Hasta La Ideas

As I mentioned Tuesday, we have delightedly added two new voices to the Unclutterer content team. Today, I want to introduce you to Dave Caolo, who will be sharing his phenomenal insights on the site twice a month.

You may have seen Dave’s writing at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, where he serves as news editor, or on his personal site 52 Tiger. He’s also published several books, including Using iMovie ’11 and Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max (and he has a new one coming out this fall). When Dave isn’t writing, he can be found spending time with his wife, kids, and Boston Terrier, Batgirl, in Massachusetts.

The amazing Dave Caolo

I was raised in a small, shoebox-shaped house in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Inside was faded linoleum, a 24″ television and my typical American family: middle class, happy enough, and terribly disorganized.
Consider the kitchen. The cabinet above the pink laminate countertop contained my mother’s recipes. Unlike most mom’s collection, Carol’s never saw the inside of a cookbook. Instead, it hung from the back of the door with yellowing strips of tape.

A potato salad recipe dangled next to my grandmother’s hand-written instructions for stuffed squid. There were pages ripped from magazines, supermarket handouts, 3×5 index cards … anything flat enough to write on and light enough to stick to a pine cupboard door was called into service.

Most bore stains acquired in the line of duty. “David, hand me that sheet of paper,” my mother would say. Another Christmas, another batch of lemon squares and another crop of buttery smears. By the time I was in high school, the recipe was nearly illegible.

While the fly-strip method of recipe storage keeps everything accessible, it’s a poor filing system. Linguine with anchovy paste rubbed up against blueberry cheesecake, which is something that should never happen, not even in print.

Like most messes, my mother’s organizational habits migrated through the house. Likewise, my dad’s garage looked like a yard sale, and the basement was a jumble.

What all this means is that I’ve got chaos in my blood. Daily, I must make a concerted effort to keep things in check. It’s a struggle that I’ll share with you on Unclutterer. I look forward to sharing my organizational success and missteps with you. Here’s hoping we both learn something.

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