Disorganized Beyond Belief

If you’ve read any of my other pieces for Patch, you may know that I am anything but organized. This is despite the fact that I long to have an extra tidy and neat home, one where a neighbor could stop by unannounced and I wouldn’t be embarrassed to invite her in.

My “home office” is still unpainted and is so cluttered with stuff that it’s nearly impossible to work there, and the “baby room” that my daughters no longer occupy still has their toddler beds in it, waiting to be disassembled and donated to charity.

But I have made some strides in getting my home more presentable (and livable) this year. A window that has leaked for years has finally been replaced, and my husband and I added a beautiful new  to our living room this spring.

I now have a newly installed wire shelving unit in my home’s laundry room, where I am now able to have a pantry of sorts (since my home doesn’t have one) and have a place to put all those containers of laundry detergent, sponges and paper towels that I seem to collect on sale.

I've been able to get rid of all those ugly builder-grade sink faucets that I found difficult to clean, too. (Visible grime had a habit of somehow getting inside the clear plastic dials.)

 I’ve written earlier about my plans to turn my home’s unfinished basement into a  for my daughters, but I haven’t made progress there yet. I hope to tackle that project this summer – maybe I can even get the kids to pitch in a little. At least the basement will be a cool retreat from the summer’s heat.

But, despite all of my organizational shortcomings, I’ve noticed recently that my daughters seem to have better skills than I have and that they make attempts to straighten up their room and their toys. One daughter has created a nifty storage center (out of paper – she even created several paper storage compartments) in which to save and sort her Silly Bandz (see photo). Meanwhile, my other daughter has one bookshelf compartment behind her bed devoted to her old Junie B. Jones chapter books, and the other one designated for her Magic Treehouse books (again, see photo). The books in both of those series are numbered, so she has her books in numerical order. In another bin in the closet, her “Julie” American Girl books are neatly stored away.

While I am not sure if there’s any hope that I will one day be a world-class organizer, at least there’s hope for my children!

Author’s note: For those who aspire to be an organizational maven, check out this interview withJamie Lee Curtis from Good Housekeeping magazine. This link will take you to a video clip of her interview with GH.