Archive for the ‘Obsessive Organizing’ Category

Something tells me my timing could have been better. But on Saturday, I started my seasonal closet flip (I divide New York weather into six months of hot and six months of cold, and October 15 marks my mental shift) a mere three hours before I was due to depart the house with dearest Hubby to see yet another Ryan Gosling movie.

I swear all we do lately is go to Ryan Gosling movies. Not that I’m complaining. He’s the best thing to come down the cinematic pike in quite some time. He makes me want to do push-ups. Many of my favorite actors make me want to do push-ups.

But back into the closet go I.

So you would think three hours pre-movie would be plenty of time to accomplish the seasonal switcheroo, right?

Not even close, my mama friend.

So, because I spent all of today with the Wee Lass at the Central Park Zoo, it still looks like a bomb went off in there. And unhappily, there is spill-over into my office, which is making me all angsty.

Whatevs, I’ll just get up at the crack of dawn and tidy it enough so it won’t make my head explode, and I can continue my excellent work habits of last week.

But I’ll need to block out a few more hours to really get the job done. At least.

One reason it’s taking so long this year is that I’m being more ruthless than ever. Edit, edit, edit, toss, toss, toss.

Still, some pieces are receiving a stay of execution, mostly because when I tried them on they were cuter than I remembered. And I noticed that certain brands always wind up in the “keep” pile: Theory, J. Crew and, oddly, Juicy Couture. I say “oddly” only because I was never a tracksuit Juicy gal. But I’ve gotten a few things over the years, and I really love them. And just last week, I nabbed a really cute white faux fur vest at the Juicy store in the Short Hills Mall.

Not surprisingly, I have a bizarre-o dialogue going on with myself the entire time I’m working. “That black puffy-sleeved cropped blazer’s very Carine, maybe you should keep it,” I’ll say to myself.

Or, “That skirt would take a good 10 rounds of P90X to jam yourself back into.”

Or, simply, “Blech.”

Okay, I need to hit the hay, but before I do, I want to impart a deeply excellent closet-organizing tip from designer and über-gorgeous mama Shoshanna Gruss. I interviewed her during the spring for one of the InStyle Makeover stories I worked on, and she said that when she’s doing her own seasonal closet flip, she makes sure that nothing gets packed away that she doesn’t love.

In other words, even if you’re tempted to just shove it all in suitcases or boxes or whatever and move on to the current season, don’t. Take the time to really assess whether you’ll be happy to pull it back out again in six months.

I noticed that in my own case, my fall pieces elicited two reactions: “Hello, old friend.” And, “You’re still around?”

Circa April 15, when I do the reverse closet flip, I want to feel all warm and fuzzy when I see those hot-weather clothes again.

Because of my new digital gig (yay! I likey!), dearest Hubby just asked me to pull together all my financial docus for the year, so he can have a little pow-wow with the accountant about whether I should Inc myself.

Instantly, this perfectly innocuous request sent me into a panic.

Why? Because I’m financial paperwork-challenged. While I’m pretty good at making dough – 2011, thank the lordy, has been très excellente so far – I am a disaster at keeping it all organized.

I mean, for reals.

My only saving grace (and you’ll discover shortly that it’s not really a saving grace at all) is that I’m kind of a paper-hoarder. That means I hold onto everything. And since I only recently acquired more filing cabinets (built-in to my yummy new desk), most of this year’s pay stubs, deposit slips, etc., have been shoved into a few giant shopping bags.

How lame is that? If Suze Orman were next to me right now, she’d slap me silly. I have her great, great, great book Women & Money and I can assure you that she’s not down with shopping bag financial document filing systems.

Another big paper problem in Momover Central: The bazillions of tiny scraps scribbled with email addresses, websites, brilliant ideas for taking over the world. They’re residing in the giant shopping bags too.

I’ve mentioned that I took a fab home-office organizing e-course with Sue Rasmussen this past summer, oui? Well according to Awesome Sue, I have plenty of company in Tiny Scraps-ville. And I quote: “Most creative entrepreneurs have pieces of paper in many different places in their office (and their home!).” Whew.

