Things are very quiet right now at work, which gives me an opportunity to get caught up on things like reading old email and filing away documents and so on. But the major project I have planned for the next week is developing an index (in the form of a web page with links) to all the files on our shared drive. If all goes well, our area will no longer echo with shouts of :"Where we did we put the answer to that very similar media question?" I will be able to find drawings of motor drive electronics, photos of sunshade mechanisms and block diagrams of flight software within seconds, instead of days. It will be, quite simply, organizational nirvana.
I have similar - nay, grander - aspirations at home. I already have a database that tells me where every book I own is, whether it be on a shelf or in a box in the den. (Well, not quite every book. There's a "to go through" pile of 100 or so and the unread stack. But I'm close.) My music collection is in alphabetical order in three categories - by performer for most stuff, by title for cast albums and soundtracks, and by composer for classical music. My maps are in hanging file folders, in alphabetical order by state and by city within each state.
But there is still much to get rid of, probably via craigslist or maybe ebay, but I'm under the impression that ebay is a thing of the past. And there are craft supplies, which defy any organizational scheme I've thought of yet. No matter how near I get to organizational nirvana, as compulsive as I can get about a place for everything and everything in its place, there is still a fundamental piece missing. I may know very well that the elastic and the buttons are in the sewing box, but I still can't find where I put the bloody sewing box.
It can't be organizational nirvana if I can't find the velcro.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel