Beloved Dry Erase Boards

I have a love affair with dry erase boards.  They make me feel sane, secure, and settled.  When overwhelming thoughts and “things to do” start to make my head spin, I go to my dry erase boards.  They always have the answer. 

Sometimes I use the board to brainstorm and create blobs of things to do.  Other times, I draw boxes and lines creating hierarchies of ideas, processes, or relationships.  For the feat that involves moving us to the D.R., we have 3 dry erase boards: one for my work tasks and things to think about on the D.R. side, another for my husband’s work/job hunt tasks, and this week we welcomed a third whiteboard into the family: I created a timeline of tasks for the first move – out of our apartment.  (The second move will be into a temporary place in the D.R. and the third move will be into our future apartment in the D.R.)

Our apartment lease ends on July 9^th, so we have about 7 weeks to sort everything we own into piles: donate, store, and pack to take with us.  This week, we started by going through all of the kids’ clothes.  It took a few hours (during nap time and after bed time), but it feels good to have one step sorted out.  Next, we’ll put a few things on Craig’s List to sell, go through our own clothes, and box up the things we don’t use on a daily basis – books, DVDs, stuff in the attic.  “Stuff management” is a major step in the process…if I start to feel dizzy, I’ll go buy another dry erase board.