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Happy Monday! Spring is just around the corner, and I couldn’t be more excited. Spring marks the beginning of so much– the warmer weather, new foods in season, and an electricity in the air that embodies nature’s “fresh start”. I personally love Spring for the cleaning, organizing, and tidying up that it incentivizes us to do! I have a hard time with clutter. To be frank, it drives me crazy. I’m one of those people who feels emotionally and mentally scattered if my home environment is a mess– and so I notice that I’m constantly prioritizing cleaning and organizing in order to feel my best. Of course having a toddler has made this endeavor around forty thousand times harder. The moment something gets put away or perfectly organized, Marlowe will blow in like a hurricane to “deconstruct” it. Fun Fact: my daughter prefers book shelves with every last book removed and scattered around the floor. I’ve long since lost the daily battle when it comes to household items that are accessible to my toddler– waiting instead for the nights and weekends to quietly and swiftly put things in their proper place. 
I truly believe that orderliness does effect our mental state, and ability to be productive. This month, I decided to support my love of organization with a quest to really put the rhyme and reason back in to the areas of my home that haven’t been overrun by my toddler. It makes me feel like I’ve retained a little bit of Adult Space and, quite frankly, keeps me sane. Here are the ways I’m implementing some Springtime tidying up in my personal space…
…To read the rest of this post, and to check out my motivational tips and tricks, head on over to Mom.me!
*Many thanks to Covergirl for sponsoring this post! As always, the thoughts and opinions expressed above are entirely my own.
Hi Mrs. Martino:
Thank you once again for a thoughtful article. I totally agree with the notion that if things are cluttered around oneself, it completely derails a person mentally. The one thing that helps organize me right off the bat is getting up in the morning and making my bed. I know it sounds trite, but I feel like the bed is the center of the room, and if it is not made, it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the room.
Loose papers are a BIG problem for me. If worse comes to worse, I just try to put everything in one big stack, so I know at least the papers are in one place. However, the stack method can make things worse if you are searching for something specific, so I just buy those accordion folders, and organize the papers alphabetically in those folders (not very original I know).
I can’t speak from the perspective of having a family, but recently I was studying for a big exam, and there were 14 subjects I had to study. My teacher told me to make a separate binder for each subject, and to use different colors for the various rules I had to memorize. I think no matter what you are trying to organize, it is important to create some type of contrast, where you separate things. In my school studies (and in life) I feel like I have the most trouble where everything feels like it is jumbled up into one, and it is hard to differentiate things.
The hard part for me is doing it everyday, and being consistent with it.
I remember studying Michelangelo’s theory of sculpting. He would look at a piece of rock, and envision a man trapped within the rock, so he figured that it was his job to remove the extra pieces of rock, so that the person trapped inside is revealed. I thought that was really cool. Maybe when we organize things, we are removing the ‘extra stuff’ that is cluttering us?
Anyway…. I’m done rambling
Thanks for the article, thought provoking as usual 🙂
Hello Eva,
That was a very helpful post about keeping organized.
My organization skills are good in relationship to a lake of clutter.
I don’t like clutter, but time for: work as well as personal projects, as well as washing dishes, with a physiology of an older person in a younger human body, priorities with choices are made. As is life.
It is challenging thou, when you love books, but there is not enough space where you reside currently to fulfill your desire for your personal library being at your residence.
I guess that is why human beings invented cardboard boxes, packaging tape and storage spaces, to store your extra essential “stuff” as George Carlin called it.
One of the things I have adopted in relationship to keeping files and projects organized is using colored paper clips, a grey paperclip with a blue or a green paper clip, means you have started a file project, but steps need to be completed. Two greys mean it is a larger more time consuming project (plan for a snack break and a short walk for that project).
Two green or two blue paper clips means project is completed, which may either stay with a green or blue, or there is a dark pink paper clip. I wish Office Depot would add a red orange paper clip, to represent a “sunset” of a particular project and or task.
This is helpful, saving time, as an everyday person to stay organized, or for me as someone who is growing a business, having paper files and plans organized is SO essential, as you well know Eva.
I continue on the quest for a filing buddy, one of those of the life journeying variety. Assisting with keeping our papers organized, as well as of equal importance our souls as well as minds with balance, as we assist each other on the old wooden roller coaster of lifes ups and downs.
It is like when I was on the Indiana Jones ride last month at Disneyland, there is calm, excitement, uncertainty, knowledge as well as wisdom on the ride. There is the love of the ride, of those things I just mentioned, its enhanced thou, when you have someone to talk about the ride with, and go to eat something together at Jolly Holiday, sometimes a Mary Poppins tune helps to add some more colors to the day. 😉
I found a book of quotes, it is called “The Wisdom of Walt Disney”. Here are two, that you with your wise blog co leaders, may find helpful:
“Somehow I can’t believe that there are many heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true.
The special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy, and the greatest of these is Confidence.”
“Don’t stick to closely to your favorite subject. That would keep you from adventuring into other fields. It’s silly to build a wall around your interests.”
A sincere appreciation for other people, their goals as well as interests, with a humble confidence of your goals, as well as knowledge, interests, is a very productive fuel for the life engine.
Eva, your blog is a quality one, helping many many people, in large part because you share about several interests of yours: family, being: creative, a parent, with a healthy home, a wife, spiritual, conscious about the world and your effect on it, with balance in a world of less than balance sometimes, an entrepreneur.
Thanks for being a multi interest human being, I prefer the word renaissance wo/man.
It is a nice grassland to reside at, its very fulfilling, Walt knew this too, maybe the next time people see his name one of those quotes might ring true, with one of the fours C’s being applied in their life.
Eva, thanks for being one of those renaissance people, sharing that essence here at your blog. 🙂
Greg Fillmore