The Organized Life archives
MARCH 2007
Volume 4, Issue #3
Organic Organizing: Creating A System That Lasts
Dear Subscriber,
Like so many things, we can choose to view getting organized as a short-term or a long-term proposition. The short-term approach involves buying a lot of boxes, putting your clutter into them, and storing them away.
It’s quick, but it has a few fatal flaws: it’s likely to make your papers and belongings difficult to find, cause you to replace things you already own, and take up storage space that could surely be used more productively. You may have found a hiding place for your clutter, but you’re still left with a problem that weighs you down.
Taking the Long-Term View
Consider the advantages of taking a long-term view. With long-term organizing, you spend time and effort up front to get a payoff that will improve your life for years to come: a system that makes the things you need completely accessible, surrounds you with the things you love, contains minimal amounts of clutter, wastes no space, and lasts forever. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
The only way to create a space with all these qualities is to get to know yourself in your environment. I call this Organic Organizing. It emerges from within you: who you are, what you need, what you love.
Just as organic gardening is based on observing the nutrients and natural pesticides that are best for a garden, organic organizing starts with you, observing your own habits and needs. And just as the delicious, healthy fruit from an organic garden comes in all shapes and sizes, and maybe with a blemish or two, Organic Organizing doesn’t require perfection to be effective.
The habits and systems you develop with Organic Organizing become an intrinsic part of who you are. And you’ll reap its dividends for the rest of your life.
Getting Started with Organic Organizing
- Establish how you are going to use each area of your home or office.
- Decide where you’d like to start. You may need to choose between beginning with an area that feels easy vs. undertaking a space that bothers you deeply. Sometimes it’s best to start with the easy challenge as you build your new skills. Do what feels best.
- Give yourself a clean slate by clearing out the area as completely as you possibly can.
- Bring back into the space the “hardware” that’s necessary to its functionality. In a dining room, the table and chairs; in your home office, everything from the stapler to the file cabinet. And don’t forget -- besides needing to have these things, it’s important that you like them!
- Now, bring in the things that enliven the space: in the dining room, placemats, perhaps; in your home office, the books and papers you work with and refer to on a day-to-day basis. But don’t bring in back all the stuff that was making it a mess in the first place!
- And now, my favorite step – observe yourself as you live and work in your newly-conceived space. Do you reach for the stapler constantly, or only occasionally? If the former, keep it on your desk. If the latter, put it in a drawer and keep the desktop clear. Observe every step you take; little by little, your habits and inclinations will make this space a place that is truly yours.
- And what to do with the materials that didn’t make it back into the space? If they didn’t make it because you don’t need or love them – let them go! But if they’re important records or memorabilia that you really must keep, put them in boxes and move them into deeper storage. Get them out of your day-to-day way.
- Follow these steps for every area of your home or office. Gradually, it will become the environment that you connect with most deeply, most effectively – and most organically.
Finally, don’t pressure yourself to make your system perfect. Accept that it never will be, just as none of us are perfect. That’s what makes us interesting!
Organic Organizing is a great stress-reduction tool. By setting yourself up this way, you’ll go beyond organizing “tips & tricks.” You’ll easily locate what you need when you need it.
Your environment will put you at ease because the system you’ve created works in harmony with the way your mind operates, and the rhythms of your life.
Until next month, Happy Organizing!
Sincerely,
Ann Bingley Gallops
The Organized Life
P.S. This is the type of Organizing that I specialize in, so if you’re looking for coaching or hands-on help setting up your Organic system, please give me a call, at 646-382-3878.
ORGANIZING DISCOVERY OF THE MONTH
One frustration I observed as I set up my own organically-organized home office was the constant rooting around for usernames and passwords for my various web- and computer-related activities. My solution was to create a paper file called Passwords, that I keep in a handy file on top of my desk (right next to the file that holds postage stamps & address labels).
To set up your own Passwords file, simply start writing down site names along with your username and password on a single piece of paper until you’ve filled it up; then start another page. I’m up to four full pages now; it’s a file I couldn’t live without. Use your common sense when storing this file: if you’re in an office, it will be essential to store it away from prying eyes.
GETTING IN TOUCH
Call or write to schedule an Organizing or Feng Shui consultation for your home or office in the New York City area.
And please drop me a line with comments, questions, or suggestions for future newsletters.
Ann Bingley Gallops
The Organized Life
646-382-3878
ann@theorganizedlife.net
www.theorganizedlife.net
