Organization and Pilers and Filers.

Today, our anniversary - instead of being a relaxing day became our "organization day".

You see, we are engineers. And we are pilers. We are pilers who endeavor to be filers. This just means that we generally let our piles get completely out of control. I guess it's normal for engineers to be pilers...we like visuals.

Now we have a toddler. He is a piler too. Here's an example of how he likes to pile up his toys.

Why is today special? Well, I finally hired a cleaning lady. After two years of thinking about it, and living with a dirty house, I did it. You see, with two jobs, we have time to get partially organized, or partially clean. It's annoying. Since our cleaning person is coming tomorrow for the first time, we decided to get organized a bit so she could actually dust.

How to get organized for a piler? Here are a couple of examples on what not to do: First, don't have a bunch of crap on your desk. Second: the wall holders are a great idea for pilers, but don't let them get so full that you can't see what's in them.

Here's an example or two of what we did today...shelves are organized. I moved my thread into a drawered container. We have baskets on the shelves with different purposes (electronics, crocheting). And I moved items into photo boxes: photos, patterns, and greeting cards.

Now it doesn't seem very frugal to go out and buy containers to store more stuff, but...we have three people in this small house. And it took us until pretty recently to come to terms with this. We were kind of avoiding dealing with the issue. If it were just the two of us, it wouldn't be a problem. The truth is that we have a limited amount of space, and we'll always have to be on top of things.

On a plus note, I freecycled some maternity wear, baby toys, and books today. Still have a few items not taken yet. But that's necessary "being on top of things". Something comes into the house...something has to go out of the house.