Patti O'Shea

Anyone who’s followed this blog knows that I’m organizationally challenged. I can tell stories, but I won’t since it’s kind of embarrassing to admit how scattered I can be. I’ve been pinning organizational tips on Pinterest and one of them has actually helped.

Before I go any farther, this is just me talking about a product I like. It’s not a paid endorsement and I bought this product myself.

Okay, so anyway, one of the areas I’m really anal about is the kitchen. I hate dishes in the sink or on the counter. In fact, it’s probably the only room where I’m insanely attentive to putting things back where they belong ASAP. But in Atlanta, I haven’t been able to eliminate paper piling up on the counter. It’s been making me nuts.

Then I saw a pin about some Martha Stewart stick on the inside of a cabinet door organizing things. Yeah, great description, I know. I’ll have a picture later. These Martha Stewart organizers were only available at Staples, but I decided to to check Amazon anyway, hoping for something similar.

I found it. Post-it Pockets!

I ordered immediately, had them 2 days later, and put them up. Instantly the little corner of clutter I hadn’t been able to get rid of was gone! Hurrah!

Here’s a picture of them on the inside of my cabinet. I got the variety pack, which gave me three sizes, one each. The biggest size is on the bottom and I found it to be the most convenient. I used the long narrow one above it for the coupon I wanted to take to the grocery store.

The third one is inside another cabinet and I didn’t take a picture of it. That one is more vertical than horizontal like the two pictured here.

I’m totally loving having the stuff off my counter, but still handy. The best part is that because they’re Post-it, they’ll come off the cabinet without causing problems.

It’s kind of silly to get all excited about something like this–I know it. but anything that I can successfully organize is a win. Since my move to Atlanta, so much seems to have escaped my grasp, but finally I tamed one thing. It might be small, but it’s a victory nonetheless and I’ll take anything I can get.

I’m calling this a win.

I’ve blogged before about being organizationally challenged. I like that phrase. I’ve also mentioned some of the different programs I’ve downloaded to try and overcome my issues. It’s kind of, sort of, maybe helped, but it’s also created a different set of “opportunities,” to use corporate-speak. I ran into one of these last week.

One of the ways I’ve tried to organize my computer folders is to color code them. There are free programs available that allow people to swap out the plain manila folder icon with a bunch of other choices, including colored folders. I am all about color, the bolder and brighter the better. But it also seemed to me that if I color-coded my writing folders, it would make life easier. So I did.

I gave each project I’m working on it’s own color, and because there are three different shades of each one, I’ve been able to mark each book in a trilogy with a different shade, but the same color. Um, I hope that sentence is clear. I also make the top level folder that all three books are filed under the color of book one. (If there were four shades of each color, that would have been so much cooler!)

This worked great until last week when I was scanning for my bright blue folder for the Work In Progress (WIP) to file a picture I wanted to refer to and couldn’t find any blue folders at all. I actually had to read the folder names.

It turned out the WIP was in orange in my pictures folder.

Oops! So I fixed the color on all the folders after I saved the picture. Today, it occurred to me that instead of having two separate folders for each book–one under pictures and one under writing–I could just have one. Revelation! Just because Microsoft created separate places for the different file types doesn’t mean I have to follow it. Um, yeah, duh, but it really never dawned on me until now.

This still won’t put all my electronic files in one place because I think the OneNote stuff needs to stay together, but it will cut down on some of the locations. Every little bit helps.

Once again, my lack of an organizational system is costing me time and stress. I carry steno pads with me in my tote bag. Yes, plural because I filled one notebook, but I haven’t finished writing those books. I haven’t even written proposals yet on some of those books. And until I am done with them, I’ll never know when I might need those notes. It’s actually a pretty good system because I’ll Post-it flag each idea with a different color and it’s easy to find what I’m looking for quickly.

If I remember to write it in my notebook.

I have a habit of sending think-out-loud emails to my writing friends. This is fine, too. If I remember to transfer the information to my notebook. Usually, though, it goes something like this–send emails with information on ideas. Get home, have deadline (either self-imposed or contracted) so I don’t take time to transfer notes. Decide I can do it later. Later comes, vaguely remember there was something, start searching email. And considering how disorganized my email is, this doesn’t always yield success.

It happened again yesterday. The character from one of my series ideas started coming in strongly and I wanted to reread my notes and work on that arc. Of course, the information wasn’t in my notebook.

I did a search of Gmail. The first attempt turned up too little. The second search term turned up too many.

I got lucky yesterday. I actually had the notes in my Outlook email. Filed even in folders that were labeled for easy finding. This is seldom the case. Usually, I don’t find them and get more frustrated.

The other thing that was awesome? Not only did I find my notes, but one of them had information on a character/setup that I’d completely forgotten. As soon as I reread it, I got a whoosh and I knew who her hero was and his personality snapped into focus. All in all, it was an awesome outcome.

And my email notes? Cut and pasted them into OneNote so that I won’t have to search email again. I still don’t have them in my notebook.