Organisation: An Essential Evil?

Organisation – it’s my friend, my very, very good friend.  I love to be organised – a lot.  The Hubby not so much but he does like the end result.  Being organised and scheduled allows me to be disorganised and unscheduled.  I find having a budget spreadsheet, a shopping list template, a monthly meal planner and a diary frees up time for the unscheduled acts of life.  Scheduling actually gives me my time back.

I have tried moving to apps – I’m fairly modern, not in a 25-year old way but in a just-over 45 year old way that isn’t completely unaware but I haven’t found the app that works just right yet.  I’m working on it though.  It took me dropping and breaking a precious hard drive with said budget spreadsheet, etc., on it and having the tabs on several SD cards from our holiday break off, and realise it’s not the easiest fix to do, to realise I needed an alternative other than just backing up my back-up.  Welcome to my life iCloud.  Although I’m still toying between this and Google Drive.  And Lightroom.  There’s a lot to learn.

I also like some elements of my life to remain hand-written – I love stationery, always have, and the thought of not being able to purchase a new diary for the year just doesn’t sit right with me.  I’ll need to economise and be environmentally friendly in other areas of my life.  Knowing that the budget is taken care of, that if we follow certain rules, and we routinely complete standard tasks, things will just happen.  These are things that have to happen – we both like a clean and tidy home and garden, we both like to take holidays and discover new places, and we both like the security of knowing we have both savings and money to spend.  When we stick to these routine, seemingly boring tasks, life is better, it is freer and our minds are happier, in the knowledge that we can take time off.  Occasionally we don’t stick to the routine and as the structure is so well established, it doesn’t take long to get back on top.  We can only do this occasionally though or things fall apart.  I stress that although it seems so structured, the structure, once established, is actually a tiny part of our day or week.

I read a lot of blog posts on organisation and general tidiness and I often find myself thinking ‘I do that already’.  Truly and honestly, I’m very happy with the organisational things I have put into effect in our life, I really am.  After several years of honing them, they work very well for our little household.  The only time it doesn’t work is when I can’t be bothered so I try not to be not bothered not very often.  The only thing I would change is transferring some of my own-created excel spreadsheets to app versions but as I said, I’m still looking.  I’d especially love a budgeting app that allows you to link to your bank, see your everyday spending, put in a weekly or monthly budget, and change it as you require.  I tried Pocketbook and I think it would be fabulous for those that need to organise bills but being reminded on a weekly basis that I have missed a bill for the off-licence or the groceries is kind of missing the point.  My bills are organised, no problem – it’s called Direct Debit and a nice-little yearly spreadsheet that I type the dollar value into and it tells me, yep you’re doing fine and yep, you’ll save some money this month if you don’t spend the savings at the off-licence again ………