If you are like most people today, you feel that you have too little time and too much to do. As a result, you often end up not getting the things done that are needed to be done. And even little things grow into a mountain of work that you feel you can never climb. I used to be very unorganized. On all of my report cards that I received as a kid, the teacher always made that cute little comment “needs to get organized.” I had a desk that was a mess at school and a room that was a mess at home. One day, the teacher dumped out everything in my desk on the floor in front of the class and told me to pick it up. I can still feel the sting of that humiliation.

My mother was not as cruel. She would clean my room so that the Board of Health didn’t come in and condemn our house. Both of these people tried to help me get organized, but neither one of them really helped me at all. My teacher used drastic and humiliating tactics that didn’t work but just made me upset, and my mother did the work for me instead of making me do it myself. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how to get organized, why it was so important and how to teach my own children how they could stay organized as well. The purpose of this book is not just to tell you how to clean your home or desk so that everything is where you can find it, but also how to organize your life so that it is easy to manage and you do not feel overwhelmed. Although I eventually realized that it was much easier to have my important papers at a place that I could find them and the value of having a home that didn’t look like a pigsty, my mind was unorganized throughout much of my life. My kids were forever joining activities and I was forever driving them around to different events after school while trying to maintain a job as well as my home. I often felt like a hamster on a wheel. It wasn’t until much later when I learned not only how to organize my home and work place, but also my mind.