Learning how to "SEE"

As you know, Messies just don't notice how the house looks - not on a regular basis, that is. Now and again we'll look around and say "Egad! What is this!?", when we notice how out of hand things have gotten.

I find it hard to keep the mess in focus once I've "seen" it. I'll start to clean up the place but as I start cleaning, my vision seems to slip away.

So, I've developed several techniques to help me see what needs doing in the house. I will share one of those with you today. It involves deliberately getting a different perspective on what I see.

When I was a raving Messie, I used to marvel at how nice houses looked as I walked around the block in the evening, glancing in the windows as I went. The scene in each room was framed by the window casing. How nice the houses looked! How they seeming to sparkle in the light of the lamps. How could they look so pretty for no reason at all? How could they be so neat and pretty?  I saw flowers and decorations, pictures and lamps chosen with care as though the owners knew they had a neat home which would showcase their treasures. (There's not much point in buying something beautiful and putting it in a pile in a cluttered house.)

Well, anyway, I use the showcase technique at night to help me see my house. First, I turn on the lamps, open my curtains and then I actually go outside and walk down the sidewalk looking in the windows. Now I see my house as a stranger would. Does it look neat? Does it look beautiful? Does it sparkle? I begin to see, really see, how my house looks and what it needs.

Perhaps some night you will see a lady walking down her sidewalk with the drapes of her home pulled open and lights blazing, don't be surprised. Perhaps it will be you. Perhaps it will be me.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY® 
Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

New Year's Resolutions?

I'm getting ready to set my New Year's goals. I don't call them resolutions because to resolve is something which emphasizes me, and the strength of my commitment. They tend to break down. A goal, however, exists by itself once it is set. When my drive gets weaker, the goal remains the same until I get back to it with stronger drive.

So I set my goals. Each year I have done this. My kids have done it, too. After we set our goals, we try to make them permanent and prominent. Once we wrote them on material, colored them in with fabric paint and made them into throw pillows for the bed. I remember one of my daughter's was, "Get a horse." This one made me nervous because we could not afford the horse, the rent of the stall or the food a horse eats. But that was her goal. She did not understand the problems. It is amazing how we reach our goals if we really make them seriously. That year she did not get a horse, but she kept her goal. The next year she was reading the classified ads under "Horses" and saw an ad for free miniature horses. All you had to do was pay for the ad. The farm was in our area. So we zoomed over there, paid for the ad, and got our horse, Wild Thing. Since she is a miniature, we can keep her in our backyard  and she doesn't eat a whole lot. Goal Accomplished! But my daughter never would have gotten the horse if she had not had "Get a horse" as a serious goal which she consistently pursued even when it seemed impossible.

So set your goal. Visualize your goal. If it is to have a beautiful house, dream about the house in detail. See the pieces of furniture and the play of shadows on the gleaming surfaces. See the colors you love and the way you will bring the colors into your house.

Set your goal. Make it definite. Write it down. Put it in a prominent place. Dream about it. And this time next year you will be surprised!

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY® 
Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

A Lesson from the Magic Kingdom

My husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary at Disney World. For those of you who have not been, Disney World is not just for kids. We had a marvelous time and I recommend it to anyone as a second honeymoon. But that is not the point of this post.

Disney World is a super clean place. Each year there are 17 million visitors through the gates of the Magic Kingdom and it always looks fresh, new and clean. How do they do it? I was a witness to one such event. They never let even a little mess start. If a mess starts, it doesn't stay long. 

Perhaps the worst time for mess is just after the parade. Thousands of people line Main Street with popcorn, ice cream cones, hot dogs in wrappers, etc. When the parade is over the street is jumbled with clutter - for a minute. Immediately after the parade, young men appear with noisy street vacuums, vacuuming the gutter. In 10 minutes time the street is pristine clean again.

I first thought that the roar of the vacuum was an intrusion on the fun of the Magic Kingdom. And indeed, it was. but so was the trash. So Disney World had a choice, 10 minutes of noise or the rest of the day of clutter. They chose to vacuum.

I find I am often faced with those kinds of choices. Shall I vacuum and disturb the children's TV or studies? Shall I clear the coffee table of cups and plates and disturb for a minute the visit with a friend? I think I have learned the answer to that at Disney World. The answer is to take a few minutes to restore order.

This is the way with housekeeping. If the house has an aura of neatness, hopefully no one wants to be the first to break the mood. If a little clutter comes, more clutter is soon to follow because the aura is already broken.

