthy, yet dirty enough to be happy," as Patricia's mentor so wisely put it.  Now that's a resolution to live by!

Back on Board with the New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

All right, so it's been, let's see . . . .let's just call it a while. The Short Version of What Happened is:  I went back to school.  Remember the Back to School series I wrote in September?  In doing so, I pulled out old textbooks, notes, projects, and binders to photograph in order to illustrate the concepts, and in the process I began, in the manner of packrats everywhere, to re-read and look through everything, which is when it struck me:  wow, I really loved studying design.  And:  I wish I was the one going back to school, which led in turn to: why, exactly, wasn't I in school?

I did recall withdrawing from one of my courses that last quarter, after the instructor told me, in front of the class, that I was "unteachable."  What I couldn't remember is why I would believe him.

Other people may have control over any number of things in our lives--from our salaries to when we are able to catch a bus on a particular corner--but they don't get to decide our character. My former instructor had indeed been unable to teach me.  But that didn't mean I couldn't learn.

What I love about January is the renewed hope and promise of a fresh start the new year brings.  No matter what your goals, the focus of new year resolutions is in the present and the in future. All transgressions are in the past--instructive, perhaps, but ultimately irrelevant. 

The New Year is carte blanche to reflect, hope, plan, and prioritize.  What do you want for yourself this year?  Dream big! Dare to defy the limitations you place on yourself and those others place on you.  It's a new year, a new decade.  Take a few minutes this weekend and ask yourself:  who do you want to be, what do you want to do, how do you want to live in the years to come? Decide on one tiny step towards that goal--whether it's replacing chips with celery for a snack, doing a load of laundry every day until you get caught up, making a point to work in a walk a few days a week, or looking into getting your GED, Associate's, Bachelors, Master's, or Ph.D.  The first step in getting what you want is realizing that you want it. 

PS I took the same class--perspective drawing--this quarter with a different professor.

I got an A.