Organization Revolution

There is a great blog I read, Org Junkie (http://orgjunkie.com/ - I am not one to know the HTML stuff yet, sorry), and I have become absolutely obsessed.  She has such great tips on how to organize, and one thing I really love is that she makes it clear that what works for her might not work for anyone else.  Don't ask me why I value this so much, I just do.

Anyways, once I stumbled upon her blog, I knew I could no longer lead my life in such an unorganized fashion.  I absolutely had to get my entire house organized and get systems (something she preaches about) in place as soon as possible.  Her website has been invaluable to me.  She has really inspired me to get my act together, so to speak.

I've slowly started going through my house, piece by piece, and pulling things out, going through them, throwing away, and then reorganizing.  If you walked in, you wouldn't be able to tell this.  But that isn't what matters to me.  What matters to me is that things are getting done.  One of her major philosophies is to start small and work your way up.  Well, that's exactly what I'm doing.  I went through our filing cabinet and good grief you wouldn't believe the amount of crap I was able to throw away or shred.  A lot of the stuff just wasn't even important to begin with, so why it was in there, Lord only knows.  Now I have about 6 hanging folders in there that are labelled properly so I know whats in them and where to stick new information I get.  The only sucky part was that the filing cabinet does not hold legal sized papers, which is what a lot of our housing documents are, so they are in the bottom drawer laying awkwardly.  Oh well, I'll survive that I'm sure.

I haven't been following her method entirely.  I just kind of pick something and go after it for a bit.  I've been picking up books and magazines from around the house and placing them in there *hopeful* proper spot.  And I've completely gone through the fridge and freezer and gotten rid of tons of crap that we just won't ever use.  She is so right when she says there is a "high" associated with cleaning and organizing these things.  It feels great to have things in order, not having to look everywhere for things.  I actually found my marriage license while doing this.

As I said, I still have a very long way to go!  I'm not sure what I'm going to work on today.  I try to do one thing a day, nothing too big as that isn't very smart for a woman on bedrest.  Tuesday we went to Target and bought 2 boxes of some Tupperware, the kind where everything clicks together, because I absolutely could not stand my tupperware cabinet anymore.  I started washing the pieces yesterday and went through the cabinet throwing away pieces I no longer want.  Org Junkie talks about using baskets a lot...well I don't have a lot of extra money laying around, so I started looking at my old tupperware collection in a new light (something I think she'd be proud of...can you tell she's kind of my hero :)).  I could use the bigger pieces for baskets, say to store all of my spices in.  I poured my Cheerios into a taller container that I had to get rid of the boxes, etc.  It's amazing how much nicer things look.  I'm still not done with the tupperware cabinet as I'm not done washing the new pieces and I decided to store the old pieces in the cabinet because I don't have anywhere to just set them right now.

I'll probably be chronicling my journey to Organized Heaven on here, it's something I've become quite passionate about...to the point where I think I annoy my Mom and my husband.  But, I'm sure they will appreciate my hard work in the end.  At least I get to feel productive, if only for a minute or two.  I will take pictures, though that is hard for me because I'm embarassed of the shape of my house.  If I get brave enough, I'll post said pictures and after pictures too!  Here's to a new Organized Life!