Getting Started

Hi, my name is Jenn and I'm helplessly disorganized.  It's been a lifetime constant and regularly gets in the way of pursuing my dreams.  It's not one aspect of my life, it's most aspects of my life and it's not my only issue, but it is a large one. I have no idea if this blog will be of interest to anyone else but me, but that's not really the point of it. It would be nice to find people with similar issues to share ideas with, but I guess I'm not about to hold my breath for that.

So I've actually been working on this process, of getting organized, for a few months now, but I thought it might be helpful to the process to create some form of accountability. Or maybe just to see the process written down in case I ever want to repeat it when I inevitably get all disorganized again. 

It's NaNoWriMo and I should be writing, but I've been having difficulty finding my voice even though I know what I want to write about. I think it's because I feel so unsteady. So at the beginning of 2020, before the world fell apart, I decided I was going to organize my entire house. I had lists and inventories for some rooms, but with one of my biggest problem areas, my office, I thought everything needs to be pulled out and put back in one thing at a time so it's organized and not just tucked away.  Except then the world fell apart and most of my office is in laundry baskets in the next room. Not only does this make it a little more difficult to do laundry, but it also makes my office difficult to use at all. Worse, a bunch of other crap has filled the space of the old stuff while it's been in baskets and boxes.  The entire room looks like one big catch-all.  I'm old school. I still prefer a desktop over a laptop because of the setup, the feel of the keys, and most of all the lack of a touchpad.  I was using a laptop on and off for years before I finally learned how to disable the touchpad, so my cursor stopped jumping all over my screen from my fat hands.  My husband upgraded my desktop and it down to the point that it just needs the software installed and was intended to be Linux because I'm not a huge fan of the new versions of Windows and that's been waiting for like a year.  There's just this debilitating stack of things I need to get done and it's not just in my head, it's visible in my house, which is made worse by the sheer number of people currently living with me.  Have you ever heard people talk about how, when your space is cluttered, your mind is cluttered?  It's so true because it's like I can't think clearly anymore because everything has passed my threshold for disorganization.  

So basically I started this blog to talk about the process of finding my way back to clear thinking and hopefully dream realization.  I know I'm a bit old to still be talking about dreams, but I feel like if you reach your forties and that dream is still there in the back of your mind, you're never going to be content with your life until you find some means of achieving it.  I want to write fiction novels and I used to dream of the mainstream publishers, seeing my ideas in a bookstore, but as I've grown older, I think more of my ideas lend themselves to indie publishing simply because I like to genre blend.  I like certain concepts and tropes in fiction you don't really see in those mainstream publishers.  I'm sure I have ideas that if I ever finish may fit nicely with a mainstream publisher and if that ever happens I'd love to chase that dream too, but right now my dreams are focused on finishing a series that I'd like to self-publish and hopefully when I do, earn enough to at least cover the costs of creating it. I don't have dreams of getting rich or making millions from the stories in my head.  My dreams are just seeing those stories on my bookshelf and maybe finding a few people that enjoy them as well. My only financial dreams associated with writing are not going in the hole to put my work out to the world, at least not permanently.  I feel like that's achievable.  

But that's more than just a process of Scrivener putting words on the page, it's a process of fixing a lifestyle gone off course to make those dreams achievable.  So I won't just be talking about writing, I'll be talking about cleaning and laundry and to-do lists. I need to clear the clutter around me and keep it cleared in order to keep my head cleared.  

