From Clutter to Clarity
An organization expert offers tips to help busy moms stay organized 

By Jill Hudson Neal
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, February 22, 2007 6:27 AM

I have one New Year's resolution for 2007: Get myself organized. The breaking point came late last year: Sitting on my living room floor, I dumped the contents of my purse in search of a prescription for my son's asthma medicine. I found it balled up and stuck to a half-opened tube of lip-gloss, which had also adopted a few stray Post-It notes and a $100 USB pocket drive that'd been missing for two weeks.

It's more than a little depressing to realize that a junky handbag pretty much mirrors my life. Yeah, I always seem to have the necessary stuff to get me through any given day, but the swirling disorganization shines a light on how uncomfortably close I am to total craziness. Managing my "to do" lists, social and work schedules, keeping track of email, cell phone voicemail messages, remembering appointments -- it often threatens to take over my life. Then there's the tendency to cram more into an over-stuffed schedule, which usually means that I do a little of everything, just not very well. To top it off, I like to whine about all of it. Wow, ineffectual AND dull. Not very cool mom, is it?

Having hit bottom, I called Julie Morgenstern, the time management and organizing expert whose best-selling books, "Organizing From the Inside Out" and "Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work," provide effective strategies for created more balance in a life crammed full. Last year, she partnered with Franklin Covey to produce "The Julie Morgenstern Organizing System," a collection of paper planners, binders and well-designed leather tote bags for those in need of a time management verhaul. Her goal: to help free the disorganized from their self-imposed misery.

 We spoke recently by phone from her office in New York City.

I always thought being super-organized left you with no room for spontaneity.

It's the exact opposite! I had a client who was having trouble adjusting from being a single woman to one who was married with kids. Before she had children, she was able to structure her day or week for herself, and she carved out specific times to do whatever she liked. After kids, that was a real challenge, and for this woman, it seemed so confining. She kind of resented feeling like her life had been taken away. Having some structure was really her ticket out. It was the solution to buy her life back.

Does being super-organized make you a better mom?

Absolutely. My Aunt Thelma was the epitome of organization, the kind of person who made labels for everything. I always thought, "Doesn't she have anything better to do?" That seemed so petty when there were so many more exciting things to do with your life. Now I understand that the organization freed her to do other things.

I was a very disorganized person when I was growing up. As a creative person, I thought being organized might squelch that creativity. When my daughter, Jessi, was born (she's 21 now), I realized that if I didn't get my act together, she might never see the light of day. I had to be organized enough to have the freedom to enjoy being a mom.

Being organized allows you to feel ready for everything, including the surprises and criseses, which is really part of being a mom. There's a great sense of calm and readiness that frees you to hone in on that frantic moment without so much anxiety. Feeling prepared as a mom made me feel confident and more fully present.

It seems almost counter-intuitive, in a way, to be kind of anal about organizing yourself and also being free to be spontaneous.

Well, you want to make sure you're organized enough, but not obsessively so. If you implement a low-labor system that's simple, intuitive and easy to maintain, you'll be fine.

What's important to keep in mind is that being better organized should free you up to be ready for other opportunities beyond the day-to-day stuff we have to do. Being organized ultimately gives you the ability to be spontaneous and fully present so that you can actually enjoy the time you have with your kids without being distracted. It also allows you to create blocks of time for yourself.

You've said that getting organized really starts at night, not in the morning.

If your bag isn't packed and ready the night before, your whole day can be lost in the morning scramble. You're so much better off if you're able to grab your bag and kids and walk out the door instead of having to stop and go, "Where are my keys?" or "Where'd I put their homework?"

It helps to have your bag system down pat. You need to know what to have with you at all times. Every night, you should check your stock and see what you need so that you're not stuck trying to do inventory when you should be walking out the door. Getting yourself and the kids ready -- whatever your pre-leaving the house ritual is -- take prescience. You can't just wing it -- if you try, you'll have nothing but chaos.

What do you need in your bag? There are two categories for your handbag: permanent items and transient items. Permanent things are your wallet, keys, a planner, your cell phone and cell phone charger. You'll need kid things depending on the age of your kids: wipes and pacifiers and snacks are always there, or safety pins, if you have older kids.

Then there's the transient stuff that's just in there for the day: a note for the kids ballet recital or a soccer game, thank you notes, stamps and envelopes that you want to drop in the mailbox. The point is you have a permanent place in the same place in your bag everyday so that you can put your hands on it immediately.

It's also helpful to have separate pouches that switches in and out of your bag; you can just take them out of one and put into another handbag. It can be very liberating to just be able to drop these things in everyday.

You can also extend that system to your kids' backpacks. There should be a permanent place for permission slips, notebooks, and pens, whatever.

How about organizing your day?

Each day is a container that's only going to fit so many things. Sitting down and choosing what's most important forces you to focus on getting done the most rewarding things, the most significant things, before you run out of time, which can happen if you're not realistic about how long things take.

People are often completely unrealistic about how that. You have to learn to take shortcuts when you're estimating how much time you have for any one given thing. It's very hard for women to say no or to take shortcuts -- there's so much guilt. But the minute you get real, all the psychology of how hard it is to say no or to delegate melts away. All of a sudden, you have no problem deleting things from your "to do" list. It becomes effortless. It's the number one skill of mastering time management.

It seems a little daunting, getting that organized.

Getting organized is a very different process from staying organized. Also, being organized is about being really available, not just looking the part. It's important for people to hear that. Many people misinterpret the purpose of organization. Systems are really a matter of physical and time management. You have to learn to simplify all your spaces -- your bag or your house.

It also helps to create a system in your house where every room is organized by function. There should be only one place to look for something or put something away. Think of it like a kindergarten classroom. There's an arts and crafts zone, a music zone, a reading circle zone. Organize the home that way; think of every single room and think of the three to five activities that take place there. If it works for five year olds, it can work for you.