Getting ARGanized: A Tale

This is a story about how Mademoiselle Mishel learned the value of being "Organized," a word that once made her shudder, laugh and tell really lousy jokes.

So: Mademoiselle Mishel lives in a small one-bedroom condo where piles of paper collect on her kitchen counter and the "office" is a dining room table that has more piles of notebooks and binders and where the chair backs are used to hang drying towels, swimsuits, caps and goggles.

In this space she would sit for her weekly Monday coach-training tele-class. Everything was going fine--well, fine-ish. Until one day she sat among her rubble and felt anxious and fidgety and couldn't concentrate. On this day Mlle Mishel conducted a terrible practice coach session on a fellow student, her mind rambling all over the place and she felt generaly out-of-wack the whole time. See? She can't even spell "generally." Poor fellow student.

That's when M.M. felt them: little beings pushing against the walls of her stomach and ribs and kidneys and other innards. These riled-up beings were crowded and pissy; instead of being able to play and create and be productive in all sorts of important ways they were too claustrophobic to move let alone do anything of any meaning. Hence, their owner's propensity for chasing her own tail.

Finally Mlle. Mishel listened to the interior clanging. She saw the piles of messy papers and binders spread over the kitchen counter and her dining room table calling to her for some ORDER in the court.

It was time.

Where did she start--having not a touch of German heritage or any Type-A afflictions? In small places. Instead of cleaning the whole place at once, like her cleaning ladies once lovingly did before this Recessionista era (zoot alors!), she took on small little bits. Like, Windexing everything that is Windex-able (coffee table, mirrors). Next, she got out a hole-puncher collected her class notes and put them in their alloted binders, and put said binders in a place they now belong.

Next, she committed herself to making a working space, aka office.

Office, in a one-bedroom teeny-tiny condo?

Sometimes you just gotta work with what you have. So, she cleared off her dining table, opened it up to its full size, put a frivolous table lamp on a lemon-lime place mat and added a pottery cup filled with pens and markers--and crowned this the official new "bureau."

Already she felt lighter and freer and was ready to commit to a new doable system of being organized so the little crowd of creative brainpower would have space to do their good, fun work. Everyone went to bed that night with a smile on their face (wait, is that another tale?) Anyway--

The moral of the story is: Organizing gave Mlle Mishel something she lives for, really--an anchor from which she can swing and play and create, as she does in this Chagall painting, "Promenade." Ahhh....

So Mlle. Mishel knows this is going to be an ongoing process to build systems that will provide new resources of creativity and productivity.

Did someone just say systems? (Way too advanced for M. Mishel)

However, and here's something tres chic and cool for all of your ARGanizational-challenged types: A two-hour Office Day Spa -- to learn how to be freer and freer; more creative and creative. Happier and happier. Check it out.

PS: On the evil TV in background, Rick Steves keeps saying "stinky cheese!" to a young Prague fellow who exclaims "It's good for you as a man!" -- so Mlle Mishel has to go now).

Au bientot!