organize – Ashley's Adventures

I have 4 different journals that are laying around my house, each of them holds some sort of purpose to organize my thoughts. I will explain each one and why I find it useful, and hopefully it will give you some ideas if you are looking to start journalling, or to find a reason why you should.

1. My “Goals” Journal

This is the journal I would say I go back to the most. It holds my financial goals, health goals, travel goals and overall life goals. It’s important for me to revisit so that I can stay on track, or re-evaluate my previous goals if needed.

I like to throw in some motivational quotes, or just phrases to help me when I’m feeling incredibly unmotivated. It’s also nice to look back at what I accomplished for when I am feeling like I haven’t accomplished anything. Some things that I thought I would never do, I end up doing and some things that I thought would be easy might roll on to the next page of goals so I can make a second attempt.

I also like going over my finances here so I can simplify what’s going on in my bank account and to find ways to minimize costs. It’s easy to just ignore what’s happening with your money online, but sometimes I need a wake up call. For some reason I find it fascinating to have a plan on how to spend my money and when, so I never feel guilty about making big purchases if needed.

I think my health goals are most fun to go through, because I most definitely need a wake up call for that sometimes. Whether it’s healthy eating or physical fitness, I need to go back to remember why I want to continue working towards these.

I also like to write down places I’d like to visit and jot down things I’ve learned about how to travel to each place and how to prepare. This includes thing I would want to buy in order to make it happen, or writing packing lists. This even includes things for camping, or road trips in general.

I like imagining a bright future and sometimes I get overly involved in that to the smallest detail, but I often find it fun rather than stressful. I think it can be quite beneficial to work towards accomplishing goals, whatever they may be.

2. My “Feelings” Journal

This sounds incredibly cheesy, but for someone who overthinks everything and has all sorts of chaotic thoughts floating around, this is a good place to understand what I’m feeling and why. My imagination has a habit of going wild which can be good for creative or optimistic endeavours, but when it starts going full tilt into more negative thoughts, I need to slow the heck down.

This is where this journal comes in handy. Sometimes my brain doesn’t have time to make sense of why the emotions that are coming up have arrived, such as sadness, anxiety, anger, or anything else that is a bit more uncomfortable than usual. As I’m writing, it slows down my thoughts and makes them into things that are just on a page – all of a sudden, they don’t seem so bad!

There have been numerous times where I am SO frustrated and I go grab this journal and begin writing so fast my pen wishes it stayed at home. By the end, happy thoughts arise and I feel much better. Not to mention, if you are someone who accidentally takes it out on a loved one, this is a great way to stop that from happening! I learned that the hard way. My poor boyfriend…

3. My “Creative” Journal

This is where I jot down ideas for YouTube videos, recipes for my cookbook I would like to create one day, and sometimes I just sit and doodle a bit. This journal is a bit sporatic, since I technically have more than one place for these ideas. When I’m out and about I will jot down a note in my phone, when I’m on the computer I’ll write ideas on Google Docs, but it usually will all circle back to my physical journal I keep in my house.

It’s quite often that my boyfriend will throw together a dinner with whatever we have, and it ends up being good – despite my constant nagging that “you shouldn’t mix those together it’s weird and will taste gross.” I honestly don’t know how he does it.

Overall, it’s fun to have a place to look back at your own creations and ideas.

4. My “Travel” Journal

This is something I bring with me when I travel, usually somewhere that is out of the country (which unfortunately, isn’t that often). This is something that my parents used to do whenever we went somewhere and it kind of stuck with me. Sometimes I forget a few days while I’m on vacation, but I try to at least write about stories that happened rather than what our schedule was like that day.

Of course, as a Lord of the Rings fan, this journal had to be a leather, old school journal (the one pictured above) so I feel like a true traveller. However, I’m a little too impatient to write the whole thing in calligraphy as Bilbo Baggins did.

This journal is nice to read when I’m feeling a travel bug coming on, but am unable to go anywhere. It’s funny to find things that I couldn’t remember in a million years, but as soon as I read my own memories I instantly am living in the moment. It’s easy to remember moments looking through my pictures, but in my journal there are often details that get overlooked and it’s cool to look back on.

Yes, I know journalling isn’t for everyone, and I might be a little hardcore with all of the journals I have, but I find that it’s a great way to reminisce about memories and achievements, be creative, work through hard times, and have goals to accomplish for the future.

It provided an organized system that I couldn’t think of myself

I’m particularly talking about clothes here. I have always folded my clothes the same and squished them into drawers and eventually every few months I would have to pull everything out and refold it all because it just became a huge mess. I had dozens of clothes I wore once, or never, but I couldn’t let myself get rid of them. There was a tremendous amount of guilt built up when I thought about the fact that I bought them with my own money, or they were a gift from someone else.

Only keeping the items that truly spark joy around was such a cool concept to me. Why would I want to keep looking at ugly or useless clothes and feel guilt every time I looked past them? I have so many clothes that I grew out of when I grew up and I’m sure I can only remember a couple of them that I actually liked and wore a lot. So why do I need to keep clothes around that I’ll never wear? This truly made sense to me, more so than other methods I’ve tried using such as “have you worn this in the past 6 months?” With that concept I would just think “no, but I might want to wear it 6 months from now.” This definitely didn’t work. Ever.

The new method of folding my clothes CHANGED MY LIFE. I can SEE everything in my drawer easily, and it all fits and is neat. However, it also probably fit better because I got rid of probably 35 articles of clothing. That’s besides the point… once you get used to folding your clothes a different way, it is easy and I have been using the same method for two years now. I still can’t believe how long I’ve been doing this for… usually new habits take forever to implement but this all just made so much sense to me and was what I’ve been looking for in order to keep a clean, organized living space.

I’m no longer attached to items

Growing up, my parents were able to provide us with almost everything we wanted. We would get birthday presents, Christmas presents, and were able to go on trips and buy souvenirs. I have always liked having a clean, organized space, but most of the time I would become overwhelmed with everything that was there and I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of anything so I tidied as much as possible whilst having a ton of things around.

I would sometimes do some “spring cleaning” and donate clothes and items that didn’t mean much to me and that I didn’t use at all. This was usually very minor though. However, after I used this method to go through each category around the house and do it all in one day I was able to get rid of a TON of stuff. It’s true, once you start going with one category you just can’t stop! And it starts to feel GOOD! It’s a little weird to talk to your items before you get rid of them and thank them for what they provided you… but I can be a bit spiritual and appreciate doing it because it actually helped. I have found I can get an emotional attachment to things so talking to them as if they were human actually helped me out.

The result of becoming less attached to items is that I now think twice before I purchase something. I think to myself, do I actually need this? Where will I put it in my living space? Will it become clutter?We recently went to Mexico (before the pandemic was a thing of course) and all I bought was a hat. I only own two hats now, and I actually needed it in Mexico, and for when I play ball in the summer or am going to the beach here in Canada. I didn’t buy a sombrero, or poncho, or tequila, or a blanket, or anything that was being sold everywhere. No magnets, or cheap t-shirts or maracas. I feel so good about this decision because I not only saved money, but now I just have pictures to go back to instead of items that have no real place in my life.

The time to tidy up is now!

Like I said at the beginning, I highly encourage anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by clutter to go and learn about the KonMari Method. I truly think this is a well thought out strategy to keep your living space clutter-free. Turn on some music, start early in the morning on a Sunday (like she suggests), bring everything into your living room and change your life!

Tag: organize

Why I Love Journalling