Organised? Me? Part 1

There may be MANY parts to this Organisation blog.

Those who have known me for a long time will attest to the fact that until my first major breakdown in 2009 I was super organised. After 2009, things have been going downhill in terms of home organisation,, but until I left teaching last year, I still maintained a very organised classroom, planning and assessing schedule and kept myself up to date with professional issues.

Now, though, things are terrible.

I don't know if it's because Spring is in the air, or because we have hit rock bottom in the house, but I have this compulsion to organise and declutter.

We went to Staples yesterday and bought some resources:

A handy dandy portable filing box and hanging files. We have 2 metal filing cabinets in the hall. One is beautifully organised with files pre 2009. The other is just a jumble of post 2009 papers, not even in files. Hence, this new portable box, in which I intend to keep our most frequently used files. We have decided just to dump the contents of metal file cabinet #2 into a big box and put it under the bed. 

I have been watching dozens of YouTube videos about organising (yes, get a life Piggles)and was taken with all the references to a label 
maker. So the Finster also purchased this:

The photo's a bit dark, but it is a hand held Brother label maker. We have to wait until tonight when the batteries come in our Sainsbury's shop, and then we can play around with it.

I decided today that I could tackle the 'in tray':

Pretty impressive filing, huh?

I needed to gather all the papers up, but that raised the spectre of the *ahem* dining table. To give the full effect of its beauty, I took shots from a number of angles:

So, 'Operation Sweepstake'. I would love to be able to say that I put everything away, but in the interests of honesty, I just dumped them elsewhere in the tip  sitting room.  But I did end up with a table like this:

I gathered the papers up and put them in a real in tray:

One and a half hours later, all the stuff that could be filed was in newly created alphabeticised files, in date order and all logical. All that remained was various questionnaires and forms that we have to fill in - hopefully tonight, sitting at our cleared table:

Just a little glimpse of some of the glory that awaits my attention...and this is only 1 room in the flat. It really is a visual statement of what mental illness looks like:

Keep watching for each day's transformed section!