How Not to Get Organized!

When I work with my clients, they have all tried to get organized on their own.  I can tell because there are all kinds of containers in their houses!  Why did they struggle to get organized and/or fail to stay organized?  The most common cause of organizational system failure is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.  We get excited about getting organized and the first thing we do is go out and buy something to fix the problem, right?  It’s kind of like grocery shopping before you’ve decided what you want to cook.  If you don’t know what you’re going to cook, how can you buy the ingredients?  If you don’t know what you have to organize or where it will be stored, how can you buy containers?

We all make this mistake at times.  We recently modeled our bathroom and I was sure I was going to need a drawer system in my linen closet.  I almost went and purchased it before the bathroom was done.

Boy was I glad I saved my money by waiting to see if I needed it!  We had a tower cabinet installed in the bathroom that held tons of stuff that used to be in the closet.  Turns out I didn’t need any drawers after all.

There’s a simple process to getting organized and it starts with sorting like items together.  Kids learn this process in kindergarten.  It’s easy enough.  For my clients, often the purging comes naturally as we pile up 20 pairs of black dress slacks together, for example.  Had we not put all the black slacks together, we wouldn’t have known we had too many black ones or unflattering ones.  We might have gone and bought pants hangers for twice as many pants as we would actually end up with.

Want to get organized and stay organized?  Please sort and purge and then see how what you have left fits into the space and containers you already have.   You may find you have all that you need!  This will save you some money and a trip to the store.   Oh ya, and remember to label your containers too!

Are you a cart before the horse person?  What interesting items did you uncover when going through your stuff trying to get organized?