Getting lost in organization
By Brent E. McCoy Special to the Acorn

It seems that everyone is writing or reading self-help books these days. I figure that because I'm not an expert on anything, which apparently makes me qualified to give advice on everything, I thought I'd try my hand at offering some self-help tips.

This week's topic will be organization. As life gets busier and more complicated, organization can be the key to sanity.

There are two main schools of thought on this. One group suggests that everything should be at arm's reach and easy to get to. This group is comprised mostly of people too lazy to go any further than arm's reach to put something down. The other group advocates a place for everything and everything in its place.

I subscribe to the latter school of thought. I believe that everything should have a place from which it can go missing.

Everything might be a little much. Let's stick to a few main items folks try to organize around the house such as pen and paper, tools and recipes.

I once wrote an entire column on the collection of pens in the bowl by the phone in my house. The pens are useless but at least they are well organized and in their place. We really don't have a place for pens that work and this caused a bit of a problem the other night.

I just happened to notice that there in the bowl was a pen that looked like it might work. I tested it and sure enough, I could write with it. But then I didn't know what to do with this pen. I couldn't put it back in the bowl with the useless pens (that wouldn't be organized), and I had no place organized for a working pen. I only had two options. Instead of repairing all of the pens in the bowl, I broke the good pen and tossed it in. Remember, the secret is to keep everything organized.

The preceding paragraph illustrates an important point. It's not enough to have a place for everything. Everything needs to be returned to its place. This is the only way you'll know where it was supposed to be when you go to get it and it isn't there. After all, if you didn't know where it was supposed to be, how would you know for sure that it was missing?

Most parents complain that their kids will never pick up a tool to help around the house. My kids were always picking up tools. To this day, I have yet to find a single place where they put these tools down. But since I had a place for all of my tools I know exactly what's missing when I'm halfway through the job. It really does save a lot of time looking around only to find that you still need to go buy another one.

Almost everyone has a stack of cook books or cards with their favorite recipes in the kitchen. Some are orderly and some are scattered all about. My wife has solved this problem. All of her recipes are stored orderly in their place and at the same time they are all within arm's reach right there on the back of the cans.

I hope this helps you get a little more organized so you can have some time for the finer things in life. I'm going to take a nice quiet drive in the country just as soon as I can find those darned car keys.