March Organisation Challenge: The Results!!

Hi guys!

I'm finally getting around to showing you the 'After' of my March Organisation Challenge!

I managed to finish the challenge on the last day of the month, and I'm really proud of myself because I thought it would take me until the first few days of April! 

Since then I've managed to keep my room quite tidy and I love how organised it is compared to how it used to be!

I haven't gone with the minimalist approach, because I don't think I could ever be one! I love my 'stuff', and I do try to get rid of the things I don't need, but I think most of what I have I need, and the rest of it has sentimental value!

So my room might look like it has a lot of stuff in it, but now the majority of those things are organised, and I just love it!

The things that still need sorting I'm in the process of doing, I have a list in my Filofax which I implement into my weekly to-dos, so I hope my long-term projects in my room will be finished soon!

I decided to make a video because I wanted to show you more than photos can do! Please enjoy :)

Ultimate Organisation Project: Weeks 2 and 3!

Hullo!

This post is about the 2 weeks together, as I have had a very busy week and wasn't able to post about last week separately! On Thursday I had my telephone interview for my new uni course, with only a couple of days to prepare for it, on Wednesday we got our new cat (more on her soon!!), and I've been babysitting a lot this week, as well as volunteering at my local museum on Tuesday and Wednesday! :D

But I have tried to do a lot in my bedroom for my challenge weeks 2 and 3!

This is how my bedroom tidying routine is starting to form:
On Mondays I try to tidy my room thoroughly, because I think it makes a good start to the new week! This is something I started to do early this year, and I definitely will be continuing in the future. If I have had a lazy weekend, my room is a mess, so if I don't tidy on Monday, it will be a bombsite by the end of the week! Tuesdays and Wednesdays I volunteer in my museum, so I can't do much on those days, but then I just have to try to keep my room tidy the rest of the week, and use my free time to do some of my to-dos, even while I'm being lazy in front of the tv- such as sorting through my old uni homework!

During Week 2 I didn't do much, I was quite lazy! I did tidy my room on Monday, and I sorted lots of my craft (Filofax stuff, stationery, scrapbooking stuff!), but that's fun for me, so it kind of doesn't count ;b I also tidied my desk area, clearing the desk and the floor, which made the room look so much better, and I found some cool stuff I didn't realise was under there!!

During Week 3, I have done LOADS!!! It helped that on Tuesday we had a home visit by the cat sanctuary to make sure we were ok to adopt our new cat, so I spent lots of Monday tidying and sorting in my room! I organised my craft stuff again (fun for me!! :D) and spent the evening preparing my room for the home visit- I think it looked good! On Tuesday, the cat sanctuary people came around... and didn't even look in my room!!! Oh well, it was tidy, which is good! I didn't do much on Tuesday and Wednesday, because I was volunteering at the museum, babysitting and picking up our new cat! On Thursday I had planned to finish sorting, cleaning and organising my desk area, but I had to have the telephone interview for my new uni course. I thought it didn't go very well, so I felt very deflated and distracted all afternoon, so I felt like I couldn't do any tidying, and in the evening I played Sims, which is what I do when I feel like I have to get out of my own head and be distracted from my life. On Friday I felt better, so I made an effort to do my desk area, which is what I had planned to do on Thursday. I organised my desk, and I really like the way I have it set out now. I cleaned as much as I can, but I will need to do it again properly when I have sorted the folders I've got on the shelf above my desk. Then I moved on to my bookcase next to my desk, but I didn't manage to finish that because I had an impromptu babysitting evening! And today my mum came up to my room at about 4pm saying that we would sort out my paperwork, which I had piled up yesterday on my desk- I thought it would take 20 mins, but we went through more loads more than I had planned, including the perpetual pile of receipts etc on the floor by my chest of drawers, and my mum also made me sort out all the little bitty things (random stuff that I don't know what to do with!) that had been sitting by the side of my bed in shoe boxes for months! Suddenly, it was 6:30 and we had done loads!! Thank you mummy!!!

So I feel like I've made so much progress this week! And to celebrate, I'm going to film a video of my newly organised craft area, which I will show you tomorrow!! :D

Ultimate Organisation Project: Planning tools for this challenge!

Hi guys!

This is a quick update about my March Organisation Challenge! I aim to blitz my room by the end of March, so that it stops looking like this! I am making progress, but you don't get to see photos yet!

Today I am going to tell you about the tools I'm using to plan my Challenge. It's a fairly simple system:

1) My Plannerisms Planner

I'm using the fantastic month-grid of March for planning when to do certain areas of my room. I love how big the blocks are! I use the column on the left to write what the aim for each week will be, and on Sundays I write down the blog posts in this series (today's is late, woops!)
I haven't finished writing in the blocks for the rest of the month, I will do this as I go along.

Every day I transfer the task for that day into my planner. I don't write a long list of to-dos etc into my daily spaces in my planner, I just use the lists I have made in my A5 Malden!

