(YAY)D/HD

Piles pt. 2: Systematized Chaos

So, as I’ve said before, I need my piles of stuff. When they are all nicely filed away in folders, I’m lost, confused, and forget everything. However, there’s a remarkably fine line between a functional pile and a disaster pile. Hopefully this post will help you find out how to navigate this tension with your piles.

I think that if you ever want to tackle some organizational challenge, you have to first understand what motivates the underlying “problem.” The trouble with this is that the world basically says, “Mmk, you can’t keep a clean desk? You’re dumb and lazy.” And then you feel ashamed and full of feelings and feelings are not going to help you get your life in order. I spent a lot of time having a lot of feelings about my piles. And then I had to start filling out the FAFSA by myself.

At this time in my life, I was living away from home and grasping eagerly at independence. Prior to this, I never thought much about the vast quantity of papers I had acquired. I knew I had these papers because I three all the papers I received into either a filing box (without file folders) or one of two drawers. However, until I tried to fill out the FAFSA by myself, I never thought much about why I kept these papers and how I planned to retrieve them. So, I would have to dig through all of my receipts, hospital bills, birthday cards, and other random papers to find the few pieces of paper I needed to fill out this form and it was annoying. But, the thing that made meso madboth times was that I would get all the way through, I would find all of the papers, and I would go to submit it and it would ask for my goddamn PIN, which I could never remember.

After two years of RAGE, I had a brilliant idea. I could write my PIN on a folder and keep all of the things I needed for the FAFSA in that folder! However, this brief appearance of organization was not enough— when the next FAFSA came up, my whole folder was lost somewhere amongst the piles and piles of paper I had crowding my desk and hiding under my bed. Around this time, I needed my passport and, of course, I had no idea where that was. While I was looking for both of those things, I found a birthday card from a year and a half ago with a $60 check I’d never cashed on top of the thank you card I thought I’d sent out. And, I remember going, “Okay. This is it. Something needs to change.”

So, I decided it was time to have  a system for dealing with papers. A system is not just a few file folders, instead it involves really understanding what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you need to change it. I realized the following:

• I was keeping papers in piles around my space because I knew they were important and was afraid I would forget about them if they went away.
• However, I was unable to prioritize my papers. They were all lumped together as “something I need to do something with.”
• This resulted in omni-piles that didn’t actually help me remember things. When I needed to find something, I was (most of the time) able to retrieve it, but it did not actually remind me of things I forgot I needed to do. They became white noise in addition to being clutter.

So, my goal was a system that would allow me to put things somewhere immediately without having to think about it, since I couldn’t count on myself to prioritize in the moment, but still have enough structure for me to find the things I needed and be reminded of the things I would forget.

Much like with the to do lists, it was time to sit down and figure out what the categories of things I piled up tended to be. Important stuff was too big a category, so I brainstormed the following:

• Knowing where my passport is would be nice?
• I get all these paycheck stubs and I’m not sure what to do with them.
• I have so many receipts.
• I keep everything at all medically related ever for some reason.
• The things people give me are meaningful to me (cards, drawings, letters, etc.)
• I get a lot of bank statements and credit card information.
• There’s always random stuff oh god.

Before I’d split it into categories it was either one giant omni-category or a completely overwhelming jumble of TOO MANY THINGS. This way, though, I could see different ways of breaking it up.

The next step was figuring out how to know when to get rid of things. I realized the key to this was actually figuring outwhenI would ever need something. In the moment, when I have a paper in my hand, it almost always seems important. But, actually sitting down and thinking about it made me realize the following:

1. Knowing where my passport is would be nice.
2. I need my paycheck stubs for taxes, but after that I can get rid of them and just hold onto the W4.
3. I only need to keep receipts where I might actually return the item. Since I am young and poor, this is essentially never. But, in the rare case that I do, it would be nice to know where to find it.
4. Holding on to medical bills is probably good practice, but there isn’t a whole lot else that will actually be relevant ever.
5. Yes, having things people give me in a place is good. However, I don’t actually care about store bought birthday cards that have nothing more than someone’s signature on them. Once I’ve sent them a thank you card, they can go.
6. I could keep bank statements… or I could switch to paperless banking because, really, the internet is a much more accessible means of looking at my history if I ever need to.
7. You can’t account for everything!

