Resolution – How Is That Going?

by Your Ordered Life | Goals, Seasonal, Time

Well, January is almost over. Raise your hand if your New Year’s resolution to be more organized is on track.

If your hand is up, way to go! You’re nearly a month into making a big change. Hopefully, you’re already seeing the benefits. Now is a great time to check in with yourself and see how you’re feeling about what you’ve done. Keep doing the things that are working and try something new where they’re not.

If your hand is not up, you are almost certainly not alone. Our lofty January 1 ambitions start running up against the reality of everyday life from January 2 on. If we’re not careful, February 1 can find us demoralized and unmotivated, resigned to just accepting things the way they were pre-resolution.

Let’s Start At the Very Beginning

If you remember, on January 1, we talked about some important aspects of making resolutions. So, let’s revisit those and figure out where things got sideways.

Motivation

Did you articulate a clear reason for why you wanted to get organized? We typically want to make a change because we are dissatisfied with the way things are. If you aren’t particularly bothered by your life being out of order, you will probably have a hard time being motivated.

Similarly, if you are unhappy with the way things are but haven’t connected that with the need to get organized, your motivation might not be very strong. You need to feel like what you are resolving to do is going to change your life for the better.

Finally, are you sure that the resolution wasn’t driven by someone else’s desire for you to get your life in order? Extrinsic motivation is notoriously ineffective at generating change. This has to be something that you see value in doing, or you’ll find reasons not to do it.

Evaluation

Did you determine what exactly you needed to change to get your life in order? ‘Be more organized’ is a pretty nebulous concept. You’ll have an easier time sticking with this resolution if you set a more specific goal.

Figure out what your most critical area is and focus on that. You can’t go paperless, clean out your garage, style your closet, and organize your pantry all at the same time. Prioritize and refocus.

Visualization

Do you know what you’re working towards? It’s incredibly difficult to reach a goal if you don’t know what it looks like, or when you’ve arrived. If you haven’t already, picture what that area of your life is going to look like once it’s in order.

Planning

Did you give yourself deadlines? Were you realistic regarding the time and attention you would be able to devote to this project? Maybe you bit off more than you could chew, or you wildly underestimated how long this would take. Revisit your plan if you had one, and revise it given what you know now. If you jumped in without a plan, take the time now to create one.

Going Forward

Hopefully, the progress that you have started – or will start – to see will be enough to keep you going. On those days when you need a little something more, here are some key things to keep in mind:

You’re Learning

Getting – and being – organized is a learned skill. It’s easier for some, but everybody can get there. And everybody can improve from where they start.

If what you’ve tried didn’t work, it isn’t a failure. It’s a lesson in what does, and doesn’t, work for you. Success is not about finding the “one right solution” (there’s no such thing when it comes to organization). It’s about working with your strengths and sticking with it.

It’s a Journey and a Destination

Don’t think of a resolution as an all or nothing proposition. You are committing to a PROCESS of change. If your kitchen counter is currently buried under two days’ worth of mail and paperwork, it just means that you’re still in the process.

You don’t have to (and can’t) do it all at once. Small steps are still progress. Just like losing ten pounds provides measurable benefits – even if you need to lose 100 – getting one area of your life in order provides a calming, positive impact even if five other areas are still in chaos.

The Best Laid Plans

You have a life, and life does not always cooperate with your plans. If you’ve had unexpected emergencies, illnesses, demands on your time, etc., it’s completely understandable that your resolution might have taken a back seat temporarily.

Mel Robbins has a saying that I’ve always loved – “Giving up on your goal because of one setback is like slashing your other three tires because you got a flat.” Keep up with what you can and, as soon as it’s feasible, recommit to your plan, but be kind to yourself in the meanwhile.

And look forward to the day that your life is in order. You’ll find that it’s a lot easier to roll with the unexpected when your day-to-day is running smoothly.

It Will Get Easier

The more organized you get, the less you have to work at it. In the beginning, it takes a LOT of effort – decluttering, sorting, labeling, remembering to put things away where they belong. But the beauty of any good system is that it eventually starts working for you.

You can do it!

Lessons in Keeping It Simple

by Your Ordered Life | Organizing Advice, Family

Like most people who enter the professional organizing industry, I have always been an organized person. I was the kid who color coded her class handouts and alphabetized the books on my bookshelf. I always knew where to find that board game, Barbie, or baseball glove. Over the years, I have learned (and continue to learn) valuable lessons that continue to inform how I organize. This is one of them.

