Take our Organizing Quiz: Right Path/Wrong Path?
The next two minutes taking our organizing quiz are going to be the most important minutes in your organizing journey. In two minutes, the time it takes you to read the next few paragraphs, you’ll find out how to achieve organizing serenity or be swallowed by despair.
Are you striving for an aesthetic ideal or would you just like to kick the junk out of the way? It is one thing to treat organization as a work of art, it is quite another thing to simply tidy up the place. Weirdly enough, one is not really harder than another. It is more a matter of setting a goal and working incrementally toward that objective. See a fuller explanation of this difference in this article Beautifully Organized versus Simply Tidy is my Obsession.
I say incrementally, because there is a method to diving into the deep end of the pile and organizing in a burning frenzy. This works, but it requires a level of determination that is usually the province of professional organizers. They do this for a living because they can.
Some individuals, who probably should be professional organizers, can plunge into the mess and come up with gold. They maintain a steely focus and don’t suffer from fading optimism halfway through the marathon. They storm right through any challenge, no matter the cost.
For most home gamers, the incremental approach is preferred. I find it very self-defeating to start a closet project that might mean I can’t sleep in my bed for the next two weeks. I really don’t want to move ten boxes before I pick out a pair of shoes.
Critical Organizing Quiz
Here’s the critical test. Do a simple experiment. Take two clothing items, at random, out of your closet. Look at each item for a few moments, then close your eyes and caress each item in your hands. Think about their pedigree, conjure up the beautiful display where they first caught your eye, paint a mental picture of those special occasions when they were worn. Now quickly drop one item into a box marked “donate” and the other item into the “treasured possession” box.
Imagine doing that one-thousand times. For hours on end.
What’s Your Power Path?
If that thought empowers you, then the crash course might be for you. If that thought enervates you then, please, please, please, do yourself a favor and take the incremental track. You don’t want your angry empty sullen closet glaring at you for the next three months while you sort through the last fifteen years of your possessions, entombed in your buying choices.
Read the more detailed description of the crash course versus the incremental approach right here. Save your sanity, please walk on the path meant for you. Either path will get you to your destination, but walking the wrong path feels like jogging with sand in your swimsuit.
If you were able to easily evoke those mental pictures and also found yourself wandering quite a few minutes down memory lane, then you might need to read my article on the enchantment of detachment.
Stay on Your Path
Organize for art or utility. Organize like a whirlwind or a cool breeze on a sunny day. The choice is yours. But first spend a few minutes with the organizing quiz and make sure it’s the right path for you.
