Organized Chaos

Erik accuses me of being a piler. When we're preparing for a trip, I start making piles throughout the house. That way I can see what I've already got in the pile and what I still need to add to the pile. If it was all in a bag or a box, I'd have to go digging through everything to make sure I remembered the bathing suits or the wet wipes or the camera cord.

Moving is like the ultimate pile. There are towers of boxes overtaking our house.

We got some great boxes from the liquor store with handy-dandy organizers for all the breakable stuff. Genius.

I don't mind packing. Erik and I both find pleasure in purging old/unused stuff and simplifying our household (Erik LOVES bringing things to the MCC thrift store - like, seriously, I think he loves it a little more than he should). Maybe it feels good to control something when other things feel very chaotic and out of control. I think that's why I really like having things organized. But finding the time to do it is the challenge. Writing this post brought to mind a couple of organizing projects that I did in the last little while - y' know, just to make my un-organized life a wee bit simpler.

First of all, we had a puzzle problem. Maybe you know the one. It starts with multiple puzzle boxes in various states of dilapidation. Add to that a toddler who finds immense joy in dumping each and every puzzle so that his loving and patient Mama has the pleasure of sorting through all the mixed-up pieces and putting them back into the bits of disintegrating cardboard...

I'm not sure why I didn't find a better home for those puzzles - one that was out of the reach of toddler-hands... In the end I designated each puzzle to it's own ziploc bag. I cut out the picture on the front of the puzzle box and fastened it to the bag with packing tape. The box was no longer needed and with the toddler unable to open a ziploc, the worst mess that Mommy had to deal with was a few bags scattered on the floor. Much better :)

And I mentioned my spice cabinet problem awhile back too - just the annoyance of digging through everything every time I was looking for a spice. Shortly after, I found these spice jars at Ikea plus a few other random containers around the house that I wasn't using. I dug up some envelope labels that I had in the house and voila. Spice finding made easier.

It didn't make my cabinet less crowded but it did ease the searching process somewhat.

OK, not sure why I'm sitting here blogging. Time to go make some more piles.