Sandra Felton - Smart organizing: simple strategies for bringing order to your home

2005 by Sandra Felton

Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com

Ebook edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3327-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Organizer Lady and Bare Bones Way are trademarks of Messies Anonymous.

Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

Contents

I owe a lot to many people for helping me make this book what it is.

I appreciate the confidence my publisher, Fleming H. Revell, has placed in me over the past twenty years and continues to place in me as evidenced by this book. Bill Petersen and I have worked together over many of those twenty years. Special appreciation to the other editors who work so professionally to make it all come out right.

I want to say thanks to my critique group, headed by Karen Whiting, for their valuable input and suggestions. They dont let me get by with much, but I did think it was a little rude when they laughed at my dramatic flair passagewhich has since been deleted.

Special thanks to the sixteen professional organizers who shared their outlooks in contributions on various topics throughout the book. Thanks to many others who made excellent contributions, which I could not fit into the book but were appreciated nonetheless.

The hardworking women in the trenches add a strong dose of realism and a lot of great information because they are right at the spots where the battle rages.

Thanks to my agent, Bruce Barbour, who has come on board and made a significant difference, and to my daughter-in-law, Linda Felton, for her perceptive final reading.

And as always, a big kiss and hug to my husband, Ivan, for doing extra work around the house so I could write. Otherwise my book would have gone forward while the condition of the house went backward. Find your own personal Ivan is my first tip.

Can We Talk?
Heres My Guarantee

Life is like a wild horse that wants to roam all over the track and, if possible, jump the rail and run amok without direction. Life veers toward complexity. Left to itself, your life will become more and more complicated, cluttered, and busy.

Life complicates itself naturally without assistance. Thats the reason there are books called Simplify Your Life but none called Complicate Your Life. A complicated life is stressful and unpleasant; a simplified life is peaceful and fulfilling.

We learned in physics class the second law of thermodynamics, which indicates in a general way that everything moves naturally toward chaos. So we spend a lot of time in our lives trying to address the problem of chaos, using handheld organizers like Palm Pilots, calendar systems, and books on organizing in an effort to stop the pell-mell rush to randomness in our lives.

We yearn for order. Our minds, our hearts, our souls thirst for simplicity and harmony, but they dont come as easily as we would like. The battle for order is hard won. Deep down we resist this fact. We hope that somehow nature will reverse its path toward complexity and we can become organized without much effort. For most of us, this is a pipe dream that will never come true.

However, as we look around, we notice that some people do seem to live naturally organized lives. By learning and following their simple secrets, we can lead the kind of stress-free lives we crave. Dont get me wrongnobody wants to live a boring life, stripped to its bare necessities. We all have our special desires, places in our lives we want to give the full treatment, maybe even go overboard from time to time. But what we want to avoid is letting life get so out of control that we dont have time to direct and focus it on the important things, because the unimportant things have taken up all the time.

Dont be more organized than you need to be, but dont be any less either. This book is about your reaching the organization goal you want in the simplest way possible. And then, if and when you have found the balance you want, you can move on to whatever extras you want to add. Simplicity is assured. Complexity is optional.

For more than twenty years, I have been known as the Organizer Lady. I entered the organizing field as a result of my own search for order in my chaotic life and in the process developed a keen sense of the internal and psychological working of organizing. In this book my insights will open mental and emotional doors that will enable you to bring your life to the level of orderliness you seek.

To help you in your search and make it more fun as well, the following chapters deal with the practicalities of organizing and often, but not always, contain the following:

• Professional Organizer Viewpoints. Over the last twenty years, professional organizing has taken its place with interior design and many other services that meet the needs of modern living. Professional organizers, many of whom are members of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO, www.napo.org), the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (NSGCD, www.nsgcd.com), or both, share their expertise on various topics. While I cant vouch for each one specifically, I can tell you that if you find the right professional organizer at the right time, it can be a wonderful help for your organizational progress.
• In the Trenches with Smart Homemakers. People who are on the road to better organizing are enthusiastic about what they are doing. They love to share and hear from others who are on the same road. The comments of those in the trenches are the happy sharing of successes, techniques, or motivation that will encourage all of us.
• Being disorganized is a private matter for many people. Even so, some want to reach out to others for support. These postings are presented as they were written, casually, in email form, on forums on www.messies.com. The unique styles are not edited, so you will sense the personality of the writers. Their comments will not always dovetail with the suggestions given in the book, but they are valuable alternatives.
• Stories and anecdotes about people are based on real lives, but many names are altered.
• Tips. In this book I stick with tips that may be useful in getting the basics done. Any tip that makes your life easier and better is worthwhile. Any tip that doesnt meet your needs on a practical level in what you do daily should be totally ignored.
• What Do You Want? In almost every chapter you will find an evaluation to help you decide what level of housekeeping you are aiming for. Sometimes the evaluation will help you determine where you are so you can plan where to go from there.
• Remember, if you aim at nothing definite, you will likely hit it. That leads to discouragement. If you have a definite goal, you are much more likely to achieve it. Nothing can be more satisfying. Even if you dont fully achieve your highest goal, you will be farther down the road; and later, after you catch your breath, you can continue the journey.