Miss Unorganized

I am not an organized person. Actually, I am quite the opposite really. If I ever won an award in the Miss USA competition it would be "Miss Unorganized." Serious, that is the label I would stick myself with.

Lately my inability to "keep it together" has reached a whole new tipping point. We showed up at school today to drop off my preschooler. We were running late (which isn't really a new thing) and I walked him up to the door to discover that guess what? No preschool today. At which point he goes oh yeah I forgot. Of course I am thinking, oh great thanks. The worst part? I didn't even know!

There was a point in time where I was organized enough to keep my dates and appointments and schedule straight and track it in a planner. I even had a calendar up on my wall and a carefully updated Google calendar that linked my email account and my phone calendar. I had it together. I think I was anyways, it has been so long I have forgotten what that looks like. This was the second time this year I have done this with my son. I was expecting some paper trail to come home and remind me that my son had the day off but I either miss it or forget to write it down.

I find it pretty funny that after my little mix up today I would want to torture myself with an organization class at our church tonight about getting rid of clutter. Guys, I have to confess. I have clutter. Lots of clutter I hide before guests come over. Our class leader Becky Esker* said, "Clutter is the failure to make a decision." Boy is that true. I will procrastinate and excuse myself out of dealing with anything.

I need some priorities. I need to mentally free myself of all the clutter in my life. No more excuses, no more obstacles to prevent me from acting. I need to live my life in a way that puts my values first. That takes discipline. That takes knowing what my end goal is and working toward it through real effort.

One of the exercises she gave us was to Start Small using a list by John Maxwell. The first three things is to list 5 areas of life that lack discipline, to prioritize them, and handle them one at a time. To hold myself accountable I am listing them here for all of you to see.

1) Grocery/Meal Planning
2) Exercise
3) Prayer
4) Laundry/Chores
annnnnd
5) Organization (Did you think I was going to leave it off the list?)

So I definitely don't enjoy meal planning. And well exercise, that is already a work in progress and so is prayer. Housework you can just forget about, the kids seem to mess up those plans anyways. So the one I need to work on next is organization. If I was really specific I would say my calendar, my closet, my kitchen drawers, getting rid of kids' items we longer need, and those pesky boxes of junk in my basement.

So where to start? I'm going to have to go with my calendar! Seems pretty fitting considering the events of the day. Starting tomorrow I am going to take 15 minutes every day to update it. It's a good start I think to my journey to a more organized life!


*Becky Esker is a professional organizer. You can hire her to help you with your clutter.  Visit her website http://www.theorganizingchoice.com/ for more information.