Can you become an "organised person"? Any techniques? I'm talking about a complete personality change required here

[Tinker]

I think I'm beginning to get sick of myself being so disorganised. I've been off work for over 3 weeks now. At the start of the summer holiays I vowed I would have the house tidy and be organised about holiday stuff etc. The house is still a tip and I left it until yesterday to ring abour insurance, green card, breakdown cover etc - we leave tomorrow! Also, only remembered yesterday that I should have registered last Friday for exams I'm taking in December - without the good humour and goodwill of the person dealing with this I would have had to stump up £200 up front. At work I'm either in a state of boredom or panic - things only get done when I have my boss on my back.

HOW do you change to from being a person who needs deadlines to get anything done to someone who passes through life smoothly and seamlessly? Anyone have any realistic workable tips/techniques?

Thanks

LOL JJ - have got box files for stuff. I do keep everything but in various piles. I really need a spike to put bills on - at present they are stuck on the boiler with a magnet.

nutty - look in Services on teh toolbar and Calendar is the first one down. I assuem it'll remind me at some stage!

Oh, I've just seen the Remind Me thing as well

the worst of it is little piles of stuff.. little piles of clothes that are too small, or should be upstairs, little piles of letters I have opened and need to read again or do something with, little piles of toy bits I was going to put back in their sets, little piles of useful DIY things I bought and have not done, little piles of stuff left out from camping that ought to go back in the loft...
I have banned all carrier bags, nobody is allowed to bring a carrier bag home (ie not from food shopping but with assorted posessions such as wet towels, bits of paper, feeding bottles) and then leave it on the floor with stuff inside.
lists are great as long as you always write in the same place
little piles of bits of paper with lists on them...

hovely

oh hovely, that all sounds so familiar.

The Remind Me is great. Just had an IM and an email telling me to Get Packing

hehehe Tinker. Where u goin?

Off to France juniper. Always able to organise my holidays

JJ, yes it does send you email reminders and I keep the emails that I need to do something about in the Inbox until its done.
No-one going to try the brought forward file?
Can you tell I was a Sec/PA/Administrator for nearly 20 years!!
I don't like DDs though as they are such a pain to cancel, or to remember to cancel and sometimes the company has a different name on the bank statement. I won't set up any more. I have started paying some bills on line which is brilliant, e.g. Onetel

davros that a good tip about yahoo, but I would have to organise myself to organise it

this is so totally me too - my mum is convinced that without my extremely organised best friend i would not have made it through school at all - books falling out of open bags, losing tickets, missing exams etc. Got organised very slowly over 15 years - crunch point was going on a very good day course called The Excellent Assistant, came back to the office full of good intentions and a new organiser to find that complete chaos had broken out because my files were in such a mess. I got a serious b***ing and couldn't pretend any more that a messy desk meant a creative mind or all that. Still fairly chaotic if i give it a chance - the only answer is to WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN in a single place - a hardback A4 notebook is my saviour. I even come home from baby groups and write down the names of new people I met because there is otherwise no chance at all i will remember them. Agree with alicatsg and Delgirl that categorising your to do list with A for essential today, B for to do soon and C for would be nice to do really helps - stops you doing all the C stuff because it's not under pressure and leaving all the A stuff. Carrying stamps and a couple of envelopes in my handbag revolutionised my life. When slumped in an armchair wanting to hang self rather than do one more piece of housework, just do something - anything - even if it's just shoving all the toys behind the sofa or drawing the curtains - and the improvement in your surroundings can really lift your mood and help you do the next thing. Moving the TV upstairs helped me too though i don't half miss it. Still, Made For Each Other is back tonight.

Otherwise, just earn more money and pay somebody else to do the organising

I got a book called 'confessions of an organised homemaker' twee but useful tips

Tinker how I sympathise.

I wish you could get life coaching or personal decluttering for mums, even though it would take weeks! I am in despair most of the time at the chaos and mess. I don't know how you people with jobs manage that as well (I am not working at the moment, DS2 is little).

I've got a bad back, the dishwasher is broken, baby is sleeping badly, and I am too exhausted to do anything in the evenings.

