I was once very organized. As a child, I color-coded my Barbie dolls’ outfits, organized my stuffed animals according to kingdom AND phylum, and alphabetized my picture books. By age 10, I’d created an index to my diary that rivaled the OED.
This attention to detail—I realize there are those who would call it something else—continued all the way through my early professional life.
I mention all this not so you can have me committed, but rather as a piquant prelude to what happened next.
I got married and had children.
The maelstrom of family life for someone like me can be a tad disorienting. Adjustments must be made. The thing is, I may have overcorrected.
Now, I do know many extremely organized people with children. And they manage, through force of will or compliant relatives, to continue to lead impeccable lives.
I am not one of those people.
My family is certainly not helping matters. Comments like “I lost my backpack! Where’s my wallet? “Have you seen my underwear?” make up the soundtrack of my days.
But it must be said that my descent into entropy is not all their fault. My organizational aptitude seems to have gone the way of my short-term memory and natural hair color.
True, I have the de rigueur kitchen calendar with everyone’s activities carefully inscribed. You are not allowed in the suburbs without one. In my case, it’s a colorful, if often forgotten, emblem of our hectic lives.
Aside from the calendar, everything else could best be described as Gone To Hell. My filing system, if it can be called that, is pathetic. I try to keep things where I can stumble upon them, so I don’t forget about them. Others might call this clutter.
For example, right now, my daughter’s practice ACT score report lies underneath her practice PSAT scores. On my coffee table. I’m waiting for the practice SAT score report to come in, obviously, before I file them.
Next to the score reports lies a sheaf of orthodontist forms. These were upsetting me every time I sat down, so I tossed a pile of catalogs on top. On top of those are the extra holiday cards I never got around to sending.
Eventually, I will scrape it all off and deal with it. And then it will all be replaced by other stuff.
I surrender. The tidal wave of bills, permission slips, medical forms, old homework papers and artwork (so much artwork!) has swamped the levees of whatever organizational systems I once had and once loved.
But it’s a new year. The neatnik within longs to bloom again. When a Container Store catalog fell through the mail slot the other day, I took it as a sign. I clasped it to my heart and waltzed through the living room. I tripped over some sports equipment, but didn’t fall. I didn’t even feel the Harry Potter Legos figure pierce my instep!
I, too, can be terribly organized and enviably tidy, I chanted to the bathroom mirror.
I swept a pile of overdue library books off a chair and sat down to study the catalog.
Just then, the front door flew open and my children spilled in. One had hockey, one had basketball, the other, play practice. In the next 45 minutes. We ran out the door.
I should have known it wasn’t a good time to start getting organized. If only I’d consulted the kitchen calendar.
