It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys, and in my lifetime, I have spent a staggering number of hours searching for my keys. There is no doubt that I could have done something much more valuable with that time: written a book, learned a new language, or taught thousands of yoga classes.
For some of us, keeping our homes and our belongings organized is like breathing. It is ingrained in our DNA and we hardly have to think about it. But for others of us, it is a herculean task. Impossible! We truly want to stay organized with all of our heart, but our inner chaos sabotages us along the way by throwing shirts on the bed, by burrowing keys into a secret hidden compartment of our jacket, and by dropping files into an important-paper-eating-pile on our desk.
A few weeks ago, a fellow AT reader suggested the book, "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys" by Marilyn Paul, Ph.D. in the comments of one of my posts. I had to read it immediately. The book is full of brilliant ideas for creating a home (and a life!) that is more organized, relaxed, and calm. Different from the usual fix-it-quick-and-call-it-a-day solution, this thoughtful book suggests ways to adjust your philosophy and your habits, bit-by-bit, in a way that can last long-term. The book weaves together themes of spirituality, self-care, and purpose. Marilyn references a great quote from Care for the Soul by Thomas Moore, "care for our actual houses, then, however humble, is also care of the soul."
Here is what I learned:
1. Observe your habits. Before you try to do any organizing, spend at least one day just watching yourself. Watch how you create little bits of chaos as you go throughout your day. Pay attention to what you do in your house. Where do you put (or not put) things when you are finished using them? Why is my bathroom always a mess? The first step to un-learning bad habits is to notice that they are there.
2. Create a vision and write it down. Why do you want to be more organized? What will it give you? More time? Better relationships? What would it feel like to be on top of everything that needs to get done? What would your organized home look like? When you walk into your pristine abode, how will you feel?
3. Enlist support from specific friends and family. Ask a few friends to hold you accountable for your new organization goals. Call a friend and let them know that at 9:00 am today, you are going to spend twenty minutes organizing your closet. Have them call you back after twenty minutes to see how it is going.
4. Start with small, specific projects. One reason we often fail to be organized is that we set unrealistic goals. "Today I'm going to clean out and organize the entire garage!" Well, if your garage is buried three feet deep in your gremlin-like multiplying collection of posessions you haven't used it in two years (but will! someday! promise!) then it is highly unlikely that you will complete this task. Remember, small and specific: from 9:00 to 9:20 I am going to fill up this bag with old clothes to donate.
5. Overestimate how long each organizing task will take, and time yourself. Instead of vaguely writing "organize bathroom!" on a list every day (and then ignoring it) set yourself up for something that you will actually do. Another reason we give up on being organized is that we make poor estimates of how long something will take. Organize the bathroom: 10 minutes...WRONG! How long will it really take? Two hours? Four hours? If the answer is scary, break the task into small parts and set a specific time to do it. 10:00 - 10:30 → Organize jewelry. Give yourself more time than you need; things always take longer than you think. Set a timer to keep you focused.
6. Get every room back to "ready." Marilyn talks about the simple concept of getting back to "ready." Perhaps when we wake up, our bedroom is at ready. But then we race around, late for work and leave a t-shirt on the floor, skip making the bed, leave a coffee cup on a dresser and the two outfits we decided not to wear crumpled on a chair. Definitely not ready! Spend five or ten minutes getting each room back to "ready" as you leave.
7. Purge, purge, purge. Get rid of everything that you don't love (or don't use.) Haven't used it in a year? Toss. Don't absolutely love it? Toss. When our homes are filled with things we don't love, we create a huge time suck. We spend an incredible amount of time moving these things, cleaning them, re-moving them, and sorting through them to find the things that we do need. As Marilyn says, "As you let go of what you don't need, your true treasures can emerge ... love what you own."
I think that last quote speaks volumes. Love what you own. If you don't love it, then what is it doing there?
Image: Etsy
Dirty Little Secrets of Tidy Families
Emi & Nathan's Natural History
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Sprout Side Table
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Recipe: Ham, Cheddar & Chive Egg Bakes
Ha, this list is like a manifesto of my last two months. And it really, really has been helping! I'm still not the cleanest, most perfect person on the planet or anything, but you can see my floors! And I can find my keys! :D
Finding a perfect, useful home for everything was a key part of changing things. If you always know where your stuff is, then you never have to tear apart every drawer/cupboard/box/pile o' stuff in your house to find it. Less panicked searching means less giant messes you can't bear to look at, let alone clean.
I'll have to check that book out. Doesn't hurt to have a little extra encouragement along the way.
