Wednesday, July 5, 2000
Wednesday, July 5, 2000 |
| Organization
is one part inspiration, but the rest of it is
perspiration By PAT NEWMAN Every few months, I get the urge to organize. Usually this inner voice gets silenced pretty quickly after shuffling some papers around and folding a load of clean clothes, but this time I am driven to become ultimately organized. I have always been a failure at putting things away. “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” has always struck me as a sick joke. I live for the thrill of the hunt. “Where are my keys?” “Where is my left shoe?” “Where did I leave the car?” My ever-clever children have devised countless ways to help their absent-minded mom to keep track of her personal belongings, but I have succeeded in failing every attempt. There's the time Robert attached my pager to my key ring so I could phone up my keys and follow the beeps to their hiding place. It worked like a charm until the batteries died. My mother came up with a remarkably simple plan to keep my shoes paired and handy — just line them up in pairs against the wall in the hall. She forgot about Nick the dog who decided he liked Cole-Hahn leather better than rawhide chews. David has become my household detective. He has an uncanny knack for sniffing out the most difficult-to-find items. Sunglasses? “They're in the bathroom, Mom.” Dish detergent? “In the garage, Mom.” And that pesky bag of dog food. “In the white chair on the porch, Mom.” Thank God I only lost him once — in Macy's. My current plan involves a ridiculously easy system of chucking things into empty liquor boxes. With the holiday weekend upon us, package stores were stacked to the max with empty crates, perfect for holding junk. Boxes are labeled in sets of three — magazines, books and everything else. In less than an hour, I had filled enough boxes to create a dividing wall in the family room. To organize bills to be paid, I bought an accordion-pleated file with numbers 1-30, designating the day of the month the payment is due. Number one is packed — from last month's bills. Compartment-styled boxes for holding earrings, etc, are piled in my bedroom waiting to be filled. The over-the-door videocassette holder is still in my car from the day I found it for a dollar at a yard sale. I decided my only way out of this mess is to just give up and build an addition to the rear of the house, just for living. The rest of the house can be for storage. I'll just label the rooms, magazines, books and everything else.
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