I have a lot of real-life, long-term friends and family members who read this blog, and they’ll probably laugh when they hear this. My coworker and I were discussing the end-of-the-year stuff for school, and I was trying to get my head around what my job will be this time of year. My day-to-day job is pretty much the same, but I have many huge projects throughout the year, and no two projects are alike. Every couple of months, I like to meet with members of my “team” (the group of two administrators and two staff, one of whom is me, whose jobs kind of overlap in what our duties are) and find out what is coming up for me. I really like to be able to budget my time and know what is coming up, especially since I’ve never actually worked through this time period at work before. Everything is new and very rushed this time of year. I met with my administrator yesterday and wanted to meet with my counterpart staff member today to find out what kinds of things I needed to have on the horizon for the next couple months.
As we’re looking over the list of things I had written down yesterday, she shook her head and laughed. I looked up from my list and asked her what she was laughing about. “You’re so organized! It’s just amazing,” she said.
I looked down at my list, which was handwritten and had tons of notes in the margins and all around my main list (notes from her and others that I had already consulted about portions of the list that were in addition to what my administrator had discussed with me yesterday). It was NOT organized in the least. I looked around at my desk and laughed. “How can you look at this list and my desk and say that?” I asked.
She just shook her head again and said, “You are!”
For the record, I do NOT consider myself an organized person. One look around my living room will tell you this. After she left and my administrator came back for her meeting, I hijacked her time to go over portions of the list that I needed more of her input on. As I was leaving, I laughed and told her what my counterpart had said about my organizational skills.
“But you are, Jessica! I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t so organized. I am SO GLAD you’re organized out there, because it helps me be more organized,” my administrator said earnestly.
I just laughed again and said, “Don’t tell my husband that, or he’ll expected me to be organized at home. Or he’ll just laugh at you guys!”
Neal and I talked about it over dinner tonight, and he agreed that at work I am definitely an organized person. At home, neither one of us really are, although I do sometimes crave more order in our house. The past several months I’ve been on a “if we aren’t using it regularly, we don’t need it” kick, and I’ve been sorting things to give away. I am just feeling the need to declutter my life for some reason, partially because we are planning to move at the end of July again (to where? We don’t know yet.) and I don’t want to pack up things we’ve had for three years and haven’t really used all that much. Away went clothes and shoes and lamps and, well, just stuff.
I don’t know what’s causing this phase at home, but maybe it will lead us both into being more organized there, too. I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot, right?
With this baby on the way, I don’t know what kind of organizational example I should set. Should I step up my game or should be less anal about how I have my things? Things like books and cds I have in perfect alphabetical order by author and artist, but other stuff…not so much (usually everything else is on the floor at the foot of my book and CD shelves). I worry I am going to freak if the kid touches my organized stuff, though. Crystal is completely disorganized with the things I am organized with. CDs I’ve given her are God knows where now, but nowhere on any property owned by us. Other stuff, though, she is just as anal as I am. It balances out…almost.
Good luck to you and Neal moving again. I know how you feel about that. I am sure we will be moving out of our one-bedroom apartment at some point before November comes…and then we’ll have to reorganize everything again. I hate moving.
Oh, our books are in complete order (by author), but our CDs aren’t so much right now. (Although it’s my hope to one day get them all in alpha order by singer or group, but I just haven’t had the gumption to get them all together and all sorted. We kind of both had fairly large CD collections when we got married.) I think my vinyl is in alpha order, though, so I should be good there. Our DVDs are all in alpha order as well, but…our office isn’t quite there yet. I plan to have our files in some semblance of order soon (we have the folders finally!) It’s just the “stuff” that isn’t ordered. New bills, etc. I need a better system for this stuff, I think.