Hi there! Welcome to my very first blog post; I’m excited to start this journey and hope my organizing wisdom and experience can be helpful to all who need it!
I want to share some about my personal organizing journey, and it all starts with a mental health diagnosis. Stick with me, here…
A couple years ago I was finally diagnosed with ADHD – Inattentive Type and my life suddenly started making sense. I was great at the big picture stuff and got reeeally excited about new projects, but when it came to the nitty gritty I never seemed to finish them. Oh, and … I couldn’t remember a dang thing to save my life, including where all my stuff was.
My organizing chops didn’t come from nowhere. They were a matter of necessity. My life was not going to stay together if I didn’t get really organized and stay that way. I can’t promise my maintenance was perfect and things got messy but I learned a lot in the process. If there’s an organizing method you’ve heard of, I’ve tried it. Marie Kondo? Check. Getting Things Done? Check. Minimalism? You betcha.
My organizing chops didn’t come from nowhere. They were a matter of necessity.
One of the more intense projects I tried came from The Minimalists blog. I tend to call it “The Box Project” but they call it a “Packing Party” and boy was it an adventure. The project goes like this: pack everything up in boxes as though you were moving. That means everything including your bedding and toothbrush! Then over the next three weeks take out items only as you use them. Once they’re out, you can keep them out, and at the end of the experiment you get to see exactly how much of your stuff you actually use on a regular basis.
Turns out… not that much.
Out of the 30-something bins and boxes I ended up stacking up in my living room what I took out was maybe 10% of everything I owned at the end of three weeks. Out of those 30-something boxes I bagged up and donated about half of what was left. I suddenly had a lot more space and a lot less stuff.
I realize that stuff isn’t evil, of course. I actually love stuff! The Target dollar section gets me every time and I’m okay with that. What I’ve learned is that it’s less about how much stuff I have, and more about how I live with it. I’ve learned to work with my neurodivergent brain and not against it in my organizing journey.
For me a stack of unsorted papers is a nightmare scenario but another person might easily reach into that stack and find exactly what they need every time. It just depends on who you are and what makes you tick. Not every tip or trick will work for everyone and that’s okay. That’s why I want to take what I’ve learned and share it with everyone and anyone that needs help taming their stuff and their space! But my #1 client? Well, that person is me.
Getting rid of the stuff you don’t want or need is one thing, but at the end of the day it’s about having the things you need where you need them when you need them.
Getting rid of the stuff you don’t want or need is one thing, but at the end of the day it’s about having the things you need where you need them when you need them. That’s why decluttering is only half the story. Putting things back in a way that makes sense using some basic rules of thumb (which I’ll definitely cover in this blog!) is critical and what works best is different for every single person on this planet. And believe me, I’ve rearranged enough times (sometimes just for fun) to have experimented with just about every organizing hack and have learned through trial and error in my own life what works … and what doesn’t.
XOXO
