ORDER AND ORGANIZATION

CURRENT THOUGHTS . . . MORE COMING SOON!

Resetting Your Mind

• Focus on progress, not perfection. I'm that girl who throws out the baby with the proverbial bathwater, the girl who starts all over again on Monday or the first day of the month because I didn't check every item off my list on a single day. Starting over again and again has led to much of the chaos I have today. Journal or take photos or create a social media account to document how far you've come. (This blog is partially about documenting my own progress!) Then even if you don't have a perfect day, revisit your journal, pictures, or social media posts to see how far you've come.
  
  
• In short, keep your eyes on the big picture. More likely than not, you'll have to make improvements to your life one step at a time, and you won't be able to complete every task you want to every single day. Work on improving your life step by step. Don't let imperfect days distract you. If you have a bad day, pick yourself as soon as possible--preferably that day, but if not the next day, not the next Monday or the next month--and move forward. Look at where you were and how far you've come and continue onward.
  
  
• Take a break if you need to. There is no shame in taking weekends off in decluttering or digital decluttering. There is no shame in taking off a day or two if you get stressed. On one particular day, I discovered that Windows had somehow uploaded multiple files it should not have had even though OneDrive wasn't even supposed to be on or linked. Fixing my OneDrive blip stressed me out for about two hours of one morning before I could create a plan, and then I was behind on other tasks for the rest of the day. While I was working on the problem, I was very stressed--I even fussed at my kids because I needed quiet to think!--but when I had to go to the bathroom, I realized I was calming down again. Sometimes it's just best to step away (and create a plan . . . see below.

Simplifying

• If a hobby has become stressful or takes up time you don't want to spend on it, stop pursuing it, at least for a while. My best friend passed away in 2005. She and I worked together, and she had peace lilies and African violets in her office. After she died, I put African violets in my office to remember her by. I even bought a cute white plant holder almost like hers. About a month ago, I found that plant holder and bought a petunia to put inside just to it out of storage. But I have to water the petunia despite that the plant holder sits in and absorbs water. Worse, none of the windows in my house get complete sun, so the petunia was very unhappy. I guess I'd all too soon forgotten that I swore off high-maintenance indoor plants since my back surgery. I just don't have the time or focus. Today I had my husband plant the petunia in my perennial flower bed outside. Even in our current drought, the water and sun are both sufficient without my having to move it or pay special attention to it. A month later, it is blooming again. I expect that when my kids are older, I'll have more time to devote to keeping plants, but right now I'm just trying to keep my family in a state of happiness or at least content.
  
  
• My daughter phrased my thoughts in an unusual way: If you have bitten off more than you could chew, spit some of it out. (My autistic toddler is a mouth stuffer, and this is something we say here at the house more than I'd like to admit!) Spit out some things you don't have to do so that you can have time to do things you need or really want to do.
  
  
• Before you get wrapped around the axle about something going on, ask yourself a question: Will this matter in a year? Today I deleted a post from Facebook from just a few months ago. In the 4:00 A.M. post, I complained because someone at Amazon packed a bottle of Lysol laundry sanitizer and a gallon of hot sauce in the same box from Subscribe & Save. The box was destroyed before I received it, and Amazon simply refunded me my money. I didn't get the items I needed, and I didn't get the same discount to reorder. When I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and saw the refund e-mail on my phone (that I shouldn't have been looking at in the first place), I immediately contacted Amazon to be "made whole," as we called it during law school. I received a $5 or $10 credit, but it kept me up for the rest of the night. Was it really that big a deal? They would have given me the credit if I'd contacted them at noon the next day. Stop making mountains out of molehills.
  
