“Organizing Magic,” by Sandra Felton

All right. I cheated.

I told y’all awhile back that I was going to be reading this throughout Lent (read: until Easter) and was going to take it seriously. I felt my life was spinning into complete disorder, and I saw this book as a way to work my way back to the way I wanted things to be.

Well.

It’s a good book. It is. I had to laugh at different points, though, because each chapter tackles an assignment for the day….and some of those assignments, well, didn’t get done. Because, well, they would have taken far more than a day to do. Because they just would have.

So instead of reading it and following it like a manual to orderliness, I read it as I would read one of your blogs. She had interesting suggestions and ideas that came from her own experience, but in the end, I had to take the advice that I received (ironically) from her (in this very book): Take the advice that fits your own life, and ignore the rest. Essentially, it’s what we all have to do with anything we ask someone else about. We can accept their advice for what it is, but ultimately, if implementing their tips and shortcuts into your own life causes more stress than you had before, its – dare I say it? – not worth it.

That said, she really did have some good suggestions for ways to keep my home more in order all along, rather than watching it tailspin into chaos and then desperately trying to reel it back in. I’ve implemented some of them, and some of them I’m still working on. All in all, I do feel like I’m in more control of things. That’s what I was hoping for, so I’m happy.