©iStockphoto.com

It's the time of year when people resolve to become more organized, clean their closets, plan their gardens, start exercising and generally make a fresh start.

So we thought it was a good time to check back in with some of the people featured in Homes over the last year, to see what getting organized means to them.

Me, I'm finally going to start a running list of phone numbers, so I can stop searching through old notes and files to find them. Right after I locate my desktop under the giant mound of city council agendas, notes and other important papers covering it.

Joan Wallace, whose lovely garden was featured in the McMinnville Garden Club's June garden tour, said that with the cold, rainy weather keeping her indoors, she's turned her attention to the house.

To her, getting organized "means doing things that I don't do more than once a year. In fact, I started cleaning out and rearranging cupboards and files, and thing like that. Cleaning my basement. When you can't work outside, you have to do it inside."

She said she enjoys the fresh feeling of having cleared out her home and attended to chores that then won't need her attention when the weather warms and she'd rather be out in the garden.

"I think it's fun," she said. "You know, it's something you put off until you sort of put pressure on yourself - 'Now is the time, got to do it' - and it seems like New Year's does it for me. It gets me motivated."

This week, she said, she's in the process of removing unwanted clutter.

"I have a stack of things I'm getting rid of on my kitchen counter, that I decided I haven't used for a couple years, so why keep them," she said. The list includes a Jell-O mold, an unopened package of ice cube trays and a tin for making giant muffins.

Realtor Nancy Flynn, a principal broker for Coldwell Executive Realty in McMinnville, said that for her, organization is a way of life.

"I drive people crazy, I am so organized," she said. "I don't really put anything on paper - I just know what needs to be done.

"In college, this was actually one of my classes, time management, and I have always done that. I know every minute of the day what I'm going to be doing next. The only time I get off that is when I'm in the garden, and I kind of lose track of time."

Flynn said that, with her busy lifestyle, being organized is a survival skill. Not only does she run a real estate business, she enjoys growing dozens of roses in an elaborate garden at her McMinnville home. Flynn's colorful cottage garden won the McMinnville Garden Club's Yard of the Month award in June.

She also sews and enjoys a variety of activities with her husband, Terry.

"The thing is, especially in real estate, if you're not organized and you don't have that time management, you just can't succeed, because you always have to be looking beyond," she said.

Even when she sits down to watch television - usually to see her grandson playing in the University of Oregon marching band at a Ducks game - she's got a book or a piece of embroidery in hand.

In fact, a sign on her sewing room door summarizes her approach to life. "I can do anything," it reads. "I just can't do one thing."

Flynn attributed her incurable habit of multi-tasking to the way she was raised.

"My whole family is like that. We grew up on a ranch in Montana and, you know, we were very busy," she said.

WillaKenzie Estate winery owner Ronnie Lacroute, whose free-spirited McMinnville garden won the McMinnville Garden Club's Yard of the Month award for April, said that, once upon a time, organization was key to her, too.

For much of her life, she was "very driven, very Type A," she said.

Then, when she was 50, blood vessels in her brain burst and nearly killed her.

"After that, I decided to live differently," she said.

Today, Lacroute practices a yoga lifestyle.

"Life is a meditation," she said. "That summarizes the way I do everything, I think. Breathe deeply and act in the moment and appreciate the moment."

Moving moment to moment, she said, removes any incentive for creating organizational plans.

"If I think of something that needs doing, I just do it. So it's just more of a spontaneous thing than laying out a grand plan and doing items one by one," she said.

In fact, she said, someone created a plan for her to follow in laying out her garden. Lacroute considered it, and then set it aside to follow her whims in designing a landscape that flows from one section to the next like a meandering creek.

Coming close to death, she said, "teaches you about the lack of control a person has over all the elements in his or her life. You can't control everything, so if you have a master plan, it's unlikely you will achieve everything on it exactly. Things change. So go with the flow."

She celebrates winter as a time of renewing.

"What I like about this time of year is that it allows one to turn within with more ease," she said. "Because of the lack of light and a lack of warmth outside, you tend to want to go to places of comfort, which could be possibly the home, the family or even the self, and it allows for more introspection. I actually look forward to it for that. I find it easier sometimes to write poetry or to read a book or to think deeply at this time of year."