Читать книгу The Clutter Connection - Cassandra Aarssen - Страница 10

I’ll never forget the day I discovered I was not, in fact, some sort of organizing genius. After years of struggling with my own clutter and mess, I had finally stumbled upon a system I could actually use and maintain long-term. Gone were the traditional detailed and micro-organized solutions I had tried so hard to emulate from television shows and various Pinterest posts. After years of feeling guilt and shame for not being able to use these complex systems, I realized that my brain just didn’t work that way. My brain is full-on ADHD, and I don’t have the patience or the self-discipline to open a lid or find the right compartment when putting things away. As soon as I’m done using something, my brain has already moved on to the next thing, so putting stuff away properly is always the last thing on my mind. I need easy solutions that take zero thought and even less effort to maintain. This ADHD girl needs fast and simple organization.

I joyfully donated the dozens of pretty matching bento-box-style containers that just never worked for me, and I even gave away that crazy expensive paper filing system I had ordered online. In their place were pretty open baskets, complete with simple labels, allowing me to literally toss my things back into their home when I was done using them. I was totally convinced that I had discovered the Holy Grail of organizing solutions. Being less organized was actually making me more organized. It sounds insane, but shifting my perspective of how an organized space was supposed to look actually made me a more organized person.

It was this new perspective that convinced me I was some sort of an organizing super genius. I started sharing my newfound wisdom with anyone who would listen. I would enthusiastically claim that most organizing systems were just way too complicated, and even though they were great in theory, the average person just couldn’t…or wouldn’t keep them up long-term. I honestly believed that most people fell into the same category as me, despite the fact that almost every solution seen in magazines, on television, or in stores was tailored toward a more detailed sort of organizer.

The truth was, my husband had no issues using traditional detailed systems and thought my new simple systems were a little half-baked. I thought that was his total perfectionist talking, and I dismissed his objections out of hand. Surely that was the opinion of the few, not the many. When I shared my new lazy system with my messy friends and family, I was super excited to learn that they all felt the same way, and the simple approach was now working for them too. I was completely enamored with my new perspective and insight on clutter. The majority of organizing systems were created solely for the personality type of the minority of the population!

My lifelong struggle with being messy finally made sense. Truth be told, I thought I was really onto something. I was convinced that the whole world was trying to force themselves into one organizational style, when in fact, there was more than one way to organize. My “stick it to the man” approach to life was finally paying off and, high on fumes from dollar store plastic containers and chalkboard labels, I launched my own organizing business with the enthusiastic intent of blessing the world with my newfound expertise and wisdom. To my delight, my “less is more” approach to organization was actually a huge hit…for a while.

All good things come to an end I guess.

Fast forward one year, and I’m standing in a client’s home office as she sheepishly explains that the paper system I designed for her “just isn’t working.” I held in my tears (and thankfully resisted the urge to throat-punch her), as this was the THIRD time in as many weeks that I’d come back to redesign her space. Did I mention that my redesigns were all pro bono? Yeah, in my organizing arrogance, I had declared to all of my clients that, if they were not 100 percent satisfied, I would redesign the space for free until they were. I was now seriously regretting that promise.

Walking into that third visit, I believed that this client was just simply lazy. The first system I created for her huge piles of paperwork was a simple basket system, similar to the one I used in my own home. One basket for bills, one for receipts, one for current clients, and so on. No extra micro-sorting into small categories such as “Electricity” and “Gas,” just one macro-organized pile of mixed-up “Bills” in a pretty basket. Her reaction to my “genius” simple organizing solution was less than enthusiastic.

“Nothing is even really organized,” she gasped in horror as she surveyed the rows of pretty matching baskets labeled with simple categories such as “Home,” “Manuals,” and “Taxes.” She insisted that she couldn’t find anything at all and that it was in fact, less organized than the mountains of paper piles that she had started with. I assured her that this system had worked for all of my previous clients and that she needed to simply “get used to it.” A week later, she informed me that she would never get used to it and that she needed a much more detailed system. She craved order and perfection. I was completely shocked. Order and perfection were not my friends. Apparently, not everyone was made for my simple and easy organizing system after all.

Her redesign used filing cabinets instead. I made her a traditional filing system, complete with color-coding for all the hundreds of detailed categories and adorable tiny labels for her hoard of papers. I sorted…for days…and created a very orderly and traditionally perfect paper filing system. I even made her a little printout directory and quick-find guide for her files. I thought it was overkill, but she was thrilled. She was a perfectionist, through and through, and I had created a “perfect” organizing system for her paperwork.

