Choice and Accountability

    Those of you who read this column may remember that I am working on a program called Personal Progress. It is a programs for preteen and teenage girls developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The purpose of this program is to teach certain spiritual and temporal values to young women. It's a good program for those of us past that point in our lives as well.
    The program consists of eight values. Each value has six expereinces,things that teach about the value, and a project that puts that value into practice.
    Right now I'm working on the value called Choice and Accountability. The purpose is to learn about making good choices and thinking about the results of choices made. The experiences all made sense as I worked through them. Then I came to the project. There are a list of possible projects that can be completed. If needed you can make up your own as long as it reflects the values and takes at least ten hours to complete.
   One of the projects for Choice and Accountability is to clean and organize. I was puzzled. How does cleaning and organizing teach about or put choice and accountability into practice? Since there are several spaces in our home that could use organizing, I was about to find out.
  I started out by organizing the drawer where I keep my tea. Over the years my tea supply has grown and I've had to put part of my tea in a cupboard. I wanted to consolidate it so all the tea is in one place. I started by taking everything out of the drawer. Then I took all the tea things out of the cupboard. I noticed that several of my tea containers were empty. I collected the empties for storage elsewhere. Then I saw that hot chocolate mix was being stored with the tea. I gathered all of our hot chocolate mixes together. Then I threw out old bags and other bits of things that couldn't be used. I put things back in the drawer in an orderly fashion so I could easily find what I wanted. The hot chocolate mixes went into the cupboard where the overflow tea supply was. I found that I had room to put away a collection of travel mugs that were sitting on the counter. Things looked good.
   Then I organized some shelves in the room where our computer is. I took the same approach. Remove all items, sort them out and replace them. All my preceptor materials were sitting on the shelf where I had left them. I felt sure that my precepting days were over. I took all the materials that I had gathered over the years and recycled them. When I finished the shelf looked clean and organized.
  I moved to my knitting supplies and partly cleaned another closet. (I hope to finish it today.) While I was working the reason why this was a good project for this value started to become clear. I was constantly having to make choices. Should I throw this out? Do these things need to be stored on the shelf or was there a better place? What spaces need to be organized next?  I could feel the result of my choices after each space was organized. I liked the clean look and ability to find things easier.
   Organizing and cleaning turned out to be a good project for this value. I still have a few more spaces to take care of in order to meet my requirement of ten hours. I hope to be done with it today. Then I can move on to the next value.