Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.

Not I-just-walked-into-the-bathroom-and-have-no-idea-what-I-came-here-to-do kind of crazy.

It’s the I’ll-be-happy-to-see-those-nice-young-men-in-their-clean-white-coats-and-they’re-coming-to-take-me-away kind of crazy.

The feeling usually occurs when I’m trying to find something.

And not something I’ve misplaced, because that happens all of the time. That’s just me.

But I feel like I’m crazy when I can’t find something I know — in the deepest core of my soul — that I have not misplaced.

A piece of paper I know I filed. A file I know I created and stored in the file cabinet. An address I know I recorded in my address book. My address book I know I placed on the same shelf I always place it on.

Catch my drift?

It’s like… I can’t just not remember where I put something. I know where I put something.

It’s just not there.

And this happened while Justin was deployed, too, so I can no longer blame him.

I have to embrace the crazy.

It’s me.

It’s all me.

And I can’t help but think, as I notice the sanity slipping away one marble at a time, will I even notice when the bowl is empty?

But.

Most of the time, it turns out I really did file something. I really did put it “away.” It’s just that my idea of “away” at the time I stored it was different from my idea of “away” at the time I tried to find it. And since I’m notorious for my lack of simple decision-making skills, I likely shuffled through several million placement options before settling on one — the one I thought was the most logical at the time — and then, for some reason, my brain didn’t follow that same logical thought pattern when I tried to find it again.

So yeah.

Still crazy.

The good news is, every now and then I manage to get a grip on my organizational skills.

I can light a fire under my ass and turn a hall closet from this:

To this:

Project details here.

Or a walk-in-closet from this:

Okay I failed to get a proper “before” shot, but trust me. It was bad. Filthy wire racks and zero organization.

To this:

And, well, okay. I’ll admit that one’s not quite done yet either. I still have to add the cool light fixture I bought and these awesome wall hook thingies, but I decided not to spend any more time on it until 2013 just in case the world ends this Friday. But you can see Part 1 of how I did this (it’s not as hard as I made it sound — I need to work on my direction-giving skills) right here.

Also, lest you think my organizational abilities are relegated to closets, I also have a really cool knife drawer:

With water spotty knives.

Hey.

We can’t all be perfect, okay?

But I’ll admit. I do like it when I come up with something that makes my life easier.

Well first it usually makes my life harder. Or Justin’s life harder. But then there’s this enormous sense of relief when the work is done and it’s like, hey. Where’s my hat? Oh, I know. It’s on that awesome hook I put in my closet specifically for that hat.

So it’s worth it.

And organization doesn’t just have to be physical — it can be mental.

Like file drawers for my mind.

For example:

Tired of wasting time every day trying to come up with something for dinner and then stopping at the grocery store on the way home to buy things we may-or-may-not already have in the fridge or pantry, I designed a menu sheet.

And then I combined it with a shopping list.

This concept is not new.

It was just new to me.

And let me tell you — it changed the way I shop. It’s actually saved us money. And we’re less wasteful. Using this, I can figure out a menu for the week, peruse the fridge to plan to use ingredients we already have, and add to my shopping list the things we don’t (which I usually organize according to section of the store — produce, dairy, dry goods, etc.). I can also record where I found the recipe, so when I go to actually make something on Friday that I found on Monday, I know to which website or recipe book I should refer.

When I actually use this little tool, it’s a total time-saver.

I even managed to use it two weeks in a row.

So, okay. It’s there when I think to use it. Which isn’t every week, I’ll admit. But when I do, I love it.

And so I’m sharing it with you:

Meal Plan Shopping List

Because that’s just the kind of girl I am.

And don’t worry, fellow domestiphobes. This doesn’t encourage routine. In fact, this makes it easier for you to plan trying a new Greek recipe one night, a Thai recipe the next, and then somehow combine all of those leftover ingredients into some kind of spectacularly twisted puttanesca.

You know.

If you feel like it.