A Little Order from Chaos

Between work, home, things I'm interested in, things that arrive in the mail - both the slot in the front door, and the email inbox - there's a steady stream to deal with.  There's a 5 step pattern in my life that repeats with some regularity:

1. resolving to keep up with things
2. doing so for a while
3. starting to slip behind
4. things build up until they trigger action
5. much energy is put into reviewing, sorting, acting, and throwing away

Today I found myself at steps 4 and 5.  Mail, books and magazines I was reading, or wanted to, and a variety of notes from yoga classes and star watching, health insurance and financial things were loosely organized, but cluttering the desk by the computer, the top of the piano, and a couple of end tables.  

In addition, there was a slow draining tup upstairs, a leaky faucet in the bathroom, the furnace room to straighten up, laundry to fold, and to top it off, a button that popped off of my shirt and rattled to the kitchen floor just before dinner.  

By the end of the day I had put the furnace room back in order, treated the tub drain, organized and shelved the books, and ridded out a lot of paper, consolidating important information in a better organized fashion.  I tackled the leaky faucet after dinner, taking it apart and replacing a couple of washers.  Success.  Then I grabbed a needle and thread and sewed the button back on the shirt.   

I have a tendency, when first confronted with something like a button coming off, to add it to my "to do" list.  But today, after putting so much energy into taking things off the list, I didn't want to put things back on it.  So I just took care of it, and was surprised at how little time it took - perhaps 5 minutes.  

So now I'm back to step 1.  I'm going to work on this, so that when things start to move to step 3 I will intervene more quickly and pull myself back into the habit of taking care of things as they arise.