When it seems impossible to organize

I wanted to offer this method I sort of discovered today on how to organize when you are in a situation where it seems like the task is too overwhelming to the point of being impossible. That is how it has been with me for too long. I have had piles of junk all over my studio and its driving me crazy. Every time in the past when I finally got enough energy to attack the piles – which was very infrequently – I usually did not complete the task and then the piles on got worse.

But today I discovered a very powerful way to organize when it seems totally hopeless. To do it I used two sizes of boxes, both from my local office supply store. One type is the standard “banker’s box” which are usually sold in ten-packs very cheap. The other type is just a smaller brown box in which it is just possible to fit an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper.

Since boxes are cheap there’s no reason not to just get a lot of them in advance. This way, if – and more than likely when – they are needed they will be available.

For things like paper work or smaller objects like office supplies, small parts, etc. use the smaller boxes. For larger things use the banker’s boxes.

At first do not even think about trying to do fine-detail-level sorting. Think about coarse levels. What types of things generally go together. Put those types of items in the same boxes.  Always label every box that is filled, with the labels consistently in the same location on the same edge of every box.  Make the labels useful so you will remember what is in them.  Labeling is essential.  Later on, when things are needed, it will be possible to very easily and quickly locate them becasue of the labels.

As a strategy, I recommend putting as much as absolutely possible into labeled boxes and stacking them.  Try to stack boxes of items which you know are the least important at the bottom of the stacks.

Once you have everything except absolute essentials in boxes (and it doesn’t hurt at all to even have put some essentials into them), you will then have the space to clean, arrange, and, most importantly, to think and process how you want your environment to be.