[Gazette Blog editor's note: The Gazette is pleased to carry Pam Young's weekly column. For more than 35 years
Pam has been
the “get organized guru” thru thousands of newspaper
articles, magazine
feature stories and radio and TV interviews. A frequent guest on
Oprah, Regis,
Today Show,700 Club, CBS Morning News and many more, Pam has
guided and helped
women turn their chaotic homes into havens of peace and order.]
By Pam Young
My Aunt Tottie was extremely disorganized and was she
ever dramatic! My mother
was a BOP (Born Organized Person) and she used to roll her eyes over the way
Aunt Tottie lived. She was a lousy housekeeper, wore baggy clothes day in and
day out and rarely put on make-up, BUT when she did get cleaned up, she was a
KNOCK OUT. Mom said when they were young; Aunt Tottie would get all gussied up to
go out dancing and she’d make an entrance that would drop jaws. Mom said she looked
just like Lauren Bacall.
My aunt loved
to get a reaction from BOPs like my mom. I remember one time; watching her in
her messy kitchen, make orange juice from a can of frozen concentrate while she
talked with my mom. She couldn’t find a clean spoon to stir the three cans of
water into the orange lump of concentrate, so she just stuck her whole hand
into the pitcher and stirred with it. My mother was horrified.
I think one of the payoffs to being disorganized is
the reactions we create. We do love drama and the bigger the mess the more fantastic a clean-up will look.
When you keep your home “company ready” you lose the drama of being able to
say, “Tah Dah!!!!!” When you look good
all the time, you just look good all the time and you don’t get to hear the
whistles and “Wow, you look fabulous!!!!!!!!!”
We lose the exclamation marks when we get organized, so we need to get
them somewhere else.
There
are two places you can get them back. One is your creativity. Being
disorganized can seem like a curse, but there is a precious gift in it and that
is your creativity. In fact you probably already know that your creativity has
gotten you into many messes, because when you’re in creative mode you lose
track of time. When you get organized you’ll give up the explanation marks for
the contrasts between “before” and “after,” but you’ll get them back with rave
reviews from what you’ll create when you have a more organized life.
The
other way to get your exclamation marks is immediate; by watching movies. I
think that’s why we love to go to the show, subscribe to Netflix, watch TV and
buy DVDs. It’s probably why prisons show movies. The inmates get to vicariously
partake in the drama on the big screen and get it out of their systems. Part of
my success at being organized is because I include watching at least two movies
each week into my routine.
Your assignment
(should you agree to take it) is to get your drama fix from a good movie this
week, not from real life mess-ups. Make it a weekly must as you have fun
getting organized. Then, when your life is organized you’ll start getting a
parade of exclamation marks because the world needs what you have to create for
it.
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