Your Organized Life

Organizing isn’t all about running your home or office like a military drill. It’s also about making time and finding space to have fun. One way a lot of people seem to have fun these days is scrapbooking. If you’re one of them, here are some ideas to help you get going.

Saying “No.” Do you remember in my post about time (“Organizing to Get More Done . . . in the Time You Have”)? One of the tips for finding more time was by saying “no” to activities and demands that wouldn’t help you reach your goal? Well, if one of your goals is making time for your hobby, this will help you do that. Make time for your hobby a priority and say “no” to the unnecessary “extras” that rob you of time.

Book it. Once you’ve said “no” to the time-robbers, one of the best ways to find regular time to work on your scrapbooking is to make an appointment with yourself. Put the appointment on your calendar and keep it just as you would any other important appointment. If working on your hobby is a goal, plan time for it.

Multi-tasking. Probably about half of you reading this just cringed. But I don’t mean “multi-tasking” in that frantic sew-a-button-on-while-you’re-stirring-soup-and-giving-your-child-a-haircut kind of way. I just mean that there are a lot of scrapbooking activities – browsing for ideas, sketching layouts, and sorting pictures, for example – that can be done while you’re doing other things such as waiting for appointments or watching television.

Keep things handy. Keep your projects and the tools you need for them together in a basket or box. If your materials are handy, you’ll be able to spend your spare time working on your project rather than looking for it.

Organize your supplies. Keep only the supplies you really love and use. Then store them in containers that make it easy for you to use what you have and see what need. (If you’re feeling especially creative – and since you’re a scrapbooker, you probably are – make your own decorative labels for your supply containers.) And be sure you arrange your supplies so that they are convenient. There might be plenty of room on the top shelf of your closet, but is it really a good place for the hole punches?

And while you’re at it. Scrapbooking can take a lot of supplies. If you want to find them faster, it will help if you set up some simple systems. For example, store things by theme. But keep this simple: The fewer systems you use, the less likely they are to get out of hand, and the more likely you are to actually stick with them.

Avoid perfectionism. As with all organizing ideas, start small and keep at it. Organizing is an ongoing process that can always be tweaked just a little more, but save your perfectionism for your scrapbooking!