How do you organise yourself?

This post is prompted by a comment I left over on the Down to Earth blog recently. Rhonda was asking how everyone kept organised, whether people had routines or kept lists etc and I replied by telling her about my diary and about the list I keep in my head.

First my diary. I have one of those page to a day diaries and it's become a Godsend to me over the last few months while juggling a job and the preparation for us restoring the racing car. 

The diary has a small list of things that have to be done (so I must post off that letter, get the washing out of the machine and hang it up etc) and these are things that would be important to do on a weekly basis to ensure the basic things of life get accomplished. It makes sure there's always clean underwear in the drawer and bills get paid on time, that sort of thing. 

However, there is a second list of 'nice to get done' items, which might be washing a settee cover if I get a few moments to pop it in the machine, or clean a couple of shelves in the fridge. If I don't get them done, it's no biggie - I just move them onto the next day's list and see if I have time or energy then. The 'nice to get done' things can float across several days, but sooner or later they will get done. Nothing has ever been on the list longer than a week.

However, in addition to these two lists, I also keep a lot of information in there, such as things that happened that day I want to remember (sometimes even things that Martin wants to remember), the dinner I'm cooking that evening and sometimes things I copy down from websites or magazines. I keep track of days when I felt off colour so I can track if it is a recurring pattern. I stick in supermarket receipts so I can keep track of our spending and food price rises and sometimes I also stick in emails or post it notes of recipes I find. It's got to the point where I'd find it very difficult to be without my diary.

The list in my head is something different. It's a revolving list of things that I need to focus on to accomplish mini goals. So if I'm about to go upstairs, I remind myself to take something with me that needs to go, which will help keep the place cleaner and tidier and stop me running around like a headless chicken doing things later. I actually have a stair basket that you can take up and bring down with you. If I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, I give a few items in the sink a wash or wipe down a surface or something so it looks tider and cleaner. 

I've found doing it this way on a consistent basis starts to open up chunks of time where I can relax of an evening and (gasp) go to bed early. In the winter this is essential for me as it's tough to battle seasonal affective disorder when you have to be up at 5:30am and don't get into bed until midnight. I might have taken that too far last Thursday though. I had a whole evening free as I'd already had dinner cooked and just needing heating up, so I was in bed by 6:20pm with my Kindle and asleep by 8pm!

Comments

[louisa @ TheReallyGoodLife]

I had a day to view desk diary last year but we didn't get on - not sure why other than preferring to have an overview of the week at a glance. My 2012 desk diary is a week to view on one page and on the other, it's just blank so I can have notes/a to-do list for the whole week rather than having to push stuff from day to day when it doesn't get done. I too use it for spending notes etc - although obviously don't have a lot of room -- I try to use a dedicated notebook for all recipes and things like that though so they don't get lost on scraps of paper.

I also use a web service - RememberTheMilk - for recurring stuff so I don't have to write it in my diary every day. I can update that from my computer or phone and interestingly, it's got a "location" section so I can see, for example, all the to-do items that I need to do when I'm at the theatre rather than at home. The reminders from that are very useful pokes too.

[Steel]

Thanks for the tip about RememberTheMilk Louisa, I didn't know about that. The location function sounds very good.

I think I get on with paper diaries because I'm always writing quick notes down about everything - and then promptly losing them if they're on scraps of paper. Near constant scribbling is an old writer's habit I guess.