So, now things were rapidly becoming clearer. At this point, I could come up with a plan that was workable, both in the immediate sense and in the long term “I need to actually do this all the time” sense.

I ended up buying a few colored folders and a magazine file, which forced me to keep the number of “important papers” that I was keeping down to a reasonable amount. This was also useful because I knew that most of the time, when I got something important I wouldn’t take the time to find the proper folder and stick it in it (this is why I get piles in the first place). When that (always) happens, I just stick it into the magazine file part, outside of the folders, and deal with it when I pay my bills once a month (routines!). So, all of my important papers (which are narrowly defined as numbers 1-4 above) go in this magazine rack.

Next comes the papers that are not important papers by my definition. The first bit are things people give me. I got a nice box with a lid and decided it was my “these things make me happy” box. Generally, since the things that go in there, by definition, make me happy, I’m motivated to actually put them in the nice box and don’t need a backup option like I did with the magazine rack. However, if I ever do leave something about that goes there, it is easy to tidy it because I know where it goes and don’t have to think about it. (This is bold-ified because I think it is crucial).

The birthday cards were there own thing. So, when it is card season, I have a bright folder that I put all my cards in. It then sits on my nightstand until I’ve written all the thank you cards necessary. Then, they all go away. Magic!

Finally comes the dreaded “everything else.” This is the worst category. However, the fact that I knew that the things I cared the most about were already being cared for by the previous two systems made me less anxious about the whole business. I simply decided that a very easily accessible box in my room was the “paper I need to sort” box and made going through them a part of my weekly tidying routine. If I ever discovered I had a new “important papers” category (Grad school papers), I simply added a new folder in my magazine file.

Now, I never waste time dredging through endless piles looking for something, I always know where my passport is, and I always know what I’m doing with whatever part of the pile is out and about.

I realize this is a loooooong post. So, I’m going to leave the next bit (how do I throw things away?) for the next installment. Whee!

Piles pt.1 : The good, the bad, and the ugly

One of the hallmarks of the organizationally-challenged is The Pile. Or, more accurately, The Many Piles. These have a tendency to spread far and wide, creeping onto every possible horizontal surface, although they most often appear on work spaces and counter tops. Some piles, such as “the mail pile” or “the articles I’m totally going to read pile” are homogenous in composition while others become one giant omni-pile of doom (see: “junk drawer”).

Like many other aspects of organization, these are often more than just a pile of things and become fraught with emotion and shame. If you’re like me, you were taught young that there is nothing more virtuous than a clean surface and a meticulously kept file system. Keeping a clean workspace is a moral imperative and the failure to do so is a sign of laziness and inadequacy. 

This is complete and utter bullshit.

There are some people out there who are paragons of clutter-free-horizontal-spaces and natural born filers. There are also people out there who can read in cars without needing to puke by the side of highway. I am neither of these things.

Of course, I tried to be one because I thought that I had to be. When the piles would crop up, I would berate myself for being an inadequate human being. At some point, I’d spent 6 hours filing away everything and pat my self on the back for a desk well-cleaned, only to spend the next however long forgetting everything, because once something goes in a file it stops existing. Eventually, I would slip up and put one piece of paper on top of another and then everything would spiral out of control. I would yo-yo between too well organized for me to function and a total disaster.

And that’s when it hit me: I needed these piles. They must be adaptive, or else I would have never done that in the first place. It made sense: I put things in piles because I knew I needed for something. If I put them away, there were as good as gone. Piles reminded me to pay my bills and send out thank you cards. This being said, the way I was using these piles wasn’t great. I really don’t function well if there’s too much clutter and since they were all omni-piles of doom it usually took me a long time to actually find what I needed in them. Plus, I would inevitably hold on to too many things, and would be too overwhelmed to ever go through and clean them out, eventually panicking, sticking them in a box, and hiding it forever.

