My wife and I were both raised in unorganized households, mine more so than hers. So, like many things we are doing these days, we are forced to implement something we were not taught or modeled to do.

Recently we decided to home school our children. My oldest is four and my wife has already begun to teach her with a formal curriculum. One thing we must overcome with such an endeavor is our organizational problems.

How does one learn to be organized? Do you have scheduled days that you do laundry, times that you start dinner, regimented hours allotted for certain tasks? We just moved into our house last year and have no office. So the filing of papers is piles and boxes hidden in the closet of our bedroom. I don't want to wait for an office to be added before we practice habits of organization, I have come to learn that now is always the best time to reform our unwise habits.

Any suggestions?

Book recommendations?

Jetson robot ideas?

__________________
--chRis
Psalm 115:1

Christopher Reeder
Husband to Kara, Father to Abigail (7), Caleb (6), Grace (4 1/2), Zoë (3), Elijah (1 1/2) and Hannah (born 8/8/2008)

Member: Pilgrim Presbyterian Church (OPC), Raleigh, NC

Chris, a schedule is an excellent idea. Having a time for each thing to be done encourages discipline and order. It eventually becomes a welcome habit. (I speak from experience, I, by nature, hate order).

My personal preference is a general sort of schedule with room for flexibility. A basic day-timer sort of calendar works for this. I first note deadlines and then allocate an estimated time to accomplish the task. Finally, leave enough time at the end of each week to review whether the time allocations were reasonable. Adjust accordingly.

Another thing is a simple filing system. It does not need to be complicated. Perhaps a folder for each child, or each subject. One helpful thing I have been taught is to do one of three things every time you pick up a piece of paper: (1) Decide to throw it away, (2) address the issue that the paper raises immediately, or (3) file the paper for future action or reference and note the deadline to do that.

The idea is to only have to touch a piece of paper once or twice, and no more (unless it's your child's work that you want to treasure).

Not quite facetiously I would suggest that you read some Puritan sermons and maybe the works of John Owen. They don't teach organization, but the outlines of their thoughts will show an advanced degree of organizational thinking.

Most important, do not wait to get something (an office space or a computerized calendar) before starting on the project. My "day-timer" is a spiral notebook and a cheap pen.

May your work be blessed by God.

Vic

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R.Vic Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

I am not trying to be funny here...

Get a job that demands it.

Seriously, I was never organized. I enjoyed flying by the seat of my pants. But my new job DEMANDS organization (or you will fall seriously behind) and I love my job so as such I must learn to be organized!

Stuff we do;

-Scheduled meal times

-Daily planner on desk (large calander with writing space). Write down on each day what you have to do and look at it OFTEN.

-File Cabinet, must be careful here. Do not file TOO much or you will never want to go into it!

-Nice desk where more important, smaller fiels that you use daily or weekly are kept clearly labeled.

-Wife does A,B,C and I do E,F,G. We can help each other out but for the most part we split the work according to our strengths.

...if I think of more I will let you know.

[Edited on 11-21-2005 by houseparent]

__________________
Adam Leavelle
Westminster OPC
Roaring Spring Pa.

http://www.myspace.com/aleavelle
"Speak wisdom to a fool and he'll think you have no sense at all"

Click to get: Board Rules -- Signature Requirements -- Suggestions?

True story: I once had a book called How to Get and Stay Organized -- but I misplaced it.

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

OK Jewish MOther here: Organization starts at the beginning:

1. Go through all your closets and if you do not use it or wear it...there is someone else that can. Loose it.

2. Go through kitchen cabinets and drawers, if you do not use it or it is one of 500 pastic tubbies with a lid...loose it.

3. Go though your kids rooms....as above #1 .....loose it.

4. Now clean the house.

5. All books on shelves (reformed people are TERRIBLE AT THIS!)

6. Implement Houseparents rules.

7. Stop making spur of the moment purchases.

Clutter is the beginning of a disorganized mess.

__________________
Grace Farmer
Member, Mid Cities Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Bedford, Texas

Learn how to set priorities in your daily work schedule (and concentrate on doing (and completing) the most important things first. You will find that it is easier to get/stay organized this way and more things will get done.

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Gregg M.
Truth Baptist Church
South Windsor CT.

Write to-do lists. Figure out what absolutely NEEDS to be done, and then what you'd like to get done / should get done eventually. Coming up with a rough schedule can help . . . but strict schedules tend to make things worse for me. Sometimes I write out a rough schedule, but it often ends up having arrows drawn all over the place from when I had to move things around . . . like today, I wrote out a plan of how I was going to organize what I had to do at clinical, included everything I had to do, and some things that were a good idea but not necessary. Ended up having to re-do half of the schedule (family visits, individual patient needs, dr's changing orders, having to chase down dr's for other orders, other unexpected stuff . . . ), but I got done everything I knew I had to do when I came in, some other stuff I ended up having to do, and some stuff that was good to do - not everything I wanted to, but that's ok. Having a to-do list helps me to remember those things that I need to do, but keep forgetting about (like mailing that parking fine & rent check . . . ).

__________________
Jessica H.
Church: www.eopckent.org (OPC)
Work: www.uwmedicine.org/Facilities/Harborview/

Oh make this heart rejoice or ache; / Decide this doubt for me; / And if it be not broken, break -- / And heal it, if it be. ~William Cowper

Thank you for the advice.

I am thinking it comes down to schedule. My wife and I both do better on weekdays when things are more routine than the weekdays that are more sporadic.

As far as filing and tracking goes, I have actually been too analytical which tends to cause stress, so I have been trying to combat that hang-up. I used to track every single purchase we made including analyzing and keeping every receipt and breaking each item into a specific category. It makes for great charts and trend tracking, but if I ever got behind (which as we had more and more kids it became easier to get behind) then I would be stressed until I was caught up.

So today, I still keep every receipt and file them by month, but no longer track and itemize all expenses.

But the problem I have is clutter. I desperately want and need an office, but have nothing of the sort. So what we have is clutter. Piles of papers that are awaiting... I am not sure what they are awaiting, I guess to be either filed or thrown out?

We do not have a routine as far as home maintenance goes (although we are beginning to). This is becoming a problem that needs addressed now that we are home schooling.

Do most people have meatloaf nights and laundry days or is it not so structured? I am just curious, my wife and I were raised with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to everything.

Chris, we don't have meatloaf days, but we do have soup days, laundry days, and floor cleaning days. As my wife says, "I'm very spontaneous as long as nobody interrupts my routine."

I suffer from clutteritis too. The only remedy is to be ruthless. Pick a set of criteria for discarding things and stick to it. For me, only tax records, legal documents and things like passports and birth certificates are kept permanently. Correspondence, even from dear ones, gets tossed unless it is of some historic value. Other paper is weeded out weekly. Junk mail gets tossed before being opened. And, hardest for me of all, any gadget or clothing item that I haven't used within the past year gets sold, donated, burned, or otherwise discarded. (But not my precious tools!).

One helpful, if extreme, remedy, is to move every three or four years. We have been somewhat nomadic and it has forced us to streamline.

Vic