Drawer dividers and other suggestions

With the upcoming wedding, my and my parents' respective moves, the house is in a state of semi-frenzied activity. Stuff is everywhere (well, as much as it can be in my mother's house). Old items are being reconfigured. Useless items (both in good condition and in bad) are triaged: donated, sold, or thrown-out. In preparation for my parents' new house, they've also gotten a couple books at bargain discounts (of course) on organization and patios. I won't bother talking about patios because that only interests those of us who own homes and want to pave half their backyard (or are required to by whatever circumstances present).

So after an evening of running around doing wedding stuff I came back and sat down on the overstuffed leather chair with a glass of Velvet Moon (or some such thing) with Jon Stewart in the background and perused the Home Depot organizing book.

The next morning I decided to do what I had let undone for sometime - to finish updating my goal board. I put up two of the mostly completed portions onto the cork board. For some reason this started off a train of frenzied work that lasted the whole day. Needless to say there's still a great deal of work to be done, because uncluttered surfaces do not necessarily mean uncluttered drawers.

The realization was multi-layered. I figured out why my mother and father have conflicting organizational styles. My mother can do "closed storage" - my dad can't. I can do closed depending on the room/items. For example, my clothing in my dresser - not a problem. The items in my desk...well I'm not sure if that's because I have a barrier of stuff between me and the desk, or if it's actually just the stuff in there. Papers are definitely invisible when in a folder hidden in a drawer. This of course is a problem for the simple reason that important documentation is frequently in a paper form. Let's not even get into the problem of electronic filing systems which really are invisible, and frequently inaccessible due to my primordial lap-top.

So I decided that I should invest in some drawer dividers. I started doing it with my socks and hair ties so why shouldn't I do it with pens and staplers? Seems logical. Now the only question is, do we make it into a fun little project where Christian (my future husband) gets to make little wooden boxes or do we just pay whatever it costs to get some modular drawer boxes/drawer organizing trays? And then, should I extend the dividers to include not only my socks and hair ties but also my shirts and lounge wear for example?

Can you tell this is how I'm exerting control over my tousled life?