Project Organize Begins

I originally started this blog five (yes five) years ago thanks to the urging of my then life coach and always dear friend. I wrote a post not knowing if it would be the first of many or the last thing I ever wrote.

Well, obviously it wasn’t the last, even though I thought it was a few months ago. At that time I offloaded a few things in order to find myself and surprisingly most of them came back! However, I feel more able to cope with them.

Anyway, back to my life coach. One thing she taught me was to choose a word that would exemplify what I wanted out of the new year ahead. You can check back at some of the ones I picked in the past. This year, I had no problems choosing. In fact, in a way, the word chose me.

While I have been officially diagnosed with OCD, the obsessive cleaning symptom was never one of mine. In fact, some people (my parents for sure) would say I am compulsively messy! And the ironic thing about this is clutter actually causes me severe anxiety!

So how do I go about becoming organized? Well, that is a really good question. I have realized that it starts, like so many things, with loving myself and wanting to live in a less cluttered environment. I am not just talking about physical clutter, but also taking on too many tasks or having too many responsibilities and not managing any of them properly.

I have tried writing lists of what needs to be done; however, I either get overwhelmed or I spend so much energy on the list(s) I have none left to tackle the items on it/them.

So my new approach is to figure out in my head what is the most obvious, time-sensitive and/or important item and start there. Today, for instance, I looked at the pile of stuff in the bedroom that needs to find permanent “homes” before I trip on it. I think I have a good chance of completing that. The benefits are:

• I will be able to walk around the bed to my side without tripping on anything
• We will be able to clean more thoroughly and that will help our allergies to dust, etc.
• The less clutter, the bigger the room looks (and actually is)
• I can then move other furniture around which will help with future projects

How confident am I that I can get this done without making a whole pile of other make-work projects? I think on a scale of 1 – 10, I would say my confidence level is about a 7. Considering my chronic fatigue and pain levels are high, I think 7 is realistic.

Well, that’s a great start. I shall report back with how I did.

Lydia!