I left her home resigned to the fact that some people really do love the traditional organizing systems and, therefore, there must be two different ways to organize a space; simple or detailed. These two systems were completely dependent on the person’s personality. Traditional “type A” personalities (competitive, highly organized, ambitious, perfectionist) needed traditionally detailed systems, while “type B” personalities (such as myself) needed a more laid-back and easy-to-use organizing solution.

One week later, I was back in her office for a third redesign because she couldn’t, and I quote, “put anything away” with the new system. She had pulled dozens of file folders out of the filing cabinets and spread them out on every surface, including her desk, the sofa, and even the floor. Embarrassment flushed her face as she scanned her messy office and whispered, “This just works best for me, I need to see my papers. I can’t bear to put them in the filing cabinets, I’ll forget I even have them. I’m just a messy person, I guess. Maybe I’m just too lazy to ever be organized.”

This is when realization hit me like a freight train to the face. She wasn’t lazy or messy. This incredible woman standing before me was the opposite of lazy in every way. She had her master’s degree, her law degree, and had even recently opened her own law firm. She loved to cook, sew, and paint in her spare time. Laziness and disorganization were not the reasons her office was drowning in paper clutter. She was not messy, she just organized differently.

I should have realized the difference earlier because, in my own battle with clutter, I had also resigned myself to the idea that I was just a naturally messy person. I had spent the first twenty-eight years of my life believing the lie that I was just not good at cleaning and organizing. In fact, the perception I had of myself as a lazy and unproductive person was so deeply rooted, I always assumed I would fail even before I began a new task. Despite my willingness to change and many attempts to do so, I never really believed it would happen because I had failed so many times in the past.

I had set up a traditional paper filing cabinet in my home, but I just couldn’t seem to find the motivation to put paper back into its appointed category. Mail would come in the door and never make it into the elaborate sorting system my husband had set up. I had organized my bathroom closet with matching stacked plastic containers, carefully sorting my products into micro categories such as “Pain Relievers,” “Allergy,” “Stomach,” and “Bandages.” The truth was, no matter how much I wanted to, I would never take the time to put things away in their proper container when I was done. I simply set the items beside or on top of it, resulting in a messy closet in no time flat.

It wasn’t until I stopped trying to conform to the “traditional” sorted category and micro-organizing style that I finally stopped the madness of endlessly tidying and re-tidying my home. I stopped looking at what I couldn’t keep clean and tidy, and started looking at the spaces I could. Once those spaces were identified, I asked myself one simple question…why?

I could easily put the pain reliever bottle away when I could toss it into a large bin labeled “Medicine” along with all the other bottles of pills. Clean laundry stopped living in laundry baskets on the floor and started getting tossed into open bins labeled “Pants” and “Pajamas” in my closet. Toys, makeup, office supplies, and even food could be chucked from across the room back into the appropriate bin, making putting things away beyond fast and easy. For me, a simple, less-sorted, less-organized system was the secret to success. When I replicated this simple system in every closet, drawer, and storage area throughout my home, I no longer struggled with chaos and clutter. Everything just started finding its way home, like magic. I still struggle with that voice in my head telling me that I’m a hot mess. I certainly don’t organize and clean my home in the traditional sense, but it is clean and organized nonetheless.

When it came to my fabulous yet frustrating lawyer client with the serious paper addiction, I was trying to shove her into the “traditional hidden organization” box. Let’s face it, not only are most organizing solutions detailed, but they also typically involve putting your belongings “away” and “out of sight.” I had never even considered organizing another way. It was at that moment, while staring at her piles of paper clutter covering every surface, that I again asked myself that one simple question…why? Why do these papers all spread out on the floor work better for her brain than stored in the filing cabinet? The answer: She was a visual organizer.

Instead of hiding her paper in filing cabinets or baskets in her closet, I filled an entire wall in her office with vertical paper-filing racks from floor to ceiling. These magazine-rack-style organizers held her sorted and color-coded file folders. Instead of being spread out on her desk and floor, they were visually spread out on her wall. We also installed bulletin boards and memo boards above her desk for important reminders and inspirational quotes. I finished it off with a pegboard to hang her daily-use office supplies.

In the end, almost every inch of her office walls was filled with something: art, inspirational quotes, and visual organizing solutions. It was definitely not my ideal organizing setup; in fact, I found myself anxious, distracted, and completely overwhelmed in the space. But this wasn’t my space; it was hers. Instead of feeling anxious and overwhelmed, her bright and full office made her feel focused, inspired, and energized. We were complete polar opposites in our organizing personalities.

