Getting Organized

T’s* View
 This morning I promised myself that I'm definitely going to get my act together and get organized. I'm tired of looking at all the little collections of clippings and other things I keep saving, that are waiting to be put into some kind of order when I finally get around to it. - This morning I was looking for a recipe that I wanted to use for tonight's dinner and I realized that my plastic bag full of recipes clipped out of magazines and newspapers is getting completely out of hand. Every month or so I tell myself I'll sort all those pieces of paper info categories of least, so that it'll be easier to find what I'm looking for but instead I just keep adding to the pile and never get to the sorting. On days when I really feel ambitious I even tell myself I'll put them into a scrapbook, cookbook fashion, or copy them down on 3x5 cards and make a neat file for them, but of course first I have to buy some 3x5 cards and I'm sure that even if I did, they'd just land up in another pile next to the recipes. ...Or next to the pile of photos I keep meaning to put into the family album. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother taking pictures anymore. When we first got married and after the first child came along, every little occasion was dutifully recorded in the photo album. With each successive birth, however, the number of photographs lessened, until the last kid is lucky to have a picture in the album at all. I must be about five years behind now in putting pictures into albums and probably the only way I'll ever get around to organizing the albums is if I'm laid up in bed and am looking for something to do. Another thing I keep meaning to do is cover the kitchen shelves with shelf paper. It's 15 years since we moved into this house, and I haven't gotten around to it yet. Then there's the box of patterns and unfinished sewing projects that I keep meaning to get to, although it probably wouldn't do me any good to finish some of the dresses I started five years ago, since they'd be out of style and wouldn't fit me anyway. And if only I'd start some of those diets and exercises that I constantly clip out of magazines ... or straighten out the drawers and closets. There just never seems to be enough time to get everything done that needs to be done. I was telling a friend of mine how I hoped that in my eternal life after this one I'll have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do on this earth but never had time for, to which she replied: "I've heard of people putting things off, but never THAT long!" - Another friend of mine, though — a very organized friend, I might add — thought there was no excuse for my procrastination. All it takes is discipline, she said (there's that nasty word again!). She then proceeded to tell me her secret of being organized. Rather than wait until she has a whole day to work on a project, every time she has 10 or 15 minutes free, she takes one drawer or one project that needs organizing and does a little at a time. And before you know it, she says, little by little it all gets done — just like that! Well, I promise — tomorrow I'm definitely going to get organized!
 *Terri the Typesetter
TViews Week of April 29, 1984