What Is Organized, Anyway?

Most of us have no trouble defining what it means to be disorganized because the evidence is all around us. When it’s hard to get out the door on time because necessary household items such as car keys, handbags, or children’s homework are nowhere to be found, or when bills go unpaid because they’re mislaid or lost, it spells disorganization.

Understanding what it means to be organized, on the other hand, can be a bit more difficult. In a nutshell, you picked up this book because you want life to be easier. That desire to live more simply, directly, and freely is at the heart of what you mean when you say you need to get organized.

Depending on the individual, the process of getting organized may involve clearing clutter, getting control of time, revamping storage, establishing new routines, or all of these things. The precise mix varies from person to person. Someone with a clutter problem will take a different road to organization than a person who needs to improve time-management skills. The secret to getting organized fast is focusing on your own challenges, abilities, and goals, and creating your own unique path to an organized life.

What will it take to move you from where you are to where you want to be? To clear the way forward, let’s examine some myths and misconceptions about the organizing process.

SPEEDY SOLUTION

For a quick start to a more organized life, carry a small notepad with you at all times. Each time you remember an item you need to buy or a task you need to do, make a note of it. Using a notepad or smartphone to track fleeting must-do items saves time and frees your brain for more important work. Trap them now to tap them later!

Organizing Myths and Misconceptions

Sometimes efforts to get organized can get hung up on inaccurate ideas of what organization is and how you achieve it. See how many of these statements about organization you agree with:

•  Getting organized takes a lot of time.

•  You have to buy stuff to get organized.

•  Organized homes are neat and tidy.

•  Organizing systems are really complicated.

Surprise! None of these statements is true. All of them express commonly held misconceptions about the process of getting organized.

Does it take time to get organized? Sure it does, but a lot less than the time you spend fighting the day-to-day effects of disorganization.

Getting organized is like riding a bicycle. When you’re just learning to ride a two-wheeler, you have plenty of false starts and stops, and you wobble a lot. But soon enough, you find your balance. From that point on, all it takes to go is a tiny push on the pedal.

Yes, you’ll invest some time in the beginning stages of getting organized. But just as with that bicycle, your efforts will move you along far more quickly than they did before. Once past the first part of the learning curve, an organized life takes very little time to maintain.

What about expense? Well, who doesn’t love visiting a store devoted to organizing products? Wandering down the aisles, it’s easy to imagine living a serene and organized life. But oh, the price tag! Specialty organizers can carry a hefty price tag, so you decide that you can’t afford to get organized—not this pay period, anyway.

Nonsense! While organizing products offer clever and useful solutions to many common problems, buying them is not a prerequisite to getting organized. Their place in the organization process comes after the hard work has been done of cutting clutter, evaluating household storage, and making educated decisions about the requirements of your space and your stuff. None of these activities costs a dime, and neither does getting organized.

Can you tell an organized space by the way it looks? Be careful—organized is not a decorating style. Despite the efforts of home magazines to convince you otherwise, there’s no such thing as an organized housing style.

A minimalist home can look great on the surface but dissolve into chaos when you open a drawer or search for a filed paper. On the other hand, a cozy country house, complete with scattered belongings and children’s toys, can be a beautifully organized home that supports the daily life of the family that lives there. Know an organized space by the way it works, not by the way it looks.

What about all those complex organization systems out there, the ones with mission statements and planner pages and checklists? Yes, they do exist, and for many people they represent an effective path to organized living. However, structured get-organized systems are not the only route to the goal. By all means, make use of them if they work well with your organizing style, your goals, and your budget. But if all those little check boxes make your skin crawl, take heart! You can achieve the same results with nothing more complicated than a simple spiral notebook and a pen.

One Right Way—Yours

Another factor can trip you up when reaching for better home and personal organization: the guru. Browsing the bookstore or surfing online, you can encounter testimonials about this method or that writer or workshop, and all of them are glowing. “Gee,” you say to yourself, “if it works for them, it has to work for me!”

If you’re lucky enough to hook up with a method that meets your personal organizing needs and preferences, it’ll be a match! But problems arise when you try to shove your square peg into their round hole. Experiencing setbacks when everyone around you appears to be making great strides forward can throw you off the path altogether.

The fastest way to create an organized life that you can live with is to know yourself. Your goals, your strengths, and your challenges all affect where you’ll start and how you’ll travel down the path.

This book helps you determine your own clutter tolerance, filing preferences, time-management style, and taste in routines to help you craft a custom get-organized plan that will work for you—and work quickly.

ROAD HAZARD

When you’re fed up with a disorganized life, it’s tempting to go on the organizing equivalent of a crash diet, changing everything in your life at once. Resist the urge! Just as with weight loss, the secret to organized success is slow, steady progress. Save your energy for the long haul so you can sustain the journey to an organized life.