Carpets & Flooring
CRI Articles
IEHA Articles
IICRC Articles
Features
I remember reading Highlights magazine during my younger days and always appreciating the Goofus and Gallant adventure stories. For those of you unfamiliar with these stories, they were about two fictitious boys brought to life in side-by-side drawings, to illustrate a bad way and a good way to handle a situation.
Here are some examples of Mr. or Ms. Disorganized versus Mr. or Ms. Organized:
1. Situation: It's Friday and the mail carrier walks toward your front door, holding a big pile of mail.
Mr. Disorganized: Adds it to the pile of mail that has been building up since Monday. It's currently about two feet high. Just looking at it overwhelms him.
Mr. Organized: Quickly glances through his mail, tossing definite junk mail away immediately. He sorts the mail into four piles:
- To do
- To read
- To file
- To distribute to the appropriate person
2. Situation: Using your digital camera, you snapped a bunch of photos from a town festival you just attended.
Ms. Disorganized: Places the camera on her dining room table, figuring she'll get the photos off the camera when she has extra time. Another event comes up, and she snaps more photos. Another event, more photos. Another event, yet more photos. Before she knows it, she has filled up her memory card and doesn't even know what's on the camera anymore.
Ms. Organized: Downloads the photos the day after the town festival, handles any photo editing, deletes the bad ones, burns the good ones onto CD-ROMs. She then prints out a few to scrapbook.
3. Situation: It's Thursday. You have to run to the grocery store to pick up snacks and beverages for a Friday morning playgroup you're hosting.
Ms. Disorganized: Figures she doesn't have time to make a list. She runs to the store and wings it. When she arrives back home, she realizes she forgot to buy juice boxes and has to make a second trip out to the store.
Ms. Organized: Takes the time to think about what the kids and moms at playgroup may like to snack on. She makes a list including snacks and beverages. She looks through her coupon organizer to see if she has a coupon for anything she needs. She then makes one successful trip to the store.
4. Situation: You just started a new job, and the person you've replaced has left you with a pile of paperwork that your boss says needs to be filed.
Mr. Disorganized: Decides he'll get to it eventually and continues to pile more papers on top. A week later, his boss asks him to find an important report he needs to reference. Mr. Disorganized wastes over two hours before he locates the report.
Mr. Organized: Divides the big pile into seven little piles. Each day, he works for 20 minutes until all papers from one of those piles, is filed away. By the end of the week, he's done filing. When his boss asks him to find an important report he needs to reference, Mr. Organized simply opens the cabinet and pulls it out, all in a matter of five seconds.
5. Situation: You're waiting for an important call to come in from your doctor. He finally calls with the information you need.
Ms. Disorganized: Jots the information on a sticky note and leaves it on the kitchen table. The kids come home from school and toss their school books on top of the note. They later grab their books and head to their rooms to do their homework. Later, when she’s looking for the note, she can't find it. She ends up having to call the doctor again, who isn't too happy that she wasted his time. Later that night, she finds the original sticky note in her daughter's room, attached to the bottom of her school book.
Ms. Organized: Jots the information into a 3-ring binder where she stores all of her family's medical information. She then stores the binder on a designated shelf in her home office. Later, when she needs the information, she retrieves the binder and follows the doctor's instructions.
Basic Housekeeping - To Be or Not To Be: Organized: Created on March 5th, 2007. Last Modified on January 21st, 2014
Maria Gracia, owner of 
