I am not an organized person. I’m semi-organized. That means I put things in a safe place where I will remember them, and the promptly forget where I put them. If I backtrack and use skills that could work for a crime-scene investigation, I usually find notes, or my keys, or my wallet, or maybe the candy I hid, or that one pair of socks that have disappeared.

In pondering how to improve my lack of organization skills, I refrained from ordering anymore how-to books since I can’t find the ones I have. And besides, they give me the hives. Maybe I’m a closet hoarder, or a soft hoarder, meaning I keep things but they are all so useful. Right.

Anyway, I have come up with a new way of being kind of organized. I call it smorganized. Yes, it’s a smorgasbord full of wonder, and it’s all there somewhere but it’s disarray spilling out in an almost pretty, creative kind of chaos. That book I just read—it’s in there with two bookmarks tagging along. My flip flops are next to the book, one flipping and one flopping. And my beach scarves, all dozen of them, are tossed out like wilted flowers waiting for a vase. That nail polish I searched for three days ago when I needed it is sitting there prim and upright in a pretty flamingo pink. A note I scribbled about my plot for the book that is due two days from now, looks like a two-year-old tried to draw a maze. My closet is super-smorganized. Clothes on two long racks, with various purses that remind me of a quilt that never got finished, shoe boxes that all have a story to tell, and comfy clothes that I wear over and over, while I neglect my pretty dresses and fancy boots and jeans. Tee-shirts that I love, while I ignore my colorful field of sweaters and my over-abundant need for hoodies of all colors. It’s a hot mess that has somehow grown into a garden that needs to be pruned desperately.

And my office? —It is Smorganized Central, with my beloved spiral notebooks, my half-a-million ink pens and small notepads, my whitewashed pages of workshop handouts, and leftover plots turned to dust. And books all around, like a fortress of lost trees that became words with friends and now protects me from myself and the world when I just can’t take it all anymore. There is comfort in stuff—it’s yours, it’s personal, it holds memories and pain, and it’s a blanket of both protection and rejection that somehow works if you can find a maze through it. So I am smorganized in my own way and that’s just fine with me. Oh, my, I just looked over and found an exercise bike. Where did that come from and who in this house uses it???

I am organized enough to remind everyone that I have a book out right now. (Good people who keep me on track helped me with that one.) You can find it online and in certain highly organized bookstores. Just don’t ask me where I put my author copies.