Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

Quickie organizing post - ever have an inspiration in the morning that you then forgot when you got home from work? I'm discovering the amazing effectiveness of simply having a dry-erase pen stuck in among my other toiletries in the bathroom. Whatever I'm thinking of in the early morning (these days, it's usually a reminder to take a dremel tool to my mouthguard, which needs a lot of fixing) - anyway, I write it on the bathroom mirror with the dry erase pen, and then forget all about it.

Then I come home, get the reminder, do the task, and wipe off the marker. It's amazing.

For something completely different: Sherlock fans who drink tea and have the expensive Adagio sampler with the 12 3-ounce tins: hold on to those tins; they just became collectors items. Adagio doesn't make sets like that anymore.

For fannish knitters who drink tea: Adagio now sells a reasonably priced set of 6 1-ounce sampler tins of tea that make GREAT stitch marker holders...

And for the third completely random thing - what can you make in a lamb cake mold aside from a cake?

This week has been an exercise in "don't plan." I've got nothing to report about doing episodes of The Walk, days I've picked up items, etc.

I need to learn to deal with reality intrusions without feeling that I've somehow deliberately blown off my chores.

On the other hand, I've started slicing my sprints into 3 goals: the top priority for the sprint (red), the longer-term medium priority job (orange), and the "this week I must" small task (blue), and despite snow, cable outages, and other kerfluffles, I have accomplished all of them.

1) RED: finish and deliver essay. Done 2 days ahead of deadline due to snow day.

2) ORANGE: resume redo. I'd renewed an excellent book twice from the library and just gave up and ordered my own copy. This one I'm rereading with a highlighter and post-it tabs.

3) BLUE: I'm holding to the sprint idea but the plan of tracking it along the side of my refrigerator, not so much. So I created Day Timer pages for each task, listing definition of done, materials needed, sub tasks, etc. and put it in my calendar. I also write weekly "to dos" to myself and at the top of the page are now red, orange, and blue highlighter stripes so I know what most to focus on.

I also added a list for very short-term jobs, the kind of thing that would only take a couple of hours to do with materials on hand, so that the next time reality intrudes, I'll have something that I can cross off a list and feel better about.

And speaking of feeling better, on a different-colored page in among the sprint pages is the You Done Good page, where I write down what innovation or chore I've done to be proud of. I didn't do that last year and that was a HUGE mistake!

And finally, speaking of innovations to be proud of, the idea of putting the month's bills in an envelope with what you paid when written on the front has proven to have another excellent benefit -- when my bank statement came in and I was all "What is that massive amount of money I don't remember paying" on it, I could pull the previous month's envelope and go "Oh. That's what that was" just by looking at the list of numbers. Such a simple little thing - a wire file basket with letter-sized envelopes with notes on the front, but it's proving to have so many benefits!

This is what happens when I get the slightest encouragement and I'm hiding from the essay due next week; I keep posting. Also, meet the new organizing tag. I'm not going to go back and retro-tag stuff, but then, the Sunday 7 and Resolution posts are about how I'm cleaning up and planning my life. The Organizing tag is about how I'm going to keep my life orderly so - in the glorious phrasing of a now unfortunately defunct comm - "I can spend less time picking up and more time watching Doctor Who."

Today, two tips that have really helped me out.

1) If it's not to hand, I won't use it. M finds my insistence on having wetwipes around bemusing; what's so bad about picking up a bottle in one hand and a rag in the other? Going and finding the bottle and the rag, mostly. So I went out and, in a first world solution, bought 3 sets of striped washcloths: blue for the bathroom, khaki for the kitchen, and black for the cleaning bucket.

Wow, that was some weird coding to type.

Anyway, the black striped ones live in the cleaning bucket, but the blue and khaki ones soak in a watertight container in their respective rooms so that if there's a quickie mess, I can just grab and mop it up fast and easy, or if it's simply time for the weekly wipedown, boom, done.

