Four Books That Changed Me From Lifelong Messy Girl to Getting My Sh*t Together (Mostly)

This month I've been focusing on planning, productivity, and organizing your time. Part of that is because it's January and I always feel energized at the beginning of the year to evaluate what worked and what didn't the previous year. 

But as I was doing these posts, I realized something--I've changed. You see, all my life I've been the cluttered, messy girl. My room was the bane of my mother's existence. When I first got married, I remember the coffee table being covered with empty Diet Mt. Dew cans and random college papers. It became a running joke with my husband about the number of cans. And I knew that about myself and had kind of accepted it as part of my identity. I'm not a neat freak. It is what it is.

And though I tried to come up with ways to be better and did make some improvement as I got older and eventually became a mom, I still struggled. I would never have the type of house that could handle a surprise visitor without an hour warning to hurriedly clean up the clutter and clear the counters. (There are still days like that for the record.)

But when I posted my before and after pics of my office earlier this week both here and on my personal Facebook, I said something like, "I'm sure the desk will get messy again like the before picture." And a number of people commented back, "You think THAT'S messy? That looks so neat." 

It gave me pause. Wait, what? But then I looked again and saw--yeah, okay, that was organized. Everything on the desk was in use. There were no stray papers or random piles of junk. But it wasn't a clear desk. I should move that binder or that pen or whatever. And it hit me--somehow along the way, I've become the girl who craves neatness. Like, craves. Needs neatness to concentrate and write. When the hell did that happen? Being messy was like part of my identity.

So I thought back to try to figure out when things changed. I can pinpoint it. Three years ago I read Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project and her Happier At Home. The second was more focused on the home, but both made me think more consciously about day to day stuff. And one of her points is "outer order creates inner calm." That stuck with me along with a lot of her other points. I started to be more aware of my environment and how it affected my mood. I got better but still struggled with clutter and such.

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

By Gretchen Rubin

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life

By Gretchen Rubin

The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life

By Francine Jay

Then about a year later, I picked up a book on minimalism called The Joy of Less by Francine Jay. The book is pretty short and straightforward and there are LOTS of books on minimalism. Some of these books can be extreme. I'm not extreme. But the concept of getting rid of unneeded stuff instead of figuring out ingenious ways to organize them clicked with me. Why did I have ten knickknacks on my mantle and entertainment center when all it meant was more dusting? Why did I have THREE full sets of dishes? I went through every room in my house and did a major donate-to-Goodwill purge. I physically felt lighter letting go of all that stuff. (One exemption: my book hoarding was excluded from the purge, lol. But I do limit myself to three full bookcases.) 

And after the purge, I wanted to do more. My house still felt like it had too much furniture and stuff. We saved up money and remodeled at the end of 2014 because of this minimalism thing and replaced most of our furniture. Instead of the bulky entertainment center with all the decorative cubbies, we replaced it with a simple media cabinet that hides all the equipment and has nothing on top. We got rid of the dresser in our room and bought cheap IKEA drawers to put in our closet instead, which opened up the bedroom. I started craving clear surfaces and minimal stuff, the lack of visual clutter (even organized stuff can become visual clutter.)

Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

By Susan C Pinsky

But I was still having trouble with the day to day clutter--the baskets of clean laundry to put away, the school papers on the counter, the little things of every day life. And forget about storage bins. If it was out of sight, it might as well not exist in my mind. It's forgotten.(Hence my need for a paper planner.) Enter the next book: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD. I don't have ADHD, but the methods of organizing for the visual person were revolutionary for me. AND it gave me permission to not be Pinterest perfect with my organizing. It asked questions like--why are you folding underwear when they're just going to sit in a drawer and it doesn't matter if they're wrinkled? It's a simple thing but I was like--wait, I don't have to fold the underwear?? And no, I don't! Or pajamas or towels.

So now that basket of clean laundry gets put away in seconds because I just drop stuff into the designated drawers. And the clean towels get dumped into a clean towel hamper in my closet that we pull from. (If you're super Type A about this stuff, I know you're probably breathing into a paper bag at the thought. When my mom comes stay, she goes in and folds all of kidlet's pajamas in the drawer, lol.) That's okay. But for me, this means I don't have laundry baskets sitting out. The task is quicker and less intimidating. And no one but us knows things aren't neatly folded inside the drawers (well, until now when I'm blabbing to the world about it, lol.) But there are a ton of tips in this book like that, and it's helped SO much. (It also dovetails nicely with minimalism. She's all for getting rid of unnecessary stuff.)

