GETTING
ORGANIZED
MARCH 2007
Six Common Organizing Mistakes
Vicki Norris
Restoring Order
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 Restoring
Order: Organizing Strategies to Reclaim Your Life
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CBN.com –
Are you one of those people who panics
when guests are scheduled to come to your house? Do you begin
the frantic “dash and stash,” running around your house trying
to conceal your piles of clutter? Do you slide your arm across
surfaces, piled high with paper and clutter, and shove the
contents into a bag or box, then stash it in the closet? If
so, you are like a lot of my clients, who inadvertently have
taken enticing shortcuts to true organizing.
Most people have a hall closet or spare room that contains
bags of paper and clutter that have been the outcome of a
“dash and stash” moment. As we sort through these time
capsules, we find unpaid bills (maybe that’s why the
electricity was turned off!), the old health insurance plan,
letters and reminders, a long-lost calendar, and sometimes
even treasures like un-cashed checks and precious memorabilia.
As you begin getting organized, you will likely discover
bags, boxes, junk drawers, and even entire rooms that have
been a receptacle for your organizing efforts. You might begin
to wonder how this pile-up has happened to you. In the
trenches of disorganized homes and offices across America,
I’ve discovered six common shortcuts to true organizing. In
reviewing them, I hope you can discover where you may have
taken a wrong turn that has derailed your organizing progress:
1. The Product Panacea
In an effort to address our disorder, we often rush off to the
store and buy a hunk of plastic (usually with multiple
drawers) and throw it at our mess. Product alone is not the
answer. I’ve seen people with hundreds of bins and baskets who
are still disorganized. I recommend partnering a good
organizing process with the appropriate product introduced at
the right time in the project. If you preemptively buy product
without determining exactly what you want to contain and how
it will improve functionality, you will likely have wasted
your money.
2. The Rearranging Remedy
A lot of us take the approach of entering a room and “getting
it organized” but at the end of the day, all we’ve done is
rearrange its contents. We grouped, stacked, and shuffled, but
that’s as far as we could take it. We didn’t know what to do
with the contents of the room, so we simply re-arranged it
back into the same space. Instead, take the time to ask
questions and assign a purpose of each space and organize
around those purposes.
3. The Cleaning Cure-All
While it is wonderful to have a clean home, it’s not the same
thing as an organized home. Cleaning simply de-grimes your
living space, while organizing requires planning and space
allocation to activities and items. Cleaning can actually
create clutter, since many of us hide things as we clean in
order to get to the surfaces. The good news is: when you’ve
taken the time to organize your home, it is also easier to
clean, because nomadic items can be confidently returned to
their appropriate location, and surfaces aren’t clogged with
clutter.
4. The Stashing Solution
We stash even when we’re not cleaning. If we are trying to
“pick up,” we look to the nearest empty spot to stash it. We
highjack open spaces on shelves, counters and drawers, and in
closets, stacking them full of odds and ends. In our attempt
to get things off the floors and surfaces, we stuff our way to
a disorganized environment where nothing has a home. To stop
stashing, you’ll want to observe the assigned purpose of each
area of the home (ie: the game closet) and use my “Only
Policy” to limit the items landing in that closet to “games
only.”
5. The Tidying Trick
It is likely that at some point, we have all tidied up our
space instead of organizing it, aiming for a neat appearance.
This organizing mistake is especially easy to make because it
feels so productive! With good intentions, many of us have
stayed late at work or come into the office on a weekend to
deal with our messy workspace. We tossed and recycled and
purged and we were proud of our progress. Sadly, within a
couple of weeks we found ourselves sitting in a messy space
once again, shaking our heads in disbelief. Tidying up never
lasts very long. If you have not implemented systems for
capturing and processing incoming paper and information you
will be stuck in an endless cycle of tidying.
6. The Cookie Cutter
We so badly want to believe that there is a magic potion for
our organizing challenges that we will try almost any
solution. The last serious organizing mistake we make is when
we take a universal tip or method and try to apply it to our
own mess. This is the “cookie cutter” approach to organizing.
I have come to believe that there is no one tip or trick that
will work for every person. Each person needs and deserves
organizing solutions designed with him or her in mind.
Just like frantic dieters trying to cut pounds, the
disorganized masses are looking for a quick and easy shortcut
to their messy homes and offices. We all want to believe that
“in three simple steps” or in “five minutes a day” we can get
organized. Yet, deep down I think we all know—as we survey the
landscape of our rooms layered with clutter—that there is no
way (short of arson) we can untangle our mess in three steps
or five minutes. We come to a moment of truth where we finally
understand that shortcutting only short-circuits our
organizing efforts. Our compulsion to cut corners isn’t going
to help us truly restore order. We’re going to have to retire
our haphazard attempts to get organized and look for a better
way.
I’ve shared a solution to each of the shortcuts described
above. In order to achieve lasting change, you must “dig out”
of the backlog that you’ve created over the years and “dig in”
to set up new systems to help you manage in the future. Here’s
to “restoring order” to your space and reclaiming your life!
Adapted from: Restoring Order™ copyright © 2006 by Vicki
Norris (available now at
www.RestoringOrder.com
and in July 2007as Reclaim Your Life™. Copyright © 2007).
Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR. Used by
permission.
About the Author: Vicki Norris is an expert organizer,
business owner, speaker, television personality, and author
who inspires people to live out their priorities. Norris is a
regular on HGTV’s nationally syndicated Mission: Organization,
and is a recurrent source and contributor to national
lifestyle publications including Quick & Simple magazine,
Better Homes & Gardens, and Real Simple magazine. Norris is
also author of Restoring Order™ to Your Home, a room-by-room
household organizing guide.
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