to ask how you become organised and together? Seriously how??

[inatrance]

This is a question for any of you who used to be disorganised/flaky and are now organised and sorted. I have been like this for so long and I drive myself and everyone around me crackers. I'm unbelievably forgetful, I am late a lot and I'm rubbish with finances. I'm so fed up of cringing because I'm so bloody rubbish and make stupid mistakes all the time!

I've got an 8mth DS and a 10yo DD and while I've always had disorganised tendencies, since I had DS, it's gone from bad to ridiculous and I feel like I am constantly trying to catch up with myself.

I'm self employed (which is for the best as even I'd have sacked me by now) and have somehow managed to run my businesses haphazardly over the last ten years without fucking up too massively. Well, not often anyway...

Well, no more, I've had enough. I am using the New Year to kick me up the arse and I need your help.

If you used to be crap and are now brilliant and incredibly organised, please, please tell me how you did it. What changed in your mind and where the hell did you start?

Can I recommend two excellent books -

"Unclutter your Home" by Donna Smallin, and

"The Family Manager Takes Charge" by Kathy Peel.

They're full of some brilliant tips.

What I'm gathering from all this is that it's hard work to get organised, but then life becomes easier whereas it's even harder work to be in chaos all the time.

I d/l the HoneRoutines App thus morning and haven't sat down since

I am hoping that once the backlog of mess is cleared then it will help me whizz round each day and keep the house liveable rather than letting it all build up and then need a big declutter and clean which takes forever - this way I can plan for weekends to be free

I have a whole section on this on my blog, which you might find helpful:

Austerity Housekeeping organisation section

Hazie when I was a CAB worker I could sort out other people's stuff - but much harder to do my own! And I was not the only worker to be like this.

Mad though it sounds, I sometimes pretend I am someone else, while doing my stuff. My fave is the Spanish maid, she gives a running commentary on how sluttish the person she is working for, even as she clears up.

Used to spend hours trying to decide what order was best to do things, now if stuck I just do the first thing that occurs to me, suspect I have ADD as getting started is the hardest bit.

Crotchflakes - Love love love the idea of colour-coding my kids!!!

inatrance,well no one is pertfect but wid babies u need to get organized as their future depends on how u treat them now n to treat them right we have to be organized.the thing motivating for me in getting organized is u want to prove to urself that u can do it n u can be proud parents n start by taking one step at a time,planning is the key,routine chores,babies stuff other activities all can be worked up if categorized by priority n given specific time,all the best to un all of us who r trying to learn being organized

This guy's book helped me a lot.
But I still need to cut & paste this fab thread.
Hopefully I can work my way through it little by little.

I loved the idea of reading this thread as it SO applies to me. I then got overwhelmed and had to save it to 'threads I'm watching' for another day !!! I think if I just stop procrastinating.

Yes, yes, mariamagdalena! I have Do It Tomorrow, and it works. If I just remember to apply the principles

Mad though it sounds, I sometimes pretend I am someone else, while doing my stuff. My fave is the Spanish maid, she gives a running commentary on how sluttish the person she is working for, even as she clears up.

LOVE that home routines app. Thanks for the tip off :D

I've been reading this with interest, and wonder f I could pitch in and ask for advice from the uber-organised?
I'm pretty organised usually - I have a part time job from home, am doing a distance-learning post-grad course, have a couple of volunteering roles, and have 2 preschoolers one of whom is home full time. Usually I keep on top of all this, and the house, if not perfect, is pleasent to be in and uncluttered.

I have had really bad morning sickness since chrustmas, and despite dh working his socks off, everything i falling apart, the house is getting dirty, the washing pile is stupendous - you get the picture.

So how do you stop your routines going out the window when you're ill - or recover from it when you've let things slide?

abirdinthehand - ok. im no expert but very similar to you in that i work part time and am quite organised too and house/cupboards are not cluttered. if people arrive unexpectedly, 9 times out of 10 the house will be fairly clean and fairly tidy.

however, it all falls apart when im ill and it really fell apart when my baby had colic for 6 months. i could have crumbled. so, i called in the cleaners!
once a week for 2 hours. they dusted, hoovered, cleaned bathrooms and washed floors. i was able to do a a washing a day and husband took care of dishwasher. my mum helped with dinners some evenings. we kept this up until the colic stopped and then once i had slept and got my energy back we no longer needed any help.

if i get ill (bad cold or whatever) we just do the bare minimum. its annoying i know but what else can you do? if your kids are fine thats all that really matters. when im better, i blast the house over a few days.

also, i never do it all at once now. i do a bit every day. i used to do all my housework on a friday but i find it much more tolerable if i do say the hoovering one day, bathrooms the next, wash floors the following etc. but i always do 1 or 2 washings a day. if it builds up though, again, i just tackle it in the same way. blast it over a day or 2 while pottering about the house (at the weekend).

hope this helps.

