Keeping organized is a work in progress for me. Five or six years ago I realized that the methods in organizing books simply would not work for me--they are designed by people who are sensors, not intuiters (for anyone who goes by Myers-Briggs). In other words--those organizing systems work great for people who are organized. So I came up with my own "good enough" method of keeping the house relatively under control, while also realizing that I'll never have a home that looks like something in a magazine (and honestly, I wouldn't want it that way--anyone with lots of hobbies and interests is going to have clutter).

Number one rule for me: if it's too complicated to follow, I won't follow it. So I made simple rules--I open my mail above the recycling and dump all of the junk and catalogs into there immediately, then throw bills in a box next to the computer, and anything else goes in front of my place at the dining room table. I "file" bills and important papers by year, and that's it--I pile everything up for a year then stuff it all in a box, put the year on it and stow it in the attic. If I should ever really NEED something, I'd be able to find it. After seven years, I can toss the whole box. I tried to organize papers by type, but that only lasted about a month before I gave up. I'm a piler, not a filer, so this works for me. Same thing with papers coming home from school--each child gets a pile in the dining room and at the end of the year I keep the best stuff, box it up, and throw out everything else.

Other clutter: whenever anyone calls asking for donations of household goods or old clothes, I always say yes. Then I go around the house the night before they are due to pick stuff up and I put together a couple of boxes of things to give away. There are three places that call for donations regularly, and they each call about four times a year. This got rid of all of the old clothes, toys, household appliances, etc. over the course of a few years (oh, and the receipt goes in the box with the bills next to the computer, which is my dumping ground for anything I might need like that) You could probably get the same effect by eBaying it all on some kind of schedule. Don't think about it too much--just do it.

Books are my biggest problem, and so far I'm just not doing anything about it. I tried once to go through my shelves and get rid of books, but I only managed to eliminate about a dozen. DH went through his a couple of months ago and decided he was just going to get rid of 25% of his books, and he did! So now there's more space on the shelves for my stuff.

My house is still pretty messy, but not so messy that we can't spend a day going nuts cleaning it to the point where we're happy to have company over. There will always be piles of things in corners, and piles on the dresser, and piles on the desk by the front door, but they are at least relatively recent piles and a sign that real people live in this house, not magazine people with no hobbies!

Sarah