Camp Creek Press

I'm trying to get a little bit organized.

This is like the captain of the Titanic saying he's trying to stay a little afloat, by the way.

Yes, that is a picture of my laptop way back around the holidays. I can't take a current picture because the card in my camera is full of 586 stop-mo photos that are waiting to be downloaded.

We are in the midst of spring break at our house. Yes, we have spring break. Early on I boldly stated that any time the public school was closed we have a "day off". The fact that our days off look remarkably like our days on is lost on the boys; they mostly see it as an implied promise we won't go anywhere and they can stay in their boxers all day.

I had a lot of high-falutin' plans about what I would accomplish this week. [pause to wipe away tears of laughter] I have accomplished .. very few of those.

I spent a remarkable amount of time — I'm to embarrassed to reveal the number of hours — organizing my RSS readers. Seriously. I read blogs through both Bloglines and Google Reader, because I was too dim/distracted to realize I could organize my Bloglines feeds into folders so I had them roughly divided into work (Bloglines) and play (Google Reader).

I never hesitate to overcomplicate things for myself by refusing to read the directions.

Both readers were so chock full of feeds that they desperately needed thinning and/or organizing. My first thought was, have they invented a third RSS reader I could use? (Seriously.) Then I gave up and spent the necessary 15 seconds figuring out that I could organize the feeds into folders. (D'oh.)

Now that it's done, it is fantastic — and it will save me tons of time, if for no other reason that I won't be as tempted to read all my friends' blogs every morning before I work because they're all staring me in the face. Now I can just look at the work stuff and later, when my brain is no longer working at its maximum level, I can click on the "Friends" folder. Whew.

When other people get organized, I think it means bins and folders from the Container Store. For me, it means organizing my brain use. I think of my brain like Estea's 30-year-old dishwasher — it requires the constant care and vigilance of a trained specialist (me) to keep working at all, let alone optimally.

Now that I'm teaching my class, I go to the library every Friday. That is working much better for us than our previous schedule, which was every other week for six weeks and then not for four months, when we would owe a triple-digit fine.

To organize my use of the library — again, focusing on my brain's inability to remember what books we wanted/needed to get and the need to actually bring back the items we took away last time — I am using two tools.

One is the enormous string bag I bought for transporting books to and from the library, and which in theory should hold all the books that aren't currently being read by anyone in the house (trying to keep them from migrating everywhere). Unfortunately, everyone in my house is fully capable of simultaneously reading six books. So that plan needs some tweaking.

The second tool is working much better. I'm using my Amazon wish list as a "get these from the library" list. When I see a book mentioned online that I want to read, or when the boys tell me there's something they want, I go to Amazon, look it up, then put it in my wishlist. On Wednesday, I open the wishlist in one window and my library in the other and put the books on hold. Then we pick them up on Friday. Genius!

This is working much better for me than the previous method of "write book title on a scrap of paper, stick in back pocket or throw on the dining table, never see scrap of paper again".

Finally, I am working on a new project so I sacrificed greatly and bought myself a new moleskine to contain all my spillage of thoughts on said project. I journal daily but at some point you have to admit it's a little inconvenient to dig through tens of pages of charming/funny things the kids said, descriptions of meals, ranting, etc., to find that project idea you had.

My next organizational project is to stop working at five different spots around the house and intead pick one and put all my books, research materials, Pilot pens, etc., in one spot so I can stop spending half the day walking around grabbing things I need and bringing them somewhere else. On the other hand, that would completely destroy my daily physical workout. So perhaps not.

If you have any organizational tips to share with me, I'm all ears.