Kathi Lipp - The Get Yourself Organized Project: 21 Steps to Less Mess and Stress

All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover design by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon

Cover illustration Krieg Barrie

Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd., 10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130

THE GET YOURSELF ORGANIZED PROJECT

Copyright 2012 by Kathi Lipp
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lipp, Kathi, 1967-

The get yourself organized project / Kathi Lipp.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7369-4385-7 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-4386-4 (eBook)

1. Home economics. 2. Time management. I. Title.

TX145.L57 2012

640dc23

2011028814

All rights reserved . No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America .

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 / BP-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my second-favorite family ,

Brian, Lucinda, and Elsa Richerson .

Love you all. Thank you for the love and support for our family .

And Elsa, I promise to never give you

more toys than your mom and dad can organize

(but when it comes to books, I make no promises) .

Amanda, Jeremy, Justen, and Kimber We love seeing you going out into the world and creating homes of your own.

The Dobsons, the Lipps, and the Richersons Love each and every one of you.

My ministry partners who carry much of this load Rachelle Gardner, my agent, and Rod Morris, LaRae Weikert, and the entire team at Harvest House Publishers.

Linda Jenkins Thanks for your fingerprints all over this book.

My team Lynette Furstenburg, Sunnie Weber, Ginny Chapman, Kimber Hunter, and Bronwyn SwartzThanks for using your talents so I can go and use some of mine.

Finally, to Roger Thanks for being my partner in ministry so I can be your wife at home. Shut the door, baby.

After his 3-month-old son sailed off the roof of his car at 50 mph and landed unhurt in the middle of an interstate highway on Sunday, Michael Murray decided to break the news to his wife gently .

It was, after all, Mothers Day, and Murray, a 27-year-old factory worker, said Monday he did not want to say right out that he had messed up by absentmindedly driving off while his son was strapped into a car seat that he had left on the sunroof of his bronze 1987 Hyundai. As her husband sheepishly held Mathew, who was sleeping serenely in white pajamas and sunbonnet, Deanna Murray, 28, recounted the phone call she received from her husband .

Come to the emergency room, he told me.

A surgical nurse, Deanna Murray was on duty at the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts in Worcester when her husbands call came in. The emergency room is down the hall from her work station .

Just come down here, thats all he told me, Deanna Murray said, describing the phone call. Mathew has fallen, he finally said. I ran all the way down the hall.

After learning the full story, Deanna Murray said, I was in shock. The nurses had to sit me down and hold me. Its a miracle. It really is.

As Michael Murray recounted it, things began innocently enough around noon Sunday when he decided to drive Mathew and his 20-month-old sister to the hospital, where Deanna was working the day shift. He wanted to drop off her Mothers Day gifts a gold necklace bearing the legend Number One Mom and a single rose .

After presenting these gifts, Michael Murray carried his two children back to the indoor garage where he had parked the car. Murray put his daughter into her car seat but then got into the car with Mathew still on the sunroof .

The garage was dark, Murray said when asked how he could have forgotten about his son .

(Chris Reidy, Absent-Minded Father Sends Baby Son Flying Down the Highway, Boston Globe , May 12, 1992.)

I first heard this story on a radio broadcast over twenty years ago, and it still gives me the same sick-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling every time I think of it.

But maybe not for the same reason as you.

You see, I think when most people hear or read about the story of young Mathew, their first reaction is, Thank God that baby is OK. If that is your reaction, congratulations. You are probably a pretty well-balanced, normal person.

However, my first reaction was, Thank God I havent done that yet. If that was your first reaction as well, this book is for you.

Here are a few other ways to know whether or not this book is for you:

if you always know where your car keys are

if you look at Martha Stewart and think, Now thats somebody I can hang with

if all your dresser drawers slide closed with ease

if theres nothing in your fridge thats older than your youngest child

if you think laundry baskets are for folding laundry and not for running around the house gathering up papers, shoes, and fourth-grade science projects

then this book may not be for you. However ,

if you have offered any of your children five dollars if they win the Where Are Mommys Keys? game

if you have ever entertained someone entirely on your front porch because your house was such a mess

if your kids automatically know that the hour before Grandma and Grandpa visit is stash-and-dash time

if you think that getting your shoes on, driving to the ATM, and ordering fast food at a drive-thru is easier than cooking

if your house is clean and your husband automatically asks, Whos coming over?

if you wear something besides pajamas and slippers to drop off your kids at school, and the drop-off lady asks, What are you all dressed up for?

then this book is for you.

I come by my chaos honestly.

I am only one in a long line of people in my family who are disorganized. I have an aunt and uncle who could easily take up a full season on the reality show Hoarders , and my dad has stored in his garage non-working electrical parts from the Nixon era. (At least when it comes to my moms walk-in-closet-sized collection of quilting fabrics, they are organized by color for easy retrieval.)

So when it comes to managing my own household, I was probably a lot closer to being invited to my own clutter intervention than invited to cohost a segment on Clear Away the Kitchen Clutter on Good Morning America .

Like reading a diet book from someone who has never weighed more than a buck ten, trying to find help from organizational experts who have color-coded their laundry hampers since they were three just didnt do it for me.

Out of sheer desperation (and a strong desire to regularly have clean underwear) I would buy the oh-so-magical, super-organization books, start on their perfect systems, and then realize that the author and I had a major communication issuewe werent speaking the same language. Apparently, my brain was wired completely different than hers was. (Then I would have to organize the book that I was no longer reading into my collection of organizational books.)