I know that I'm not the most organized person. I have been wondering if I live too much in the present. I'm not necessarily impulsive but I do enjoy spontaneity. The idea of having certain systems on certain days just sounds too much like work but I also realize that some organized system would be helpful to me. As I write my post there are towels in the dryer that need to be folded as well as piles of clean, folded clothes on the couch behind me. By the way, the desk that I am sitting at looks like Staples and a toy store had a collision. There are papers, writing utensils, toys and various other odds and ends strewn everywhere. It's a miracle I have room to type at the keyboard!
So I see the benefits of systems yet I feel that I would be angry at myself for not following through with them. For instance, if it was laundry night and I decided to take my son to the playground because it was nice out or mad that I was missing out on a beautiful evening with my son at the playground because it was laundry night.
I read the articles on creating systems and I am going to give it a shot. Here is an excerpt from one of them:
I’ll lay out the steps of creating a system and then do a simple example. My goal is to share the problem-solving mindset that you can apply to creating needed systems in your specific situation.
- Identify the need
- Identify the essential components
- Find useful tools/technology
- Assemble/create accompanying documentation
- Determine the where new system lives
- Document the system so that someone else could easily follow it
- Use your system, and improve upon it
- Paperwork system: I need to go clean out my file cabinets and then go through the piles of bills and miscellaneous papers I seem to have all over the house and get those in order. This way when new bills come in they are easy to file away. It's a pretty big job but I know that it is time to streamline this area. My husband takes care of paying the bills online but we still receive some via snail mail. I also have a paper shredder (a decent one too) that I never really use maybe I should move it into the dining room where we sort the mail so I could easily dispose of junk instead of letting it accumulate.
- My son's toys: He definitely has too many and it leaves us with multiple levels of clutter. I have been wanting to do this for awhile and I have made some progress in other de-cluttering projects that all eventually lead up to the toys. While I'm happy to throw out broken ones there are a couple of opportunities in the next few weeks to donate or consign toys and I have been holding off on this project to time it with drop-offs.
- Laundry system: I do feel like I am always doing laundry or in some stage of doing laundry. I can never seem to put my son's clothes away because I usually fold and put things away while he naps and I cannot risk waking him up to put his clothes away and then when he's awake its either playtime, snack time, lunch time, tubby time, etc. that I forget to put his clothes away and his stuff just piles up.
MY laundry system mainly involves this kind of thinking: If there are clean clothes for all of us, screw the rest. I am usually very anti clutter, but there are clothes currently folded but not put away on P.'s dresser. And so on. I don't know what it is other than hating the cyclical nature of laundry - I have to fold, again?! - that makes me so resistant to doing it right. Hasn't been a big problem, though, so I'm okay with it.
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