Set Up Homes for Everything!

The other day I was thinking about what it takes to be able to find what you need when you need it. Yes, we professional organizers are a strange lot, daydreaming about what it takes to find things! But, alas, that’s the way my brain works!

The three keys to being able to find things on a regular basis are setup, habit and memory.

Setup–The best way to ensure that you will be able to find things is to create a “home” for everything. A home is the place where an item is stored so you can find it when you need it. Homes don’t just magically present themselves. They have to be set up. Setup takes time and careful thought to determine the best home for each item you own so you’ll know where to go to retrieve it when you need it. You will need to set up all the storage areas in your home, your car, your purse, your garage, your shed, even your wallet. When you create homes for everything, you’ll be creating an initial order. In so doing, you will be laying the groundwork for being able to find what you need when you need it. Setup is an initial action that will likely need evaluation and adjustments over time.

Habit–Having a home for everything is great, but if items aren’t returned to their homes after use, all your work to establish homes will quickly melt down into a mess. The essential habit you need to ensure you’ll be able to find what you need when you need it is to routinely return things to their homes after use. Retrieve things. Put them back. Retrieve things. Put them back. The repetition of putting things away will help you remember where everything is located in your space.

Memory–To be able to find things, you must remember how you set up your space. You must remember the homes you designated for each item. That is no small feat! Homes and offices are filled with thousands of items. If your memory isn’t the greatest, being able to find things will be a challenge. One way to build the necessary neural pathways to be able to remember where things live in your space is to work very hard on the habit of retrieving things and putting them away. If you are conscientious about putting things away immediately after use, that repetitive action will help create the neural pathways for remembering the homes of your things.

Setup, habit and memory. Where do you get hung up in this process of finding what you need when you need it? Do you struggle with setup, either because you have no clue how to do it or because you have difficulty making time for setup? Is your “put things away” habit weak? Or, is your memory your weak point? Perhaps you set up your space nicely but struggle with the habit of putting things away. If losing things is a constant challenge for you, identify where you struggle–with setup, habit or memory, and take steps to address your problem.

If you are at a loss for what to do to make real progress to improve the odds of finding things on a regular basis, remember that help is available from both coaches and professional organizers. Being able to find things on a regular basis is a great way to lower stress and feel empowered. It’s worth the investment of your time and money to improve the conditions for finding what you need when you need it!

© 2012 Clutter Clearing Community | Debbie Bowie

“Author, Organizing Expert and Feng Shui Practitioner, Debbie Bowie, is a leading authority on clutter clearing to attract more of what you want in life. If you’re ready to clear clutter and move your life forward, get your FREE TIP SHEET, “Feng Shui Tips for Instant Success” at http://www.clutterclearingcommunity.com.

It has been a quiet week here in Kilmarnock, Virginia, in the aftermath of my step-father’s death. I’ve been here to make funeral arrangements and support my mother as she comes to grips with the biggest loss of her life.

As is my habit, I’ve watched my mother move through her days both with curiosity and concern. Mom is not only grieving the loss of the love of her life, she is showing signs of dementia. The most obvious sign is poor short-term memory. I’ve been preparing myself for further decline by reading The 36 Hour Day by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins, a book about dealing with dementia. I know it’s possible that over time she will eventually forget how to do even the simplest of tasks. I dread that time.

My mom has always been very organized. At the moment, for the most part, she still is. It has been comforting to watch her move through her days maintaining order in her lovely home. When she opens mail, she routinely throws away the opened envelopes and junk mail. As she moves from the den to the kitchen, she picks up used glasses and plates to put in the dishwasher. She regularly clears cluttered surfaces, stating that she just doesn’t like to have too much stuff around. Maintaining order is a way of life for her. I am so grateful to have learned the lessons of how to get and stay organized from her. I feel sad when I think about the possibility of her losing that ability to the ravages of dementia.

For now, I take comfort in Mom’s commitment to maintaining order and her ability to tend to her space. What a blessing it is to be her daughter!

What can happen when you don't put things away!

Are you a person who routinely puts things away when you’ve finished using them? Or, are you a person that uses something and leaves it where it landed when you were finished using it? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess which person would be most challenged with staying organized. Regularly putting things away as you move through your day is one of the most important behaviors necessary for staying organized.

 What is the benefit of putting things away?

