The Organized Life

The organized life is an efficient life.  A place for everything and everything in it's place.  I long for that life, and am decluttering, donating and tossing with that vision in mind.  And I don't want to buy storage boxes and new crap until I am exactly sure how I am going to use something.  But then how do I organize if I don't get new things to organize with.  It's a vicious cycle that I am sure only comes with experience.  Anyway, in keeping with the goal of total organization (sounds like total domination, or maybe total control) I decided to downsize my lip gloss collection.

What girl can resist a shiny new tube or the latest great smelling lip balm, that new hot color for fall or the PERFECT for you red that you've been searching high and low for, but then after a week or so turns out to not be it either.  Not this girl.  And therein lies the problem.

Step 1) Organize into logical color grouping.

Step 2) Try on and toss.  Which is not so easy because your lips really start to get dried out and the color never truly comes off between back to back applications, so it's hard to tell exactly if that is a perfect color or not.  And I was not going to keep anything that was not perfect.  Also, the lighting was bad in the bathroom and it was cloudy outside so lighting was bad everywhere.  Which are all excues as to why I ended up with this:

I know - it doesn't loooook like that big of a difference, but I bet I got rid of 15 tubes.  (The pile on the left is NOT the toss pile.  Continue to Step 3 for what that pile is)

Step 3) Since I only got about 3/4 of the way through before my lips were swollen and puffy and some of the look-alike colors I couldn't decide which I like the very best, I made a 3rd pile of try-on-later-and-decide.  This is the pile that sits on my counter and when I pull out my usable bag I see if there is anything better in the try-on-later-and-decide pile.  If yes, it can stay and something similar from the usable bag should go.

(Notice I said something similar should go.  I haven't actually tossed anything else.  Nor have I really tried this out, but I am trying to rotate and use the stuff I did keep)

I've also gone through the pen/pencil box, cookbooks, non-fiction books, and general bathroom beauty products (hair gels, shampoos, lotions, perfumes etc.).

Today at Lowe's while I was buying baby latch gates so the dog can't get up or downstairs - oh and I suppose the baby too at some point - I found a nice modern looking basket that we are going to use for our cards throughout the year.  I stole the concept from the neighbors.  From Jan 1-Dec 31 after we are done displaying birthday, thank you's, anniversary, Easter, thinking of you, etc. cards we will place them in the box.  At the end of the year, we'll go through them, decide which ones are sentimental and keep for eternity.  That way we can get more than one read out of them if we want to look back at the year.

Speaking of the keep-this-card-for-eternity box.....perhaps that should be next on the list things to organize.....