We returned the filing cabinets, and she sold all the “hidden storage” units in her office, opting for open bookcases instead. She had fully embraced her visual organizing style and beamed as she gushed to me about her plans to replace the upper cabinets in her kitchen with open shelving. She finally knew herself, really knew herself, and realized that she wasn’t a messy person at all. She was a visual person, and she needed to organize accordingly. It was as though a weight was lifted off her. I was overcome with emotion as I watched her look at her home, and herself, in a whole new light.

I saw her in a new light as well. This was the lightbulb moment that changed everything about my career as a professional organizer. I realized that organizing isn’t one-size-fits-all. What works for one person most certainly doesn’t work for everyone. Organizing systems need to be as unique as the person and the family that use them. Each space has to be designed based on their unique organizing styles in order for it to stay clean and organized. It was this new organizing philosophy that transformed how I organized my own home and my clients’ homes, and has helped hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world finally get organized for good.

As my professional organizing business grew and I began helping thousands of families from all over the world, I was determined to research, identify, and categorize all the different organizing styles that I was seeing in so many people’s homes. After years of practice, I could instantly know someone’s style by stepping into his or her space, or even just by speaking with him or her for a few minutes about clutter issues. I was an expert at the different styles, and I had even narrowed it down to four distinct personality types, but I struggled to articulate these types in a way that was simple and easy to understand.

I created an online test to help people identify their style, but even the test wasn’t always accurate. I just couldn’t find a way to take what I had learned inside my head—and what I had come to instinctively “know”—and say it in an easy and concise way.

It was during an interview with a local radio station that I had my eureka moment. It all came down to two simple words: abundance and simplicity.

When asked about the different organizing personality types, I was struggling to find the words to describe a person who craved visual organizing solutions. So many people want to actually see their stuff, and I was totally blanking on finding a positive way to describe this. Visual personality types feel anxiety with traditional minimally organized spaces, just like some people feel anxiety in a space that has a lot of visual distractions. My explanation of the differences was usually long-winded and confusing, but during this interview…it hit me…the opposite of minimal is abundant. About half the population craves visual abundance in their homes, and I finally had an easy and positive way to describe it!

So “abundance” was the winning word, but I was also using the word “minimal” in describing the personality types that prefer to have their items organized out of sight. The problem with this word was that it was now associated with the ”minimalism” movement, and, while half the population craves minimal visual distractions in their homes, they were not in fact, minimalists. Instead, I settled on the word simplicity. Visual simplicity versus visual abundance.

I can use the words simplicity and abundance to describe the other side of these four personality types as well. There are two very different ways to organize your belongings: micro-organizing versus macro-organizing. Micro-organization is all about having detailed, subdivided categories, with accuracy and functionality being the main goal. Macro-organization has broader, simpler categories, with ease of use being the top priority. People who prefer micro-organizing, with a more detailed and subcategorized system, crave organizational abundance. Those who prefer a macro-organizing approach need fast and simple solutions, or organizational simplicity.

Do these personality types overlap? Of course, but I can promise that you fit into one category more than any other and, once you identify and understand your organizing personality type, everything will change.

Now that I had this language to describe the four personalities, I gave each one an appropriate bug title, and thus the Clutterbug Classification System was born.

The four categories are as follows:

•Ladybug – Craves Visual Simplicity with Organizational Simplicity

•Cricket – Craves Visual Simplicity with Organizational Abundance

•Bee – Craves Visual Abundance with Organizational Abundance

•Butterfly – Craves Visual Abundance with Organizational Simplicity

It’s that simple: the entire human race sorted into four categories based on how they like their belongings cared for and displayed.

You can easily identify your own personal organizing style by taking a look at a space in your home or at work that just seems to stay clean and organized. Maybe it’s a desk drawer or the bookcase in your living room. Perhaps it’s a filing cabinet or your daily planner. Ask yourself, is this space visual or hidden? Do you prefer to see your belongings or have them out of sight? Is this space using a micro (lots of smaller categories) or macro (a few larger categories) organizing solution?

It’s such a simple concept that it has gone unnoticed until now. Instead of trying (and failing) to make your home and your life fit into a certain mold, it’s time to create your own. You finally can have the answers to the questions that no one has ever thought to ask: “Why does my home look the way it does and what is the meaning behind my mess?”

In the next chapter, we will dig deep into the four different organizing personality types and identify your style, and then you will finally be able to understand yourself in a way that you never have before.

So, repeat after me:

“I am not messy. I am an organized and productive person.”

Now, let me show you how you can prove this to yourself.