Wow, was yesterday ever one of those days!  It was one of those nothing went as planned kind of days.   I didn’t even start on my mini-organizing project until about 8:30p.m. because of middle school conferences, a child with a nosebleed, a late dinner (what dinner plan?  I did the drive-thru thing with STARVING children at 6:45p.m.), and Valentines in need of assembly just to name a few things that made it that sort of day (and night).    I was excited to discover that they carry 8 1/2 x 11 frames at the Dollar Tree though.  I have no idea why I never thought to check there previously.  I was finally able to frame this:

J wrote this at school around Thanksgiving and I’ve had it on the fridge but wanted to frame it so I could display it better.  I have it hanging on the wall in the living room now.

For Tuesday’s mini-organizing project, I decided to tackle just one shelf in our bedroom closet.  My husband put these adjustable shelves in there earlier in the summer (he built the closet as well) and then just sort of threw all my stuff on them when I was taking too long to decide what I wanted to put there.  Here’s what they looked like at the start:

I decided to just focus on the middle shelf.

Ultimately, I’d like this area to be organized with all my family research materials (hobby that I work on in spurts and keep hoping to post about how I keep it all organized.  That is, once I figure out how to keep it all organized).  I started by emptying the shelf and wiping it off as it was a bit dusty!

One clear surface!

Then, I started dealing with the items I removed and trying to figure out what to put back and how to keep myself centered on just one shelf.  The truth is why I organized only one shelf a bit, I did have to rearrange some others and deal with a small pile beside my desk.  I was really excited to find a new take-home folder for J to use in the pile from the shelf!

Hooray for Lego!

His Lego folder from the beginning of the school year was falling apart and he did not want to let it go.

 Here’s some more of the mess from the shelf and beside my desk.  Wait, didn’t I say I was organizing one shelf in the bedroom closet?

I had to go through this pile that I removed from the shelf.

There’s a printer under those papers! Some of those papers go other places.

One of these file boxes also went on the shelves.

How did I keep from becoming overwhelmed and not cleaning and organizing all the shelves as well as my computer desk?   First, I knew if I cleared all the shelves as well as my desktop, I’d have a much bigger and more time-consuming mess than I could deal with today (yes, Tuesday’s mini-project carried over into this morning).   Second, if I simply put quite a bit of this stuff back where it belonged, it would improve things more than I could tell by just looking at the piles of mess.  Finally, I reminded myself my project was simply to organize the ONE shelf! 

I’m not saying I didn’t get sidetracked with things I needed to do in other areas or stop because I couldn’t figure out how I wanted the area to look.  I did do both of those things.  However, I decided it was most important to “stay the course” and focus on the task at hand.  Sometimes it helps me to write down the other projects I want to return and complete later.  For example, I did move a shoebox full of old photos that I need to sort and divide between my siblings to a different area of our room.  However, I did NOT start the sorting project in the middle of this mini-organizing project.  I threw some stuff away (am I the only one who finds trash while doing these projects?), returned other stuff to its proper home (I have a bin for the boys’ school work in the basement), and shuffled stuff around for the final result.

The middle shelf now contains nothing but papers and photos relating to my family research work

The final result wasn’t perfect but it was certainly better than when I started the project.   What are your tips for keeping focused on a small project and not letting it blow up into a million overwhelming tasks and projects?

Posted by Jean in Uncategorized