Showing off my inner nerd

Organization, it's a skill not a hobby!

It takes a lot of concentration to be organized. It also requires a lot of crap to be organized and I've got a lot of it.  I collect "stuff".  I can't help it, I'm no hoarder by any means but I can't seem to let go of certain things.  I cleaned out a lot of old bills that I seemed to hang on to and condense my files down to the bare minimum and that has left my desk pretty free of clutter and things that always needed filing.  I've been spending a lot of time cleaning out things, de-cluttering our lives.  Since adding a new family member this summer, I felt the need to simplify our lives and keep things organized so that life doesn't run over me.

Take for example our mornings, I have a sleepy head husband that sleeps long after we've left the house.  I have to have myself ready for work and 2 kids ready for school and leave the house at 7:30 am.  This is no short of a miracle and takes some planning.  I pick out all of Colin's clothes a week in advance and put pants, shirt, socks and under ware into each cubbie.  He knows to get a whole outfit out and can pretty much dress himself.  His lunch is always made the night before and I put his morning cup of milk on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator so he can help himself.  He's always so thirsty first thing in the morning.  This leave me plenty of time to get myself ready and tend to Ella.  The bouncy seat is God's little miracle for letting mommy's have some hands free time.

Ok now that we've all had a chance to gag a bit at my organization, let me show you something that will make you really throw up.

My binders:  I keep everyone's medical files in separate binders and they are categorized by year for easy findings when I need to fight the insurance company on something or remember if one of the kids has taken a particular medicine and what it was for.  Birthdays are in individual binders too and separated by year.  I love planning birthdays and keep a handy folder for invitations, party supply orders and other things related to the party.  And the master binder that started my love of binders, my Christmas binder.  It all started with a simple spreadsheet that I kept for gifts that I bought throughout the year.  I would tend to forget about things I bought earlier in the year so I started writing it all down.  Then I realized that I would forget what I bought the year before so I started my binder and have kept everything since 2004, receipts, magazine pages and my lovely spreadsheet.

Go ahead, throw up now!

It's gotten worse since I've discovered google documents, I can keep my spreadsheet online and update where ever I am.

The spreadsheet fetish also lives at the grocery store.  I have a list of "regular" items that we purchase at the grocery store and then they are categorized by the aisles at the store.  I can check off an item right away when we use the last of it.  Then when we go to the grocery store, I just start down the list and everything is in order of our "route" through the store.  Can we say OCD?? 

I can't help but try to stay organized, I'm a working mother of 2!