Chapter Eight
The Organized Person Loves Yard Sales
Come April every year most people are stretching forth their arms
with a big sigh of relief. Winter is over and the warm weather is fast approaching. Thoughts go in the direction of the
birds and the bees, summer sun, the beach, picnics in the park, and lots
of other things. Our good old friend the organizer has other things on his mind. The time has finally come.
After a winter of strategically collecting saleable junk he can have his
yard sale. "What a way to get rid of junk," he thinks. You're
not only forsaking unwanted stuff, but you're getting money in return." Don't you wish that the weekly trash
man would drop a buck or two in your mailbox as he collects your
garbage. Well yard sales are almost as good.
After systematically organizing his saleable clutter he unloads it on anyone who wants it. "Let them have the
clutter." he thinks. "I'll take their money." So after
the day is over he counts his one hundred and twenty eight dollars and
fifteen cents and feels quite satisfied with the result. Then anything
that is left over goes to the Salvation Army, or the trash can. Nothing
goes back inside the house.
Mr. Organized sure loves his yard sales. One thing he doesn't
particularly like though is other peoples yard sales. He can't seem to
reconcile the idea of spending the money he made by selling his junk, to
spending that money on other people's junk. Or why fill up that nice new
clean empty space with more stuff. Do you know how he feels about such
"stuff"? Can you remember as a kid going through a field and
coming home with all of these sticky burrs stuck to your pants and
socks. It took forever to get those things out of your clothes.
"Junky stuff" hangs like burrs on the organized person. It's
detestable. He cannot wait to pry those things off of his life.
How many burrs do you have sticking to your life? What about yard
sales? When is the last time you had one? "Oh the trouble it
takes", you say. That's right. It is some trouble, but maybe, yes just maybe, it's worth the effort.
Chapter Nine
The Organized Person May Love Kids But He Hates Their Messes
Now this is tough for the organized father or mother. Most kids leave
a trail of toys like a seagull leaves a trail of droppings down at the
waterfront. Father will pick up, and pick up and even pick up some more.
He tries to teach his children to do the same, but they just don't seem
to possess the same passion. In order to preserve what sanity he has
left he decides to give in at this point, just a little. So in a moment
of weakness he decides to clean the kids room once a week if it needs it
or not. Usually it is long past the stage of needing it. By weeks end
the only way to find the children in the morning through all the clutter
is to give them their own phone, and you call them from the neighbours
house.
What Mr. Organized would love to have is a secret trap door in the
floor of the kid's room. He could simply slide it back and with his
three foot snow shovel he pushes all the toys down the hole in the floor. It would be simple and quick. All the toys
would be gone in one clean sweep. What a time saver that would be. You
just shovel in the toys and then slide back the trap door. Nobody would
know the difference.
Have you been able to keep your sanity concerning the kids room?
Maybe you have conceded to the fact that most kids are messy and beyond
any chance of change. Maybe you just run and close their door anytime
you hear the door bell ring. Is that why you are always out of breath
when a friend comes to visit? You've just ran up fifteen steps, slammed
their door and ran back down stairs to say "hello, sorry for the
exhaustion, I'm just doing my daily exercise routine." Then your
friend thinks, "that's too bad the effort of exercise doesn't show
a little better on you".
Chapter Ten
The Organized Person Loves His Pen In His Shirt Pocket.
If everyone was like the organized person, shirt companies would have to throw away all of their shirts that had no pocket. The
organized guy can't figure out why there should even be such a thing as a pocketless shirt. Where can you put a pen and a note
pad, or paper. Have you ever tried to put a pen in the front pocket of
your pants and then sit down, especially if you have tight pants. The
pen jabs you right in the leg. There is no way you can put a pen in the front pocket of your pants. The back pocket
is almost as bad. After you put your wallet and comb in your back pocket
there's little or no room left for a pen. Women have their purses and
men have their pockets. It's a good thing that men don't have to carry
as much in their pockets as women do in their purses. If so their pants
would be bulging out all over.
