Sunday 30 August 2015

Ruins and Being Organised


The ruins pictures are just because I want there to be a nice picture at the top of the post in case I don't get post for weeks (again). And also because the pictures were taken last Sunday on a particularly nice day, so why not? The ruins in question are Bothwell Castle, some bits 13th century, some 14th, so it's doing all right really!


The kids have been back at school for two weeks now. The Boy Child is settling into high school - it's a big change from primary school but he seems to be adjusting quite quickly, and Miss M is adjusting to not having him at the same school as her. Not that they saw much of each other, but she knew he was there! So new routines all round. I'm due to start my next (and last) Open University course at the start of October so I'm looking at ways to be more organised. For the moment I'm trying to get all the course reading done before the course starts - some things are easier than others. I'm 40% through Gulliver's Travels at the moment and it's slow going, whereas As You Like It only took a couple of days.


I'm a great one for list-making. I am a pen and paper person when it comes to getting organised, although I use my phone and tablet for appointment reminders and so on. A while back I came across a mention of bullet journalling, which is a bit like making to do lists but with different symbols for different things. It can get very complicated and I'm wary of that - it could be a big timesuck, which is hardly the point - but I've taken elements of it so that I can keep track of things done, things started, things no longer necessary, and things moved to another day.

I did a search for bullet journalling on the wonderful world of Pinterest and discovered all sorts of amazing complicated systems involving multiple colours of felt-tip pens, loads of symbols and quite unfeasibly neat handwriting! Hmm. So the picture above is the reality of my own version, complete with post-it notes for other things to keep track of (shopping list, theme list for a picture-a-day group I'm a member of, that kind of thing). It's simple and not very pretty, but is working for me, especially on days when I have lots of not-very-big things I want to get done but might easily forget because they're essentially boring, or when there are things I need to get the kids to. I always start with 'Kids to school' so that I can tick something off at the start of the day!

So there we are, the start of a new academic year and all the resolutions that entails!

1 comment:

Mrs. Micawber said...

Ooh, I like this idea - withing reason. I tend to make lists on odd bits of paper which then get lost in the shuffle. When I'm VERY organised I put the list on my keyboard so I can't fail to see it.

Did you ever read "The List" by Arnold Lobel? It's a Frog and Toad story and quite funny. (And only takes about 3 minutes to read.)

:)