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?

Springdaffs Have you tried a wall planner? It sounds like you're visually cued and maybe being able to see a whole year is what you need. Write term dates, holidays etc and add things as you go. If you switch half way through the year to an academic year planner and again in January to a full year planner you should always have a full year ahead of you.

You could also try writing some goals down somewhere you go regularly (near the kettle? On the fridge?).

so glad i found this tread... i have just started a new job. in job i am very organised, on time and together...at home however i am a catastrophyis a different story.
i used to be very organised when i had DS,but like someone else on here i have severe morning sickness, then DD came along and added to the chaos, then we moved taking it all with us, then i tried to decorate around it and now i have started a little at a time and now have 1 room completely free from 'stuff', just the others to go! it doesn't help that my mum is the most organised person on the planet, and my kids have lots of crap toys. am likeing the get everything off the floor though, may get big storage draws for under the satirs, where i have nothing and noone can see
one tip i do have for diary use is get stickers or colours for money in and out and stick them in. i.e. 28/1/12 red dot (tv licence £XX) green dot (paid £XXX) then you always know where you are up to and can see if anything bad is going to happen befpre it does.

This thread is making me want to be the queen of organisation - thank you for the inspiration! My DH and eldest DS gave me a really useful pressie yesterday (it was an Xmas press DH had forgotten to put in my stocking) and it's a pen with a magnet in it so it sticks to the fridge, and I can ALWAYS now find my pen! A little piece of genius!

Springy do you do Excel? I make myself a colour coded calendar and print it out as my Piece of Paper that Must be Kept With Me - or in some phases I do

Jaysus ! i am convinced i have ADD now having read this, I have done an on line test

The ONLY area I am organised in now is my finances.
ALL bills are paid by DD/SO and I have online banking.

I have an excel spreadsheet with columns...

BILL DATE DUE AMOUNT DUE NOW PAID

When bill is paid I then cut and paste amount from the DUE column to the PAID.
The due column has a running total at the bottom, So as long as the balance of my account is more than that amount I know we are not in trouble.

coldwed has a point; if you have bad short term memory loss look at your diet (could you make it healthier?!) Also great help for STML is the herb Gingko Biloba.

You also need to be serious about being organised.

No point making excuses.

If you are going to keep a diary - keep it and use it
If you are going to put reminders in your blackberry - do it and check it
If you are going to use a wipeboard - write on it and look at it
If you are going to put an hour aside each week to plan - do it
If you are going to de-clutter - do it and spend 15 minutes each week, getting on top of it.

I am organised to the point of being a bit obsessive with it - have notes in my blackberry for everything, have set days to do certain jobs and have no clutter in my house at all - but have a sister who is hugely disorganised. She once said to me that she didn't have time to plan. This really made me laugh, as she had plenty of time to run round in circles achieving nothing.

If people have time to come on here and post, then you have the time to plan.

If you try and keep everything in your head, it will all fall out sooner or later when you cram more in - get it down on paper or on a laptop/blackberry.

Lucy88 you are scary!

Lurking her since the start of the thread, but you girls are seriously motivating me to reorganise my life :)
Thank you!

sorry, i have not yet read all the replies so am likely to repeat. but was compelled to reply because i am a former Disorganised Person who remade herself, in an act of desperation, really...have been an Organised Person for about 7-8 years now. i am now perhaps overly dependent on a routine -i really feel quite overwhelmed and stressed when i go off the Organised path. But it beats feeling overwhelmed and out of control all the time, which is where i was.

My biggest help is my notebook. I keep a 'to do' list, which i sit down with at the start of every day. Electronic reminders and so on do not work for me - I live by my handwritten lists. The notebook also keeps a list of books I'd like to read, song lyrics I have caught snippets of and want to track down, things i want to remember to do with my DD when she's older, projects i want to take on this year...

and i am happiest when i keep to a bit of a routine. not in a pathetically slavish way, i hope, but i do schedule my time and have regular times/days for things.

since having DD, my DH and i split her childcare between us; we both work PT and from home, and go to school - so we have a careful schedule worked out! this is a work of beauty with color-coded segments and so on...

i have things like a master shopping list - it includes everything we might buy, pretty much; we print off a copy each week and circle what things we need; it makes the weekly shop much more efficient.

Also try and make life easier for yourself with regards to housework.

I buy those packs of cleaning wipes for a quid and have one pack by each toilet. So as the bath is running you can run a wipe around the toilet, one around the sink etc.

I have 3 of those rubbery flexible basket thingys - one for stuff to iron, one for stuff that doesn't need ironing and can be carried upstairs to be put away, and one to carry laundry from the laundry basket down to the washing machine. It means I don't have piles of laundry all mixed up, or waiting to be sorted.

brdgrl I work on handwritten stuff too.I have a section in my filing cabinet with lists of inspiring things - eg types of roses that are recommended and I'd like, or books I want to read etc.

Helenagrace I also have a list of everything in my loft.

