I Want to Spend Time in My Closet

Can I tell you how great my closet it? I cleaned it out a few weeks ago--one of my first decluttering efforts--and it's fantastic. I have cleaned my closet many times in the past, of course, but this time I threw away or donated so much more than in the past. I wasn't totally ruthless, but close to it. I am the kind of person who wears the same clothes all the time, and I alternate between just a few pairs of shoes, so I just don't need that much.

The most significant change is that I got a sweater hanger. For the past ten years, I've been folding and stacking throwing and piling my sweaters on the shelf above the hanging rack. I am only 5' 2", and, therefore, I've spent the last 10 years with a mess of sweaters falling on my head and on the floor whenever I try to get a sweater down from the shelf. Now, the sweaters are in the sweater hanger, and the top shelf of the closet is reserved for storage of photos, mementos, and travel supplies.

The photo below is from the project in process, but it shows my awesome sweater hanger. Now that the project is complete, the floor of the closet has nothing but few pairs of shoes, and the top shelf has the items I mentioned above. The clothes on the right edge of the frame are my husbands. I also have a bureau for socks, skivvies, t-shirts, and tanks, but, otherwise, this is my wardrobe.

The closet is wonderful, and I know that it won't become a disaster again because I got rid of so much. I have finally learned a way I can organize: Have less stuff!

Now I've moved on to the desk in the study.

Getting Organized, Getting Serious

Notorious PhD recently had a post about various note organizing programs, and her post reminded me that I need to think about this issue.

I'm starting to get into the thick of the dissertation, and I'm starting to reach critical mass with my sources. As such, I'll need to start re-organizing text as a I write (in huge ways), and I'll need to remember sources that I read two years ago. Already, I have embarrassed myself with some oversights--sources I didn't reference that I should have, sources I forgot about until after I submitted a piece of writing.

A while back, I downloaded a demo from Note Bene, but I was deterred not only by the price, but also by the learning curve involved. My thinking: "I've got to get busy on my real work! I don't have time to figure out how to work this friggity-frig program!"

I asked my PhD supervisor what she uses, but she doesn't use any special programs. She writes her books and articles the old-fashioned way--by shuffling through stacks of articles on her desk. But I do most of my work at home, and I have a smallish house that contains two children (and a husband who gets very tired of my book and paper stacks), and so I can't spread things out the way I did when I was a single gal in a master's program. So I might need to GET ORGANIZED.

I don't have a Mac; I have a PC. I've heard Zotero is good (and cheap or free, right?). And I've heard Nota Bene is good, but I found it a bit baffling when I messed with the sample for an hour or two.

So, dear readers, I'm soliciting your advice. What say you?