Yesterday morning I found myself running around my flat pulling together my yoga kit from a pile of similarly coloured clean but yet to be sorted clothes and hunting high and low for my house keys, Oyster card and purse, getting increasingly stressed (oh the irony) that I was going to arrive late for yoga and not be allowed into class, remembering to grab a sorry it’s late birthday card on the way out of the door.
I eventually found the Oyster card in a coat pocket and the house keys and purse in the canvas bag I’d taken to the local shop the previous evening to pick up some food for dinner because, as usual, there was nothing in the fridge and when I say nothing, I really mean nothing, well bar half a jar of tahini and one tomato. Not exactly the makings of a delicious dinner. I’d booked the yoga class the night before so it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision to go or anything. And it’s not the first time a similar scenario has unfolded.
To be honest I’ve always had a tendency to be a bit last minute. As a teenager I frequently left homework so late I could often be founding finishing off essays at lunchtime ahead of the class they were due in. It was the same story at university. I was the one at the copy shop getting my dissertation bound half an hour before the deadline.
My first job out of university was as an editorial assistant on a magazine. Basically my job was to organise, well, everything, including the editor. Turns out I’m perfectly capable of organsing other people. More recently as an editor myself I had an editorial assistant to organise my life which worked well, although the loss of control took a bit of getting used to.
Having left office life and, no longer having anyone to organise me, things have gotten a little out of control. I know life would be less stressful if I just put a few simple systems in place and I’ve set this weekend aside to make a start. I’ve even bought highlighters (see above). If nothing else my to do lists are going to look pretty! So here it is, my 10 point get organised plan. It’s written down. I’ve shared it with you. I will do this!
10 Point Get Miranda Organised Plan
Can anyone else relate? Any advice for getting my life under control? Have I missed something crucial? How do you keep your receipts organised and, more importantly, spotted any lovely subdivided folders for receipt storage?! What are your store cupboard essentials so you can always put together a meal? Is eBay still the best place to sell clothes? And what about everything else such as books, CDs, DVDs and so on? Any great apps for keeping on top of birthdays and appointments? Oh and where should I keep all my passwords? I had them written down in a diary, which I lost. Oh dear… Do share!
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Haha! As I read this on my iphone a reminder has popped up to tell me to remember my running stuff for later. No bag packed the night before for me!
Haha! Erm, how do you set an iPhone reminder?
I had exactly that purge this weekend. I’ve been meaning to sort out my clothes since my wedding over a year ago, I have 3 wardrobes and 2 chests of drawers bursting with stuff and yet all of the clothes I actually wear live on the guest bed. I’m always running late for yoga cos I can never find the bits I want to wear.
A fresh influx of new maternity clothes has rendered the situation untenable. So the bank holiday weekend aided by the rain and our broadband being down saw me go through every last item and decide whether to bin/recycling bin/car boot/eBay/give to Mum/keep. It was hard to let go of some items, ones I’ve not worn for over a year but I still love. Garments I no longer wear but whose fabric and pattern is beautiful I’ve kept in my sewing project box. With our household head count about to swell by 50% I had to be brutal. I’ve freed up a whole wardrobe and two drawers, and all the clothes I regularly wear now live IN the wardrobe and drawers in my bedroom which is an exciting novelty.
You don’t need me to tell you how cleansing it’s been. I keep gazing at my clothes all hanging facing the same way. And I got to the gym on time last night! The only issue now is the rest of the house now seems even more chaotic by comparison.
I’ll be keeping an eye on these comments to see what great suggestions people have for remembering birthdays that are more effective than my current method which is: see its someone’s birthday that day on Facebook, rush out and buy a card to arrive a day late. Lame.
I can’t wait until my my wardrobe is in a similarly organised state Philippa! I find it similarly difficult to get rid of certain items, but it’s a great idea to keep prettily patterned items for future projects. I really hope someone suggests a system for getting birthday cards out on time too!
Hi Miranda, I had a similar purge a few weeks ago to tackle my ‘floordrobe’ and it’s so nice to see everything there ready to wear all hanging up neatly 🙂 Well worth it! Just the rest of the house to tackle now!