Like I said, I started this process in September with a Scrivener template.  I didn't like the Basic Template for Fiction. There's not enough to it. I'm too prone to going down the rabbit hole searching for something I need that's not there.  So I went hunting for template downloads except a lot of them don't bother worrying about things like formatting in the notes and that drives me nuts. Some just cater to one genre. A lot of them do questions instead of categories and I don't like that style of character and setting sheets.  Most of them have just the basics in those categories that you're supposed to customize for each individual setting and I'd rather have sheets that are at least customized to the major types.  Like I don't want just a basic setting page that I have to customize myself every time I'm trying to plan a dimension, country, city, business, etc.  I want setting sheets already designed specifically for each of those things and then a basic setting sheet for the stuff that doesn't fit.  Because I want a setting sheet that reminds me to think about the stuff that I might not quickly consider, like history, climate, plant life, among other things.  And I don't want the setting sheets that aren't for bigger places to be bogged down with a ton of things that aren't relevant. The same goes with characters.  I feel like most of these templates were crap on the planning stages and specific to one type of story arc that I'd never learned.  I do intend to learn what a beat sheet is, but when you're looking at a novel template for one never having learned Save The Cat, it looks insane.  I realized to get the template I wanted; I needed to build the template I wanted, and in researching one thing, I kept finding others that needed to be a part of it.  So yeah, I'm still working on the template.  My goal is to at least get a draft done and then keep rewriting that draft as I go along. I still need draft one though. So far I know I'm temporarily happy with my series planning sketch.  And I like my lefthand organization system. It's the sketches I keep working on. I've got this great outside links section that takes me straight to the help I need when I'm writing and I've even got some visuals saved into the sketch for describing features.  I'm a huge fan of visuals.  I also have a ridiculous amount of icons that I really wish Scrivener had the capability of organizing into folders.

As I was going along I realized I wanted a quartet of templates instead of just one.  I like the organization system and I feel like even though that's not Scrivener's intended purpose, it would be a great place to keep track of financials that you need to get in the habit of keeping track of.  As far as my personal ones go I'm just keeping track of the cost of things I've bought for writing, not because I can write it off on taxes, but so I can set myself a sales goal when I actually do publish.  So like I bought Scrivener just for my dreams of writing and while I bought it a while ago and just paid for the upgrade, this is a new practice for me so I listed it as the current price of $49.  That was an expense I wouldn't have had if I didn't want to write, so when I publish I'd at this point at least like to earn $49 to reimburse that expense.  I just want to know that when I pursue my dream that doing so isn't going to become a financial sinkhole for my family. So I'm keeping track of things I never would have bought if I didn't have this dream and adding them up as my sales goal when I finally publish.  Besides an initial expense tally sheet, I'm creating a monthly expense section for when you actually do start writing to get me in the habit of keeping track of the things I'll need on taxes. I know you can write off a certain percentage of household bills like electricity and internet expenses so when I release my first book (in a few years when it's written and ready) I'm hoping having this template made will remind me to start keeping track of those things. The idea is that the Expense Tracker template will have me entirely prepared for tax season when I publish.  

The third template, besides the novel template and expense tracker, is an Idea Library Template to store all the loose untyped pages in boxes and files around my office and all the computer files tucked all over the place in multiple file types.  I want to put them all in one massive file that I can use as a playground when I need a break or when I'm looking for something new to work on, just go in there and play and bit until something takes off.  So when I do pull it out to be a project, one it's used all the same files as my novel template so it will transfer really easily. Two, a lot of it's already done for me and I've left it in the idea library until I felt excited about the idea again so I'm ready to work on it again.  The plan is to read through each idea, try to add one thing before you move on, or add until you're bored with this idea again. Or maybe steal the entire idea to incorporate into the current story you're working on and delete it from the library altogether.  It's all in one place so it's not a huge scavenger hunt, so I feel like once I finish this, it will work really well for keeping me organized.  It also gives me a place to throw all the new ideas in my head so I can focus on the one I want to be focused on.  Getting ideas is not my issue, focussing on one is my issue.  But building this and using it would clean up a lot of the file mess on my computers, and storage drives making me feel more organized.  Making them look less daunting. 

The final template is a Research Library for all the random that might be useful someday bookmarks and file downloads on my machine.  Again, it sorts those things into categories and makes them more manageable, it's already there to drag and drop if I need those topics in my current manuscript,.  It cleans up my bookmarks and file storage.  

So it's a template quartet, all in progress. I'm intending to share with two of my writing friends, honestly, they're my only writing friends at the moment, once I at least have a first draft to share.  I'm doing this because I'm terrible about doing things for myself.  If I make these intending to share them with other people, with the thought in my head that I'm doing it for those other people, I have more of a chance of completing these templates than if I'm making this for myself.  I'm terrible at doing things just for me, something I need to work on yes, but for right now I just have to be creative about finding my way around my failings as a person.