• You restore visual order. An orderly space is peaceful and feels good. It has positive energy.
• You snuff out a bud of clutter. Anything left out of place immediately creates a negative energy that will attract more of the same. Once one thing is left out, it’s much easier to leave other things out.
• You’ll be able to find the item when you need it.
• You maintain order in your space and a sense of control in your life.

Why doesn’t a person put things away?

• You were never taught the habit of routinely putting things away. It is a habit to use something and leave it where you last used it. It is also a habit to use something and put it away!
• You have attentional issues that keep you bouncing from one task to another, leaving object litter in your wake.
• You haven’t created a home for the item. There is no place to put it away.
• The home you created is not convenient enough given how often you use the object.
• The home you created has become so cluttered that putting it away is a hassle.
• Putting things away seems boring to you.
• You are rushing and putting an item away will take time you don’t think you have.

I could go on and on with reasons why people don’t put things away. Whatever the reason, you pay a heavy price when you neglect to regularly put things away. Over time you create your own nightmare of clutter and chaos in your space.

Putting things away is a behavior over which you have complete control. It can take only seconds to do if you’ve created convenient homes for everything. Being faithful to the behavior requires self-discipline, but it is one of the best ways to stay organized and directly correlates with feeling in control in your life.

Watch yourself today. Are you taking those extra few seconds (yes, seconds, not minutes) to put things away when you are finished using them? Remember, your peace of mind, stress level, productivity and success are affected by what you choose to do. Make putting things away a priority every day! If regularly putting things away isn’t a habit, make it the next habit you acquire in your effort to stay organized, manage stress, and have the life you really want.

I was recently asked to address the issue of what to do about staying organized when you’ve been leveled by some type of illness. What an important subject! You may have your house all organized and clear of clutter and then break your leg. How on earth can you tend to your house when it takes all of your energy to get to the bathroom and feed yourself, much less do anything else?

My first recommendation is: ASK FOR HELP!!!! I know that’s hard to do with tapes playing in your head that say, “You should be able to do everything by yourself,” and “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else.” Contrary to popular belief, the people who care about you often get pleasure out of being able to lend a helping hand from time to time.

When I say ask for help, I not only include friends and extended family, but also the people who live with you. They may be accustomed to living in their own orbit, but a healthy functional family is one in which all members contribute, especially in a time of crisis. In particular, ask family members to be even more vigilant about cleaning up after themselves and helping to maintain order in the home.

My second recommendation is: keep paper under control. If paper gets out of control, you are more likely to have negative consequences, like missing a bill payment. It will also take much longer to dig out once your recover from your illness or injury if paper is part of the mix. Paper is one of the hardest things to organize. It also takes more time to organize than most things. And, the energy of paper will shut you down faster than any other kind of clutter. If you do no more that separate out bills from other papers, throw away junk mail and stack up all other papers, like those that require an action or filing, dealing with paper once you are up an around again will much easier to do.

You will have physical challenges from time to time that make it difficult for you to maintain order in your home. Be gentle with yourself at those times and do whatever you can to restore order as soon as possible once you recover. That may require getting some outside help if the challenge you are facing is beyond what you are capable of doing in a timely manner. If you leave your house in disarray, its condition is more likely to deteriorate further which then can become a health risk in itself.

There is still much external chaos here in Richmond, VA, the remnants of Hurricane Irene’s wrath. The damage done by high winds and fallen trees is visible everywhere. Some people still have no power, phone or cable service.

It is impossible not to be affected by that chaos, those disruptions to day to day functioning. The energy of brokenness abounds. Most of us are unconscious of the effect of that negative energy. We are too busy trying to get back to normal in our homes, with our work, with public schools opening soon. There is also the uncertainty of when services will be restored, when school will start given the delays caused by the storm.

When things feel so out of sync, when the negative energy of brokenness is everywhere, it’s very easy to let your day to day maintenance activities slide. After all, you have no hot water, why bother washing dishes. Those dominant negative and unsettled energies attract more of the same. They stress us and make us less likely to attend to cleaning up, putting things away, maintaining order. It takes extra energy to make yourself do the things that you would normally do to maintain order in your home.

If you follow the lead of those negative, chaotic energies, you’ll find yourself inclined to ignore tasks you know you should do. Do them anyway. Consider them an investment in restoring order. So, you can’t make the power come back on any sooner. You can’t get cable up and running. You can’t get the tree branches hauled away soon enough. You can maintain order inside your home. You can process your mail. You can hang up your clothes even if you can’t do a load of laundry. Resist the urge to stop because the power is out or your yard is torn up by a fallen tree. You’ll be glad you did when you are enjoying a calm order in your home environment instead of a nightmare of your own making!