Plus I have perpetual moths that I can't get rid of and am always about 10 bin bags behind with the washing as no sooner is everything clean then the moths come back.

My husband jokes at my terror of the piles of crap. Sometimes I wish I could just leave the house and everything in it and start again.

Anyway I will check out the tips everyone has mentioned.

Thank you CHANDRA for the link.

This is v v interesting - reading everyone's problems with keeping on top of everything, so why is it that whenever I go to friends homes they ALWAYS look so organised, clean, tidy etc??? It makes me feel even worse. My children accidentally scratch furniture etc yet they seem to have perfect furniture only the other day a frame got damaged accidentally and they are not rough children. So why is it my house gets me down so much that I feel I just can't be bothered

If they're anything like me meysey, they've begged their mum (if available) to come and help before you come round.

Sorry, memder.

Tinker,

Thankyou for starting this thread. I thought it was just me who could get whole days when I seem to achieve nothing, just by not getting started, and also where I waste 2 or 3 hours looking for something (When I should know where it is anyway). It makes me feel less useless, knowing there are other people out there doing the same.

I agree that MN is really bad for me, cos I can get sooo hung up on a thread that I keep coming back to it when I should be doing something which is really more important. I even stay up late on nights when I'm tired, just chatting and browsing threads.

But I hereby resolve to improve myself.

Now where do I start?

oh hell, just opened the car boot, and found a birthday present in it for my best friend's daughter. The birthday was at the end of July

Not had time to read the whole thread so sorry if someone else has mentioned this, but I really like "Organising from the Inside Out" by Julie Morgenstern. Since ds was born I gradually have become a hyper organised person, and it really will reduce your stress levels and make more time for fun things. It is well worth all the boredom of tidying and sorting things out in the beginning and allocating regular times for maintaining organisation.

BTW, yahoo calendar has a tasks section, I just tend to use the calendar only, maybe I need to look into this part myself?

I'm hoping it will work, but my inbox has over 350 messages, many of them needing replies.

Can someone help me with that?

I've tried the "reply to" folder. It's the kiss of death for the messages that are dragged into it.

JJ, what you need is a wife! I'm often tempted to say to men I know "you should try being a wife instead of having a wife"!!!

I use a very simple "Working Smarter" approach in my Outlook e-mail, (but works in the 'real, paper world too!)it's based around the principle of "Touch it Once" (i.e. don't shuffle piles of paper or e-mails...
For every e-mail or thing in your intray (or pile in the kitchen...) you have to allocate it as one of the follows, and a 'PENDING' option is simply NOT allowed:
So, it's either:
DO - i.e. it's a short something which you can just deal with immediately
DELEGATE: get someone else to do/ make it their responsibility
DECIDE WHEN: i.e. it's too big, or requires input which means you can't, or don't want to do it immediately, so you allocate a time/date when you will do it, then file it accordingly (As a task, or in a carry forward file)
DUMP - ask yourself, what would happen if I didn't do this, or do I really need to keep this - if you're wavering, then DUMP it!!

Works for me - try it!

Good advice Mo2. I can't tell you how many times I threw stuff away that had been put in the filing tray during my many jobs. Nothing important imo but I was always ready to say I'd never seen it if anything happened..... it never did!

Have just skimmed this thread but was going to say more or less what Mo2 says...my old boss used to say just touch it once. He just used to delegate everything in fact , but it is a good idea. eg when the visa bill arrives, don't open it and put it down on the bench to be lost, pay it at once, if you have a decent bank you can tell them when the cash is to leave your a/c. Scan school newsletters, put any dates on the calendar then recycle; put child's artwork straight on the wall if Picasso or in recycling bag if Rothko; put the ironing away in drawers as soon as it's done. Of course I don't do any of this! But I have been having a clearout lately, for some reason we have about 30 soft toys and I have never bought one! Do they breed in the night or what? Anyway, persuaded the kids to let me charity shop lots of them hurrah! don't get daunted by the big task (giant in the case of my house), try to achieve a bit of a clear-up/extra job each night and you've got somewhere.