So, I learned how to tame my piles, to harness their power for awesome and not for chaos, and to stop listening when the world told me I needed a clean desk to function. The strategies I learned will be the topic of the next (YAY)D/HD installment, but for now, I leave you with these takeaways:

• You don’t need a clean desk (or counter or whatever) to be Doing it Right. In fact, you might need a certain amount of piles to function optimally.
• Piles are not a sign of laziness. If you see your piles as a character flaw, you’ll yo-yo like I did. You’ll try to eradicate them, fail, and feel bad about it.
• Piles are adaptive. If you make them, you’re probably doing it for a reason. If you want to harness them for awesome, you have to see them as a strategy, not a character flaw.
• That being said, piles aren’t virtuous in and of themselves. Clutter can be crippling, horrible, and overwhelming. Growing up, I lived in a hell hole of a room and hated it. However, in order to take control of my clutter, I had to figure out whyit was happening in the first place. I had to stop making it personal, stop buying into the myth that organizational ability is an innate virtue, and find a way to take a pragmatic approach to the problem. 

So, tune in next post for my (not yet) patented approach to functional piles!

Triumphant Return!

I’m guessing everyone has been at that place where they are so embarrassed about abandoning a task/hobby/activity that they feel anxious/ashamed at the thought of starting again. Then if/when you finally convince yourself that you really want to do this thing, you return with a whimper and your tail between your legs, apologizing with every word and action. It turns out that getting too disorganized and scattered to keep up with an organization blog can induce that in a person. 

But, really, eff that noise. My first rule of finding an organization style that works for you also applies to loving and taking care of your beautiful-awesome self: Acceptance. Life happened, that happens a lot. There was too much school, too much work, a helping of brain chemicals, and a few too many Feelings. But, I’m back now and ready to do this thing.

Before I go digging back into the nuts and bolts of troubleshooting your organizational life, I wanted to meta out and think about thinking. One of the things that can make ADHD (or not-ADHD) frustrating is unreasonable expectations. Going through life feeling like you are never quite awesome enough (“you lost your glasses again? really?”) or capable enough (“seriously, slow down and you’ll stop making so many mistakes”) or organized enough (“if you just folded your laundry your room wouldn’t look like a disaster zone”) or, well, enough enough means that you never learned how to set reasonable expectations. You are forced to fail repeatedly at the expectations of others who don’t recognize that certain “easy” or “basic” skills (executive functions) don’t actually come naturally. And, as a result, you learn to set unreasonable expectations for yourself.

The big ugly word that crops up here is “should.” When you are used to people telling you unreasonable “shoulds” then the word creeps into your words and brain. “Shoulds” almost never actually belong to you but they do hurt you and keep you from realizing your beautiful-awesomeness. And, even if they seem innocuously attached to a “reasonable” expectation (“I should do the dishes”) they mask the underlying unreasonable expectation (“I should do the dishes because real adults do the dishes and my failure to do so is further proof that I will never be anything more than a useless lump of a person”).

Luckily, you can fight back. You can find the “shoulds” and interrogate them and understand where they are actually coming from, what they really mean, and why they hurt so damn much. But, this isn’t easy. Fundamental to the “should” is that you are incapable and less than. So, when you walk up to the “should” embarrassed and ashamed, tail between your legs, and apologize to it for being stupid, lazy, or crazy, then it will continue to push you around.

During my absence I battled many “shoulds” (“I should eat better, start papers early, be a better daughter, work harder, be less crazy, actually write blog posts, etc.). In some cases, I stared them down and won. In other cases, I learned that I still have work to do. But, I learned that expectations are context dependent and fluid. There is no absolute failure, no point at which I have irrevocably ruined some aspect of my life (like blogging). If anything, the past several months have given me many new and interesting things to ramble on about. In the time that I wasn’t here I finished graduate school, wore wizard robes and a funny hat and received a fancy piece of paper saying I was cool, began the process of moving in with a boy who is very important to me, found a job, started working full time, and many countless things. When I was away, I wasn’t failing, I was being awesome.

So, here is my triumphant return. It is good to be back. As always, if you have any requests or whatnot, please let me know!