A Place For Everything...
by Christine Mosley

Over the nine years our family lived and worked in our Rhinebeck B & B, we've been asked many questions about our lives there. The inquiries ranged from what we served for breakfast every day to how we were able to do all the laundry, but the question most people asked was how we managed to take care of our guests and our family at the same time. We answered that question this way—we got organized.

Before opening the inn, I always considered myself a neat, but not an organized person. On the contrary, I was usually found happily flying by the seat of my pants, whether I was paying bills or cleaning the house. As the kids grew, though, I suppose I did too, and eventually I not only learned to face the grown-up tasks of managing a household, but learned to enjoy them. So when the time came to open the inn, I thought my husband and I were prepared and ready to handle two kids and the house that was to become our business. However, we soon discovered the one detail we had overlooked: an organized family and home environment.

The negative, stressful effect of not being better organized was wreaking havoc on our daily lives. Like most parents, we found ourselves running to our son's basketball practice or our daughter's ballet lessons, but unlike most parents, our jobs centered around a house that had to be clean and guest-ready all the time. We struggled through our first year at the inn before we really started to devise a plan that would carry us through the next seven.

We started in the kitchen. Our average size kitchen had to somehow function as an office too, so we came up with the idea of using a large pantry for that purpose, but we quickly became overwhelmed. What were we going to do with all the food, dishes, and assorted junk that was stored on those pantry shelves? Our old house had few kitchen cabinets and they were already full. So with no options left, we started tossing things away.

We tried to stay focused while we were cleaning out, taking a hard look at all we had. We quickly realized we didn't use half the stuff we had stored in that pantry. If I hesitated about throwing something away, I reminded myself that I needed the office more than I needed another casserole dish. This mindset helped us get through a difficult process. We went to an office supply superstore and bought a relatively inexpensive desk/computer station with a single file cabinet that fit into the pantry. Suddenly I had compartments for bills, receipts and a real filing system for the business paperwork, instead of the cardboard box where it had been previously dumped. The end result was immensely satisfying and immeasurably valuable to all of us. I was empowered. Now I had a place for everything I needed to run our lives more efficiently. My love affair with the art of organization began.

Once the kitchen was finished, I moved on to other areas of the house, all the while questioning the importance of any item over which I hesitated. I kept my focus through most of it, until it came time to tackle the basement. The basement suddenly seemed huge as I descended the creaky stairs into the chaotic discards of family life. Outdated toys and video games, my husband's messy and neglected workbench, the laundry area with an assortment of clean and dirty clothes scattered everywhere—and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the stairs were dusty bags of fabric intended for a long-forgotten quilt. Then there were the boxes of loose family photos along with dozens of the kids' kindergarten drawings. The floor was a minefield of useless household items. I panicked. Instead of running back up the stairs, as was my first impulse, I set a one-hour limit for myself and starting wading through the mess, not looking further than three feet in front of me and working in just that one space. A feeling of control began to take over and when the timer went off, I rejoiced in my small, three-foot-square victory that day. After laying down the law to the rest of the family, they reluctantly followed my lead and became responsible for their respective areas of clutter. I found that if we set a time limit each day instead of imposing a "finish-this-now-or-else" attitude, the job was eventually completed.

Throwing things out was, I realized, the key to getting organized. I had to learn to identify what was valuable in our lives now, and what was not. I developed a few principles of stress-free living. One, if you haven't used something in the last two years, you probably won't in the near future. Two, less is more. If you can't get to the books you want to read because of all the stuff you have to move to get to them, then what's the point in having the books at all? For instance, I found beautiful pieces of china I had forgotten I had because I couldn't even see them shoved in at the back of the closet. How about all the clothes in your closet that you think you'll fit into next year after you go to the gym?

The list is endless for most of us, and I admit it's a constant and ongoing process, not only to get your place organized, but to keep it that way. The technique, though, is just to start at all, set a goal and never lose sight of it, no matter how small that goal may seem. Determine what your needs are, and if you think your space can't meet those needs, then try to envision your space in a different way, as we did with our pantry. Managing our clutter helped us managed our lives. Our busy home, while never completely idyllic, became a prosperous and wonderful place to live and work in.

For seven years, Christine and Doug Mosley ran the Sleeping Beauty Bed & Breakfast in Rhinebeck; they now run Sleeping Beauty Ltd., an interior decorating consultation service.