Saturday, April 19, 2008

Being Organized Enough

book cover - Organize Your Home ... In No Time

I've just started reading Organize Your Home ... In No Time, by Debbie Stanley. I've attended teleconferences that Debbie has taught, and been impressed - so I'm not at all surprised that I'm enjoying her book. Here are just a few choice quotes.
An organized space is not necessarily
- Perfect
- Trouble-free
- Easy
- Maintenance-free
- Beautiful
- Empty
- Expensive

An organized space IS always
- Functional

***

I advocate being "organized enough." When you are organized enough, you almost always reach destinations and complete tasks and projects on time, and you don't forget very many things you meant to remember. In your organized home ... you can put anything away when you want to and you can find pretty much anything on the first try. ...

Every once in a while, you'll forget something or lose something or be late to an appointment, but it won't happen very often. To completely eradicate these occasional lapses would require being more than organized enough, and it's not worth it.

***

Disorganization is just a problem to be solved; it is not a character flaw.

4 comments:

Michele said...

Great concept, being organized enough. It's easy for me to get caught up in finding the best solution rather than a good solution. The problem with this is that a good solution is pretty quick and the best solution can take a long time.

Jeri Dansky said...

Michele, that brings to mind a favorite quotation, from Voltaire: Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (Translation: The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

Anonymous said...

I was so glad to see this post Jeri. I just bought this book at conference. I have been wanting to read it and I am glad to hear you are enjoying it. Thanks, you just moved that up the list!

Jeri Dansky said...

Megan, I've read over 80 books about organizing and related topics - and I think this might wind up being one of my favorites.