Firday Five 1. Would you

Firday Five

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?

Yes and no. Some things I keep in strict organization and other things no.

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?

Yes

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?

No

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?

Alphabetizing is terrible. I organize by genre and subgenre and date. In classical music I organize chronologically by idea. Same in jazz (a 1964 Turk Murphy recording is going to come before a 1949 Gillespie record). I hate discs that mix stuff around (a Bach and Berlioz CD would give me fits), but they exist, and are in the collection, so I deal with them in other ways. Folk music is organized by geography/linguistic affinity. I tend to divide books into Trivium and Quadrivium, with some special sections. Fiction is divided by geography, language, era, and the mood I am in (yes, I do occasionally refile books and CDs to disparage a work, for instance, filing John Adams next to Brahms because they are roughly equally bad composers). My system drives Melanie crazy, but I insist that it always makes logical sense.

5. What's the hardest thing you've ever had to organize?

Boxes of miscellaneous screws, bolts, electrical insulators, etc. When we had to sort out my grandfather's belongings, the job of his shop came to me. He saved everything, including things that probably fell out of common usage sometime in the 1940's, so there were lots of things that were difficult to identify, let alone classify.

Posted by erik at May 9, 2003 11:15 AM | TrackBack