Room for Improvement

For me, organizing books all have one thing in common: they make me feel better about my place on the organized/disorganized scale. Often after reading the case studies and the prescriptions for improvement, I wind up thinking, "Hey, I'm not so disorganized after all."

I can't decide whether, as the saying goes, this is a bug or a feature.

Donna Smallin's Organizing Plain & Simple is what you'd expect from a book of that title: straightforward, practical, common sense tips and refinements that are based on systems, not on spending tons of money on fancy containers. It's just right for my place on the scale.

It feels good to know that many of the things I already do are recommended. For example, I limit myself to one box of paper records, where I file current versions of paid bills, medical records, and other papers I need to keep. What can I say? I'm an analog woman. When the box is stuffed full, it's time to go through it and purge. Documents still worth keeping go into deep storage (currently 2 additional boxes in the guest closet) or are shredded and discarded. Everything is kept electronically these days, anyway, so I don't worry too much. Purging and shredding is a nice activity for a rainy afternoon listening to music or the radio. So I'm doing okay. (Please do not ask about my backlog of digital photos. Thank you.)

It's also nice to pick up some tips and refine my systems, although not every idea is for me. This book has its share of tips that would drive me crazy: hang up your cookware lids by installing a towel rack inside your cabinet door, for example. To me, that's a sign of a person who has too many pots. The right number of pots allows the lids to be stored on top of their pots. But I don't cook a lot or do any fancy entertaining, so I get it. This might be a good idea for other people.

One of the best things about this book is that it includes some big-picture areas that could use organizing, too. Some sections lead you to examine the larger questions of how much (of whatever) is enough, options for slowing down,  and living a life focused on your values. That's an important part of "organizing" that's often overlooked. It's not just about what to do with your activities and your "stuff," but whether you should be doing them and acquiring it in the first place. 

One tip I plan to adopt, now that life is pretty busy again, is spending a few minutes every evening preparing for the next day: clothing picked out, tote bag packed, lists made. That will save me some time in the morning and maybe I can sleep a few minutes more. We'll see how that goes. I'll also be thinking about how my daily activities align with what I say is important to me. The end of the year is a good time for reflection about that. 

The bottom line: everyone needs a little organizing help now and again, and this book is just right for whatever level you've already achieved -- or would like to achieve.

Note: This book counts for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.