So are things perfect? God, no. Of course not. Real people live here. I have an eight-year old, and hubs and I have busy jobs. Dishes are left in the sink overnight. School papers still accumulate on the counter. Socks are still the bane of my existence (I'm going to switch hubs and kidlet to one type of dark sock and one type of white so then they don't have to be matched up.) And let's not talk about the hell in a handbasket things go when I'm up against a tight writing deadline. But a lot has changed, and I accept that it's an ongoing journey. It's changed me from the person I was five years ago. I'm not messy girl anymore. I'm the messy girl who's tricked herself into being pretty neat and organized. ;) And all from reading a few books and getting inspired. Gotta love the power of books, right?

Have you ever made a big change in how you do things or approach them? Have you surprised yourself? And what organizing things do you wish you could get your arms around? What clever tips or book have resonated with you? Have you ever suffered from Pinterest Perfect syndrome (I definitely have)?

The Joy (and Lesson) of Finally Tackling a "Someday" To Do Item

There are To Do Items and then there are the "Someday I'd like to..." items. Many times those someday items are big, lofty things like, "I'd like to travel through Europe" or "I'd like to write a book series about (insert thing that is not what I'm currently writing)" or "I'd like to live in a cabin in the mountains (with full internet and amenities, of course.)" Those things are great to have. Lofty things can be accomplished. Once upon a time, I said, "I'd like to be a full-time writer." So those someday items are vital. Stretch goals. Dreams. Brass rings. All that.

But there's also this other kind of someday item--the annoying type that you really would like to have done but don't actually look forward to doing them. You want the result, not the stress/work/process of getting there. Painting my office was one of those items for me.

I've been having the same color on the walls of my office for almost ten years. And it wasn't the color I would've picked in the first place because my office was originally in a different room (which eventually got turned into my son's room when he was born.) But I was DREADING the process of painting the room. Because not only would all the furniture need to be moved, but there are three bookcases and about 600 books in here, AND the high, oddly angled ceiling would have to be painted, too. Fun times.

But after doing all this goal-setting and planner buying and digital detoxing for the new year, I realized--now is the time. I needed to break down the overwhelming job into a list of doable tasks (pick out a paint color, get supplies, clear out the office, etc.)  and then rip off the bandaid. I could do this. This is a fresh start to the year and my office should be refreshed, too. I spend at least 40 hours a week in this room. I should like it.

So on Sunday morning I woke up and told hubs, "I think I'm going to paint my office today. Do you think I could do it by myself?"

Hubs, being the gentleman that he is (and probably fearing for my safety and his sanity), said, "Maybe. But why don't we tackle it together?" So we did. Finally. Here's the two-day journey in snapshot form.

The Before: 

Tan walls. Dark curtains. I think I was creating a literal writer's cave because with only one window, I definitely wasn't doing anything to help spread light around.

Unloading 600 books is super fun. My hallways looked like a used bookstore warehouse. This is about 25% of what I unloaded off the shelves.

After an hour of working on the ceiling, I was beginning to question why I'd taken this on. 

Why did I bring this upon myself again? And why did the builder think it was fun to do angles and rounded edges on these ceilings?

Eight hours later. We were exhausted and thought we were done. (Little did we know that when we woke up Monday morning, the bright daylight would bring us a gift--the ceiling needed a second coat.)

This was our celebratory, "We're done!" pic Sunday night. But Monday we ended up having another 4 hours of work ahead of us, lol.

BUT when we finished, this is what I ended up with. :)

The After:

My Day Designer looks like it was born to be there. :)

The pic makes the wall look a little green here but it's a pale grayish blue.

The color is called Sleepy Blue (by Sherwin Williams). Hopefully, that doesn't mean I'll be sleeping in my office. :) But it's very calming and it makes the whole room bigger and brighter. So in the end, the 12 hours of work was SO worth it. And now I'm kicking myself for waiting this long. What's 12 hours in the grand scheme of things? Plus, hubs and I got to hang out and laugh at each other as the two of us tried to figure out the best way to do all this. (Neither of us are handy in any way. We're the people who fall off ladders and step in paint trays.)

So though it was a minor thing of changing a wall color, it was a lesson for me. GET THE SOMEDAY STUFF OFF THE TO DO LIST. Break the thing down into tasks that seem manageable and start checking off the tasks. Often the dread of the entire thing keeps us from even attempting, but usually it's not as bad as we've built it up to be. And even if it is a pain, it all has a finish line. It'll be over and done soon enough, and then you'll get to enjoy the results for much, much longer. I just had to ask myself--is the end product going to be worth the work to get there? If the answer is yes, I need to go for it instead of procrastinating it so long it ends up on the Never list.

Do you have things on your Someday To Do list that you dread doing? What's keeping you from tackling it?