Organization 101.....my way...

Years ago....maybe 1983, I stumbled upon a book titled  "Sidetracked Home Executives" written by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. (btw...if you're familiar with "Flylady" on the internet, she was sort of a spin-off from them, with their blessings of course.)



These two sisters had me laughing my way through this book. I read it and enjoyed it, but as I recall I didn't really implement any of their changes and certainly not the 3x5 box and cards. Jump to mid 1990's, I had 4 kids that didn't pick up after themselves, a husband that was always at work or traveling, and one big messy house!

By the 90's the "Slob Sisters" as they came to be known, had moved into the internet world as had I. I found there site online, met other S.H.E.'s and made my fist card box. It was just a plain old black speckled, plastic index card box, but I had ordered their system with nice printed cards and I was on a roll!  Mind you, my house was never terribly out of control, nor was it dirty...but the kids left there stuff everywhere all the time just assuming I would pick it up, and I was terribly unorganized!

So I got organized one drawer at a time as my worst weakness is drawer shoving, (actually any storage space I can shove something into will do) I think I have 6 junk drawers in my kitchen even now. All that means is when I don't know where to put something I shove it in a drawer ( or cabinet or closet...).  Hence the reason I'm writing about this....

I digress...sorry, enter the "Infractions Game"! Oh, this did the trick! I gave each of the kids a sheet of those little round florescent stickers with instructions to stick them on anyone's stuff that they found laying around, and then go write it on a list I hung on the frig.  Infractions cost you money. I don't recall the amount now but it seems it was .05 cents.   At the end of the week, we added up the amounts owed, everyone paid and the person with the least infractions got all the money. If you were really messy it ended up taking much of your allowance for the week, so it didn't take long until none of their things were laying around, nor mine ( I was included in the stickerfest).  The game had worked to make everyone accountable for their things. I was relieved, had a lot less work and we had a tidy home finally.

A few years ago I made up a new box....

It looked good...but really I missed a lot of the pre-printed cards. It sits on a little ledge in my kitchen...sits there looking pretty sort of like a "decoration"....:-/ but that's about it.  I'm the type of person that needs mental stimulation to get me going, similar to how reading everyone's blog does for me.  They inspire me to get things done!

Enter a blog I found the other day that is selling this exact idea, only cuter than I have ever seen nor have been able to do myself!  The site is called  Spring Clean, Year Round , I also have the blog listed in my blog roll.  If you want to see these cute organization boxes, you'll have to go to her blog because I didn't get permission to show any of her work here.

I ordered one of their creations today and am VERY excited to receive it! And no, I didn't really need a new box but she does the chore cards up so cute I'm sure to want to clean something...right? ;)

I'll keep you posted after it arrives and I try to implement some changes around here!