"promise!) then it is highly [insert "unlikely"] that you will complete this task"
Finding a spot to toss my keys when I came in the door was the biggest favor I ever did for myself. It's not pretty, and it's not fancy, but I have not lost my keys in a good 3 or 4 years. Definetly saves time.
My Grandma used to say, a place for everything and everything in its place. Our biggest problem is that we have old, outdated storage (drawers and cabinets from the 1930s basically). Think about what type of storage fits your posessions, then buy it and find a place for every one of your items, and stick to it.
"promise!) then it is highly [insert "unlikely"] that you will complete this task"
Some of the best advice I have ever received, that literally changed the state of my now organized home, is to adapt your storage to your habits. So what if most of the world uses a key hook by the door, if you are constantly tossing yours on the kitchen counter, put a cool dish there or tray to toss them in.
My husband likes to get dressed in the living room each morning so he doesn't wake me and can watch the news, as he goes to work before me. He always leaves his pajamas in the living room. We could have endless bickering matches, or I just swapped out our ottoman for a storage ottoman that serves as a hidden laundry basket.
Another example is my habit of losing scissors because I take them all over the house. Solution? A labeled pair for each room, with a hook behind the bathroom cabinet door.
We constantly would lose yogurts and cheese sticks in the back of our fridge and they would go bad. My solution was to corral them into a plastic basket within the fridge. I am a big lover of baskets in the fridge! I have one for cheeses, one for herbs I buy because I failed at growing them.
Thank you for posting this - my life is chaos, and its my own fault!
Purging is something I do monthly, and I have a low-ambition but achievable goal of reorganizing one thing a month. This month - the freezer.
Brittneylynn - you are an awesome person - I strive to be more like you!
this is such amazing advice. i'm the kind of person who has no trouble at all staying organized, and people are always asking me for my tricks. but really, there's no one way to do it! as you say, observing your habits and finding your own way really is the best solution because it's customized! people still don't believe me when i say that, though. i will be linking them to this! thanks for posting.
*I* am organized to within an inch of crazy. My best friends are not. I can't tell you how often I have had to wait to cries of 'WHERE IS MY _____". I've tried to help, but my ways don't work for them. Fitting needs to habits is so simple, but so brilliant.
I'm going to check out this book for myself and perhaps to share...though I KNOW it'll get lost...*sigh*
All of this is exactly in line with what I'm trying to do right now. As an adult with newly-diagnosed ADD, it's been a struggle to change my thinking from "I'm just not trying; I'll do better next time" to "let's figure out a way to work WITH my brain, not against it." My doctor recommending ADD Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life and it completely changed my outlook. For those of us who have always struggled with being organized despite our best efforts, the advice to watch ourselves and develop organizing strategies that work WITH our habits is essential. Just because your mother did it one way doesn't mean you'll be successful with the same method. There is no "right" way to be organized - it's whatever works best with your life and your processing style.
And I messed up the html. It's supposed to go to http://www.amazon.com/ADD-Friendly-Ways-Organize-Your-Life/dp/1583913580/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1318359427&sr=8-2. Sorry!
kthompso87 said: There is no "right" way to be organized - it's whatever works best with your life and your processing style.
Yup. I always ask myself "Where am *I* most likely to look for item X?", then that's what I designate as the home for item X.
Professionally I find that its very easy to keep organized. But I'm barely starting to admit to myself that my home life is far from organized.
One of my biggest struggles is that I want a cleaner, organized home but my partner has other priorities and his habits affect the house and myself as well.
What sort of suggestions do you have with people who are cohabitants?
And then more specifically what sort of suggestions do you have with people who are cohabitants with people that tend to hang on to everything and are not very organized about all the stuff that they hang on too?
koolaidkisses: My suggestion is to find out what really bugs you, and do those things yourself. Dirty socks on the living room floor? Throw them in the laundry basket. Breadcrumbs on the counter? Wipe it clean. Makes it easier to ignore the rest.
If this can be negotiating grounds for a trade-off, so much the better. Personally, there is no limit to the socks I will pick up in order to have someone else clean out the drain.
@Koolaidkisses - change what is in your control. there is plenty of work to do there. and you can't change what it out of your control.
Good luck!
@Koolaidkisses there are some good suggestions in the book (it's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys) about how to handle co-habitants. the tips she suggests are:
1. try to respect each other's style
2. have a conversation about who will do what and take it seriously
3. look for benefits in the very qualities that annoy you (hard!) ; )
basic point is to appreciate each other's differences and be creative and inventive about ways to create space that work for both of you...easier said than done!