And Sue’s reco is to take all those bazillions of tiny scraps and dump them into one big basket or bin. And then sort, sort, sort and chuck, chuck, chuck.

So right now, even though it’s Saturday morning and there are at least 10 other things I’d rather be doing (knitting, flipping my closet over from summer to fall, reading the new Vogue), I’ve gathered up all my stray bits and bobs and put them in a festive wicker InBox. And the plan is to take all the little nuggets of info and transfer them to one big master notebook.

Sure, I could input them in the computer. And I probably should. But I sort of like writing. I’m old school. Old school and extremely paperwork pack-ratty.

It’s a rainy Sunday in Gotham, and am I kicking back with the paper and a cup of half-caf Chock? In my dreams. Instead, I’m knee-deep in the Wee Lass’s playspace, trying to bring order to sheer chaos.

We’re sort of on our way. We just got her bedroom closet all tricked-out, California-style, so now it looks like a glam, clothes-only mini-boutique, just like Mom’s.

But now all the toys and clutter that were crammed in there have to find a new home. That is, if they’re not already shoved in a Hefty bag or a box headed for Salvation Army.

Although I wanted to get her involved, I must have been on crack to think that she would want to help me figure out how to systematize the new Cubeicals set-up Hubby hammered into being yesterday afternoon.

But beyond lobbing a few compliments our way – “Wow, you guys really switched it up around here” – and being overjoyed to find a few long, lost treasures, she officially couldn’t care less.

I so don’t get this. When I was little, I was obsessed with keeping my toys and Barbies and books and clothes – basically everything I owned – totally organized. But then again, my daughter has waaaaaaayy more of everything than I did. Not to make anyone bust out a hankie or anything, but I was poor. My daughter isn’t, and I’m really happy about that.

Still…all the stuff…

Please, I know I’m not the first parent to get semi-overwhelmed by the mountains of itsy bitsy crapola. For moral support, I just read this great blog post on Frugal Dad. The author, Jason White, writes about wanting his children to have more than he did, which I can totally relate to. And he, and his commenters, offer many excellent suggestions about how to keep a lid on it.

Reading that made me calm down a smidge, and to remember that in any given moment, we can choose our reaction to the events in our lives. Happy, ballistic, anxious, whatever – it’s our call.

So I’ve made a decision – for my physical and mental health, because stressing-out is the single worst thing we can do to ourselves – to try to just accept the fact that the Wee Lass isn’t me. She isn’t poor, she has too many toys, and she has zero interest in whether they’re organized to a fare-thee-well.

And I can still be happy. I may follow her around with a Hefty bag for a few more years, but I can be happy nonetheless.

Chez Moi is a little topsy-turvy at the moment. We’re having the Wee Lass’s bedroom painted and closet tricked-out, we’re sprucing up the third floor hangout zone (and P90X Central), and I’m taking full advantage of this Mercury retrograde by excavating and organizing every square nano-inch of this place.

The pantry just got a total re-org, and as soon as I finish this blog post, the fridge is getting stripped down to its ice cubes. Brrrr….

What’s with all the clutter-busting? A) I live for it, as the number of posts filed under “Obsessive Organizing” would attest to. And B) I have the time to do it.

In fact, I’m so in the zone right now with this stuff that I’m actually taking a home study course with organizer-extraordinaire Sue Rasmussen. I’ve blogged about Sue before, and I love her tele-seminars. So I figured she could help me with the ultimate challenge – my home office. It’s been neglected for about six months now, and it’s beyond time for a massive purge and revamp.

(More on that in an upcoming post. I just ordered these Kathy Ireland wooden filing cabinets, so yippee, I’m on my way…)

Adjacent to my home office is my walk-in closet, which brings me to the actual point of this blog post: Meditation.

For quite some time, I’ve meditated in my closet. And I have a little shoe cubby filled with all my props – my ocean CDs, my Sleep Sheep boom box, etc.