In regard to birthdays my mum has this system whereby she has everyone’s birthdays written on the calendar and at the beginning of that month she goes out and buys all the cards she needs for that month, writes them, addresses and stamps them and then puts them in a box divided up into the four weeks of the month depending on which week they need to be sent, then just takes out that weeks cards each Monday and puts them in the post on her way to work. Obviously there’s not always a card to send every week but it seems to work quite well. I wish I was that organised! Oh and all the addresses are in a battered old address book she’s had for years bless her! X
I am loving your mum’s birthday system Kayleigh. Also that it means I will have to invest in a box or sub-divided folder. Even her old address book system is better than mine which involves scrolling though old text messages, flipping through old diaries, or the giveaway, a last minute panic email or text asking, “What’s your address?!” X
Being a PA you’d think my life would be one of organisational heaven…..it’s not!! Apparently I am much better at organising other people than myself!
This has lead to far too many late birthday cards recently.
I did have a gorgeous purple filofax & then I didn’t get the refil this year…oops!
At the moment I am trying to use my phone for all reminders as I nearly always have my phone with me. I am using my google calendar (yup, I’m an android gal!) along with the in-built tasks function. I am yet to update with every birthday, but it is helping me to remember what I need to get done when I get home after work & my brain is bored or organising!
But any other tips would be helpful
As for a house of chaos – that is ours all the time at the mo. Working, collaborating on a blog & making a fabric flower bouquet for my friend mean that I have no time to breath let alone organise the house! Oops!
(not complaining though, am secretly enjoying making all those fabric flowers again! Shhhh!! heehee)
xxx
Why is it that it’s much easier to organise other people’s life than your own?! I should definitely use my phone’s organisational capabilities better Rebecca but I can’t quite let go of having a paper diary. Wow, it sounds like you have a lot on right now, not surprising that it’s hard to keep your home organised too!
Haha I love this post! I am completely a night before packer… mainly due to that stressed feeling of being late to a gym class -I HATE it! (or the worst one I did…arriving with just one trainer!?- what do you even do?? Everything goes in bags by the door the night before and explains why me and tesco.com were up late together at 2am… I’d packed up a picnic, made hummous, run out of tahini (could have used yours Miranda) and gone for my shopping list before I forget what we’ve run out of (and then maybe overslept a little)
Storage boxes are certainly my friend… I know I don’t deal with things thoroughly strait away so having a nice filing system would be nice but I know I wont put things in there for months so I have loads of crates and boxes and tins so I can at least throw things in the right direction and I know roughly where there’ll be. ‘Down stairs baby stuff’ all goes in big apple crates under the kitchen table, all organisational annoying papers go in pantone tins and then I can sort properly another time. I love those because they’re naturally colour coded. Red is for important things – by that I incude tickets, prescriptions, passport forms etc- the things you NEVER know where you put them when you need them even though they’ve been getting in your way all year. My blue one is for adhesives because blue rhymes with glue. It works for me! I have a big wooden blanket box I also keep old clothes to do sewing projects in, like Philippa suggested – love making things that have a bit of a story. I also do the beginning of the month thing for birthdays and then leave them ready in a tray in the hall – if your birthday is the beginning of the month you may get a slightly late card – but it works for 28th types really well…!
Having said that I think I overfiled away a while ago and my Chatsworth Country Fair tickets may have been organised into the paper recycling… no Mary Berry for us this weekend 🙁
Haha, if it wasn’t for the fact that I mostly do yoga I would definitely have done the turning up with one trainer thing, as it is I’ve turned up without key pieces of kit and had to borrow tops and bottoms from lost property, because, hey if I got up at 6am I’m damn well gonna do a class! Your Pantone box system is genius. Oh no, how gutting that you won’t get to hang out with Mary Berry this weekend. I’m yet to catch up on last night’s GBBO (and I just saw a spoiler of FB, grrr) but am loving this series.
I’m not the most organised person ever, but I’d be lost without the online supermarket shop! I did ours at 8pm last night & it arrived at 11am this morning. I use Ocado and I buy all my toiletries, birthday cards, baby stuff and often gifts from there too. Their ranges are amazing! I’ve also subscribed to a smart pass so I pay for delivery once a year and get as many deliveries as I like at no cost. Cor, you’d think I work in marketing for Ocado – I promise I don’t! Other than that, with an 11mth old baby and just about to go back to work, I’m the world’s least organised person….
