Organizing my life?

Wow. I am so incredibly unable to get my act together lately. I've always had a problem drowning in paper. You know, all the flyers, newspapers, magazines, invitations, etc. I can't throw them away, so I stick them in a big pile. Well, lots of piles. And then when the pile can't go any higher (or we have company coming) I purge it all. By that point it's all outdated or overdue or expired. Why do I hang onto all that stuff anyway?

But now, in addition to drowning in paper. I'm drowning in electronic media too. Evites, blog subscriptions, yahoo group emails, facebook articles, etc etc. I can't keep it all straight. There's no way to read everything, and therefore I feel like I'm always missing something.

I just decided right now that I'm going to just delete all the extra stuff. I bet I'll feel a whole lot less overwhelmed. I'm going to do that right....NOW!

Ahh! I just deleted 35 different groups, websites, companies, etc off my facebook feed. That should help. 35! 35 random causes that I was trying to keep up with on a daily basis? Why? Why does stuff like this seem so important? I've been wasting so much time! Now off to the yahoo groups.....

5 groups deleted. I stopped the emails for three others. Woo hoo. This is fun! What's next?

I've been trying to set up a "household command center" or whatever would be a good word for it. Basically, a place I keep all MY crap....recipes, papers that need to go back to school, rebates to fill out (hey, that reminds me...), etc etc.... this is increasingly less paper related, and more and more electronic filing. It's driving me a little batty actually. I currently have 4 email addresses that I maintain, two separate calendars, a bazillion log in credentials for different websites. How do you keep it all straight?

So, I selected a corner of my living room, and put a drawer unit there. I can stick my laptop on top. My comfy nursing chair is near...so I have everything I need.

Today I also purged my recipe/cookbook shelf. I had two binders full of printed out recipes, or recipes torn out of magazines. 99% of these I had never tried. Straight to the recycling bin. The remaining half dozen or so, I put on a calendar to make in the next two week. I wrote them out in Jessica recipe style...what the ingredients are, but that's it. I very rarely actually USE a recipe anyway...so why I had two binders full of them sitting there makes no sense. I wrote down the ingredients, and then left it at that. It will make for some fun experiements to try. I'm stuck in a major food rut!

Back to coordinating electronic media...I have to come up with a system for keeping track of my online recipe websites. I found a website today called delicious. It's a way to keep your bookmarks organized. Because the bookmark bar in internet explorer is worthless to me. That will be the next thing to purge! I just started adding stuff into there today. A few recipes I want to try, a few places I had bookmarked (local parks, museums) that I want to take the kids to. Now I can make categories for them, and actually see what the heck they are, and write tags/descriptions.

Fabulous.

Now I have to figure out a system for household tasks. Last week I got the house cleaned, and Nate and I made a chore list for the kids. We've been talking about having Ella do chores for a long time, but neither of us has ever followed through on it. So, I need to finish up the chore charts, and start that this week. It boils down to cleaning up after themselves. Which they don't. At all. That could be a whole other blog post.

My goal for myself each day is to have the kitchen clean...dishwasher loaded and run, big dishes washed, sink cleared out, and counters relatively clear...each night before I got to bed. The nights that I don't do this, sets my whole day the next day up for disaster. I can't make breakfast because the entire kitchen is a mess. I have no dishes because they're all dirty. then I have nowhere to put the dishes we create. It's such a mess. So. No matter how tired I am, I am going to start doing that.

Wow. This post is so incredibly random. Can you tell I need some organization?

Better get to work!