Making Connections

Yesterday Ito and I met up to discuss our venture of combining forces like the Wonder Twins to dedicate ourselves to organizing our homes, which are also our creative spaces.

We spent our first segment of time focusing on many thing but here are the things I was thinking about:

- As we work through this process over the next months, when will we know when we are taking too much time? For example, when we try to use freecycle or craigslist or have a yard sale vs. just taking it to salvation army and kissing it goodbye?
- what are our short and long term plans?
- what do we hope to implement as a part of our lifestyle?
- how does Ito use each space?
- what spaces does she need that are being ‘made’ in other spaces?
- creating a family organizing day and two days a year where they all pitch in and re-locate things back to where they belong.
- what are our own cycles of cleanliness? Ito’s is different because she has a family, I’m a single gal who cleans when my mom or friends are coming over.
- how did we get here?

Stuff I’m doin until we meet again:

- I’ll be reading “Organizing from the Inside Out” by Julie Morgenstern and getting ideas, tips and letting you all know what I think of it. I like already that it acknowledges that there is something standing between me and my goal of complete organizational bliss, mental roadblocks, quirks, psychological stuff, etc.

- I’ll also be doing my photographic Tour of Shame, even though we’re gonna be focusing on Ito’s house for a while first.

Hope and a New Start

So my friend LM came over today. She has agreed to be my partner-in-organization. She’s going to help me with my house, and I’m going to help her with hers. I’m so excited about this. One, because doing it with someone else and that immediately lessens the sense of isolation, shame and sadness. Two, because I really think she Gets me and that it is not simply about getting enough clear boxes from The Container Store to deal with the stuff. Three, because I think it’s going to be fun.

I am feeling better already. We started this morning. She came over and I took her physically on the Tour of Shame. I gave her a tour of every nook and cranny of the house, and she took notes on a writing pad. It was all very liberating, calming and horrifying all at once. But really good.

We talked for a long time about my history of clutter, my patterns, the things I have tried (including mega expensive Professional Organizers) etc.

We agreed that this is not going to get “fixed” overnight. But we are committed to each other for the long haul. I decided that my two main priorities are: getting my home office in functional, nice condition (it is currently serving as toss-place for junk from the rest of the house, and so cluttered I cannot think, write or concentrate in it) and getting my bedroom in restful condition.

She gave me two homework assignments. (YAY I love this kind of homework)

1. Writing assignment (Double YAY): write about my dreams/hopes/etc for my office space and what it would ideally look like/feel like/function as. This will be my next blog post.

2. Doing assignment: remove everything from office that does not BELONG in office. Leave other stuff. Then, BRING other things to office that are scattered in rest of house that actually belong there. Do not sort, toss or otherwise organize until Lisa returns.

3. Read one organizing book and see what stands out/makes sense/resonates. I’m choosing Unclutter in One Week (HA, yeah right) since it is the newest one in my collection.

That should keep me busy! But yeah I am energized!!