Saturday Special: Simplify with Marcia Ramsland

You've probably guessed by now that my house is not an organizational utopia of clear, spotless surfaces. As a writer and an educator, I live surrounded by paper. Paperless is not my thing. I need to see it, so life is an uphill battle with the land of spotless surfaces at the top of the mountain where the air is thin and it's hard to breathe.

But there's one surface I tackle daily. Every day, I make my bed. And I have Marcia Ramsland to thank (sorry, Mom). I found a copy of her book, Simplify Your Life, at a local store known for selling overstocks at cheap prices, and in it, I found this gem, (#1 on a list of Ten Timesaving Habits to Simplify Your Day):

"Make your bed and make your day. It takes only two minutes to give you sixteen hours of order. Besides, a room is 50-70 percent clean when the bed is made."

50-70% clean for two minutes of effort? That's an investment I can get behind!

The other nine tips were also inspirational, to varying degrees (#2 is "practice the two-minute pick-up" -- yet another advocate of small actions yielding big results!)

I went on to read several other books by Ramsland, and I've even written about her here on more than one occasion, but Simplify Your Life was timed perfectly. It landed in my hands at a time in my organizational journey when I was a sponge, open to not only tidbits but also organizational philosophies that rang true for me and encouraged the development of my own way of thinking about organization. Though other organization books have come and gone, Simplify Your Life has kept its place of honor on my book shelf.