Welcome to the Chaos

When my oldest daughter was a toddler, she had what seemed like four million Disney Princess dolls (in reality, more like a dozen or so). Naturally, each one came complete with outfits, shoes, hair accessories, etc. Every play session ended with her playroom looking like a disaster scene. Dolls were flung around the room in various stages of undress, and princess paraphernalia was strewn from one end of the room to the other.

A Stroke of Genius

I decided to use my favorite Container Store shoeboxes with a self-adhesive pocket attached to the front (like these). First, I took pictures of each doll with all of her accompanying accessories. Next, I used photo editing software to create a color-coded bar at the top of each photo with the name of the doll. Finally, I printed the photos and placed them in the pockets. After playing with the dolls, my daughter and I made a game of cleaning up and returning all of the pieces to the appropriate boxes. My daughter would match the items with the pictures to find the correct box. She even began recognizing the corresponding letters in the dolls’ names which helped her reading skills. Great organizational idea, right?

Or Not…

As my friend Molly says, ‘Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back’. It turns out, as long as my daughter and I were the ones playing with the dolls, the shoeboxes were great. But when she had friends over, many of them were not nearly as enamored of our system. They didn’t mind helping to get the mess off of the floor. But they didn’t necessarily want to take the extra time to match items with containers. I wound up dismissing the children’s and/or parents’ offers to clean up, and my daughter and I would do it after they left.

The Problem Becomes Clear

After just a few playdates, the drawbacks to our system became very obvious.

First, I was making more work for myself and my daughter – We were spending precious time after each playdate cleaning up and organizing.
Second, I was creating a double standard – It did not escape my daughter’s keen eye that the rules were inconsistent. I expected her to help clean up when she visited other kids’ houses, but I didn’t ask them to reciprocate at ours. If you have ever known any small children, then you know that “NOT FAIR” is a BIG deal.
Third, I was discouraging responsibility on the part of our visitors – Most of the kids (and parents) were more than willing to do their part to help clean up. I was the one waving off the offers.
And finally, I was sending an unwanted message to my daughter – It was more important that it be done our (OK, let’s be honest, my) way than that her friends share the chore of cleaning up the mess they’d made together. NOT what I wanted her to learn.

Lessons Learned

I decided that it was more important to maximize play time vs. clean-up time, and to let the kids chip in to clean up too. After all, if Cinderella’s shoes spent a few weeks hanging out in Belle’s box with Jasmine’s crown, the earth was not exactly going to spin off of its’ axis.

Once a month or so, my daughter and I would go thru and gather up all of the dolls, clothes, accessories, etc. First, we grouped everything together, referencing the picture on the front of the box. Second, we hunted down any missing pieces. Finally, we returned everything to its’ proper box.

In between those times, I decided to be satisfied as long as it was all off of the floor. I focused more on the benefits of encouraging fun and cooperation between my daughter and her friends. And I enjoyed spending the extra time on something that had a greater impact on our quality of life.

The Moral(s) of The Story

That experience still informs my approach to organizing, both in my own home and in my clients’.

Always keep your ultimate objective in mind. What is the real reason you’re creating this system? What problem are you trying to solve? The answer may be different in various areas of your life. The goals for your workplace filing system and your home refrigerator front won’t be the same. Be crystal clear on what you want this system to do for you.
Think ‘What is the simplest way to accomplish that?’ Generally speaking, the easier it is to do something, the more likely it is that you will do it. Most of the time, complexity is not necessary to accomplish your goal.
Make sure that everyone who needs to use the system, can and will. It doesn’t matter how attractive, or even logical, it is if nobody follows it. Know your audience. When I work in common areas in homes or offices, I always start by talking with all parties who will be using the system to get an idea of their style of organization. You can save yourself a lot of frustration by being realistic upfront about who and what you have to work with.
Be flexible. Honestly assess what is working, and what isn’t. Take the feedback that you get from others and evaluate it. Be willing to change things up to get the results you want. Remember that the goal is to be organized, not right.

Are there areas of your life that are overly complicated and out of order? Ask yourself, ‘Where could I simplify?’ Or you can ask me.

Resolutions – It’s That Time

by Your Ordered Life | Seasonal, Goals, Time

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Ordered Thoughts. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to post to this blog every other Wednesday. So, let’s start by talking about resolutions.

A new year is a time to reflect and reset for most of us. Sometime between the end of the old year and these first few days of the new one, we examine our lives. We go back over the previous twelve months, revisiting our successes and failures; our highs and lows. We think long and hard about where we are vs. where we want to be. Then we make a list of resolutions which, for many of us, will be forgotten or abandoned long before Spring rolls around.

Why Do Resolutions Usually Fail?