But lately, because it too needs major editing and TLC, it just doesn’t feel peaceful in there. Certainly not enough to Zen-Out and focus the way I want to.

So after dropping the tot-lette at camp this morning, I took a cue from so many of my neighbors, who routinely meditate right on the river every morning. And I have to say it’s pretty perfect for that. The Hudson is a tidal river, which means it sort of acts like the sea, with cute little waves lapping the rocks. I had one of my ocean CDs with me too, but it didn’t feel like over-kill at all.

Indeed, for your own meditation practice, I highly recommend a double-whammy of water. Unbelievably calming and Zen-ing.

Semi-leisurely Sunday morning. Ran. Took the Wee Lass to the park. (She’s obsessed with swinging.) And now I’m trying to squeeze in a little knitting, blogging and Vogue-ing before we head to the town pool for the afternoon.

On the knitting front, permit me to brag for a moment: Last night, while I was catching up on the season premiere of Curb Your Enthusiasm via the (impossibly awesome) HBO On Demand, I finished that Texas-sized purple scarf I started on Road Trip 2011. So I’m embarking on a mini version for a certain small blue-eyed blonde in my life.

I know, I know; I’m a genius. Please hold your applause until the end of this post.

And while I’m generally opposed to multi-tasking, I also took five minutes to flip through the new issue of Vogue. You know, the one that’s themed around age. My entire mental landscape is themed around age at the moment, so I might as well read big, important fashion mags devoted to the topic, right?

Anyway, there are definitely a few pieces I want to read in the issue, so I’m bringing it with me to pool. One of which is the cover story on Sarah Jessica Parker, and how she somehow manages to be an icon of utter lifestyle perfection.

(I’m not mocking; I love her. In fact, if Hubby doesn’t get me that super-expensive boxed set of Sex And The City for Xmas this year, I may never speak to him again. I’ve only been coveting it for, um, five years…)

I was particularly struck by the multiple images of her jaw-dropping pad positively strewn with kid-crapola. She’s got twin girls and a boy now, and all the god-forsaken gear that goes with it. I recognized a lot of the girly stuff in the pics, of course, and it completely shored up my resolve to get the Wee Lass to toss a lot of the stuff she’s outgrown.

If you’ve read the new Mama Guru already, you’ll know that my lovely expert – pro organizer Barbara Reich – strongly urges us to involve our tots in the toy-purging process, and not just pull a sneak attack, Hefty bag in hand.

Guess what? I struck gold, and got the Wee Lass to bid adieu to several big items, including one of those adorable Rody hoppy-things. Since the nanny procured that for her, I never really knew what it was – a dinosaur? a seal with ears? – but now, creating this link, I see it was a horse.

Hmm….I’m from Oklahoma, and it doesn’t look like any horse I’ve ever laid eyes on.

But it’s all good. A little knitting, purging and pooling. And we’re off.

I’m flying out the door for a hair appointment right now, but before I leave, I just wanted to call your attention to the latest Mama Guru, Barbara Reich.

I’ve blogged in the past about the Wee Lass’s toy-hoarding tendencies, which seem to be getting a little worse with each passing day. Compounding the problem of her excessive “collecting” is the fact that she doesn’t exactly possess a clean-as-you-go work ethic. Thus, not an hour after we’d gotten home from Road Trip 2011, her entire room and playspace looked like it’d been trampled by a herd of buffalo.

Über-grrr…

But happily, I’d already been in touch with Barbara before we left, so her amazing organizing tips were waiting in my InBox when we got back from the heartland.

I think you’ll get a lot out of them too.

Okay, I’m off to the salon – followed by a pit-stop at Staples for a Brother P-Touch. As obsessed as I am with organizing, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher that I don’t already own one. (Or five…)

TGIF gorgeous Momoverettes.

Yesterday – on my big weekly date with Hubby – it was all about mixed messages for me. But in the spirit of putting the cart before the horse, I’m gonna tell you about the second part – the stylish thriller Limitless - before I tell you about the first.

