Some Inspirational Reading

If you think you're procrastinating you probably are, right? Anyway, I did a quick search on the New York Times this afternoon to find some inspirational reading on getting organized.

In addition to the three articles below, I also noticed a text ad for a guy who calls himself The Organizer Guy. It looks like he's done some great work for his clients. I'm not ready to pay $75/hour for his services just yet, although it does sound reasonable.

You can read these articles for yourself, but here is what I learned.

It’s Time to Get Professional About Getting Organized

* A certified professional organizer typically charges $50 to $200 an hour, but "often pays for herself, either in found money or opportunity."

* Every house should have a launching pad where you can drop stuff off at night for pickup the next day.

* PACK (Purge, Accessorize, Categorize and Keep it up) is a system for taming lockers and backpacks, but can just as easily be applied to an office or home. Here are two choice nuggets from PACK's creator, Donna Goldberg:

• "The less you carry, the more organized you are, the easier you can find things."
• "The key to organization is never the system. It’s always the follow-through."

* Car trunks should include an emergency kit with a multipurpose tool, 12-foot jumper cables, two quarts of oil, a gallon of antifreeze, rubber gloves, bottled water, granola or energy bars, a flashlight, four 15-minute roadside flares, glow sticks, a first-aid kit and a blanket.

Dawning of a New Day to Get Organized

* "It takes four hours to get visible results, which is so important... There are so many emotional factors in getting organized."

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success

* Boys generally have more difficulty getting organized and multitasking than girls do.

The last story reminded me of something that happened during my Senior year of high school. We were supposed to turn in to the yearbook staff a form summarizing our activities while students, you know, the sports you played, the clubs you were in, etc. I missed the deadline, probably because I misplaced the form, and as a result you'll see that there is nothing listed next to my name in my Senior yearbook.

It's as if I was never really there.

Setting Goals

I met Snafu and his Mom for drinks at Zeitgeist tonight and the conversation eventually turned to organization. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently Mom's apartment is a model of modernist minimalism: very little furniture and a Murphy bed that disappears during the day. Her only furnishing vice, if you'd call it that, is art - lots of it.

Art sure beats cardboard boxes.

Tomorrow is the last day of March, and I'm starting to feel Spring slip away before its really even begun. I need to set some goals and get things done. Snafu's Mom had two pieces of advice for me:

1. BE RUTHLESS. As she put it, there are some positive associations to be had with having lots of stuff, like a feeling of abundance, but there are better associations to be had with having less clutter. She says, there are things you need in your life and things you don't need. Get rid of the things you don't need or that you can easily replace should you ever need them again.

2. GET RID OF 7 THINGS EVERY WEEK. This seems like a lot to me, but I'm going to give it a try for the next month and see how it goes. Also, I won't buy any new stuff without making room for it by getting rid of old stuff. My clutter is bad enough without me adding to it.

Carpe diem.....tomorrow!

The reason for my sign-in name, "Snafu"

n., pl. -fus.
A chaotic or confused situation.

adj.
In a state of confusion or chaos.

tr.v.-fued, -fu·ing, -fus. To make confused or chaotic.

Perfect for what I feel these days. I've been thinking about my previous post. Not happy with it. Things will improve, Rome wasn't buildt in a day, etc. Today was a setback, I didn't totally bail on my objectives and I wasn't totally negligent, but I can and should do more. Persistence, dedication, habitual - that is how I'm going to face this blog and that's how I've got to face my organizational efforts. The day ran out on me today. I dealt with my bank in Panama (don't want a third world foreclosure on my record), my property manager in Panama, two real estate agents...in Panama. My business partner in Reno, a radio station in Reno, two lawyers in Reno, two promoters in Reno, my business broker in Reno, a real estate broker in Panama, my landlord in Reno, another business partner in Reno, a mom, a wife, another business partner in Panama, oh and I applied to a half a dozen jobs today, one of which is a $40 an hour, $40k job which I don't really want anyway, but has 250 applicants at last count.....and a week's worth of mail has piled a day higher - tomorrow I'm filing away, which will be a huge step forward. Work smarter not harder tomorrow. Day 2 is done and I give it a C-, here's to tomorrow's curve buster!

Clutter no mas!!

Have you ever hired someone to come to your house to clean it, but you feel compelled to clean a little bit beforehand? That's what I did yesterday, cleaning up a bit knowing that today was going to be my first blog entry towards a clutter-free existence. Hey whatever it takes, eh?

Of late, many things are not "clicking" for me professionally, things seem to take longer than they should and I've got this cloud hanging over me that seems to all lead back to the trail of clutter I am accumulating and not cleaning up. I thought about the common characteristic of "successful" people (however you define success) and every example I came up with was "organized", something that I can honestly say does not describe me these days.

Yesterday I took a look at what Dingo is dealing with in his storage, and it's definitely not a pretty sight. While I don't have his car or storage situation per se, I struggle with trying to transcend from being cluttered to organized.

I recently got married and live in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. A highlight of our place is the three walk-in closets (anyone familiar with the characteristics of a typical San Francisco apartment will understand that three walk-ins truly is a highlight). One closet for her, one for me, and one to convert to an "office". As of today, only one out of three closets can actually be 'walked' into, due to my overflowing boxes and paper. Co-habitating with someone who doesn't struggle with organization sometimes makes trying to overcome my cluttering ways even more of a, well, struggle, but it gives me more determination than I've ever had in my life. I welcome the transformation!

Clutter Liberation Organization

The idea for Clutter Liberation Organization came about yesterday while my friend Snafu and I were walking around Bernal Hill in San Francisco. We've been friends for a long time, but just this week opened up to each other about our difficulties getting organized and managing the clutter in our lives.

Almost every aspect of my life is cluttered: my closet, my dresser and my files at home; my car; my office. Rather than take action to get these areas organized, I've turned to a costly coping mechanism to get around my problem: storage units. I have two storage units here in San Francisco and one in Austin, and I treat my 1994 Isuzu Trooper like a mobile storage unit. All together my units cost me $2,760 a year in rent, not to mention the lost opportunities to spend my money on other things and the decreased gas mileage for my truck. (I've also found that having a truck full of stuff parked on the streets of San Franisco is a tempting invitation to some thieves -- four break-ins in as many years.)

It's time I made some big changes in my life. It's not going to be easy, so it's good to know that I'm not alone. Snafu and I will chronicle our efforts to get organized and reduce the clutter in our lives on this website.

Thanks for reading.