There’s a clipboard on my desk (pictured beneath my furry assistant at right) that is more valuable than any tech tool in my office.

Divided into two columns, at left is my actual and pending work list, and to the right are personal and household matters needing attention. Though it is all calendared, this where I prioritize an actual day’s activities.

Like a bar graph in an article charting home sales and foreclosures over time, the left hand column has shrunk as the right hand list has grown. A lot. Had I kept all the lists after the tasks they delineated were done, I’d have my own visual representation of the economic events of the past year.

If you have lost your job, you had zero time to adjust. For entrepreneurs, it’s a little different, in that the slow down may have crept up on you.

If your actual work life is taking up less (or none) of your time, you may be spending more time marketing, or sending out resumes and filling out applications.

And, you may have a surplus of free time. No matter how organized your professional life may have been, this infusion of extra time into your personal life may result in something of an unorganized mess in your household, or even in your head.

Now that these two segments of my life are rearranged, my dreams are filled with chaotic images, and I often awake feeling dazed and confused.

In the middle of a recent night, trying to banish those wacky dreams, I actually arose and wrote this on my to-do list so that I wouldn’t forget to take care of it the next day: “Clip fingernails.”

If you can relate to this situation, perhaps it’s a good time to apply some of your successful office organization principles to your personal life so as to regain control of the big picture, which is actually your life.

You didn’t have time to keep your closets or kitchen cabinets decluttered and organized before? Well, you do now!

For some help with these tasks, and how to keep them from undermining your ability to focus, try these resources:

OnlineOrganizing.com (search for these keywords: “disorganization,” “the mental side”)

Unload some of what you don’t need (and someone else DOES need) using your nearest Freecycle group

Share how you are managing your new found freetime!