The only place left for a pen and some paper then is the shirt
pocket. There is absolutely no way that he will buy a shirt without a pocket. So why does he need to carry a pen with him
anyway. He needs to make notes. There's all sort of notes a guy could make. He leaves little to memory, especially after hitting
the age of forty. He jots down thoughts as they come to mind.
He writes schedules, appointments, prices of garbage bags that are on
sale, baseball scores, and a host of other things. So don't worry, the
pen is well used. The problem comes when he can't get the stain out of
his shirt from the pen when it decides to leak. Pen manufacturers
haven't invented a totally leakless pen as yet. He needs that pen and
that paper. It's one vital instrument of the organized person.
Where does your favourite pen spend most of its time? Maybe you don't
have a favourite pen. Some people have cats, others have dogs, and then
some have pens. The organizer figures what is left to memory is most
likely to be lost. So he records it.
(clutter is clutter no matter where it is found)
Chapter Eleven
The Organized Person Love Making Lists
The organized person has his pen and paper in his pocket. He also has another special place for another pen and more paper
where he's always making a list of things to do. He figures if he
doesn't make a list then there is a good chance the things he needs to
do won't get done. He has a point. So he is always adding new things to
the list, and taking off things he has done. When he runs out of paper
he throws the old paper in the trash and begins a new page. He has a
special drawer for scrap paper that he can use for these lists. He never
lets the drawer get too empty.
Then there is the calendar. That's a good place for lists of things
to do. After an organized guy is through with a month on the calendar I
doubt if you would be able to see the numbers due to all of the notes.
He thinks, "it's better to have a cluttered calendar than a
cluttered life."
The question remains. How clean is your calendar? You say, "it's
just as cluttered as my life". Oh well, do you know why they make
such small spaces on calendars for each day? They realize, and so should
you, that you can only do so much in one day, so don't try to do more.
Actually this is an important point. Many people try to put way too much
into twenty four hours. It's better to do a few things and get them
done, than do many things and never finish them.
Chapter Twelve
The Organizer's Closet
Everyone these days is coming out of their closets. Our local radio
station has changed their musical format to country music. Now you can
hear short radio spots to advertise this change. They have listeners
call in and admit to being a closet country fan and since the format
change they've decided to come out of their closets. The reality of it
all is that one might wonder how anybody could possibly squeeze into
most peoples closets in order to come out of them. Closets for the most
part are for clothes, but what is found in some closets is far beyond
belief.
Mr. Organizer for the most part keeps his closet for his clothes. He
might have his pants on the left side, short sleeve shirts beside the
pants, long sleeve shirts come next and so on down the line. If he has
two closets he will separate winter and summer clothes for simplicity
sake.
You know how it is. You get up Sunday morning hoping and praying to
find your white shirt right where you believe you left it. The first
thing you do is open the closet door and a book falls from the top shelf
onto your foot. That irritates you for a moment. The thing that really
bugs you is the apparent loss of that white shirt. One by one you
shuffle through the hangers. There are your blue pants, red shirt, brown
sweater, black pants, orange sweater, spring jacket, that old Nero shirt
from the sixties, a turtle neck, bell bottom pants from the seventies,
and on it goes. Then you look on the floor of the closet. "It can't
be in that mess," you think. There's half of your tools, six and a
half pair of shoes, one dirty smelly sock, an old baby bottle, a couple
of toys, your lost pen, fourteen million ties, and one wrinkled white
shirt. What? Your white shirt. What is it doing on the floor under all
that mess. Well, at least it's in the closet.
The organized person looks through his closet every so often to have
a time of evaluation. If there is something in there that he hasn't worn
in two years he gives it to the Salvation Army. If by chance there was
something in there that he might have missed that he hasn't worn in
twenty years, well that's trash. Even the Salvation Army doesn't want that.