I have tried the 'uniform the night before' stuff but inevitably end up with a five year old having a wobbly that she wants a skirt,not the trousers she picked last night,which takes up more time TBH! (and then usually she'll get breakfast down them anyway).Some set routines are destined to failure in my house but I have taken time out to establish one new habit since school has been back,which is giving the loo a quick clean each morning.

Once this has been established as a habit (is it 20 times of doing something to make a habit?) I'll move on to the next little thing.

I also cannot be doing with doing anything in a sensible order.I do one thing until I'm bored of it then move on to the next,in a completely random way.It is working for me - I feel its like going round the house in ever decreasing circles of clutter,plus I don't have one room looking immaculate but the rest of the house a total shithole.

My Mum walked into my house today and said she' thought she'd got the wrong house as she'd never seen it so (and these were her actual words!) "clean and tidy".

only 20 times to make a habit? that is encouraging!

more thoughts...we have a printed jobs rota on the fridge, DH and I and the teenagers (well - normally, having a bit of struggle over this at the moment!) take turns with dinner/washing up/dog walks/ hoovering kitchen. So those are on the rota.

thursday night is always takeaway night. sunday is laundry.

friday is the weekly shop. DH and I normally go together, and actually I look forward to it (sad, i know; i remember when we used to go on dates!). we get coffee beforehand, and over coffee we plan the menu for the week ahead, circle the supplies needed on that pre-printed list, and then if we have plenty of time we do the shop together; if in a rush, we tear the list in half and each do our bit. (did i mention that the list is ordered to correspond to the order of the aisles at sainsburys? )

brdgrl a master list for shopping is genius! I shall do one. (tomorrow) :)

Menus and matching shopping lists here, if anyone wants them.

Week 1 of 4

List for Week 1 menus

Does this being organised lark get easier the further into it you get? I've barely sat down all day to do nothing, although my living room and kitchen have stayed tidy for two days and my bedroom no longer looks like Steptoe's yard.

Once I've got everything set in place, then I should find more time to sit on my arse shouldn't I, because I won't have three weeks worth of washing to put away but just that day's stuff? That's how it's meant to work isn't it, because if I'm going to never sit down and take a breath in order to stop my house looking like a shitpit, to be honest, I'd rather live in a shitpit.

I manage to have time to sit down and chill. The systems have been in place long enough to be automatic and simple.

exactly, flisspaps! I have no love of housework (NONE) - and a great love of sitting on my arse. SO really, none of my attempts at organisation are about being an Uber Housefrau or competing with the Truly Organised People. I am more of a fraud than that...but I discovered that all this crap really just frees me up AND calms that screamy bit in my mind that is always terrified I have forgotten to pay a bill, or write that report for work, or send my nephew a birthday card, or get a smear...

it is not worth the anxiety to me anymore to be 'relaxed'.

That is what I am hoping for - once things are in place and I am used to doing things in a little and often fashion then they will become automatic and simple, as you say BoffinMum.

I am only on day 2/3 really (have been doing bits and pieces since the Christmas holiday but have only really gone for it the last few days.

DH has left a half empty box of Quality Street haphazardly abandoned on the piano normally I would ignore it, but now it feels wrong to leave it there. The lid isn't even on it properly, it's sort of sitting at a jaunty angle like a plastic purple beret [anger]

even!

That's the downside Fliss, the twitching at stuff

It's that horrible feeling of nagging anxiety that I have decided I can't live with any more. It really is exhausting to live like that which is why I started this thread. I know it's early days but I really, truly think this thread could hold the secrets to being An Organised Person! I'm inspired, it's also helping to kick my arse WRT my other NY resolution which is to lose 2 stone. I've been and got loads of fresh veg and salad etc and am miraculously finding myself planning meals and buying stuff accordingly!!

As someone said, it's just keeping the motivation. Im trying to do a bit every day. Today I emptied my car of shite (a carrier bag full! ) picked up the litter outside my house, rang the bank to sort something important, been shopping for healthy things, done several loads of washing, cleaned up and wrote my to do list.

That's like a weeks worth of stuff for me normally!

I heart you all.

We heart you too inatrance for starting this thread. My house is getting more organized by the day, kids are seeing a difference and helping, and I'm not so stressed and narky. Result!

I think I read somewhere that it takes 6-7 weeks for something to become a habit so we must stick firm to our resolve!

Buy a little notebook (I used to get the small moleskine ones when I was flush, these days I get the cheap ones from the post office - always red though. I find that helps). A larger one is scary and you write too many things in it. A pocket sized one is great, stick it in your bag and write down everything you need to do, when you think of it. That's the joy of a small book - the amount of stuff in there isn't too intimidating.

Every day, check back the last day's list. Resolve to do some of the things and cross them off when they're done. When the list has a satisfying amount of stuff on there crossed off, put a big cross through the entire thing and start a new list, carrying over the un-done tasks from before. I find there's a natural wastage of chores, some I gleefully never carry over and as I write a new list, I decide not to bother thinking about them ever again. I get a sick thrill from that actually. Try it, it's quite cathartic.