In a prior career I worked as a drug and alcohol counselor. We’d tell clients that the first step in the recovery process was to make a commitment to get sober. Some people would talk a good game, but the addicted part of themselves was still working hard to keep them thinking they could control their use and continue using. Their commitment was shaky and their actions eventually led them back to using.

A person who makes a commitment to a process, like the process of recovery from addiction, must first make a psychological shift in their thinking, a mental commitment, before they can be successful in their efforts at recovery. They may be doing all the right things, but if they haven’t made a solid commitment and taken steps every day to honor their commitment, they are likely to fail.

The same is true for people who want to go from living a cluttered, chaotic life to a life that is primarily clutter-free. The first step is to make a commitment to learning a new way of thinking and acting. Then they must honor that commitment every day by taking action to prevent and eliminate clutter.

Commitment without action is like having a boat with no motor. The boat is capable of traveling from one area to another, but it won’t move forward without the energy of the motor. Action with no commitment is comparable to a car in need of a tune-up. It will move in fits and starts for awhile, but eventually it will break down. Commitment + right actions=success.

AA teaches alcoholics and addicts to stay sober one day at a time. They are urged to start their day telling themselves, “Just for today I won’t drink.” Take the same process and use it to help you stay clutter-free. Tell yourself, “Just for today I will process the mail, pick up after myself, put things away, throw things in the trash, wash the dishes. . . .” Staying clutter-free is a one day at a time commitment!

“I keep my office at work organized, but my house. . . that’s another story!” I have heard that comment so many times. I wonder if what is happening for those people is that their work and keeping things organized at work takes so much of their available energy that they have none left over for maintaining a neat, clean and organized home.

I also wonder if they are choosing to invest the bulk of their energy at work because their financial survival depends on doing what it takes to keep their job. It’s as if they can afford to let the condition of their home slide, but they really can’t let things slide at work without experiencing consequences that they think they can’t afford.

Because I spend many hours per week helping people get organized in their homes, I’ve had the chance to observe the cost of a messy home. Here are some of the consequences of a messy home:

• More chronic health issues, particularly autoimmune diseases like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, allergies, asthma.
• Difficulty making decisions because you are distracted by the noise of the negative energy of your clutter.
• Difficulty taking action to achieve goals. The negative energy of the mess affects your energy and your ability to think clearly to identify actions to take and how to take them.
• Tend to stay in situations (jobs, relationships) that aren’t working longer than necessary because your mess keeps you immobilized and distracted from the reality of your situation and your options for change.
• Waste money purchasing duplicates of items you own because you can’t find what you need when you need it.
• Feelings of shame, inadequacy and low self-esteem, a reflection of the negative energy of the mess back onto your sense of self.
• Feelings of irritability, hopelessness, overwhelm and apathy that can cause relationship difficulties and keep you stuck feeling anxious and depressed.
• Inability of have family and friends over for social events because you are embarrassed by the condition of your home or it would take too much effort to clean up and restore order.
• You might even deprive yourself of going out and participating in social activities because you think you should be home cleaning your house. However, you never seem to get it done.

Wow! That’s quite a list! A messy home affects every aspect of your life. It’s not a little deal. It’s a big deal! Letting home maintenance activities slide could cost you your health, your mental health, your marriage or primary relationship, your relationship with your children, your money, your sense of self worth, and your social life. If all of those things suffer, it’s quite possible that you will also have problems at work. Doesn’t it make sense that your first priority should be realigning your energy so you have some energy left to tend to those daily tasks necessary to maintain a neat and organized home?

I am an observer of behavior. I watch myself. I watch my clients. I watch family and friends and people I don’t even know. I learn a lot about getting and staying organized and not staying organized by observation. This week I watched myself make a mess on my desk while I was in the process of completing a task. Then I watched myself automatically restore order. I realized that my habit is to make a mess, clean it up, make a mess, clean it up.

Somewhere along the way I learned that if I just clean up my messes as I go along, I stay organized. I might clean up at the end of a particular task or at the end of a particular time segment spent doing things that make messes. And, I rarely leave messes behind. Why? I guess I learned that if I left them, there would be negative consequences. I’ll bet my mother gave me some consequences when I was growing up. She was very organized and both modeled regularly cleaning up and enforced it as a family norm.

