Organized Ninja
I love to find new tips and strategies with organizing and often take advantage of the library to help find new ideas and resources. If they are a great find, I can purchase it and mark it up with my notes and if not, it doesn’t create more clutter. Organized Ninja sounded interesting, at least by the title. I thought maybe it was some sort of way to quickly apply feng shui techniques or speed up the organizing process in general. When I got to the library to pick up my hold, I discovered it was neither of those. It was a picture book. Come to find out Mary Whin has a Ninja Life Hacks series for all things related to life and that is not an exaggeration, I really mean life skills galore.
I was going to put it right back in the depository to check in, but decided to take a peek to see if the Organized Ninja had anything to teach me and sure enough they did. Well not so much anything new, but the book was a good reminder for kids AND adults. It starts out with two ninjas looking for checkers to play. With a messy room, it’s nowhere to be found and they decide they’re going to have to play something else. When we’re unorganized it’s hard to find the things we want when we need them. For me, it isn’t checkers, but wondering where I put the birthday gift I bought for someone or when the chicken I bought needs to get used by. The Organized Ninja could help with both of those.
The organized ninja teaches the not-so-organized ninja that it’s the thee C’s that keep us organized and happy. Collections, Categories and Checklists. Legos, rocks and magazines all make up collections. Once we have the collections put together, it’s good to have categories. For the ninja’s they headed to the kitchen where different categories were posted- pasta, cans, candy (it was a children’s book after all).
The final suggestion was checklists as a way to break big tasks into smaller, less intimidating steps. It’s much easier to tackle things with a list. There’s something so satisfying with getting to cross something off your list. Plus things don’t fall through the cracks when we have them written down. For the organized ninja it was Make Bed/Take out Trash/ Pick up dirty clothes/Organize toys/Dust dresser. Not too shabby. I might have to borrow that list and just swap out books for toys.
The organized ninja was so happy he could help out his cluttered friend and they were able to organize their rooms and the playroom. Pretty impressive, but I guess they are ninjas. I love their secret weapon against disorganization:
Collections
Categories
Checklists
To think I almost checked this book right back in. I’ve always reminded my kids that we can learn something from everyone. I should have known I could learn from a picture book, I just had to give it a chance.