This is why it is so important not to let messes get started.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY®, Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

Garden Principle of Time Use

I am not a gardener. I really don't understand why you can't have weeds among the veggies. Are weeds really that bad? I guess so. I'll take the word of those who know that they are.

What I really don't understand about gardening is the principle of thinning out crowded plants. Frankly, as a Messie, I tend to feel that more is better. So what if the plants are a little crowded! I can hardly bring myself to pull up those healthy plants just because there are too many. If five plants are nice, fifty are better. Right? WRONG!

The truth is that if there are too many plants crowded together, all the plants will suffer and keeping more plants will actually reduce the production of good plants at harvest.

This is the way it is with life too. When we crowd too much into our lives, have too many activities back to back, the activities become sickly. The quality of each activity becomes poorer. How can we raise the quality of our activities? One way is by cutting out many of them, thinning them out, so to speak. Then the activities we have left will be healthier and more satisfying to us. Remember, we also need time for quietness and reflection between our activities just as plants need space between each one in order to grow.

So don't crowd the garden of your life. You may have to weed out some of those perfectly healthy activities for the sake of the quality of your life. One of the activities which will improve in quality as a result, of course, is the housekeeping.  It won't be squeezed to death by all those other activities. So, if you are the treasurer of the garden club, have pottery and exercise classes, help out an elderly friend who needs to be taken places, plant a garden, and make all of your own Christmas presents - STOP! Stand back and look at your schedule. No wonder your house doesn't get done and you feel like you're on a treadmill.

Start thinning out some of those healthy, good activities which are crowding each other so much that life itself is less, not more, satisfying.  Remember, crowding doesn't work for your garden and it won't work for your life either.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY®, Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

YES, DO DREAM!

"If we are no longer dreaming, we are no longer planning"

It is important that we keep on dreaming about how good it will be when our house is the way we want it.

Dream about how beautiful the house will be when you come back to it from a time away. Dream about how it will be so orderly that you will know where everything is. Dream how it will be neat so that visitors can drop in any time without your being embarrassed. Dream about all of the work being caught up so that you can do all of those creative things without guilt about leaving housework undone.

Studies have shown that those who achieve goals are frequently daydreamers. They do not use daydreaming as a substitute for work but as a help to setting goals and inspiring themselves to accomplish their goals.

Don't let the dreams you have for your house fade and don't be satisfied until the dreams become reality.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY®, Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

You Are Allowed to Miss the Corners

As I write this I am sitting in a hospital lobby. Don't worry nobody is sick; I am just waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast.

To my right a woman is cleaning the glass doors, spraying glass cleaner and wiping them clean. She is conscientiously looking for spots on both sides going back and forth to check where she might have missed some oily fingerprint. Sitting where I am sitting I can see what she can't...which, if you look carefully have been generally neglected.

Does it matter? I don't think so. The over all picture in this hospital lobby is one of beauty and cleanliness. When you walk in the doors you are impressed with the gleam and shine of the Italian tile floor. The place in every area says, "This is one clean hospital!"

But what about the foggy corner of the glass doors. Nobody but a woman waiting for breakfast and doing a critical survey would notice.

The point I am making is this. Pay attention to the overall impression. Later maybe, you can get to the details but it is the overall impression that is important.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY®, Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

THE URGE!

In a past seminar where were laying out our plans for each day of household maintenance by filling in the Flipper planning chart, a sweet lady said, "But suppose I don't have the urge to clean on that day?"

What we do is wait for a whim. Some day we wake up and there is that "right" combination of energy, time, and opportunity to clean. So we say, "Today is the day," and begin to plan because we realize we have "THE URGE."  It has come! 

Needless to say, this is not the way the house can be maintained the way we want it. Who knows how often the urge or whim might hit. And what else do we wait on a whim for -- going to work? going to school? fixing the meals? Hopefully not!

The point is proper household maintenance can only be done when we have a plan that is easily within our capability and we do it faithfully. We don't wait for urges. And the freedom from having to wait for an urge makes a person so happy. It is encouraging to think that I can keep things under control even if I don't get the urge! It's a wonderful idea. Try it.

Warmly,
THE ORGANIZER LADY®, Sandra Felton
Founder, Messies Anonymous

Visit our website www.messies.com

You can find more information about our unique Super Flipper on the "Tools" page of the Messies website.