Organizing the World - One Piece of Crap at a Time

I know I'm not alone when I say I like organization. I'm fairly sure I am alone when I say I want every ioda of my life to be organized. I want my clothing categorized by season and color. I want everything in my pantry, all the dvds, spice cabinet and under the sink organized alphabetically. I want all of the storage items in my garage organized by purpose. I want my makeup organized by feature (IE: eyes, skin, lips). I even want my dirty laundry to be organized by person and article. Is it certifiably insane? No. Leaning on the side of OCD? Possibly. Would it make my life so much easier? Definately? Is it likely I will ever acheive all of this? Certainly not. But I'll try, damn it. I'm revamping my work book. When I was pregnant with (or possibly shortly after his birth) my first child I constructed a home management binder that kept my life organized. Everything from scheduled daily, weekly, and monthly chores; recipes; important numbers; etc. It kept my life running smoothly. After the birth of my second child I had less time to devote towards maintaining a perfect home with counted food calories and nutrients for each family member. I didn't abandon my organization completely, but instead wrote down a list of daily to-dos for myself in a composition book - my work book. Now that baby number three is here (all three babies in 2 years) my life is a chaotic disaster, but I take solace in knowing that even though I barely have time to shower, can't pee without a bystander in the bathroom asking for M&Ms, and am constantly cleaning stuff off of, well, stuff... I still have my daily to-dos and it's my job as a good mother and wife to make sure it all gets done. Although I love the simplicity of tasks on lined paper that I can cross off when I finish them, I think I may feel better about my world if I had a defined day-to-day docket of sorts. I found some great ideas on the internet and now my mind is in a fury trying to add one more to-do to my list for today (create dtd docket) which will be far more time consuming than I want it to be. I'll have my normal list of things to do for the day but I will also have 3 MUST HAVES that must be completed every day. 1 will focus on ME. I haven't done that often enough in the past three years and it's killed an important part of me (time for a resurrection!) 2 will be one mandatory part of maintaining my home. 3 will be focused on the relationships that are most important in my life (IE: call mom, family outing, date night with the hubby) I will also have the days meal plan written out on my dtd-d as well as part of a health regime for myself. Don't worry, it won't include exercise. I get enough of that. Hopefully I can find some friends to motivate to join my task. It makes me so angry to know that somewhere out there, there is someone who is sitting on the couch watching tv while her husband works and the kids are crying while the house is a mess. What's the point of staying home if you are worthless in the home? Take care of your kids, provide a positive learning environment, clean (NO ONE likes this but it must be done), and cook. If you can't do all of those things all day, every day then you shouldn't be at home. You should be employed somewhere trying to benefit your family. When I tell people I'm a stay at home mom I generally get a flicker of disgust before some shmoozed comment. It's people like the aforementioned that give us a bad image. I work my tail off for my husband and my kids. I don't get sick days. Ever.... Ever.

Now that I'm off of my tangent, this organization helps me to keep pace with the workload of life and I think with a little more definition, my daily outline can help me de-stress. I'll post a final product when I get it finished... after I finish putting away 3 more loads of laundry, do a load of dishes, and clean the master bathroom. I need to start dinner soon too....