If you’ve already seen the movie, feel free to skip on down to the bit about – spoiler alert – my trip to the psychic.

Okay, so the movie. Basically, and implausibly, Bradley Cooper plays a dirtbag wannabe novelist who has a book deal but has not yet committed one word to page. (I say ‘implausibly’ because I mean pleeze, have you looked at Bradley Cooper???) And early on, after his hottie girlfriend dumps him because he’s such a loser and she is so very, very together, he is sad-sacking his way home to his crummy Chinatown apartment when he runs into his former brother-in-law.

In short, the creepy former bro-in-law supplies Bradley Cooper’s character with a drug that instantly makes him wildly productive. He’s learning languages! Playing the piano! Day-trading his way into millions with his newfound knowledge of complex algorithms! Starting and finishing his novel – brilliantly – within four days!

Oh, and of course he physically morphs into the real Bradley Cooper, i.e., stunning with nary an ounce of body fat.

Although, after seeing the flick, Hubby and I both said we’d like to procure a stash of the Limitless drug so we too could reach our full potentials, I couldn’t help but dial-back to the chat I’d had earlier in the day with Judy Turner, my beloved psychic of the past 15 years.

Now that my big life questions have been answered (the ones about whether I was ever gonna get hitched and have a baby), I only go to see Judy about once a year. But it’s always great, even when she has sad or scary info to impart, as she most definitely has had in the past. She’s a no-nonsense mom of three, warm and friendly but completely a BS-free zone. Despite a roster of famous clients, there isn’t a pretentious bone in her body.

(Speaking of bodies, she helps the New Jersey police find ‘em. Dead ones. Spooky.)

Anyway, here’s the net-net of what she had to tell me yesterday, which is a happy twist on the Limitless message: This time of my life is all about slowing down, and enjoying my kid, my hubby, my house and my life. Yes, there are work opportunities – probably more than I can even handle. But, unlike previous pre-Momover Lady lifetimes, career stuff isn’t what defines me anymore.

Instead, Judy wants me to dive into cooking and driving, and to build my confidence around both of those core mommy-competencies. And trust me, she isn’t reading this blog, so she doesn’t know how much I whinge about my poor cooking and driving skills.

For the next 10 weeks, I have an insane amount of work to get through. But then Hubby and the Wee Lass and I are taking a massive cross-country roadtrip to visit relatives in Tulsa and St. Louis.

I’m living for that road-trip. And the cooking, driving and mommying that will follow. So yes, Limitless productivity – but in a very, very different way.

Despite experiencing a small (and misguided) personal-failure pang when I picked up my new Rx for even-more-jacked-up thyroid meds, I’m having a pretty good day. I managed to do some real, live, pays-the-bills type of work this morning. And my thighs and ass are super-happy that I blasted through the P90X Plyometrics workout that was hanging around from yesterday’s To Do list.

Then I took care of a N.U.T. that’s been preying on my feeble mind for months now. Hubby’s niece had a baby back in January, and at the time, we somehow wrested some of the Wee Lass’s best infant toys and stuffies from her to send on their merry, circle-of-life way. But of course they languished in purgatory (read: storage) until I could get my act together.

Today, I did. And as I was lugging the shopping bags full of Melissa & Doug puzzles, wooden alphabet blocks and fresh-from-the-washer-and-dryer stuffed critters down to UPS, I thought to myself: Really? This task was such a big deal, so impossibly taxing, that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it for 90 freaking days?

That’s the thing about N.U.T.s, which is a moniker coined by Dr. Oz and his book-writing buddy Dr. Michael Roizen. We put off doing something small, like mailing those darn toys, and before long, it’s looming all large and unwieldy.

And that, my mama friends, eventually leads to stress.

As I sit here gobbling a can of almonds (seriously; the second after I uploaded this cute picture I was rifling through the pantry), I’m thinking of all the NUT-ish stuff in my life that needs to be done so I can mentally just move on already.

I think I’ll make the mother of all punch-lists. And then just check those suckers off one by one.