In other matters, I've started using a to-do list program called Todoist. I'm trying to get all my personal failings, cleaning to-dos, and writing to-dos in one place.  I've divided them by type into separate lists because I'm still using the free version, but it puts everything from each list onto the today tab.  

Step one was laundry. I read a writing email that said do a load of laundry every day because that way it doesn't fall behind or take up too much of your day. I don't really see the need for that exactly. I also feel like the writer probably doesn't sort their laundry and pity what their socks look like because I know how socks mixed in with jeans can end up looking.  So I sort my clothes into jeans, darks (dark grays, black, and sometimes navy blue), colors (depending on which I have more of I might put navy blue here too), whites (white, light grays, light khakis, and tans) and finally towels & bedding.  I put my schedule in order of need, what we run out of first, then what we get the most of in the laundry on down until I had a daily schedule.  Mondays are jeans, Tuesdays are darks, Wednesdays are colors, Thursdays are towels and bedding, Fridays are whites.  I then set a schedule of who strips their bed when, there are eight people in my house at the moment so if I have them all change their bedding the same week I'm going to be doing laundry all day Thursday into Friday trying to get it all done.  Half the house gets washed one week, the other half the other. Sometimes if I know there's a lot, and I get done with colors early on Wednesdays, I'll do a load ahead of time.  On the weekend, I hound my family to get their clean clothes out of my laundry room.  It's had mixed results.  

On the positive side, it's really nice to not do any laundry on the weekend.  Laundry doesn't feel as daunting and overwhelming anymore because other than towels and bedding, I normally only need to wash and dry one load per day.  I have a front load high capacity washer and a mini washer so that might be part of why I don't have to do two loads even with eight people.  Even so, it takes a lot less time to only concentrate on one type of item instead of all the laundry. Gathering and sorting every weekday before I get started only takes a few minutes instead of the hour-plus it used to take to find my way through laundry mountain people threw in my laundry room. It allowed me to come up with a method of avoiding laundry mountain by putting a pop-up laundry bin for people to drop clothes in at the entry of the laundry room.  When I'm done for the day I can start loading tomorrow's load to save time and then starting the load doesn't take as long.  I'm not a morning person. I move slower when I first wake up so this actually gets done a lot faster when I have it mostly ready the day before.  I keep up with laundry pretty well and haven't had a lot of I'm out of these, conversations since starting this method.

On the negative side, it's a massive battle to get the kids to get their clean clothes out of my laundry room on the weekends.  It's a battle to get the empty hangers back when I need them.  Sometimes my laundry baskets fill up before I'm finished doing laundry and again it's a fight to get them emptied and get them returned when I need them.  It's really hard getting used to leaving dirty clothes in the other laundry bins when it's not their day to be washed.  Sometimes my kids try to help except they don't understand my system, so I have to spend some morning resorting my bins the way they're supposed to be sorted. Sometimes the kids won't bring laundry out until I've finished the load for the day and then get upset when I tell them it's going to be a week before I wash something because I'm trying really hard to hold firm to this schedule.  I guess the biggest battle is getting my family to understand this is the way I'm doing things now and they need to get on board with that.  

Next, I moved to my bedroom, which had become sort of a catch-all for everything, much like my office.  I should probably explain that when I want to do something, a lot of times I'll go in there instead of to another room, so my bedroom is sort of treated like a public room.  Especially since at one point when we were first getting everyone situated in my house, my office was being used as a large closet and couldn't be used as an office.  So I started with writing a maintenance plan even knowing that the initial clean-up to perform those tasks was going to suck.  And yes, it really sucked.  Pulling out all the furniture to sweep up everything that had fallen behind and underneath, dusting the furniture, clearing all the surfaces to put them back the right way, it took a couple days, mostly because I have a bad back so I have to take a lot more breaks than an average healthy person so as not to injure my back worse than it already is.  But once I finished it, my bedroom makes me so happy.  I have a list - stock the mini-fridge, take out empty boxes to recycling, straighten the mini-fridge corner, straighten the nightstands, empty the ashtrays, (yes I'm a smoker) put laundry in the basket, pick up any large items on the floor, sweep as needed, check recycling and trash, change as needed and make the bed.  Now that I've done the cleaning, that entire list takes ten minutes or less to complete.  On Saturdays, I have dusting and mopping, which takes a little longer, maybe a half-hour tops, and monthly tasks like windows, curtains, walls, and ceiling which may expand the task to an hour.  But my bedroom only depends on my husband for my routine and he's on board with it, so it's clean and stays clean.  It makes me happy to be in there, it makes me happy that the entire task is finished in a few minutes.  