Why is that? Because many of us approach resolutions in a way that practically guarantees failure. We have a vague idea of what we’re not happy with, and an even vaguer idea of what we hope to accomplish. We often dive in without any concrete goal, actual plan, or measurable way to evaluate progress and determine success. Then we’re often disappointed to find that just writing ”Lose weight” or “Get organized” on a piece of paper does absolutely nothing to ensure that will happen. Without insight, goals, a plan, and metrics, those extra pounds – or clutter, stress, and chaos – are pretty much guaranteed to remain a part of your life.

Most Common Resolution

Among the Top 5 resolutions (after losing weight, getting in better shape, and improving our health) are getting organized, and reducing stress. We know that never being able to find what we’re looking for, never being able to relax in our home, and feeling anxious all of the time about those things, isn’t fun. It also has a negative impact on our mental, emotional, and physical health – to say nothing of our happiness.

So, if getting organized is on your list of resolutions this year, how do you improve your chances of success?

Consider why you want to get your life in order

What is your motivation? Are you tired of wasting time looking for things? Frustrated that you can’t have people visit your house because it’s a mess? Feeling weighed down by years of accumulated clutter? The clearer you are about why you want to make a change in this area, the better. Motivation for any lasting change has to come from within, so find yours (or pick a different resolution). If you’re only doing it because a boss, spouse, roommate, magazine article, guilty conscience, etc. says you need to, you will find it hard to succeed. If it helps you to write this down, do it.

Determine which areas of your life are out of order

It’s possible that your entire life is a disaster, but that’s probably not the case. So, think long and hard about, specifically, what is making you feel as though your life is out of control. Are you paying late fees on overdue bills that you forget to pay? Have you been constantly scrambling to meet – or worse, missing – deadlines at work? Is getting dinner on the table every night a challenge? Do you miss events or appointments? Do you dread opening your closet? Identify the things that always seem to be falling through the cracks or stressing you out the most. Make a list.

Prioritize

Don’t try to tackle everything all at once. Identify the biggest problem area, and address that first. Look at everything that you previously identified as not working, and ask yourself “How much does this bother me?” For now, don’t worry about whether it should or not. It’s your life, your home, your office, so be honest with yourself. Take that list you made of ‘out of order’ areas and rank them.

Be specific

Once you identify what isn’t working, think about exactly what isn’t working. That pile of paperwork on your kitchen counter may be your biggest problem area. Is it because you hate how it looks? Do bills and important documents get lost in there? Are you out of space to cook? Those are different problems that will require different solutions to address the core issue.

Understand what you are doing now that is working

Is there any aspect of your ‘out of order’ areas that is working? Think about the areas of your life that are in order, and what you do differently there. Don’t judge your systems! There really aren’t any one-size-fits-all ways of doing things, and the latest, most popular way may not work for you at all. So, don’t worry if you write your grocery list on a scrap of paper while it seems like everyone around you seems to be using a smartphone app. If you leave the store with the groceries you need, then your system is working for you. On the other hand, if you frequently get to the store and don’t have your list with you, or don’t look at it while you’re shopping, then maybe that system isn’t working so well. Think about how you are approaching things right now, and where the breakdown seems to be happening.

Visualize success

How do you want this problem area to look when you’ve achieved your goal? Again, be honest with yourself. If you won’t truly feel successful until you have an aesthetically pleasing, color-coded filing system for all of those papers, then that’s your goal. If you’ll be happy just having that pile off of the counter and on your desk, then that’s your goal.

Make a plan

Do you have the tools that you will need? Do you have the time to tackle this right now? How are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be? This is one of the primary areas where resolutions fall apart. Sometimes that is the result of a genuine lack of knowledge – we don’t always know how to get there. Sometimes it is a result of vague goals – it’s hard to make a plan when you aren’t clear on what you’re doing. If you have trouble making a plan, revisit your goal and make sure it’s clear enough. If lack of knowledge is an issue, it might be a good time to contact a professional for a consultation.

Make a timeline

When do you want to start? How long will this take? If it’s a complicated project, you will probably have to break it down into steps. This is another point at which resolutions tend to fail. We are notoriously bad at estimating time requirements. If you give yourself an hour to do something that is going to take five hours, you’re likely to get discouraged after that first hour. You thought you’d be done and instead you haven’t made much progress at all. If you’ve been realistic and detailed, you have a greater chance of designing a plan that will accurately reflect the time commitment necessary.

Just get started

Once you have your goal, your plan, and your measure of success, the most important thing to do is take that first step.

At the end of the month, we’ll check in and see how things are going. Happy New Year!

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