overwhelm « Well-Ordered Chaos

Organizing, ADD, and Allergy Hell

I haven’t been updating either of my blogs much lately. This is partly due to drama in my offline life — like one in ten Americans, I am unemployed and looking for work. I’m spending most of my time these days sending out resumes and coverletters into various black holes, where I never [...]

Still here, still crazy … and cleaning my studio

I haven’t been blogging much lately. My offline life has been pretty hectic, as I mentioned in last week. But I got through a great big deadline yesterday, so I hope to get back to blogging, organizing, and blogging about organizing.

The deadline in question was the final critique for my art class, a self-directed painting [...]

Top 6 ADHD Travel Accessories

I got in from France on Saturday night. I’m still pretty jet-lagged, but I’m recovering slowly.

As much as I freaked out in the weeks leading up to my trip, I’m proud to say it was a well-organized success. I remembered my underwear, and my passport, and my meds. I even remembered some [...]

Travel Planning Update

Last week I wrote about my upcoming trip to France. I was going to try to prepare ahead of time, doing little bits at once, so I could avoid my usual ADD drama wherein I run around like a decapitated chicken for the last three days before I leave. I thought I was in pretty [...]

Attention Deficit Disorder and Attempted Travel Planning

As I posted the other day, I’m going to Europe in a few weeks, and I have a ton of crap to get done before then. If this trip is like, oh, any other trip I’ve taken in my life, EVER, I’ll get all of it done at 3 am the day we leave on [...]

Organized Travel, ADHD Style

My partner travels a lot. And when I say “a lot”, I mean that when somebody asks me where he is, I have to stop and think pretty hard about it. Is it Beijing? No, that’s next week … Australia? Hong Kong? Seoul? Tokyo? … Brussels?

Last year he spent more time driving on the left-hand [...]

My Organizing Journey: Getting Started — The Staging Area and the Big Sort

There’s a lot of wisdom in the old adage “A Place for Everything and Everything In Its Place”. However, if your space hasn’t been organized before, most of what you own does not yet have its own “place”. This is why it’s important to set aside a portion of your home as a [...]

My Organizing Journey: Getting Started — Identifying Activity Zones

The big day had arrived. My clutter buddy was at my home and by the end of that day I would, come hell or high water, have made some progress on organizing my home. My confidence had received a boost from learning that my apparently chaotic surroundings were actually a somewhat functional attempt [...]

My Organizing Journey Begins

My organizing journey began in the fall of 2005 when a friend of mine called me with an interesting proposition.

“I think we should help each other get organized”, she said.

I was stunned. “Get organized? Help each other?” I asked. “How can I be any help to you at all? You’re pretty [...]

Want to organize your junk drawer? For starters, don’t call it a junk drawer!

Earlier today I came across a blog post by a CPO (that’s “certified professional organizer” about your junk drawer. You know, the one that has all those packets of ketchup in it? And those containers of pepper flakes that come with pizza? And your spare buttons, and some batteries, and that piece of paper with [...]

Well-Ordered Chaos

Now where did I put that post…