My organized evil twin is not me

I am obsessed with systems in an almost I long to be a left-brained person way. Linear, pragmatic, solution-based, I’ve convinced myself that systems can be created to crack the code on looking chic everyday, cooking dinner, staying fit, saving money, and producing good creative work. According to this as yet untested theory of mine, the only difficult part should be finding your system.  – Sarah from Pink of Perfection

I recently read the above and went YES THIS!  I crave being a orgnaized, systematic person.  Make a to-do list, cross it off, and have that glow of productivity and satisfaction every day, surrounded by my clean horizontal surfaces and things filed away.  Just find the one trick, the one system, or pen color, or type of box and BOOM!  Awesome killer adulty-type-person.  Sadly, no trick, pen, or box has kept me from often feeling like below :

Closer to reality from Hyperbole and a Half

I know I’m not the only one, so I’m going to share a few things I have managed to figure out that do help me and hopefully will help you too.

1. Everything counts!  Making the bed?  Counts!  Going downstairs and get the mail? Counts!  Put it all on the to-do list or, if you can’t handle the list of doom that might be, the “I did” list.
2. The corollary of that – breaking down big projects really does help.  So much easier to start with draft email to contact than get new awesome job.  And remember, it all counts!
3. Start with the 5-10 items (no more) that are always either missing (stamps) or present in way too many places (for me, hair things and lip gloss).  Come up with a place just for those items that’s easy.  I dump all my hair things and lip gloss into the same jar on my dressing table.    It’s so much easier to clean when half of it is sweep hair things and lip gloss into hand, walk to bedroom, dump in jar.
4. It only has to make sense to you – don’t do something just because Martha does it, or your favorite blogger, or your mom.  For example, I keep postage stamps in my wallet.  Easy to find, have them whenever I need them.  Nearly everyone who has learned this thinks it’s weird; almost all of them were borrowing a stamp from me.  Organized point – Kat!

What about you?  What tricks and treats do you use to make things work for you?