Organizing Your Life

Right about now, the weekend before Thanksgiving, you are starting to think about being off for an extra day or two.  Your mind is switching gears between work and what you need from the grocery store to make that all important dinner.  Or you may be far from home and stressing over the fact that you won’t see your family for the holidays this year.  Your focus is thinning out on work matters and tuning in on what you want to give your son or daughter for Christmas, Boxing Day, or Channukah.  You may be focusing in on trying to stay focused.

My stress is realizing that I will be driving both Monday and Tuesday of this week and that today I keep falling asleep with my fingers on the keys.  A nap may be in my plans for today…somewhere between making Koulourakia (cookies) and making sure I have the ingredients for Spanakopita (spinach and feta cheese pies), Pastitsio (macaroni and beef pies) and stuffing for the turkey.  Of course, I will be getting up on Wednesday and cooking all of the above.  Yes, it is a long drawn out process that even my father-in-law seems impressed.

So how do you get past these stressors and stay focused and organized in your next few days?

I, yes me, use a list system.  It consists of the dishes I want to make, with the grocery list; the house cleaning schedule so I can make sure it is cleaned before company arrives; the scheduled appointments I have to keep; the call sessions I can make while the cookies are baking.  Of course this is all for up until Tuesday afternoon.  Monday and Tuesday are both out of town, so Wednesday is my baking and cleaning day.  On Thursday, I will prep the turkey and put it in the oven; clean whatever is left to clean (like the kitchen again) and then if I’ve taken the time to stop and put up the tree I will decorate it while the turkey is cooking.

Hmm, I wonder when I will find time to buy a tree.

Staying organized during this stressful time of year will help you remain calm and centered.  You will enjoy the season if you can remind yourself that this is a time of year when you give of yourself only when you have taken care of yourself.

I was watching a few minutes of Joel Osteen one evening when I heard him say something truly enlightening.

He was talking about how it is written in the Word that you should love your neighbor the way you love yourself.  Of course, this is all paraphrased.  My point here is the same as his point.  You can not love others, care for others, help others until you love yourself.

You can feel better about yourself by letting go of the ‘junk’ in your lives.  The bad feelings only pull you down.  They do not feed happiness and joy into your life.  Your friends and family have their own ‘junk’ piled up in their lives.  If you let go of your sorrow, your pain, your feelings of low self worth and increase your feelings of joy, happiness and wonder at what is here in the world for you to see and contribute to then you are better prepared to meet your neighbor with love in your heart.

How does organizing come into this?  De-cluttering is the first stage of getting organized.  Recognition that you will feel better, less stressed once you have let go of the ‘junk’ in your lives you will begin to recognize that you can find things, know where things are and feel organized.

Try letting go of some of the clutter this season as you prepare for the holiday.  Whether your holiday is Christmas, Kwanzaa, Channukah, or other holdiay let go of the clutter and be thankful for what you have.  There is always someone who has nothing right around the corner.

I think if we remember that one little thing;  Be thankful for “but for the grace of God” there you could be also.