It’s NOT about Perfection!
When people meet me for the first time, it is not unusual for me to hear, “your house must be looking so good”, or “I’d love to see your desk” and it occurs to me that some people think organizing is about perfection and appearance and everything looking neat. To me that misconception about being organized is not only unrealistic but has also some negative connotations and since perfection is impossible to achieve, it would explain why others think it is an impossible task for them to get organized. It is just like assuming that because someone is asked to eat healthy they will never eat ice cream again and that level of “perfect” eating is not something that is attainable.
So what is being organized? In actuality, being organized is about efficiency, effectiveness, and making your life and surroundings work for you in reference to time management, productivity, paper management, space management or clutter. It is about having the most functional, useful, efficient system that helps you achieve your goals. And like most things it is different for everyone.
So after we purge, place things efficiently and effectively and optimize the space then your surrounding will appear much neater.
Staying Organized: Organizing is a process, not a destination.
Have you ever gotten everything organized and then, over time, some of it fell apart? This happens for one of two reasons.
- When you try to organize yourself, you may not know how to implement the most appropriate systems for you. So the system breaks down and you feel unorganized again. It would be a mistake to view organizing as an all or nothing activity with an end. It is ever evolving as is life, and needs to be worked constantly.
- The other reason an organizing system breaks down is that something in your life has changed, causing the current system (which may have been the correct one at the time) to break down. When you pursue an organizing project with a professional, your sessions may come to an end, yet your life continues to evolve and you continue to work the systems. Life events such as depression, a new marriage, divorce, birth, a family death, job change, etc., you may temporarily loose your ability or desire to be detail-oriented and work your systems thus causing their break down.
Author
Sophie Bent is a Professional Organizer & Productivity Consultant @Bent On Organizing, LLC. She is a NAPO Specialist in Residential Organizing in South Florida and has been organizing businesses and homes since 2008. Contact her at 561-404-7181 or www.bentonorganizing.com
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