Inspiring thread. I have moved my intray from the little-used study to the kitchen table, together with a filing tray, a box containing pens, envelopes, stamps, chequebook etc, my diary and a family calendar. When the intray was in the study it just got forgotten about and piled up. Now it's by the kitchen I take a quick look whenever I am making tea, feeding the baby etc. Makes such a difference that it's in it's 'natural' place. Obvious but had never crossed my mind!

I always had a to-do list but it was too long and intimidating. Now I am trying to plan tasks daily in my diary and stick to it. Today I got the tax folder out and checked our self assessment passwords worked - three weeks ahead of deadline

I am still loving this thread! :)

Just wanted to say that I got my home & work diary yesterday, and am loving it so far! Let's hope that it helps me to stay on track for the rest of this year! :)

oh and i always have quite a large calendar hanging on the kitchen wall for important dates/events coming up.

check kids school bags daily for letters and put info in correct date on calendar.

most bills are direct debits. check bank transactions weekly with a cup of tea.

have a letter drawer which i shove things into at first but always deal with weekly - another sit down with a tea activity.

Blondyminx - we do "pre bed tidy up" as well. I make it into a game. Evening time in our house is "toy-free-time".
I love coming downstairs from putting DD to bed to a toy-free space :)

"Why was I able to deal with something that required a lot of research and consideration and yet I let two insignificant matters turn into problems? "

Because it was someone else's problem and not yours. I can deal with other peoples' problems until the cows come home but when it comes to mind I'm a "head in the sand" girl

I have one of those family calendars hanging in the kitchen - EVERYTHING goes on there and I have got in the habit of checking it every week to make sure I haven't forgotten anything

Google calendar is great, I have sync'd it with my phone (android) so I get reminders well in advance of birthdays/appointments etc

school uniform/lunches/pe kit ready the night before

shopping ordered online, if I think of something I need I log in and add it to the shopping basket straight away

everything that can be paid by dd is paid by dd

never move from room a to room b without checking if there is something I can take with me

don't allow clutter to accumulate

children tidy toys away before bed

as soon as there is a full load of whites/darks/brights in the wash basket it gets washed and hung up to dry (although it doesn't always get ironed for a couple of days)

for work I have a day to a page diary and as soon as i know when a task is due i add it to the appropriate page

the key is not to think "I'll add it to the calendar later" or "I'll do it later", do it as soon as you remember or as soon as you can

don't bother spending time punctuating MN posts or constructing sentences properly

I just did an online test for ADHD and scored very high so perhaps I have another reason for being so inept.

Oh, this thread is great! Though I've been meaning to copy and paste the best bits for inspiration since about Thursday and, um, haven't got round to it yet

I also haven't got through the last few pages yet, so apologies if any of this has been said before ... hoping that one of you uber-organisers might have some tips for me!

I do have a couple of strengths - though they're faaaaar outweighed by the weaknesses on the organisation front! -

1. I'm good at birthdays - it's some kind of quasi-autistic ability thingie that basically means if you told me your birthday once, back in 1979, I'll almost certainly still remember it. I never really have to write them down, though I'm not completely infallible these days, with all the zillions of new DC born to me and my friends and my aging brain. But I've never gone "Shit! It was great uncle Herbert's birthday last Tues, and I forgot!!
2. I'm pretty good at not being late, despite the 3 young DC. We normally walk to school, so I can time it perfectly. We were only late once in the entire last school year - a day we took the car and it wouldn't start!

So, um, onto the things I could use a little help with ...!

• what do you do with clothes that have been worn once? I don't have wardrobe room to put them back in, so they currently pile up and pile up on the top of the washing basket until, if I try and lift the lid to put something dirty in, the whole damn lot crashes down, or falls into the basket. Sigh. Bane of my life, this pile
• what if you're upstairs and you think of something you need to add to your to-do list, and the diary's downstairs - do you rush down to get it? And if the same thing happens 5 mins later? I can't be running up and downstairs all the time to write "wash cushion covers", or something! And if I find a random piece of paper lying about where I am and use that, I'll inevitably lose it ...
• I have loads of things I can't seem to think of places for - unused Christmas cards being the latest. And frequently, if I do think of a place, I'll forget where that place is when I'm looking for it...
• where do you write down sort of medium-term goals, eg something like: "keep an eye out for cheap school uniform for DD starting school in 2013", that kind of thing??
• um ... I'm sure I had more but I forgot to write them down ...

I am full of admiration for you very organised people and I have a lovely realtive who is much the same BUT she is so bound to her routines and organisation she cannot just do anything at the "drop of a hat". I have become more organised in recent years and should maybe spend more time on housework but if the sun is shining I would rather go and do something with my son. I also have friends with homes where I sometimes feel uncomfortable because they are like show homes. I am sure there must be a happy medium.

ScarlettCrossbones I keep my Christmas cards/paper on the top of my wardrobe. On the October AND November pages of my calendar I have noted this so I don't forget where it is or buy more in October thinking I'm all organised only to turn to the November page to find I have some stored already!

That was probably the one organised thing I did last year!