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

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Preparing for The Get Yourself Organized Project

1

Is This Book for You?

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, Mother’s 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 husband’s call came in. The emergency room is down the hall from her work station.

‘Just come down here,’ that’s 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. It’s 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 Mother’s 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 haven’t 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 that’s somebody I can hang with

•  if all your dresser drawers slide closed with ease

•  if there’s nothing in your fridge that’s 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 Mommy’s 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, Who’s 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.

You’re Not as Disorganized as You Think You Are

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 mom’s 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 didn’t 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 issue—we weren’t 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.)

The difference seemed to be that while these experts lived to organize, I wanted to get things organized so I could live. I saw organizing as something I wanted to do and then move on. The experts saw organization as the goal in life. (The last time I checked, no one was giving out blue ribbons for the fewest mismatched socks.)

I’m sorry, but I want a little more from life than an improved laundry system.

I bet you do too.

Now don’t get me wrong—I have a few friends who love to clean. I mean can’t-wait-to-get-down-on-their-hands-and-knees-and-scrub-the-grout-with-a-toothbrush friends. (Come to mention it, I’m wondering again why we’re friends.) There again, I realize we have completely different ways of approaching life. While I see the glass as half full, they see the glass as Are you finished drinking that? If so, go rinse it out and put it in the dishwasher. From these friends and their kind I would never be able to learn the art of home management.

I need to learn from people who have the same kind of brain that I do:

•  one that loves to get things done—as long as it’s quick and easy

•  one that doesn’t want to waste time on boring or seemingly unproductive things

•  one that doesn’t want to spend time cleaning a bathroom that’s already clean

•  one that would rather be watching a good DVD than organizing them on a shelf

When I was describing this book to fellow author Kristin Billerbeck, she looked at me and rolled her eyes. It took only a second for her to confide in me the pain that surrounds her feelings of inadequacy when it comes to organization. I am so unorganized! My desk is constantly a mess, and I have to color-code everything if I ever want to have a chance of finding anything.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. While Kristin sees the process—a messy desk, not putting things away when she’s done with them—I see the product. Kristin has published more than thirty books and hasn’t even reached her forty-fifth birthday. She must be doing something right.

I think too many of us needlessly bag on ourselves when it comes to organization. Kristin has let someone else define organization for her: The results are not important—the process is. It doesn’t matter that we’re raising great kids, get dinner on the table every night, and work a full-time job. Since we often can’t find our car keys, we consider ourselves a complete and utter failure.

All of us have areas where we already have a system that works for us. So many of us are hyper-organized at work but fall apart when we get home. Some of us enjoy great achievements out in the world, but we feel overwhelmed by trying to meet our family’s demands. Some of us are at a place of feeling so buried that we don’t even know where to begin.

In this book, we’re going to look at the areas that are already working for you and what you are accomplishing. Once you realize that some areas are working, it’s only a matter of getting the rest of your life on a system that works for you.

So take heart! You have some struggles, yes. But I would venture to guess you have people in your life whose needs you do meet regularly, a job where you are valued, and people who love you. I bet you meet the needs of many people every single day. Now, I just want to make your life a little easier in the process.

2

Eight Basic Rules to Get Yourself Organized

I know that eight rules seem like a lot, but as you start to organize this way, I think you’ll see how each rule is absolutely necessary. I don’t want to tie you down with a bunch of silly rules. I want to give you the freedom of living an organized life and making steps to be who God has created you to be.

Rule 1—Work Backward

I’ve spent so much of my life living in reaction mode. This real scene is just one example:

You need to build a Pentagon out of Popsicle sticks, but it’s not due for six weeks? Awesome! I don’t have to worry about it for a while.

Five weeks and six days later…

What do you mean you have to have a Popsicle Pentagon by tomorrow? AGGGHHH!

We all get caught in the occasional crisis. But when you constantly postpone projects and wait until a situation becomes a crisis, that’s living in reaction mode. And reaction mode is not a fun way to live.

That’s why I want you to work backward. Look at the questions below and think them through.

•  What is your busiest day of the week?

•  What is your rest day?

•  What day does your garbage and recycling get picked up?

•  What is your best day to run errands?

•  What is the best day to clean house?

Why am I asking you these questions? Because I want you to work backward.

Let’s take the question What is your rest day? For most people, their rest day (if they have one) is Sunday. So if your goal is to rest on Sunday, think about what needs to happen the rest of the week in order for you to rest that day:

•  Your work project needs to be done on Friday so you don’t have to stress about it Sunday afternoon.

•  You need to marinate something in the fridge on Saturday so you can just pop it in the oven on Sunday.

•  You need to run errands on Saturday morning.

•  Your kids need to be informed that if they need something for a school project, they need to let you know early in the week and not on Sunday evening.

I’ve determined that the best day for me to clean my house is Tuesday. (And to be perfectly transparent, since I’ve been working and traveling full-time, I have someone come in twice a month to do the bathrooms, floors, and kitchen.) But it doesn’t matter if I’m the one scrubbing floors or it’s someone else, there’s a lot I need to do to prepare to clean:

•  I make sure that each room is picked up.

•  I clean out any stray dishes in the sink so that I can scrub the sink.

•  I throw away any food that’s past its prime so I can clean the fridge.

•  I sweep the kitchen and the bathroom.

Since Tuesday is my cleaning day, I do all those above activities before Tuesday so when it’s time to clean, nothing is hampering me.

That’s what I mean by working backward. It’s making an appointment with myself and then working backward to get it done.

Look at how Nichole Blean, writer and single mom, takes this to the extreme when it comes to scheduling out her days and working backward:

"This January, I followed in the footsteps of my grandmama, who had particular days for wash, shopping, ironing, etc. I set up Mondays as grocery shopping/cooking days (I cook three meals for my daughter and me, and we eat them through the week), Tuesdays as bill paying/paperwork days, Wednesdays as wash days, Thursdays as tidy up the house days, Fridays and Saturdays I run errands/go to church/do church groups/have fun with friends, and Sundays we have a Sabbath. I work full time and write every day, so this routine helps everything to run smoothly and creates more time for writing.

"This routine is fantastic in so many ways. I am saving a ton of money on the grocery bill by being more prepared, making meals with what I already have, not wasting leftovers, and using coupons. And I don’t really have time for going to the mall anymore since I am streamlining my schedule to open up free time for writing. But the best benefit of all is that my daughter (who has lived with my haphazard ways for years) is now getting straight As. I swear it’s because of the routine, and she knows what to expect when she gets home from school. Amazing what a little discipline can do!"—Nichole

Rule 2—Apply Pressure Where Needed

When I get a cut on my hand (and I’ve had plenty of those due to equal parts klutziness and multiple book orders to open), I put a towel on the bleeding area, not on my elbow. I apply the pressure where I need it. So when I devote huge amounts of time and money to purchase and read books on systems of organization, I want them to address my problem, where I’m at, now.

What generally happens, however, is that these books present a plan. And a plan is good, as long as it’s a plan that meets your needs. Most of these plans tell me what room to start with or what system to start setting up. Maybe that’s fine for some people (those who are good at following a plan, for example), but for me, a better way to roll is to tackle the area that’s causing me the most pain and start there. Can you say garage anyone?

One of the most stressful things in life is to feel out of sorts, unorganized, and pressured, so it just makes sense to me that you address the most urgent areas first, to get the most relief. As you look over this book, I suggest you start with the areas that are causing you the most stress.

I cover three major life areas