knitabit

From Russia With Love

My parents went to Russia last month and my mom brought back this for me:

It's a wool/mohair lace scarf, beautifully knit. I wore it around my neck for a few minutes as I was picking up clutter upstairs so I wouldn't forget to bring it down here where the camera is, and in only about 90 seconds my neck was hot! It's rectangular, and might work equally well as a wrap. Thanks, mom!

OK, today starts the beginning of a total organizational overhaul at the Knitabit house. I've collected some resource books over the years, and was a visitor and sometimes participator over at www.flylady.net over the course of a few months more than a year ago. I think I know what it is that I need to do; it's just a matter now of making the commitment to do it. My house is not a total disaster - it's reasonably clean and not terribly cluttered. But it seems as though chaos is lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to fall just one day behind and the house of cards will collapse.

Last spring, I had whooping cough and although I was recovered by the time school started last fall, in some ways my house never did recover. I lost all track of everything, and I've not felt in control or organized since. About a month ago, I forgot to go to an important early-morning meeting because everything was in chaos. So that was my wake-up call, and my pledge was to spend the summer fixing all that is broken.

Hope you don't mind a few brief blogging notes about all this over the next few weeks.

My first discovery over the weekend is that my beloved PDA (a Palm Tungsten) is not serving me well. It succeeds marvelously as an up-to-date address book and notepad, but it fails miserably as a calendar and to-do list. When you can't see a whole month laid out before you, you're lost. And while I can scroll through my calendar day-by-day, I just can't get the big picture. Also, I've tried over time to use the built-in task (to-do) feature, but for whatever reason, I never seem to get focused on it. I need a system to prioritize my tasks while still allowing me to see what needs to be done today, as well as what's coming up tomorrow.

So it's back to the pen-and-paper analog method.

I bought a 'family organizer' at Borders Books yesterday - the one by Amy Knapp. I have no idea whether it will actually work or not, but it appealed to me because it's small enough that it might actually fit inside my purse. Also, it has tear-out grocery lists for each week.

The calendar starts in July 2004 and goes through December 2005, so I have a couple of weeks yet to get it set up.

Tomorrow: a disciplined morning schedule.

Comments

Pretty. My husband went to Russia and all I got back was -- him ;-)

Posted by: Patricia Tryon at June 14, 2004 03:19 PM