Calm vs. chaos

Although you wouldn't guess it by looking around my house, I consider myself to have an organized soul. I crave order and organization. I'm anal about details like all my clothes facing the same way in the closet or how my dirty dishes are stacked on the counter. Typos or grammatical errors in books jump right off the page and smack me between the eyes. I thrive on structure - once I find a system that works, I stick to it like glue. I load the dishwasher in the same order all the time, I follow specific steps when I pay a bill, I even write out my checks in the same way every time. I think I mentioned the other day that haphazard messes totally stress me out - I would rather fold laundry for an hour (every towel the exact same way, of course) than spend 10 minutes picking up the living room. Let's not even get into how many times I edit my blog posts or how I obsess over my color scheme.

I'm not sure why this is, except that I know my mind is always going a hundred miles an hour - my brain is multitasking even when my hands aren't. Systems help me make sure nothing important gets missed.

Of course, there are areas of my life that don't have really good systems yet, and as you might imagine they drive me more than a little crazy. Example: the other day I posted a picture of my shiny clean kitchen, which I was super proud of. What I didn't show you was this....


(Seriously, I cringe just looking at this picture. I must do an amazing job of mentally blocking it out day after day. ) This space is basically a catch-all for stuff that belongs in the kitchen (and quite a bit of stuff that doesn't) but doesn't have a proper "home." Tupperware strewn everywhere, eight bazillion paper grocery bags (we use them for recycling, but have way too many), a jug of bubbles, a horse show award from 2007, and God knows what else. As you can see, even the window ledge is cluttered with "stuff." This space drives me crazy. If we were in a position to do any home improvements, one of my top priorities would be ripping out this counter and filling that space with floor-to-ceiling cabinets. That's not gonna happen any time soon, so instead I restack the tupperware more or less weekly, rearrange the pen cups (how hard is it to remember that whiteboard markers go in this cup and regular pens in that cup?!), and throw stuff away when no one is looking (those bubbles are next!).

One of the reasons I like going to work everyday (well, most days) is that my office is 180 degrees from that counter space:


(Ahhhhh. Pretty, isn't it? I can literally feel my blood pressure going back down. ) Everything has a specific home, right down to the white-out tape and the separate containers for big and little paperclips. Even though 90% of the time I'm in the office alone, my workday has a pretty consistent routine as well. My boss and I share a page-a-day calendar, and everything I need to get done on a given day, the boss writes on the calendar, and I check them off as I do them so she knows they got done. Mostly this is stuff like which bill(s) to pay on a given day, but it's also reminders to send e-mails or pick up the timesheets or call in payroll. If there's stuff that I need her to do before I get in the next morning, I write it on the calendar. I would love to have that level of organization in every part of my life.

...

Okay, that was an interesting tangent....back to home. Just recently Levi has offered to take over 100% of the money management in our house, and although giving up control is kind of hard for me, it's also a huge weight off my shoulders. We both knew I wasn't very good at it (more on that another time - maybe), and it was creating undue stress for both of us. One of the reasons I became in charge of dishes-and-laundry was because those were the tasks I agreed to take on in exchange for letting (making?) Levi take over the bookkeeping. And I'm pleased to realize that those responsibilities are becoming a more natural part of my routine, as well.

Uh....this post is getting stupid long, and I don't really know how to wrap it up. So tell me: do you need structure and organization in your life, or do you thrive on chaos? How do you deal?