Preparing to Slow Down

I am trying my best to get things organized so that I will be ready for the slow down that cooler weather and less outdoor activity brings.  It's hard for me to enjoy baking and needlework when clutter abounds. 

My hope is to go through each room and address those areas where things seems to accumulate. The problem I have is that as I sort through the mess and place each item in its proper place I find another corner that needs to be addressed and my attention is averted to the new area, leaving the original task left unfinished. So my promise to myself is that I don't let the perpetual rabbit holes suck me in and that I stay focused on the task at hand.

Am I the only one with this problem? Let me give you an example of how this typically goes...

My cookbook nook is full of loose printed recipes that I have stacked on top of actual cookbooks because I didn't return them to their proper notebook after I used them. As I pull out my recipe binders I get the urge to take everything out and reorganize them by category in the new Pioneer Woman notebook that my sister in law gave me two Christmases ago,

So I spread the pages all over the dining room table and begin stacking them according to what the recipe is for.  As I hit the dessert section I stumble on a recipe for an apple crumble pie that would be perfect to take to my moms this week as we work on our sewing projects since I have a jar of apple pie filling that didn't seal properly in the refrigerator.

Then it hits me that I never put away the apple corer slicer that I used when I canned apple pie filling over the weekend with my grandboys. So I get up and head to the kitchen to put it away into my jam packed baking cupboard and remember that I promised my daughter she could have my extra baking pans and now I might as well separate those and get this cupboard organized while I'm at.

So now I pull everything out of the baking cupboard but decide I should make an inventory list of what I'm putting back in there so I head back to the messy dining room table after grabbing my household notebook and start a new section for baking pans and other useful cooking gadgets.

Then I notice that I never decorated or labeled my plain white organizational notebooks when I purchased them and think I should probably do that before I put them away in my nicely organized cookbook nook which of course I've forgotten about by this time. 

So I head into my craft area and select some pretty scrapbook paper and pull down a few baskets of crafting things and place them on the guest bed looking for my label machine.

So now after a couple of hours of "cleaning" my house looks messier than it did in the first place. Not only is my cookbook nook still not decluttered but now I can't see my dining room table and have baking pans all over the kitchen floor and baskets of craft tools stacked on the guest room bed. 

Of course, by this time it's time to start thinking about what's for dinner, just where we are going to eat it and where I can stack my baking pans so that I don't break my neck tripping over them as I cook.

Sound familiar? 

Tell me I'm not alone. Let me know what areas get you off track when you do organizing projects? Share it in the comments.

xo, Patty