Most of the other rooms are chores. There are eight people in this house. Six of them are legal adults now, even if I call them kids. They are my kids, it's just that my three kids are all over 18 and one collected a spouse that's also over 18.  My office, my bedroom, the laundry, shopping, and any complicated cooking are my chores. If it comes in a box, I'm probably not making it because I don't actually like to cook and if they can't throw something in an oven and set a temperature and timer, I've completely failed as a mother.  I'm also supposed to be the one who's making sure everyone else is getting their chores done.  And before you think it sounds like a lot, one person has bathrooms, cans, and yardwork, another has dishes and cleaning the laundry room, one has cleaning the living room, and the last has cleaning the kitchen and pantry and taking out the trash.  The final adult in the house pays the bills, cleans his office, and fixes the broken stuff.  Everyone has their own bedrooms on top of that list.  Nobody has a massive list of things to do.  These lists become hard with errands, jobs, and the small children needing attention in the house, but they're designed not to be impossible to complete. 

So next on my to-do list is making detailed lists like I did for my bedroom for all the other rooms in the house.   That way no one can say they weren't told and hopefully I can start getting a handle on my house.  I'd like to decorate for Christmas soon. I can't do that with the house in the constant state it's in by people failing to properly do their chores.  Just because they are someone else's chores doesn't mean I'm not working on them when things occur, like a need to use the table or sit on the living room couch.  Did I mention every room in this house has been treated like a catchall of late and that's a lot of the reason why I've passed my threshold for disorganization?  

So that's where I'm at currently on the house. Assuming I keep up with this blog, which I don't have a good track record of, I'll keep you updated on progress.  I'm well aware they keep saying you can't have it all.  I've read it a million times. If you want to write, you should expect your house to get messy or to have to pawn off cleaning and cooking tasks to other people in the household. You should expect to miss out on things with family.  But my question is why?  What if it's just that those people didn't look long enough for the right system because they were driven to get to the words?  I can understand that mindset.  But there's also a mindset that says clean spaces make it easier to concentrate and think and while I'm a naturally disorganized person, I can really understand that too.  I think it's a matter of finding the right system. So I delay getting to really writing a bit so I can get my space clean and find a method of maintaining it that doesn't require a lot of time.  So I may not get a ton of time every day to indulge in my dream, but I maintain good relationships with my spouse, children, and grandchildren. I just need to find the proper balance.  Right now I'm admittedly not finding that balance.  I have zero boundaries with my family and they know it.  It doesn't matter what I'm doing, most of them expect me to stop and give them my undivided attention whenever they wish about whatever they wish and that needs to stop.  I need to carve out a set time where they actually agree to leave me alone and let me be.  I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.  It's on the agenda.  I could accomplish a lot in two silent hours a day if I could find them.  And don't give me get up earlier or stay up later because one I have both night owls and morning people living in the house, it's rare to find a time where everyone is asleep, and two, I have trigeminal neuralgia and a lack of sleep tends to cause flare-ups.  To give you an idea of what that means, have you ever had an abscessed tooth? Imagine that every tooth on one side of your mouth is an abscess. Now add a sinus infection and ear infection on top of that.  It's like having all of that at the same time on one side of your face.  If I get a flare-up it's hard to get anything at all done.  And while the meds help, sometimes when they're helping I feel dizzy, high, or nauseated, all of which are hard to concentrate through.  I have to be careful about how much sleep I skip out on or I'll find myself in worse shape than I already am with trying to get personal things done.  