Now I can do what I want and I choose to clean up regularly. Why? Because it takes just seconds or minutes to clean up most messes I make, whereas if I leave the mess it is likely to attract even more clutter. Then cleanup time and effort would be much greater–hours and even days. Besides, the bigger the mess the bigger the overwhelm factor, which would lead to procrastination to avoid the overwhelm. That’s how messes snowball into rooms full of unorganized stuff.

Also, I really value closure. Cleaning up is a way to close an activity and give me a feeling of accomplishment. Cleaning up also restores physical order which in turn helps create mental order. I feel grounded and ready for the next task when I leave a neat and organized office. Finally, when I return to my tidy office I am greeted with calm and positive energies. If I didn’t clean up I’d be greeted with chaotic, noisy energies whose message to me would be something fearful and abusive like this, “You’re too busy. What’s wrong with you that you can’t get everything done? Why are you so messy?” Who needs that? Especially if it only takes seconds or minutes of effort to avoid it!

Make the “Mess-Cleanup” approach to staying organized your new habit. It could change your life!

Staying organized is not for sissies! Unlike getting organized it requires a commitment to DAILY ACTION to maintain the order you created when you got organized. That means, you must do the same actions day after day after day after day after day . . . in order to avoid the trauma of having to reorganize chaos all over again!

So what? What’s the big deal? All you have to do every day is pick up things, put them away, throw them away or give them away. That’s the simple answer for how to stay organized. No big deal!

The actions you must take are not difficult. In fact, they are pretty easy once you have established an initial order. But, they are boring and repetitive. For those folks who are creative, fun-loving and who crave variety and stimulation, the repetitive actions required to stay organized can seem deadly. But, they must be done if you want to stay organized and have a peaceful life free of chaos.

Here are 8 steps to learn how to STAY ORGANIZED:

1. Watch your behavior to identify actions that contribute to the problem of being disorganized and commit to changing problem behaviors.

Common problem behaviors include: dropping, plopping (choosing couch potato mode before taking care of business), avoiding and procrastinating.
2. Identify specific places in your schedule for daily organizing activities.

Work and school schedules create a structure around which to arrange routine organizing tasks. For example, there is usually a small window in the morning before leaving for the day that can be used for loading the dishwasher, putting in a load of wash, and cleaning up breakfast dishes. And, there is a window in the evening upon returning home where mail can be processed, voice mail checked, etc. There is also another window before bedtime for a final pickup of clothes and other items used during the day. People who are retired or self-employed sometimes have difficulty staying organized because they don’t have the structure provided by work and school schedules. It is even more important for them to consciously commit to specific times for getting routine maintenance chores done.

3. Incorporate the most important organizing tasks into routines.

Routines create a structure within which specific activities can happen. Repeating routines over and over again will make actions automatic rather than dreaded daily events. A morning routine might include getting up, showering, hanging up wet towels, getting dressed, eating breakfast, cleaning up after breakfast, checking email, leaving for work/school. An evening routine might include putting away any items you bring into the house (groceries, shopping bags, etc.), processing mail, checking
voice mail, making dinner, cleaning up after dinner, helping children with homework and cleaning up afterwards.

4. Reward yourself for changed behavior.

Commit to a new organizing behavior that you know will help you stay organized. Then repeat the behavior 21 days in a row. It takes repeating a new behavior 21 days in a row before it becomes a habit. Beware, you will resist new behaviors. You may have to start over again several times if you find yourself sliding back into old messy habits. When you reach the 21st day, reward yourself with something you enjoy, a special meal or purchase. Use email, TV or a phone call to a friend as a reward for finishing your evening chores.

5. Be willing to pay to get help if you haven’t been successful in your efforts to stay organized by a certain date.

Professional organizers and professional coaches can provide the structure necessary to hold you accountable to your goals to stay organized. (Admit it; you’d pay for help if you couldn’t get your car to start.

6. Hire others to do the things you hate the most and/or have the hardest time doing.

Consider paying for a cleaning service, a professional organizer, a person to pay your bills, a lawn service or a person to do your laundry/ironing. I pay to have my bills paid because I hate doing it, I’m prone to math errors and I want it done right. I also pay to have my house cleaned every two weeks. Again, I hate cleaning. And, it always gets done better than I’d do it. Having someone clean my house also gives me a deadline to pick up my house so I can get the most out of the cleaning!

