Is it possible to be a Wildly Disorganized Organizational Dream-Kid? Is that even remotely a thing? I only ask because I have so many things that I manage, so many parts of my world that I try to keep records for neatly, and I have great plans, I make great charts and graphs and workflow diagrams, and yet, can still be surrounded by piles of paper, with tasks undone and waiting.

My brain is wired to put things neatly into categories, to alphabetize and order things. I am Waffle-Wednesday after all. Perhaps that holds the key.

Perhaps I am simply a late bloomer. I see all these young moms with their lists and their calendars, and they are such whizzes at organizing the lives of their children. I didn’t even get married until I was 36-years old, and I’d spent my entire life concerned only with me and what I wanted to do. My idea of housekeeping was to keep it out of the way. If I knew I had company coming over, I’d fly through my apartment picking up and tidying until it looked like I lived a neat and orderly existence. I did not. I usually had books and papers strewn hither and thither, to a clutterers delight.

When I got married, I was suddenly responsible for two teenaged boys, my husband and myself. Five weeks after we got married, I was pregnant, and we started a business. So, I had to quickly come up with ways to manage a household, and the housekeeping tasks, in a way that made sense to me. Alphabetical strangeness was what I clung to because it was fun. Waffle-Wednesday was born early in our marriage. Along with Thoughts of Waffle-Wednesday Thursday (leftover waffles), Fried Egg Friday, Muffin Monday, and when I had little guys a few years later, Tater Tot Tuesday.

It also morphed into chores around the house. Make Bed Mondays was the day I’d clean the linens and remake beds. Throw Something Out Thursdays was my way of decluttering.

If I made a list of the things I needed to accomplish during the week, and sorted them into days of the week, than once those things were done, I could go on to focus on cold calls and marketing for our business.

That’s all fine and good, and it worked fairly well. It’s just that our lives have gotten even more complicated. Last night I was trying to work out calendars for all the different parts of our home life, and I came away from the kitchen table spinning.

In my day job, I have a binder for my Cold-Call focus for each day of the week. Monday – is Market Research Monday, and so forth.

Here at home, we have the household chores, farm chores, animals to tend, garden to plant and manage, vegetables to can, canned food to put away and categorize so that we have enough for winter, kids to teach a variety of interesting things, than our business – which is going into a slow season, so I have time to plan for the break-out big rush of Spring, which also coincides with new animal babies, and the garden to put into the ground.

One year ago in August, we got a Duck. That was our first farm animal, and Morduck was actually an Anniversary Gift from my husband. In just over a year, we have grown to having chickens, 2 more ducks for Morduck’s little community (read Harem), turkeys, goats, bunnies, and now a Pig who is due to have babies any day. (The Pig is not on our property yet, but she will be about a week or two after the babies are born.)

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining. I absolutely love our crazy adventure of running a farm. This winter we get to learn how to milk goats, make cheeses and butters and everything else dairy that we can possibly imagine. After our first year of doing this, we have food put away for winter. I cannot begin to express how taken-care-of this makes me feel. It is a lot of work, and it is never ending, but it is our new way of life, and I love it.

So, maybe it’s just holding onto an old way of life to think I need to have a calendar big enough to handle all that we do here on a daily basis. I keep trying to make a chart that will encompass everything, and maybe that’s just crazy sauce. Maybe simplifying my calendar will mean, not worrying about whether it ALL gets done. There are daily things that we do, that there’s no way we can forget. The animals get fed. The children get hugged and snuggled. The dinner is on the table. Other than that, if at the end of the day, I summarize whatever big project we handled, and long-hand that into a journal, that will be enough. Everything else is just a stack of paper waiting to happen.

Somewhere along the line, I will learn a Farmer’s Wife outlook on organization, that less is more, and that as long as we keep moving, it will all get done.