Hi, I'm Jane and my creative genius is a prisoner of clutter. That means that I tend to be right-brained, live in piles, and work incredibly hard at whatever I'm not really supposed to be doing. For years I ignored the fact that I literally lived from deadline to deadline and was constantly trying to deal with the immediate problems that my unintentional lack of organisation had created. In fact, I would fight against any sort of order in my life because everytime I picked piles up and attempted to put them away, I would feel as if I had organised myself out of existence!

One day Gustave Flaubert entered my life. Although this quotation has been translated from the original French in various ways, this is the one which stuck with me: "Be neat and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and creative in your work." Slowly, I began to realise that I was cheating myself, cheating my art, and cheating my precious personal freedom by remaining disorganised and doing nothing to change.

This should be the end of the story, right? Guess again! But the important thing is that I'm making progress, and I'm writing this in the hope that if you fall into the category of chronically disorganised due to creative thinking, that you will begin reclaiming your life as well.

The first trick is to try to be patient -- not very easy for us creative types! However, your life/art/work didn't fall into the mess it's in overnight. Only small, progressive steps are going to have any effect on the chaotic surroundings in which you find yourself. Personally, I didn't think the theory of "baby steps" could hold water - so I set out to prove it wrong. I scheduled one 15 minute increment a day and began attacking clutter, disorganisation, piles, you name it. I didn't attack with a purpose, I attacked in a random pattern (another curse of the creative psyche).

To my great surprise, in a few weeks I was noticing a difference, a small one to be sure, but a tangible, visible difference. By this time I had spent over a year in trying to find books or websites which would speak to me and address my problems, but the search was fruitless. Finally, I discovered the folks at the Get Organized Now! website and forum, from whom I began to learn the following tips:

1. The 90 Second Rule: if it takes less than 90 seconds, do it now. It uses more energy to pick up that coat or towel off the floor later, than it does to hang it up now. It's more time consuming to spend 45 minutes before bed cleaning up the mess of scattered mail, manuscripts, scores, books, plays, business papers - whatever - that you have tossed about with careless abandon throughout the day, than it takes to simply deal with each item at the moment it's in your hands.

2. Baby Steps: allow yourself the freedom to make small, but consistent steps, towards a manageable goal. I tend to combine this with another rule, the 15 Minute Rule, in that I choose that particular amount of time to attack the surrounding havoc. Technically the 15 Minute Rule is much more extensive, but if you begin to explore some resources on your own, you'll discover that for yourself

3. Erase the Evidence: at last, a game! The rule is simple. If you make a sandwich, hide the evidence. If you spend an hour going through a stack of manuscripts to find one score in question, hide the evidence that the stack was ever tampered with. Our moms would have said very simply, "Pick up after yourself!" but we all know that's no fun! Erasing the Evidence becomes a game, and the results can really make you smile.

4. Maintain, maintain, maintain: even if you can't make any progress on a given day, don't backslide! The minute you see all that lovely progress begin to vanish in a matter of hours, you can become discouraged, despondant, and convinced that all of this was a waste of time in the first place. Believe me, it's not! On the days when you can't achieve because the work or personal pressure is too great, simply maintain, and you can still go to bed with a smile on your face.

5. Contain, condense, limit: the rule of the Victorian packrat! This is the rule I finally came up with for myself, and it's working quite well - with professional journals, with collections, with anything you can name! As I begin rooting through my surroundings, I determine how much space I want to devote to any given thing. As I move things into that clean space, I condense. If I come up with something else (within reason) that I want to add to the collection, and there's no room, then I must limit myself. Therefore, if something is to be added, then something must go. Naturally, this won't work with professional resources, but do you really need the "Greatest Stars of Bubblegum" sitting on your music bookcase? If you do, terrific! But think before you store.

6. Reward yourself: yes, that's right, reward yourself! Stop the years of unhealthy self-bashing and give yourself a pat on the back for doing something positive for you. You're not organising for anyone else; if it's not about you, then there's no sense in proceeding. So take a moment and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

As much as I'd love to tell you that I've mastered all these ideas, I haven't, but the journey has begun and has become tremendously satisfying. I seriously doubt that all the piles will ever be completely gone, but they will be under control. I have a better sense of what I have and don't have. And most importantly, the closer I come to being free of the oppression of disorganisation, the more time I gain to give to the things which are truly important to me.

HELPFUL LINKS
Get Organized Now!:
is an incredibly useful website with a forum filled with knowledgeable people wanting to help, no matter what the situation. I own two of Maria Gracia's books, Finally Organized, Finally Free and the Easy Organizer, and I recommend them highly. I hope to adopt the title of the first as my motto someday! The Easy Organizer is a binder crammed with forms designed to help you begin to pull things together and keep them organised.

Organizing for the Creative Person:
is a thought-provoking book by Dorothy Lehmkuhl and Dolores Lamping, which speaks specifically to those of us in the creative field.

7 Simple Steps to Unclutter Your Life:
is a small paperback guide by Donna Smallin which takes you through 7 simple but effective steps to begin freeing yourself from clutter.