Has your organizational strategy changed since BC (before children)?

I grew up in a home with an obsessive-compulsive father. His closets were organized by color and sleeve length and separated by work versus leisure. His kitchen cabinets resembled Martha’s only with less gadgets and his laundry. It was a work of art.

When he died, I was 19 and very mature for my age in many ways but very naive in so many others. Upon examining his closet to separate items that needed to be kept, thrown out or given to family, I happened to find his unique filing system for checks. Yes, my mother and father had divorced when I was 4 and my OCD-bound father had kept meticulous financial records from that point forward. Basically what I found was 15 years worth of checks. This was before the banks became all computer-literate and they sent back your actual check once it cleared the bank. In his closet, 15 years worth of cleared checks, in the boxes that new checks arrived in. All in numerical order with the starting and ending numbers written in black marker on the outside. Need I tell you how many boxes one can accumulate in 15 years? This was prior to the invention of the debit card mind you. Fifteen years worth of cleared checks!

I marked this as a lesson learned and I realized that his habit had been living deep inside me for a long time. I had only rebelled because that’s what teenagers are supposed to do, right? I started to sort and organize and clean, oh, my father was quite the clean freak too. For many years I remained a slave to organizing my financial documents, sorting my clothes by color, style and occasion, cleaning the deep crevices of my home almost daily and you better believe my laundry? It was a piece of art. 

Fifteen years after my father passed away, my first child was born. And just as if I had tossed away my organizational skills with the placenta, I was on a downward spiral. With the influx of baby gear, and the living arrangements of a construction worker, I started to lose my mojo. Slowly but surely I would find dust in the wall joints behind the bathroom door, I found dust resting on top of my appliances and formula filled bottles rested in the sink.

But, laundry, I had never sacrificed my laundry. My first-born son’s closet was organized, by size, by color, by occasion; my closet only delivered more of the same.

A short 22 months later, we welcomed the birth of baby number 2. And, as his placenta was tossed out, the rest of my skills disappeared. I wash dishes when I need a pan to cook something in or a glass to drink out of, I dust when someone’s coming to visit and I sweep and mop when I realize that we have a full family of ants moving living with us.  And laundry? I scoff at a bit of laundry. You’ve only worn those jeans twice, no need for me to wash them again. Underwear? Looks like its time to buy a new package. And socks, my socks are sorted, folded and put in a drawer but my husband and each of my boys; they simply have an assigned basket color and their socks live there. If they want to fold them and put them away, so be it, but me, bah, who has time for that?

If someone had told me BC that I would run such a ridiculously lazy ship, I would have mocked them, relishing in my crisp clean laundry, my tax papers organized and ready to file by January 2nd and my dishes, washed and filed away in the cabinets not only neatly but also in exactly the same place each time. But the truth is, this time known as AC, this time is precious and I have so many more important issues than a bit of laundry or dirty dishes.

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