Every time this guy buys a new sweater there is a good chance that he will throw his oldest one away, unless it's in real
good shape and he likes it. For the most part things wear out and the
old clothes look a little tattered anyway. So when it comes time for the yearly evaluation there's not much
involved since he has kept up with it all along. How many pairs of bell bottoms and old Nero shirts do you have in you
closet? And has the floor of your closet been long forgotten? You never
know what you might find if that floor got cleaned up. Maybe some long
lost treasure you once cherished but have misplaced might be found beneath the rubble and ruins of
your closet floor.
(clutter is like debt, it weighs you down)
Chapter Thirteen
The Organizer's Back Shed
As you peak into the organized person's back shed you may question
the reason for its existence in the first place. There's hardly anything
in the thing. You have a valid point. It's most likely crossed his mind
to get rid of the shed and consolidate its contents somewhere else. It's
like taking a consolidation loan out and putting all debts in one spot.
As a matter of fact clutter and debt to the organized guy are two very
similar concepts.
Most people like to think they clean out their back shed and garage every spring, but in actuality soon after they open the
door to the shed they have a change of mind. Usually it is the immensity
of the job that scares most people off.
So one day your wife decides that it is time to rake the back yard.
She goes to the shed to find the rake. After muttering a few
unmentionable words she lets out a scream and yells, "where's that
rake of ours, anyway"? There's no way she is going to enter that
shed and look for the rake. Who knows what she might find, maybe a rat,
or a snake, or some other creature who has made the rubble their home.
She can just picture herself reaching her hand into some dark crowded
corner and feeling something fuzzy.
Her husband knows he should have cleaned that shed back in 1973 when
he first thought about it, but now the task is beyond repair. He
considers torching the whole thing on fire cracker day, and making it a
family event, hoping the fire would be a suitable replacement for the
fire works at the park.
How many species of animals live in your back shed, or even worse in
your attic. Have the squirrels claimed your attic for
their home? Are they the reason for the strange noises you hear in
your walls in the middle of the night? Maybe the squirrels are playing tag with the bats. Sounds like great fun, right. I hope
the squirrels have more fun chasing bats than I did. I didn't particularly think it to be fun, but that's me. You
may think differently. Actually, I would suggest you keep your place
real messy now that I think of it. I rather see the bats in your house
than in mine. I spent most of a night chasing a bat once and I never
want to do that again. I finally stunned him with a broom and killed him
with a shovel. Let me tell you that the squeaking noise of a dying bat
is one hideous sound.
(be a clutter buster)
Chapter Fourteen
The Organizer and Laundry Day
When is wash day in your household? Does wash day come when you
finally run out of clothes to wear? Hopefully that day is on a Saturday
when you can spend your day off in front of the washer and dryer instead
of the TV. It's that same old story.
You get up one day and you look for your clean jeans and green shirt.
You've already looked on your closet floor. You don't even think of
looking on a hanger since you sincerely doubt that it would be there anyway. It's not in the pile on the floor, so
it must be in the dirty clothes hamper. And so it is, along with all
of the rest of your more recently purchased clothing. So here's the
start of another laundry day. First you're hoping nobody comes to the
door since you're walking around in your underwear. It's either that or
those twenty five year old bell bottoms in the closet. You figure it's
less embarrassing for you to be seen in your underwear than those
things.
Then there is a great heaping pile of clothes on the floor. The kids see the pile of clothes and think it is a great place to
play hide and seek. So here you are, trying to sort colour from whites
when you realize that the whites is actually your two year old son. You
know he needs a bath, but you're not sure the washing machine route is
the way to go. On second thought , that might just be a good idea. Just
kidding. After picking up the trail of dirty clothes from one room to
the other left by another kid, you finally get the first load going. Then comes the second load, the
third, and even the fourth. The job eventually is finished. The kids
lose their hiding place for another couple of weeks and everything is
clean, but the day is over. A lost Saturday. So many other good things
could have been done. At least you are thankful that you have your own washer and dryer. Can you imagine the
extreme boredom you would have gone through at the local Laundromat.