I’ve never done an online supermarket shop Sophie, I’m not sure why really, lots of my friends are fans and as I don’t have a car it would save lugging heavy bags around East London. Good tip on the smart pass too, thank you!
We’ve just had a CD, DVD and game cull and sold them on Music Magpie. You don’t get much per item but it’s VERY easy using their iPhone app and it’s quite fun seeing the price you get for certain things (best CD was a Duran Duran one which made my husband v happy!). You can also sell clothes I think. Loving Kayleigh’s mum’s birthday system!! I’m terrible with forgetting where I’ve put my keys etc. Always have been! It’s drives my husband mad. I think I need to invest in a pretty dish for near the front door…
I think Rock My Style’s Adam has used Music Magpie too, will definitely give it a whirl. I think I need some sort of dish near the front door too, Sarah, or perhaps a shelf, or some hooks or something…
LOLs at cupboard of doom!
We have a few drawers round the place that have random stuff in them! I am an Event Manager so organising and planning is my thing – I sometimes organise people too much with the old social life but heh we’ll never see each other if we don’t make plans these days as everyone is so busy!
I have odd places that paperwork builds up before it makes the transition to my dusty 80s filing case under my bed. Underneath Chanel (had to get that in) gift box with nail varnishes / in between sewing box and jewellery box on the dresser / in wooden post box in the hall…. My husbands filing is everywhere from the fruit bowl to the pantry to the drawer to just bits of paper strewn about the flat.
I am trying to get us into a routine of doing a weekly shop and planning meals rather than pick things up on a day to day basis. It means I can plan lovely recipes from Hemsley Hemsley book (thanks for the recommendation Charlotte) and also saves us money! This totally depends how busy we are at the weekends though!
Totally agree Lynn, someone in every friendship group has to be the organised one or months would go by without you catching up. I think a weekly shop is definitely the way to go and I do love having my fridge full of lots of tasty things to eat!
Trying to be more organised is such a good excuse to just buy more pretty boxes (to keep junk in), pretty lever arches (to hide boring not-dealt-with paperwork), stationery (because I need a nice new pen to write my labels/in my notebook), labels (to put on pretty boxes) and notebooks (to make lists and to justify the purchase of a new pen)….
Woops…I am SO guilty of all the above!
Haha, I’m with you Victoria there is nothing I love more investing in new stationery! I’ve got to pop into town later and thinking I might have to swing by Selfridges, Paperchase and perhaps even the Liberty stationery hall…
Oooh now you’ve mentioned dealing with the front door junk that’s reminded me! I meant to say, we have a file organiser screwed to the wall (it was a rustic chicken wire one from homesense though – don’t worry, my hall doesn’t look like an office haha!) and a paper shredder under our console unit in the hall. Any post that comes in is opened and anything with our address on or that we don’t need gets shredded straight away, anything important gets split into one of 3 sections in the file holder; my stuff to file away, my fiancés stuff to file away and the last one for things we need to action, such as hospital appointments or bills. Then the envelope goes into the wicker recycling basket on top of our fridge! Try it, it’s worked really well for us. Now that I’ve written that I’m thinking maybe I am more organised than I give myself credit for! I just need to be motivated enough to actually get and file away all the paperwork in my section now! Haha! Xx
My random tips, in no order whatsoever (irony, much?!)…
1. Only handle post once. Use whatever system works for you, but do it straight away.
2. To decide which clothes to keep, hang all your hangers the same direction. When you year them, put them back the other way. After your own choice of time has elapsed (a year?), anything still facing the original way should go.
3. I have a ring binder full of pollywollies which I use to organise the fun side of life. Any tickets, holiday confirmations, invitations, etc go in a wallet, then just put in relevant order in file, soonest first. That way, I never have to search behind fridge magnets/my bag/my bedside drawer to find directions or tickets or whatever.
4. This is boring, but kind of important. When you next back up your photos to a hard drive, also scan and save a copy of your important documents. Passport, birth and weddings certificates, pension policies, bank and saving accounts, important insurance policies, all that stuff. If god forbid you have a fire, you’ll need it all somewhere off your property.
Im going now. Im embarrassed, just realised I’ve turned into my mother.
All your tips make perfect sense, but the best thing I take from your comment is pollywollies!!!! Love it! This is what I’m calling plastic wallets from now on! 🙂