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Getting Organized: The Easy Way to Put Your Life in Order Cut through confusion and take control of your life by Getting Organized. Work, family, exercise, errands, paperwork...more and more Americans have too much to do and too little time to do it in. This is the classic guide that has been helping people simplify and manage their daily lives. Now, with nearly one hundred pages of revised material, this updated edition applies the timeless principles of organization to today's changing lifestyles and technology. Learn how to:
A New York Times bestseller with over a half-million copies in print and translated into five languages, Getting Organized is America's- and possibly the world's -undisputed number-one organization guide. Chapter 1 More than once you may have felt that someone wasn't looking when your "life management" card was dealt out. You are intelligent, you are a likable person, but how can you explain the fact that you are always running late and, all too frequently, seem to be drowning in busywork? Although the following sad tales may not apply to you in all their particulars, there is probably something here that will cause you to grimace and sigh, "Oh God, it's me." | ||||||||
Lisa, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer in Far Hills, New Jersey, stumbles out of bed at 7:30 a.m., stomach churning in panic, because that important appointment is set for 8:30 and the alarm didn't go off. Lisa dashes out of the house disheveled because there was no time to dress and groom properly and because the blouse that goes with the tweed suit is missing as usual. Breakfast is coffee because Lisa has no time, naturally, for a real meal. But even under less harassed circumstances breakfast is a pain; who can ever find the eggs, which are invariably hidden at the back of the refrigerator? And pulling the only decent frying pan out from under the pile of pots in the cabinet hardly seems worth the trouble. As usual, Lisa misses the eight o'clock bus-which she generally does about half the time-stumbles onto the next one ten minutes later, and, in her disheveled state, spends her fifteenminute ride to work attempting to riffle through her briefcase searching for the crucial document for her meeting. Home again. Cooking a meal seems unendurable when utensils are piled into every nook and cranny of the kitchen. So once again, Lisa opens a can of tuna or orders a pizza. Early evening might be a good time to get started on the income tax, but who knows what deductions to claim when the canceled checks have disappeared? At last, a warm, relaxing bath to soothe away the tensions of the day. But relaxation turns to rage with the realization that all the towels are in the laundry. And so to bed; with muscles taut, nerves jangling, and the sinking feeling that the whole thing is going to happen all over again tomorrow. Bill Marshall is in advertising. You can count on late nights for Bill twice or three times a week. He frequently has to take clients out for drinks or dinner. His wife, Diane, an office manager for an import-export firm, is generally able to make it home to relieve the babysitter by around 5:30. For Diane it's all go, go, go as soon as she walks in the door. She generally comes home to find beds unmade, homework not yet done, and the children clamoring for dinner. While screaming at the children to finish their homework, she's trying to get the dinner fixings together. While the stew is cooking, she's running up to make the beds and screaming for the children to bring the laundry for folding. Finally, Diane is able to grab the kids and sit them down for stew at 7:00 p.m. Next comes another screaming session to get them undressed and into the bath, while she does the dishes. At which point, Bill walks in. He's had a hard day. He goes first to his room and calls out, "Honey, the bed isn't made!" Then he comes back, pours out some white wine, sits down, and says, "Hi, sweetie. How was your day?" Not a good question. Can this family be helped? Pam and Steve Michaels faced a daunting, and unexpected, shift in their family life when their six-year-old twins, Rebecca and Daniel, were given a computer for Christmas by Grandpa. Pam said, "We never thought we would become one of those families that iMac would divide. Because Steve and I both have busy careers, we have always made time to take the kids on nature hikes, to play with them, and, above all, to read to them- real books. "Yet we are beginning to see our children choose their headsets and modems over spending time together as a family." My clients, and more and more families, are facing the daunting task of competing with multibillion-dollar tech corporations for their children's time and attention. More than a sociological issue, this tech absorption plays havoc with the organizational needs of family life. If these stories apply to you at all, you must wonder what causes your wheels to spin in this way. The answer is complex, but there is nothing in your stars or your nature that dooms you to live out your days chafed and affronted on every side by such indignities. On the contrary, your innate capacity to organize is powerful indeed, but for a variety of complex reasons that instinctive capability was short-circuited. The causes are primarily psychological, stemming from childhood-not to mention the constant challenge of coping with the mechanics of a highly sophisticated, complex world that our grandparents never knew. You are capable, however, of setting your own life in order. Your inner drives toward order and clarity are much more powerful than the forces of chaos. Consider, for example, a major traffic circle and the experience of crossing it on foot or in a car. In your intrepid passage from one side to the other, whether as a pedestrian or a driver, you are spontaneously organizing a good deal of complex information: the velocity of the cars, their different angles of approach, their interrelationships with one another and with you. Managing this intricate situation signifies that you are highly successful at processing an assortment of information into a pattern that makes sense, the basic definition of organization.
Copyright © 1978, 1991, 2006 by Stephanie Winston About the Author Is the Country's preeminent organizer. She was honored by the National Associated of Professional Organizers as the founder of professional organizing. More by Stephanie Winston |
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