2) My A5 Purple Malden

I'm in the process of setting this Filofax up as a binder for all of my lists, notes, etc etc that I don't need with me every day in my normal planner. Most importantly, it's the home for my projects. My bedroom organisation challenge is my main project for March, so I've set up its own temporary section in my filo, although I will be setting up a permanent section on my room (routines, where important things live, cleaning tips) when I've finished my challenge. Once I've done this big Spring-clean (which I guess my challenge boils down to!), my goal is to maintain the tidyness and cleanliness of my room every day, so I will have lists etc for that (maybe based on Flylady!)

So in the Challenge section of my filo, I have lists of tasks that need doing in my room for the organisational challenge, and to-dos that have needed doing for a while anyway, which I will get done this month!

Ultimate Organisation Project: My bedroom! Part 1

This is a scary post, and very difficult for me to write! I have a confession to make...     I have a VERY messy bedroom!!

Before I show you photos, let me give you my reasons (excuses) as to why it's this messy!

1) I have a LOT of stuff. I'm not a hoarder, I just have a lot of stuff that I need, or is useful and still functions well, or is sentimental to me. I can get rid of stuff when I need to, but I often don't feel the need to!

2) I am a nester. If I sit in one place (on my sofa, or in bed when the weather's cold), I have to have all the things I'll need (books, stationery, laptop etc etc) within an arm's reach of me. Therefore, my sofa and the surrounding area, or my lovely big bed, get a large amount of accumulated stuff on them.

3) I am a leaver. Comedian Jon Richardson argues that there are 2 types of people in the world: putters and leavers. I am definitely in the latter. In fact, my mum would call it 'dumping'- I just leave stuff where it is, or move it to somewhere else and leave it there. I don't sort things unless I have to, and I don't put things away unless I have my 'tidy brain' switched on.

4) I am very much an out-of-sight-out-of-mind type of person. Therefore, I have to leave things out, so that I can see them, and be reminded to deal with them! I said this to my mum once, and she said my dad is exactly like that- in fact, he would like floor to ceiling shelves around every room, and everything on show on them.

5) I don't like tidying. I don't like sorting or cleaning even more! So if I can get away with it, I won't do it! Even worse, I have a very high threshold for untidyness... my room can be really messy before I actually realise I should tidy it, and then it's usually only because my bedroom is becoming an assault course or a trip hazard!

So, these are the reasons why my room is very often messy, or even when it's tidy, why I can't finish sorting out my piles and boxes of STUFF.

Below are photos of my room this morning, after I haven't tidied it for at least 5 days. It's not normally so bad, but there are key spots that I haven't touched in ages.
I am hoping these photos will shame me into my goals of:

• Getting it sorted and cleaned thoroughly, once and for all
• Maintaining the tidiness and cleanliness level
• Changing my habits and making new habits to:
•  tidy as I go, and
• sort my stuff on a regular basis.

So this month of March, I am going to BLITZ my room, once and for all!! I need to do this ASAP, because at the moment I don't have a job, but I will hopefully get one soon, and then I won't have the time to do it!

I am going to be using my Plannerisms planner and my A5 purple Malden to plan this!

I will be turning this into a series throughout this month, showing you how I am using my Plannerisms planner and filofax, new methods and tips I think up, and of course, my 'After' photos!

Here are my 'Before' photos: please don't judge me!!

 My desk area. I don't sit here any more, and my desk has become a dumping ground. If you can believe it, this area has been tidied and sorted a lot recently, and is a lot better than it used to be!

Between my desk area and my wardrobe- washing bin, paperwork and stuff to sort etc, and my storage area behind my wardrobe, which quickly becomes messy!

Dressing area. Wardrobe drawers open, but they are difficult to shut because the wardrobe is about 80 years old and the doors are misaligned from the frames; however, it still makes it look untidy. My bin nearby (it doesn't have a permanent home), my chest of drawers with perfumes and make up on top (I sorted all this last week). This is actually the least messy part of my room... until:

This pile of papers and stuff on the floor. It's been there for a couple of months, because I just do NOT want to deal with it!!!

My bed. Unmade, messy, covered in stuff. This morning I had to search for receipt, so it's very bad today, but normally isn't much better! The boxes on the floor to the left are little bits and bobs that I have to sort out- and keep putting off doing, because I don't want to do it! 

Beside my bed. All of my teddies sit nicely on my window-sill, but my bed-side cabinet always has used glasses on it that need to be washed up, and other stuff that shouldn't be there.

Trousers left on the floor where I undressed last night, lip balm which fell off my bed, a bag of stuff to put away, magazines I've been meaning to read and get rid of.

My 'living room' area! Clean laundry to put away on the back of my chair, boxes and containers on the floor, my craft stuff on top of the cabinet that REALLY needs organising...

The coffee table another dumping ground, and stuff all over my sofa too, so I can't sit down on it!!