The non-first-world version would be to go to a thrift store, buy a blanket or sheet, and rip it up and write the room name on it in indelible pen. Which leads me to:

2) Indelible pens (hereinafter known as 'sharpies' because Americans casually use brand names and it's faster to type) - sharpies have found an unexpected use in helping me keep my clothes organized.

I have 1 pair of blue jeans that stretches out as I wear them to the point of practically falling off; I call them the "clinic pants" because I use that malfunction as a feature by wearing flannel pj pants underneath for warmth during shifts. But the clinic pants look a lot like my well-fitting jeans, to the point that I had to really compare the two when I specifically wanted one and not the other.

... until I wrote "CP" on the inside of the left front pocket with a sharpie. You know, that cheap white cotton that's right next to your skin? Excellent writing area, and it can't be seen from the front of the jeans.

I also have three near-identical pairs of black jeans. (I believe in Little Orphan Annie dressing. Find what works and buy a crapload of it.*) I say near-identical, because one faded in a strange way with streaks - not bad enough that I won't wear them casually, but not good enough to wear to work anymore.

Only being black jeans, the inside left pocket was black too.

Enter the silver sharpie. A long time ago when I was labelling fanzines on the spine I bought a rainbow pack of sharpies so that I could color-code the fandoms and write on the black GBC binding combs. The streaky jeans now have two silver slashes on the inside of the pocket.

I still have to take a quick glance at the pocket, but that's a lot faster than pulling the whole thing off the hanger to check it out.



*I can't find a link right now, but there's a cartoon of Little Orphan Annie wondering why people think she never changed clothes while she hangs up an endless line of identical dresses to dry. I've also heard this called "mad scientist dressing."

Tomorrow I'm going to be mailining Sherlock. And on Monday I can finally go back on tumblr again; I've been avoiding even the Night Vale-specific ones for fear of spoilers.

In my personal life, the agile/kanban thing is working REALLY well. Oh, I don't think I go a week without rejuggling what the next "sprint" will be, BUT I'm noticing some really great benefits:

1) This is fabulous for focus. Instead of thoughts of racing "you should x, you should y, you should z" I can tell myself "I should work on THIS sprint this week and then I can think about x, and then I'll think about y..."

2) By specifically stating "what will success look like/what do I need to achieve it" I've been able to clearly define what I need to do and how I need to go about it. For instance, instead of "clean up Christmas stuff" it was "I want to clean up the Christmas stuff so that everything is sorted together, easily accessible, and safe from cats. That would require... bins? Bins would work, but you don't consider them accessible. How else could they be sorted? Oh, look, see that unused barrister bookshelf? Is that long enough to hold rolls of paper? Yes? Where could it be put up?

... and so instead of having my Christmas stuff strewn all over a couple of floors, it was tidy, organized, and accessible with materials on hand in about 90 minutes.

3) Early success has made me determined to keep up the winning streak. This means that this week's sprint was a task I've been putting off and putting off and putting off, but yet I could still convince myself "look, it's just one week. One week and then it's all over and done. That's not so bad." And indeed, the job is done.

4) There's a built-in reward system for finishing the task early. Rather than look around for the next thing I "have" to do, I am using the rest of this week's sprint time to just relax. Read. Putter around online.


And the systems I'm bringing online are all combining to make some part of my life easier. Nicer. Less effort on my part. And that is REALLY encouraging that I can actually achieve my goal of reaching the point where I can focus most of my life energy on what I want to do, not what I have to clean up or clear out or organize.

If nothing else, I am getting a better balance in this young year. I've done a clinic shift and a Book Thing run and still had time to throw a party, attend a party, and get to this Sherlock shindig while still clearing up the clutter steadily, working on some professional goals, cleaning up my iTunes, creating my "if I'm hit by a bus" book, cleaning up my Christmas crap, and hanging shelves in the bathroom. Not a bad mix of activity and recreation in less than a fortnight!