Day One:

This month's issue has a spread on how super organized women live.

After reading the article I emailed my sister 4 words: "This makes me ill."

I can only imagine what it does for the average person, let alone hoarders or messaholics.

I consider myself organized. Most things in my house have a place--they may not be in that place on any given day, but if you gave me a week I could get it all back together.

There are a few spots that are a complete mess. I have let the chaos reign for too long--the task of pulling it together seems too huge. I have 3 secret drawers of shame.

1. My photo drawer--literally a 3 foot by 2 foot repository of my life on photo paper. I adore the images, I just can't figure out what to do with them. But really if I cherish the photos why can't I give them some respect?
2. My sewing drawer--I have fabric, thread, needles and all the tools, but they live in a jumble mess. The last time I had to sew a pillow I bought all new materials instead of digging through what I had.
3. My Cord City--a drawer full of every cord, camera and computer cast off I have ever owned.

The image of the drawer of cords neatly tucked in labeled ziploc bags inspired me to tackle cord city. I have ziplocs, and I thought I had sharpies, but I digress.....

I set my youngest daughter up at my desk with a coloring book and some markers (which came in handy when I discovered I had "misplaced" all our sharpies. 45 minutes later I had a container store (oh the irony....) bag full of old cords, old cell phones etc to E-Cycle, and I had 3 smaller drawers of bliss.

In the first count I had:

1. 10 USB to camera cords
2. 4 ethernet cables
3. 2 power plugs of unknown orgin
4. an old router
5. an old wireless adapter
6. an old hard drive
7. 2 broken cameras, 2 working cameras and all their accessories
8. Mini VHS tapes of my trip to antarctica 10 years ago
9. 7 headphones
10. 2 camera bags that none of the working cameras actually fit into
11. AV cords, and extension cord, phone cords, dsl filters and more

What did I need to keep to be REAL SIMPLE:

1. 2 USB camera cords (we only own two cameras for goodness sake)
2. 2 ethernet cables (I likely don't need either but you never know...)
3. 4 headphones (2 for the kids, 2 for us)
4. AV cords, and extension cord, phone cords, dsl filters
5. the working cameras, lens and chargers
6. Mini VHS tapes are off to be converted to DVD as we speak

I can now send anyone in my house into cord city to find what they need, instead of knowing that I would have to dig through the mess for them, hoping to find the mystery item, because only I knew what the cord or item looked like. Now if you can read, you can help yourself to our drawers of electronic delight, and that to me seems pretty simple, really.