Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina  |
This article gives the "how", but that isn't my problem. My problem is more along the lines of "why", as in "Why get organized?".
For example, let me ask some questions:
1) On your bookshelf, are your book organized by title, author, subject, etc. or are they just put on the bookshelf in whatever order comes up. If organized, isn't it a waste of time to sort your books?
2) When you put away your laundry, do you pair up and fold individual socks and fold up each pair of underwear seperately and put them away in a "sock" drawer or "underwear" drawer or do you just dump your socks and underwear into one drawer?
3) Do you open your mail/bills daily and decide what to do with them right there and then or do you just throw them somewhere until you're ready to open them? If you wait do you sometimes open urgent mail or fun mail first while leaving boring stuff for later?
4) If you're reading a couple of books, is it ok for them to sit on your desk when you're not reading them for a few days or do you put them away on the bookshelf whenever you're finished reading?
5) If you're writing an article, and drinking some water in a glass, once you're finished drinking the water, do you take the glass immediately into the kitchen, wash it and put it away, or put it into the dishwasher, or do you leave the glass on your desk "for now" while you work on the article?
6) Do you make your bed every morning and put the decorative pillows on top of the covers, and tuck in the corners and make it look all pretty, even though you know you'll be messing it all up that same night and nobody will see the "made bed" anyways since most people never go into someones bedroom?
I guess if I could call my current system something it would be "organized chaos". There's crap all over my desk, stuff is dis-organized, however as long as nobody walks into my room and moves something, i know exactly where something is even if it's buried under a stack of crap. Keep in mind this is only for my personal space like my office etc. For kitchen/living room where I entertain guests I keep it clean.
I know this all stems from my belief systems, and I'm flexible to adopt a new belief system if someone can show me the benefits of being organized, as it outweighs the time invested to keep yourself organized on a daily basis. For example, if I was to spend 15minutes in the morning making my bed tucking all the corners in and putting the decorative pillows on and making it all smooth and looking pretty like a hotel room and then another 15minutes per day putting the pillows away and getting the bed ready to sleep, that would amount to (30mins x 365days) 10,950 minutes of bed making per year, which is approximately 180 hours per year. That's like a 2 week workweek!
I *could* vacuum the house every 2 days, but if I do it every 8 days it only takes 25% as much time total and the carpets don't REALLY get that much dirtier than vacuuming every 2 days.
I guess I'm just confused as to what is meant by "organized". I have looked at some books and such and the standards in them are rediculous. Like if you followed the standards in there you would do nothing else with your life except dust, clean your house, vacuum, put away stuff, iron, make the bed. Like, does anyone out there ACTUALLY dust every day?
Maybe the reason I don't have time to be organized is because I work a full time job. If I was self-employed working from home, I'd probably have a lot more time on my hands to keep things organized.