Anyway, back to getting organized. It's not just my house, it's my systems.  They need to be uncluttered and easy to use, since trips down the rabbit hole are a regular activity for me that's not the case.  So with my bookmarks, I'm moving all the writing and research-related bookmarks into my writing and research templates.  I don't need a bookmark on Greek Mythology for regular usage of my computer. Zeus doesn't really impact my daily life.  I'm making sure all my recipe bookmarks are moved to my Pinterest board.   I'm checking to see if they even work anymore and the things I bookmarked for other people I'm emailing off to them and deleting.  I started by taking all my bookmarks mobile and otherwise and putting them into the other bookmarks folder then deleting the folders I currently have, the plan is to sort through ten bookmarks a day until that folder is empty.  I want my bookmarks bar to be quick and easy to use without a ton of scrolling or distractions.  So we'll see how that goes.

The second thing I've really been working on is email.  I have no idea how I get on so many mailing lists.  I get on average over 100 emails a day, most of them garbage I have no interest in reading.  I've been avoiding my email for years and I tend to miss important correspondence.  My attention has been brought back to it recently because Gmail has sent me messages about how I'm close to my storage limit and either I need to pay for more storage, clean out my email inbox, or stop getting my emails.  Only option two is an acceptable option, no matter how much I don't want to do it.  I use a service called Unroll.Me which has its benefits and its downfalls. 

The benefits: You can clean up your inbox so that it shows up in just one newsletter.  It figures out all your subscriptions and allows one-click unsubscribe.  And you decide what's in the roll-up and what isn't. It's also totally free. 

The downfalls: Apparently they track information in the roll-ups, I don't know to what extent but I read about it when Clean Email, a paid service, tried to get me to switch. Personally, I don't see it as a big deal that they know Old Navy spams me with ads.  They don't actually delete the emails put into the roll-up, they're simply moved out of your inbox into another folder in your email called Unroll Me that still has to be sorted out at some point.  

I like it because it fools me into believing there's not a lot in my inbox and the unsubscribe feature actually works.  It's more of a temporary tool for me while I work to get my Gmail back under control because, let's be honest, I have no interest in reading 1200 newsletters.  I don't even have the time in the day to do all that.  

So I have an email to-do list because again it's a daunting task.  I do the current month plus one month backlist in each of the top categories, inbox, social, and promotions.  First, I scan the headings for things I have no interest in reading and delete them.  Then I move stuff I want to keep in my email into labeled folders like account information and receipts.  That should just leave writing and research-related stuff for the most part.  I print those to PDF and save them into my research library to read later.  If there's anything that doesn't fall into those categories, that I will take the time to read right then, but very few inbox emails don't fall into one of those categories.  I repeat this process in the other two headings with the same constraints.  I've actually cleaned the Inbox tab to just this month. Social is usually empty because of Unroll Me and Promotions is on October 2020, I did a year's worth so far. Yay! I scan the headings in the trash for anything that shouldn't be there and the same with spam and empty both.  I check drafts and sent for anything that doesn't need to be there, downloading any attachments I'm worried I haven't saved elsewhere.  Then I check the category folders. I started with one per day clearing it out with the same process I used on the tabs. Now I check the ones I've already done and start with a new one.  If that category has more than a couple thousand emails, I break it into pieces and do it by months.  I've actually made really good progress. I went from 99 percent full to 79 percent full so the process is working. I spend about an hour working on emails, which is more than I want to be spending but eventually, it should pay off and become manageable.  When I'm done, I empty the trash and head to Amazon, where I learned I have a ridiculous amount of subscriptions.  To get to those, I go to my account and it's in one of the lists on the bottom left.  I unsubscribe from at least five before heading to Unroll.Me where I do the same.  I want the subscriptions gone, but I don't want to spend my whole day unsubscribing from them.  So again I break it up into small manageable portions and try to concentrate less on visible progress and more on being able to check off my daily box and be done with it knowing that I am making progress.  

I'm trying to get the rest of my space and files organized but these are really the only places I've made progress so far and this post is kind of long, so I'll try to check in tomorrow to let you know where I'm at with getting organized and my writing journey.