Making Dreams Real: Down to Earth Organizing

Earlier I posted a link to a book list about organizing. This has been a challenge for me most of my life. Several weeks ago I realized that since the youngest boy (sorry, young man) has moved out, now is the perfect time for me to not only get the office and other rooms of the house in order, it's also prime time to decide exactly what I want to accomplish during the final third of my life, weed out everything that doesn't support this purpose, decide on a mission statement and set up systems that support what I'm trying to accomplish.

Are you at this point? Are you a 40-50 something faced with an empty nest, the sense that this is an opportunity, and you don't know what to do? Do you freeze at the mere thought of going through all that stuff, your electronic or paper records or your calendar? Check out Susanna Sanka's site. The author of The Not So Big House provides a downsizing system that works because it gets to the heart of why we cling to clutter, whether it's old stuff, outworn activities or relationships that don't serve us well.

Another great resource is Marilyn Paul's It's Hard to Make a Difference if you Can't Find Your Keys (Ouch! Even the title hits close to home for me). She tackles a number of myths & misconceptions, one of which could be stated "Organization is the opposite of creativity. A messy house is the sign of a free spirit." I call it the Free Spirit Myth. I half-believed it for a long time because childhood experiences bore it out.

I grew up in an extremely organized family - well, at least my mom put forth a valiant effort considering she had a husband, six kids and chronic medical conditions. We were a Navy family and my mom's house had to pass the white glove test until my dad went civilian. The house always met basic standards of cleanliness, and there were places for everything. I didn't get to do fun stuff like draw or read until I'd done my chores, and sometimes those seemed endless.

One of my classmates was also the eldest of six kids but there the resemblance ended. Her mom taught art and stitchery classes at our church and school. Whenever I visited, I reveled in the opportunity to play, make something or help my friend assemble a snack without having to clean up immediately afterward. Piles of stuff lay everywhere. The kitchen was a hive of happy activity. Visiting this friend provided some relief from the exacting standards at my house. I stitched, wrote and drew there in a way that I wasn't able to do at home.

Because of this, I carried into adulthood the notion that order and creativity are mutually exclusive. In college I believed that I had to choose between a professional attitude towards time & money, and a life-as-art viewpoint. Over the last 30 years I've reaped plenty of evidence that this dichotomy doesn't work - it's hard to be a respected freelancer if you don't return calls promptly because you've lost the phone number again - but until the empty nest, it didn't feel like something I could tackle.

Marilyn Paul confronts the Free Spirit Myth in her book. She really challenges the notion that being an artist means leading a tempestuous, disorderly life.

I've come to realize that she's right. We all have a right brain and a left brain. Each of us may be predominately one or the other but we're capable of using both. When a right-brainer says "Oh, I just can't balance my checking account/get my files together/learn about this internet stuff," it's as much a cop-out as a primarily left-brained accountant or engineer saying "I'm just not the creative type." Nonsense, both of them.

If you're looking at a wonderfully blank datebook because the kids are adults and thinking that you might like to try one of those activities you put aside 25 years ago, Sanka and Paul provide good preludes. Make sure your spaces, priorities and calendar support your goals.