  
• Weigh benefits and drawbacks. A few months ago, I bought a Ryobi EZClean Power Cleaner, and I love it. It is one of many Ryobi ONE+ tools we have purchased over the last decade. Today, I realized I'm past the return window, so I discarded the box. The paperwork that came inside the box included a request to register the item. I signed into my Ryobi account, an account I signed up for years ago when I had a brief problem with my hedger (fortunately, that one resolved itself). None of the tools I'd tried registering in the past are in my digital toolbox on the site. Additionally, I found this thread on Reddit (external link opens in new window) indicating that not only has Ryobi been notified of their broken web site, but they haven't fixed it in years. Why am I wasting my time? We've had one problem with one tool, and my husband was able to repair the item quickly without warranty work. I'm not registering a product that has been well used in the last three months and will likely be around for years in my house. I'll buy another if this one breaks in a few years. Registering on a broken site is just a waste of time. I've adopted the same practice for anything less than $10 or $15 that breaks past the return window. I try to read reviews and buy high quality to begin with--OXO items are an example--and even if those items have a long-term warranty, I can buy again in a few years.

Decluttering

• If you have an allergic reaction to a beauty product, just throw it away. I paid less than $10 for a Crystal rock deodorant at Amazon in 2021. I used it successfully for a year or two, but I suddenly developed an allergic reaction to it and went back to Secret Clinical Strength. I placed the rock on its tray in one of my bathroom bins for a year or more until I finally decided to try it again in May. Big mistake. The result was a chemical burn. Lesson learned. Don't risk a more severe allergic reaction just to save a few dollars.

Digital Decluttering

• If a task is overwhelming you, start anyway by creating a plan to tackle the task. My passwords have been stored on 1Password since 2021, but I still have spreadsheets from previous years: electric and water companies for apartments a decade ago, old logins for the long-paid loans on my since-donated 2004 Jeep Liberty, etc. I finally created a plan to fix all of it, and just the plan to resolve the situation made me feel better. Creating a plan does count as working on the task, by the way.
  
  
• Take time thinking out your organizational system before you get entrenched. As an example, digital photo organization is something I have tried to handle multiple times over the last five years, but I've gotten bogged down in details, ultimately resulting in a fractured organization system. Reading one particular book--Managing the Digital You--helped me a lot in this regard. But I still had to step back and create a plan that worked for me.
  
  
• Don't be afraid to revise your plan. On the first day of undertaking my new photo organization plan, I realized I have taken a lot of pictures of items I've donated, some of which had great sentimental meaning to me. I'm currently trying to figure out how to organize all of those photos in the midst of photos that mean more, like those of my children.
  
  
• Some tasks are not going to be completed in a set time period. Tackle them one day at a time. Maybe you have tens of thousands of digital photos that need to be organized. Maybe you have eight different e-mail addresses, all with more than a thousand e-mails in them. Set a goal--organize 10 photos or delete 10 e-mails, for example--for each day, and then remember you can take off on a holiday because you are making progress. Even if you decide to take off on the weekends, it's still going to be okay because you are still progressing five days a week on getting your tasks done.
  
  
• Realize that you need to let go of some things that you will likely never need. When I was locked out of a Google account or two in the past, I was asked what date I created the account. I remember exactly what I was thinking when asked: Who keeps that information?! Because I was never able to get access to those old accounts, now I DO keep creation dates for Google accounts. In fact, I've been keeping very detailed histories for all of my passwords for the last seven years. Keeping such records is time-consuming and tedious. I now have recovery methods set for all of my active Google accounts, so I decided to let go of keeping detailed histories (except I do still keep Google account creation dates, just in case).
  
  
• Sometimes it's best just to hit the delete button and start over. I had thousands of old Internet bookmarks I'd saved over the years. I used a bookmark extension clean-up tool and found they were riddled with deleted pages and broken links. Some links even led to malicious sites because the original owners of blogs had abandoned them. Ultimately, I decided just to delete all of them more than a year or two old and start over.
  
  
• Put some tasks on the back burner if you can in favor of other tasks that need to be done. I have hundreds of CD's I need to organize, but since I pay for YouTube Premium, I have YouTube Music and don't need to handle this task at this very moment in order to listen to my music. I will eventually handle this task, just not today.