I’m gearing up to go back to my guest-editing gig next week, and I’ve decided I need to get insanely organized, wardrobe-wise. Because I have to schlep the Wee Lass to school before work, I’ll have not one second to dilly, dally and dither over what I’m wearing.

Sadness. I excel at dillying, dallying and dithering.

Right now, I’m in full-on add and subtract mode. On the addition front, I nabbed this cute teal Jovovich Hawk top at Target yesterday. Technically, it’s a dress – part of the relaunch of all the designer collaborations that’s been getting so much buzz lately – but there’s no way in hell I’ll be attempting to wear it as such. Perhaps if it were six inches longer. Or I were six years younger…

Still, I’m happy to report that, for once, when I looked at my reflection in the three-way mirror clad in my bra and undies, I felt downright pleased as punch. All my P90X-ing is completely, utterly paying off. So much so that I’m contemplating a second go-round once I wrap the first one in two weeks. We’ll see…

And speaking of my undies, or more specifically my undie drawer, I need to do a ruthless edit. I’ve lost a little weight, and quite a few inches, so there’s really no need to have so much precious real estate taken up by my vast collection of Spanx and Assets, the lower-priced line also designed by Sara Blakeley.

Don’t get me wrong; they’re both great collections. Total confidence-boosters for so many women looking to rein it all in. In fact, I think I read recently that Oprah has an entire room devoted to Spanx. That’s true love.

And that’s also why I’m not chucking my stash wholesale. Rather, I’m gonna bundle up all the bottoms (i.e., the bike shorty numbers that harness a mama’s wayward booty) and put them in storage. Some of the camisoles I’ll keep on hand, especially the nude ones. Those are are great under sheer tops and dresses.

For me, my problem area is definitely south of the torso. And even now, when I’m pretty trim, I still have a total bubble behind in my Gap Always Skinny jeans. And my upper thighs can be a little irksome, which is why I also swear by trouser jeans.

But right now, it’s all under control. As long as I keep up with my endless squats and lunges. And some lower-body move Tony Horton calls Heavy Pants. I just moved up to 10 pound weights for Heavy Pants, but watching this tough chick on YouTube is making me realize what I wimp I am.

At least I’m a happy wimp. And a Spanx-less wimp, to boot.

Recently, how much have I been whinging about not having any free time? A lot, right? Like non-stop?

[Sidebar: Don't you love "whinge"? I think it must be a Brit-speak mashup of "whine" and "cringe." Because whenever I hear myself whining about my manufactured Barbie Problems - when there is so much freaking misery in the world - I cringe along with everyone else within earshot...]

So yesterday, on my first day in about five weeks of not having to do drop-off and haul myself straight into the city for work, you’d think I’d kick back a little, right? WRONG! Yes I stopped for yummy pancakes on my way back to Casa Us, but once I arrived, I dove into a list of chores as long as the Mississippi.

Many of them were household-oriented, including ironing and starching my sheets. In one of my massive stacks of mags, I’d read this great tip about bringing your fresh-from-the-dryer 500-thread-counts to the cleaners and having them pressed.

Since I’m obsessed with hotels, and that whole crispy-crisp sheet thing, why didn’t I just do that? There’s a drycleaner literally in the bottom of our condo complex. No, I figured I’d attempt it myself – on the measly half-board that’s part of a California Closets built-in in the Wee Lass’s playspace. I can assure you, sheet-wrangling on a toy-sized ironing board is a tougher workout than P90X.

Later, I continued my geek-streak at the annual spring fund-raising auction for the Wee Lass’s school. Amid all these great prizes – harbor cruises, weeks at the Shore, dinner for two at Le Cirque – what did I bid on and buy? A three-hour house-cleaning and a private consultation with a clutter-buster.

Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Momover Lady knows I’m counting the seconds until the all-powerful Clutter-Buster darkens my doorway. I have an even bigger fixation with organizing than I do with crispy-clean sheets.

I think it’s my way of tricking myself into believing that I have some degree of control over the chaos of modern life. In fact, I know it is.