Ready, Set, Snow (Days)

It’s Winter in New England and we’ve had our share of snow recently. With last week’s major storm came the snow days.

It was joyful to watch and help my daughter create Lego towns for hours during the snow storm; of course these were scattered across the living and dining room.

After the storm it was my birthday and my family had an amazing weekend full of special activities. I enjoyed every minute of the fun and ignored the laundry, Legos and emails piling up.

Needless to say, we were off our regular routine.

But that is part of life, and we’ve got to take the unexpected (snow days) and expected (birthday fun) changes to our regular routine. After all, being organized is not a constant state and the special times are what we’ll remember!

Some people say that if you are organized you miss out on the fun. If you do spend hours alphabetizing your spices then yes, life may pass you by.

But I find that generally being organized helps me enjoy the special times…because I know I can get back on track when I have to.

How to bounce back?

• Keep your systems simple and easy to use. 
• Have a place for everything. If you don’t know where something goes, find a place or toss it out!
• And the biggest tip, develop your re-set routines—routines for putting things away and taking care of regular maintenance (like laundry). For more on re-setting, read my January 2009 Neat Sheet article, Resolve to Reset.

So the next time your routine is upset, roll with it and be ready to reset.