Well Planned Life

Well, not at all, really. So the “sighting” below isn’t about planners at all.   But I think it speaks to the philosophy of why this community prefers paper over digital formats for planning, or least why we prefer not to use digital in its entirety since many of us use a hybrid system. Below is a snippet of Miranda Lambert’s new song “Automatic.” If you had something to say You’d write it on a piece of paper Then you’d put a stamp on it And they’d get it three days later… Hey, whatever happened to waitin’ your turn Doing it all by hand, ‘Cause when everything is handed to you It’s only worth as much as the time put in It all just seemed so good the way we had it Back before everything became automatic If you listen to the rest of the song, you’ll see that the song points to nostalgia of a time that was simple, before everything was digital and instant and, well, um, automatic.   I think we can all appreciate that. Click here to list...

This is not the kind of thing I usually write about.   My philosophy is to live and let live—I’m not a preachy person by nature, probably because I don’t like when others tell me what to do, how to do it, or how to think and/or feel.   So I tend to stay away from things that tell others what to do or how to do it.   However, I have seen this topic discussed a lot lately, and I have gotten a few questions about blogging in general. I am by no means an expert in writing or blogging.   I didn’t go to school for either, though I have had a lot of experience with writing throughout school (thanks to many English classes and an emphasis in English in college) and growing up (I did a lot of creative writing as a child, mostly stories for my family).   It comes naturally to me.   It’s my medium of choice when it comes to remembering things and getting my feelings out (though music is great for feelings too, but lyrics are a form of writing, so to me, they go h...

One of my organization projects for 2013 was to clean out the cabinet under the bathroom sink and to revamp my linen closet.   They go hand-in-hand because I keep backstock of all bathroom items in the linen closet (as well as linens).   So when I run out of something, I take the item from my backstock, then put the item on my “to buy” list.   This way, I never run out of something (for the most part—there are some things that get missed for various reasons, but mostly this works well), and I rarely need something immediately, which gives me time to buy whatever I need.   These areas also need to be reorganized fairly often because my husband and I both use them and because there is a tendency to eventually just throw items in there without placing them in their respective spots. Although the bathroom cabinet wasn’t a complete disaster, things started to get unruly in there. In order to store like with like, I bought some new Bento boxes for each place....

I’m currently reading One True Thing by Anna Quindlen and came across a passage having to do with a datebook (no brand associated, though one can perhaps assume a Filofax, based on the mention of an included map of the London Underground, or maybe that’s just my assumption, though one should never assume…).   To avoid any copyright issue, I will paraphrase the passage: Someone gives the main character a datebook, which at first goes unused.   She flips through the blank pages just thinking about the possibility those empty pages could represent.   Describing the empty pages, she is looking back, so the narrator mentions that in present day, she uses the datebook, would be lost without it.   Her friend says she is anal about the use of this datebook, that the reason behind it is to bring order to a chaotic world.   The main character, however, states that it’s just become habit the way one eats corn on the cob in one direction or another. Also, she...