7. Make staying organized a family commitment.

Invite family members to participate in the process of maintaining an organized, comfortable place to live. If you have a husband or wife, start with him/her. It is always easier to encourage children to participate if you and your spouse both consider staying organized a priority. Teach children early that picking up after themselves and participating in on-going organizing efforts is not optional; it is essential to having a rewarding, comfortable life.

It should be introduced to them as a normal part of life as soon as they are capable of throwing toys into open tubs. Be sure to reward them with praise for their on-going efforts even though they are expected to do them. Never use getting or staying organized as a punishment. And, remember, they will be watching what you do. You are a model for behaviors they need to learn like cleaning up after themselves and regularly getting rid of things they no longer love or use.

8. Have realistic expectations for the level of organization you can maintain.

It is fairly common for women to believe that they should keep a perfectly organized and clean house, even though they may work outside the home and/or have several children running around. That is an old standard that probably has NEVER been attainable without regular outside help. If you have children, especially under the age of 10, cut yourself some slack and shoot for relative order. As long as you keep picking up daily, regularly get rid of stuff, and you have all family members doing their part in the process, you probably can function without any major organizing challenges.

As your life changes, so too will the level of intensity of your daily organizing efforts. Efforts should intensify when raising children and become less intense when children leave home (if you haven’t replaced the obligations as a parent with other commitments). When you reach retirement, initially, you will have much more time to get organized and stay organized. But, you will also lose the structure provided by a work schedule. Resist the urge to drop helpful routines at retirement. Those who do find their homes in chaos and wonder what happened!

You will be rewarded for your daily organizing efforts with the ability to think clearly and accomplish your goals more easily, improved relationships and greater peace of mind. A few minutes every day is not a great price to pay for an improved life!

Think about the last time you were all over the place, full of a free floating anxiety, bouncing from one task to another, reacting to people and situations emotionally in a way you later regretted. I’ve learned that when I feel like that I have become ungrounded, disconnected from my center, from my knowing that I am OK and all is well.

How do I get back to my center? How do I ground myself? Staying grounded requires daily attention and effort. Here are some of the ways you can stay grounded:

1. Make your bed every day. Creating order and peacefulness in the bedroom settles the energies in that space and those good energies affect the rest of the house and you.
2. Clean up your kitchen every day. Having a clean and orderly kitchen calms the part of the house most associated with nurturance and comfort, also calming you.
3. Have morning and evening routines that are made up of activities of self-care, like bathing, exercising, tending to pets, straightening up. Tending yourself is a powerful way to ground and center yourself.
4. Sort your mail daily to make yourself aware of tasks that need to be done and bills that need to be paid. Knowing your reality is more calming than the anxiety produced by not knowing.
5. Keep paper in no more than two main locations, for example, the kitchen and the home office. Avoid allowing paper to spread throughout the house. When it spreads, its negative energy pollutes whatever area it is in. Paper is usually associated with some kind of task that needs to be done, like deciding whether you need the paper or not, or deciding where the paper should go next. When you see it all over the place it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the message it is sending, “You need to do something!” When you are feeling overwhelmed your are not centered.
6. Maintain order by putting things away all the time. Avoid the temptation to just drop things. It takes much more energy to pick them up than it does to drop them. When items are just dropped they have a negative, chaotic energy that is anything but grounding. And, dropped things attract more dropped things!
7. Do at least one 5 minute cleanup per day. Either start or end your day with a quick cleanup. Put things away, move things to the part of the house where they belong, straighten your papers, throw out trash. Take that time to restore order to your space. One of the first things I do when I’m thrown off center by some bad news or a difficult situation is to establish order in my home. Some would call my behavior compulsive. I call it grounding!

As I wrote the above list it occurred to me that all my recommendations are the same recommendations I make to people who want to learn how to stay more organized. So, staying organized in your physical space is a great way to stay grounded!

Joan Borysenco, Ph.D, author of Inner Peace for Busy People writes of the benefits of being grounded, centered, “When I’m centered it’s easier to respond to people, to catch the nuances of their attention, and to let inspiration flow through me. Thinking of myself as an instrument that life plays, rather than the source of the melody, has helped me be a better juggler. The instrument needs to be cleaned and polished, treated with care. When I’m in balance, the unbalanced hodgepodge of things on the to-do list are accomplished more effectively.”

Treat yourself with care and stay grounded by committing to maintaining an organized space. That way when you are confronted with one of life’s challenges you can handle it from a place of clarity and calmness, centered and able to access your inner wisdom.