Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

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I went to the mall with my daughter yesterday. Not only did not one leave angry, but I actually bought two garments, both of which were Stylish-Teenage-Daughter approved! What did I get? “Skinny jeans.” (Well, one pair is really “skinny khakis.”) I didn’t think I could wear these, or would like how they look, but I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. Icing on the cake? Middle Sister told me they looked good! Worth every penny, though I’m still not ready to post a photo of myself in said skinny jeans on the Internet.

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I had an excellent customer-service experience with Fitbit. Hubs had gotten me one for Christmas, but it was the kind that strapped around the wrist, and I had a skin reaction to whatever was in that strap. The awesome folks at Fitbit hooked me up with the kind of device that clips onto your pocket and has all the same features as my previous wrist-worn model.

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I cleaned my (small) desk. It was getting out of hand. I have an organizer, but then I pile stuff next to the organizer and stack clipboards on top of each other and, well, it wasn’t working for me at all.

I’ve been getting a lot of encouragement and food for thought via a series of blog posts on organizational styles and tools at Lisa Lawmaster Hess’s blog, The Porch Swing Chronicles. (In fact, she’s just started up a new blog just for this ongoing series! I’m definitely going to be following that.) What I’d really like to do is hang a bunch of clipboards on a wall, assigning each clipboard a category, and have a big hanging tickler file. As you can see from my photo, however, I only have a wall space that’s 24 inches wide behind the desk and 18 inches wide next to it. All the rest is open to below, which is nice when you’re supervising Street Urchins but not so nice when you need to see stuff you’re working on.

At the same time, I wanted to add a computer riser so I could have a standing desk. I removed the basket of stuff from the top of the organizer (mostly cords for various electronic gadgets) and found homes for that stuff in other spots (mostly inside my desk). I’m down to just my planner and ONE clipboard on the desktop, and I can remove that riser if I decide I’ve had enough standing for one day. I’m not thrilled with the look of the riser, but it does the job.

Then I emptied out my entire organizer thingamabob and found new homes for anything I don’t use frequently. I have decided that if I don’t use something on a weekly basis (or more often) then it doesn’t deserve space on my desktop. There’s just not that much real estate to go around, so I’m going to be stingy with it.

We’ll see how this works for me going forward, but I do love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I organize something that’s staring me in the face every day!

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