Well good old Mr. Organized always thinks ahead. He either has two
wash days each week, or knows when he is going to run low and then washes before it's too late. He's never at a loss for
clean pants and shirts. Anyone at anytime can come to the door of his
house and he will be found fully dressed.
How about you? Will we find out someday that you really do wear
coloured underwear. If you're a guy I hope it's at least a masculine
colour. It reminds me of my college days in the United
States. You always knew a guy was a Canadian back in those days, since
only Canadians wore coloured underpants. Americans were satisfied with
standard white. So does that mean when you cross the Canadian U.S.
border that the customs people have an alternative way of finding out
your citizenship. I can picture it in my mind. The border guard says,
"I don't believe you are a Canadian. Drop your pants. I want to
know for sure."
Chapter Fifteen
The Organized Person's Checkbook
Do you balance your bank book once a month or once a year? Here's the
picture. After letting the balancing act go for a year you sit down with
fear and interoperation, wondering if your accounting ability is good enough for the task. After an hour and a
half your calculator paper has rolled off the edge of the table on to
the floor and is well on its way to the living room. You have to stop
for a cup of coffee because your brain can no longer handle the stress.
If not for the calculator you would have contracted the job out long
ago. Today's low and high tech gadgets do make it easier, so there's no
excuse. You carry on. After correcting seven adding mistakes, finding
four unrecorded checks, three unrecorded deposits, one missed interest
credit, and three missed service charges, and three hours later it is
over. You tell yourself, "I can't let this go again", but
bankbooks seem to be like taxes. We think it's a yearly event.
How many times have you given up on balancing your bankbook? Have you
ever opened a brand new account in order to get rid of the one that is
too far gone to balance? After trying and trying over and over again you
think it's simpler just to open a new account and so that's what you do.
Or do you never balance your account, hoping that all will be well,
having no over drafts.
The organized person balances his books very often. If he doesn't do
it once a month, then he does it twice a month. He knows the headaches
that occur when you let it go. He'd prefer to watch baseball on TV than
spend all day with his calculator. By the way, how is your calculator
working? Have you checked the batteries lately? Maybe you'd rather not
check them. Dead batteries can't add bank balances. It is a good excuse,
isn't it.
(tomorrow starts today)
Chapter Sixteen
What About Children
It's obvious that you aren't going to get your kids so organized over
night. It may take a while, or maybe even quite a while, or maybe even
never. How many times have you decided to go to the mall and so you tell
your kids, "okay guys I've decided we're heading to the mall. Lets
go, right now." Immediately the whole household is filled with
groans and "not now dad, I'm not finished playing my game
yet". "Yes, right now", you reply. "No", yells
one kid, "wait", screams another. The temperature in the house
rises a degree or two. You calmly raise your voice and say, "no, we
are going now, and I mean now". Tempers are flying all over the
place, bouncing from one wall to the other.
Mr. Organized has found a way to limit, I said limit, not get rid of
all this confusion. He treats the kids in an adult fashion since that is
what he hopes they will be some day real soon. He sits down with them in
a quiet voice and says, "in one half hour we are going to the mall.
Whatever you need or want to do you need to do in this half hour."
If there needs to be some negotiating then at this time he will do it.
Believe it or not, he is flexible enough to extend the time a few minutes. The idea is
that he is forewarning them. He's not telling them at the last minute what is happening. He knows that he wouldn't like
that and so he doesn't expect his kids to be any different. As time goes
on he pops his head into their room and says, "you have ten minutes
left." By the time the thirty minutes are up the kids understand
fairly well the timetable of events and accept it quite well. There's no last minute surprises. Now this may
not be the end of all the arguments but you'd be surprised how many it
does take care of.
The organized person does this in every area of household life. He
says, "thirty minutes to bath time, fifteen minutes to bed time,
eight minutes to snack time, twelve minutes until school. "Soon the
kids get to know what is happening and you are happily surprised when
one asked, "do we have enough time to play cards." Yes, that
can happen. Trust me, it has.
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