15 Minutes for 30 Days

First for an update. It has been 11 months since I last posted, which means I have not done so well at working on organizing consistently. That does not mean I have not gotten anything done. In fact, this past summer, since I did not teach, I took the time to work with a Professional Organizer, Angie Weid (of Organized Soultions). She came in about 6 or 7 times, usually a week apart. During those visits, we spent 4 hours at a time--mostly going through stacks of papers. Since returning to Grad School, paper work has become my nemesis. Now that it has been over 20 years since I started back to Grad school, it is no wonder I have been inundated with papers! Angie's help this summer was tremendous. We got rid of a lot of paperwork, and I got back a lot of floor space in every room.

Now that school has resumed, I have begun to run into the same problem that I had before--i.e., I find that I still have papers piling up, do not keep them sorted, and still have to spend more time than I would like searching for papers that I need to grade or review for class. When Angie was here this summer, we did put a filing system in place. Unfortunately, I forgot it was here--sort of like my basement (I continually have to remind myself that I have a basement... maybe because I always lived in apartments).

For awhile I have been thinking that it would be a good idea to do what I do for Academic Ladder (AL). It is a writing club that I joined about 3 years ago. The members of AL are other academics who are interested in writing on a regular basis. My goal is to try to write for at least 15 minutes a day (on days that I teach), and longer when there is time. Over Thanksgiving break, I was able to spend over an hour a day for three or four days in a row. I would like to apply the same principal to organizing. So, I began on Friday, November 25, the day after Thanksgiving. The first several days I was able to spend an hour or more doing organizational work. It was great while it lasted. Among the things I accomplished during that time were: updating a Master list of things to do (I can post it for future reference--I want to draw from it for reminders of things I hope to get done, both long-term and short-term); shredded a large garbage bag of paper; sorted through papers on my kitchen counter (that took almost 2 hours); and updated my Organizational Ladder (a journal that I have been keeping since Friday). I plan to use the journal to set goals and report on what I have done each day.

While this will not be a formal thing like AL, I will invite several people to participate. So if you are reading this entry, I encourage you to comment or add your thoughts about what works for you in terms of organizing. Thanks for reading! 

Back on Track in 2011

Now that the holidays are over, I decided to get back on track with organizing. One thing that I left undone this summer was to finish building the book cases for my office. So I decided to make them over Christmas break. After starting the first one on New Year's eve, I finally finished it today, January 2, 2011. It took about 3 or 4 hours in all--a lot longer than a bookcase usually takes for me to build.

There were several challenges: first, I had to drag the boxes into the house from the garage. That was no small undertaking since each one weighed about 83 pounds. After that, I had to do what I could during daylight because it was hard to see with the regular lighting in my office. Finally, I ran into problems with the molding. At first, I couldn't get the sides to fit, so there were huge gaps between the shelves and sides. So I contemplated what went wrong, and figured out that I had put the side moldings on backwards. When I turned them around, they finally meshed and the book case now looks great (imho:-) I am hoping the second book case does not take as long--hopefully I can build it tomorrow!

Tuesday, October 5: Living Room Pick-up

So far, I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping things picked up in the living room. However, slowly but surely, things began to spread out and I can see the clutter starting to build. So, even if I spend only 15 minutes a day, I want to make some progress toward de-cluttering and/or organizing each day. This is the start I will make for today.

I also want to exercise, even if only for 15 minutes a day. Admittedly, I feel much better when I exercise longer, but that is not something I can do on an everyday basis during school. So, before it gets any later and I wait any longer, I will do 15 minutes of exercise and 15 minutes of de-cluttering TODAY!

Sunday, August 15: Office at School

As you may know, school starts next week so I decided to take a brief detour yesterday and work on my office at school. Below is the "before" picture. I'm not sure if you can tell how cluttered my office is. There is actually quite a bit of stuff on the floor in front of this desk as well as all the stuff piled on my desk.

What did I get done yesterday?
I was there for almost 5 hours and sorted through almost everything that was visible up to, but not including, the Lance Armstrong poster. Behind the Lance poster, there are several stacks of stuff that have been there at least a year. While I am not eager to look at what is there, I know that I need to eventually. I also need to be able to move a lot of the books and notebooks out of my office but that will be difficult to do since I cannot get my car very close to the building where my office is located (due to construction:-( I am hoping that as we get closer to school starting, I will be able to park closer, but in the meantime, I was able to carry out several loads of books and papers... which means I have more work to do at home!!

Guess I better get back to the work I brought home with me!

