I live my life on post-it notes. I find them at the bottom of my purse, in pockets. I hear some people find money in the pockets of last year’s winter jacket or summer shorts. That sounds much more exciting than a florescent square proclaiming, “Creamer juice boxes poster board cat litter.” I text myself. I have a physical daily planner that travels with me and I put appointments into my phone calendar and my work calendar. 
And still, I can’t manage to show up at the birthday party of one of my closest friend’s 6-year-old daughter. And that random school in-service day when there was no school? Well, looks like mama’s working from home today, girls!
I need a day – or maybe a couple – just to get myself organized. Just like I accumulate time off for days that I show up at work, I need to accumulate time off for real life days when I am drowning in lists and too mentally scattered to cross anything off. I need time to make the phone calls and do the laundry and shred the mail and do the things so that my life isn’t one giant pile of perceptual and physical clutter. Scholastic book club order, due January 25th? Kohls’ New Years coupons? I swear with personal organization days, these wouldn’t create such a firetrap on my kitchen counters. I could do so much better. I just need the tools. And by tools, I mean time. And by time, I mean time not after 9:30pm when I’m too tired to shred paper without potential loss of limb.
Clearly, it would be unfair, to say nothing of demoralizing, to be required to use the time off that I painstakingly accumulate at work on things like calling the school transportation office, or getting the children to their dentist appointments – or heck, even scheduling their dentist appointments. It’s called “vacation time” is it not? (I mean, I get that PTO generically stands for personal time off, but so help me, I will still stare lovingly at the timesheet-generated table of hours and call it vacation time). And so, to avoid taking depressing days off, in addition to my vacation time (which I need as motivation for going into work the other 49 weeks a year) I would like to institute Personal Easement Days.
“Hi. I won’t be coming in today. I have 36 phone calls to make, two dozen Girl Scout patches to sew (liquid stitch) on, and I need to research pediatric dentists since I clearly can’t face our current one after having waited this long to schedule an appointment.”
On a Personal Easement Day, I could hear, “Please listen closely as the [15] menu options have changed,” and I would simply smile wisely and make another cup of tea. I would find lids to the Tupperware and stack them neatly in our cupboards before sorting through the girls’ closets for outgrown clothes (rather than fighting, or not fighting, the morning battle over favorite pants now two inches too short – why do we keep rewashing those and putting them away?!). And then I would take every empty granola bar box and half open cracker sleeve out of our pantry. I’d order a cute basket from Thirty-one, and consolidate all our chargers and cords in one visually pleasing, usage-friendly place. Boxes would be checked. Lists would be crossed off. Library books would be returned.
It’s a fantasy, of course. No matter how many lists are crossed off, no matter how many races we run, there’s always another. Sometimes it feels downright overwhelming. But it occurs to me, even as I wake up in the middle of the night and text myself 3am jibberish, I’m pretty lucky to have so much to balance. My life is full. I’m pretty lucky to have people who say, How can I help?, and I’m pretty lucky to have access to plenty of sticky notes in a variety of fun colors.
My house may never be uncluttered, and my mind even less so. My Tupperware will remain a series of square containers with round lids. But… at least for one more day:
