Don't Get Mad, Get Organised!

About a year ago, someone brought something over to my house in a plastic bag - not a thin plastic bag from the supermarket, but one of those hefty, square-bottomed plastic bags that sometimes come with rope handles, and it had the slogan on it "Don't get mad, get organised!"

I liked this because I love all things organisation, storage, stacking, these go together, put these sideways and you can fit those there, budget, list-with-tickboxes, 8-step plan, achieved, goal, colour-coded, space-saving, labeled.
When a couple of pals introduced me to Store: The Storage Superstore where this plastic bag hailed from, I just couldn't stop frowning and shaking my head and singing little songs to myself and then left as soon as possible. It can be distressing being surrounded by too many things you want.

My Organisation Idol is a friend and former work colleague from back in the days when I used to get paid to work. I was looking through a filing cabinet of assessment results when I noticed the labels were not just in order of school year, but in alphabetical order within each year. And the manila folders were colour-coded by subject. After staring for a while in dumbfounded delight, I wondered what kind of filing cabinet mastermind had done this. When I looked around the office and saw a desk that was neatly stacked with space-maximizing document holders, each one labeled with an electronic labeler, I knew.

The true extent of this friend's organisational virtuosity was only revealed to me when I went over to her place and saw her study. Wall-to-wall cube bookcases. Storage boxes clearly labeled and in perfectly aligned rows between each level of books. Matching L-shaped desk featuring a clear and unencumbered workspace. It was genius. Pure, Swedish, flat-packed genius.

So. The following scenario was happening to me on what seemed like a daily basis at around 5pm:


Laundry: done. Poo-stained jumpsuit: soaking. Mopping of kitchen floor: HA HA. Baby wakes from afternoon nap. Kiss baby maniacally. Wipe baby drool off face (mine). Baby puts drooly hands on face and in mouth (mine). Wipe off baby drool again. Husband arrives home, handball baby to husband. Change wet-shouldered shirt. Need to get dinner so look in fridge: sweet chili sauce and milk. Look in pantry: passionfruit pulp. Look in freezer: Icepack. Spend ten minutes trying to dream up some new kind of toxic smoothie. Order pizza.


So after some weeks... or possibly months of this, I could have got mad. But I got organised.

There is now a System in place and the System is this. Once a fortnight, Gastro Boy and I go to the shops and fill our trolley with LARGE quantities of the following:

• Chicken breast fillets
• Minced beef
• The big cans of tuna
• Pasta
• Rice
• Frozen vegies
• Cans, jars and bottles of such things as tomatoes, tomato paste, pasta sauce and chicken simmer sauce.

We fill the freezer with the chicken, beef and vegies, chuck everything else in the pantry and shazam - a healthy, easy meal is always at my fingertips and none of it is perishable so it all keeps till I need it. Shazam indeed.

Now don't get me wrong, I love meal planning and cooking, and I still plan and buy for special meals. I just don't have as much time or energy for it right now as I used to. When it comes to the end of the day, if I'm tired and haven't planned dinner, all I want is to be able to pull together something healthy and right now. And with The System, I can. No pizzas, no toxic smoothies.

The thing I love about storage planning checkboxes organisation is you pretty much never reach the perfect way to do it or store it or manage it, so there can almost always be a better way. It's a challenge, and much better than getting mad.