A place for everything

This week’s Friday Five:

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
I think I’m organized, but not necessarily neat. I’m a piler, not a filer. I like to see where everything is, even if it means being a bit untidy, rather than having them out of sight… and perhaps out of mind.

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
No. I used to have a cell phone with a built-in Palm interface, and I loved having my entire address book so accessible and customizable, but I never used the calendar functions. I need to see an entire week or month at a glance, and a small PDA screen isn’t ideal. It’s not like I have a demanding work or social schedule anyway, so my multi-purpose, pocket-sized notebook suits me just fine.

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
At work, yes, considering there’s very little to organize at the moment. Ask me again in a few weeks, when the desk will seem to have been completely replaced by a slowly drifting glacier of paper.

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
No. But I do try to organize CDs and books by genre. As for DVDs, I own so few that some kind of order wouldn’t be significantly more useful than their current random state.

5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?
More a project, than individual items: a few years ago, when I interned for a Silicon Valley PR agency, I had to recruit retail sponsors for a local science fair. It was an unwieldy project, especially for just one person to handle—making contacts, negotiating promotional offers, etc.—but my anemic efforts at business persuasion seemed to have some positive effect. In the end, the event turned out rather well.