Most people have some kind of method for attaining a sense of personal peace. I’m not talking about meditation but rather organization. When life seems out of control, most people have something they can physically do to regain a sense of balance and control in their lives. Often this takes the form of cleaning or organizing, which makes sense because if you can’t control some bigger things in life that are giving you fits (not Pfitz), exerting your control over smaller things can ease the stress.

For some people, it’s doing dishes. I’m one of those, because when you take a counter of chaos and transform it into organized cupboards and clean surfaces you bring order and prepare the potential for the next project in the kitchen. Plus, it looks so much nicer to see clean counters that that alone can increase your sense of peace. :-)
Other people clean the house, do laundry, reorganize their clothes closets, and that sort of thing, which is their way of bringing order to chaos. So not only do they regain their inner sense of peace, but they also improve their environment, which helps the people around them. My wife is one for organizing the basement or garage (depending where we’re storing things). She has a theory that a cluttered and disorganized basement creates tension and disorganization in the house and the family living above it. By organizing and cleaning the basement, she brings a sense of order to the whole house.

This week I discovered just how much I benefit from another task I’ve been working on. Back over the Christmas and New Year holidays, I reorganized my personal library of almost 1,200 books by assigning each book a call number according to the Dewey Decimal System (no, I’M not a librarian!). ;-) I’m using LibraryThing, which I totally love, and which I blogged about last year and the year before when I first found out about it.

Well, I last week I finally took advantage of one of the great features of LibraryThing: I exported my personal library catalog to Excel. I’d actually done this before, and printed out a nice shelf list, but this time I was grabbing the call numbers, which I used to “mail merge” into a template in MS Word and then print out on labels. This last week or so I’ve been taking a little free time each day to apply some labels to their books. I’m about 3/4 done now and the books look great on the shelves. Clean and neat and organized. And if I or anyone else takes a book off the shelf, it will be clear where it belongs. (Yes, I’m teaching my children how to reshelve.) For some people, it’s no big deal to have books in loose categories on shelves or even just wherever they land, but that’s not something I can abide. It’s kind of like being in an auditorium and sitting behind someone who has their shirt collar tag sticking out. I just HAVE to fix it. :-)
I’ve discovered that for me this is a great way to increase my sense of order and peace within the house and within myself. It’s almost a cathartic feeling to watch order being imposed on my bookshelves. (By the way, if you’re interested in the concepts of Order and Chaos, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has a series of fantasy-type books called The Saga of Recluce, which introduces us to a world where order and chaos are the basis for magic. VERY interesting concepts and well-written books.) And for those of you who might be interested, here’s a link to my catalog in LibraryThing.

So, what do YOU do to regain a sense of control, order, and/or peace in your home? Leave a comment and share with us.