Thursday, August 12: Furniture Updates

Here are more updates on the furniture that I completed yesterday (Wednesday, August 11). The first is the hutch, which was already completed, but needed to be added to the smaller desk next to the computer desk. Since I could not lift the hutch onto the desk by myself, I was able to do that with Lori's help when she came yesterday. It may not mesh perfectly (probably because one desk has been there longer than the other), but it looks pretty good to me. More importantly, this now includes a cabinet of drawers in which I will be able to file a number of things, such as bills and/or receipts.

The second piece is a large filing cabinet on which another hutch will be built. I built the filing cabinet yesterday while Lori was here. I had started the hutch for this cabinet before but had to put it on hold when I realized that I needed the lower cabinet on which to put it.

What is left to do in terms of building furniture?
1. Finish hutch and put it on file cabinet.
2. Build two book shelves.
3. Build large desk for middle of room.

I am hoping to finish these pieces by the weekend. But more importantly, I need to make significant progress toward organizing the stuff that goes into my new office. (Any ideas?:-) Hopefully by next week, I can send photos of how the finished product looks!

Saturday, August 7: I need to get motivated!

This morning was graduation, which meant I had to get up much earlier than I am accustomed to getting up. I won't complain because I know some of you get up in the middle of the night to deliver papers (LeeAnn:-) Anyway, my plan was to stay at school and work on organizing my office. However, after I got home, I realized that I have not done much since taking the 'before' pics of the dinette. In fact, since I have not yet posted those pics on my blog, I thought I would post them here so you can see where I am, and perhaps offer some words of encouragement. I seem to be at that point in the summer where I know there is a lot more stuff I need to be doing--I just don't know where to start! It did help to talk to Mary Jo earlier today, since she told me that she struggles with getting motivated, too. It helped to know that I was not alone. But how do I get past the fact of always feeling tired and not having much energy?

Anyway, the two pics below are different views of the dinette. Looking at it, I can see that there are about 3 big bins that I need to sort through. That is the most overwhelming part of it--where to put things when I sort. Included in the papers are bills, receipts, notes and readings from classes, as well as work that I have done on research.

Oh yeah, and there are some newspapers in the above photo, which means they must be significant because I haven't ordered a regular daily newspaper for awhile. Still, I need to figure out where to put everything as I sort through it. For now, my plan is to work in this area for about an hour and see what I can do during that time. Hopefully I will have some progress to report by tomorrow. Hope you are more motivated than I seem to be!

Where did July go?

Remember when I said I would be posting on this blog daily? Well, I obviously have not done that. But it does not mean that I haven't been busy (and in some cases productive) over the past month or so. It is now just about two weeks until we start meetings for school, and three weeks until school starts. That reality always evokes a certain sense of panic. Of course, if I had been teaching summer classes, I would still have this week of classes to teach. So at least I do not have that. But I still feel a sense of urgency, as I am sure most of you do as well.

The past several weeks have been especially eventful, as Mary Jo, Jenny, and Lee Ann can attest. About two weeks ago, I flew out to CA to visit the Rangel's for a week. It was a great visit (from my perspective) and without a doubt the hottest weather I have experienced all summer! Besides getting to visit with Raul, MJ and Kev, Courtney drove to Bakersfield from San Diego and visited for a couple days. I also got to see my friends John and Rebecca McMillen, who drove down from Fresno to have dinner with us (MJ and me) on my birthday. All in all, it was a great visit!

Meanwhile, back in OH, Chuck, Lee Ann, and Jenny were dealing with Mom and Dad's increasingly demanding needs for care, since Dad was admitted to the hospital, and Mom needed 24/7 care. It all came to a head while I was in CA, when Mom and Dad were admitted to Manor Care Nursing Home, thanks to arrangements made largely by Lee Ann and Chuck. I had to wait till the end of this past week to see them. Below is a pic of them when we visited this past Saturday. After posting this photo on facebook, a former student wrote: "You have the happiest parents in the world!:-)" If only he knew how happy Dad is to be in a nursing home...

Anyway, all of this is to say, it has been (unexpectedly) busier than I had anticipated. Of course, there could not have been a better time to spend with family than during the summer. But it also means I have not been quite as productive as I would have hoped.

Nonetheless, I wanted to catch up on what I have been doing and let you know what remains to be done. I am pretty sure that I will not complete all that was on my "To do" list posted several months ago. However, I have accomplished more than I had anticipated. The important thing is to do what I can to make the most of the remaining weeks before school starts (i.e., to "maximize my potential," as Dad would say). Below is what I have put together of the furniture that I got from Sauder's. John (McMillen) suggested that I do one piece per day when I got back from CA. I haven't been able to do that much but I have almost completed the fifth piece which puts me almost halfway there. The hutches have been the most difficult pieces to build.

I won't make any promises about when I will post next, but hopefully it will be sooner than last time, and even more hopeful--I will be getting a lot done in the next few weeks.