Organizing on Paper.

One thing I did last week was to get my brain really wrapped around the idea of organization. More specifically, organizing my days on a weekly planner. I have realized, about myself, that I like to play a lot. I like to have loads of silly fun. And that, sometimes, makes for a not-so organized girl. I've made lists before. Planned out my week in a sorta haphazardly way. But this time, I got VERY specific for each time slot of the day. I need that. This week is my first go at trying this out. We'll see how it goes. I sure know that not everything works for everybody when it comes to organizing & planning. I'm just trying to find out what works for me. (*I found the fill-in-the-blank heart weekly planner at The Dollar Tree a couple years ago.)

To begin, I used a pencil to get everything squeezed into each day. I knew the things I HAD to make time for every week: the girls school, prepping orders to be shipped, etc.

I knew the things I WANTED to make time for every week: making stuff, blogging, taking pictures, etc.

And, I knew the things that sometimes slack every week, but that I wanted to make a priority: making dinner EVERY night (instead of frozen items half the week), a thorough house cleaning once a week, etc.

And all those 'to-do's' got penciled in & erased & shifted around & penciled in again until I felt it was gonna work for me. And then I used a pen to make it a "reality". And it was sooooo interesting to see a typical week from that angle, to see a different viewpoint of the days events. I could see where I had little pockets of time open. I could see where "the weekly plan" was going to help keep me from making things for hours & hours when I really should be doing other stuff. When it was all written out, I felt SO GOOD & so confident & ready to tackle each week & get things done & check things off my list every day.

Here's one example: I could see that every Tuesday & Thursday, after dropping the girls at school, I wanted to make "going to the gym" a priority. It got written down on my weekly planner. Then, after working out, I realized that I have about an hour of time leftover until I had to pick the girls up from school. I usually head home to shower & tinker around for that hour. But instead, I'm going to NOT go home, but use my time wisely & go grocery shopping, drop packages off at the post office or run other errands. Grocery shopping is miserable for the girls, & unless my errands include anything with the word "toy" in them, they could care less. I actually save so much time running errands when the girls are NOT with me. And after I pick the girls up from I school, I can drive home, hop in the shower, beaming with productive pride that the errands have already been done & decide what's on the agenda next: Old Maid or Crazy 8's?

P.S. Sorry so late in the day with this post. I was busy following my weekly plan. HAHA!

I must add one final note. This may seem like a list of duties to be done at precise & exact times, but what I'm doing is giving myself some guidelines throughout the day & what will end up happening is I'll be creating MORE time for myself to do the things I really enjoy doing.