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!