Closed September 2017

Clutter Video Tip: How Do YOU Measure Up? Are You Really Organized? Part 2

Does having an organized home sound too good to be true? The first thing you want to do is examine your true colors and maybe adjust your organizing strategy. Watch this video for my tried and true definition of what it means to be organized. Following these strategies will bring you peace of mind- and that’s not too good to be true!

(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdmeasure2.)

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today, we’re going to find out how you measure up, how organized you really are, based on our definition of what it means to be organized with the word “neater.” This is an acronym we went over in Part 1 for letters N, E and A. And today in Part 2, we’re going to talk about the letters T, E and R.

So what does it mean to be organized? “T” is for “True to your style.” And your style refers to two things. Esthetics, or how you like things to look, and how your brain works. So, for example, if you like things to be out in the open and you’re really uncomfortable if things are put away in a drawer and you can’t remember that you have them, out of sight being out of mind, then you might be more of a concrete thinker. If you’re very comfortable filing something in a file drawer and remembering that you still have it, and you like closed cabinets versus open shelving, you might be more of an abstract thinker. Do you like things to line up straight on a shelf? Do you like things to match? Are you more of a paperless, digital kind of person, or are you a kinesthetic person who prefers to write things in a journal? Do you like color in your life? Are you very sentimental? Whatever these preferences are for you, you need to embrace them and accept them, because if you don’t, you’re not going to be able to create systems that work for you long-term. So if you are an artist, you’re going to have a very different style of organizing than an accountant would have and your house will look very different.

So let’s go to the next letter, “E” for “Efficient.” Now this might be one of the most important letters in our acronym because efficiency is talking about not wasting time, energy, and money. You want to do things with a minimum amount of waste. We have a great video about duo-tasking, which is a way to be more efficient. We all know multi-tasking, however, doesn’t work. So you do need to focus on one thing at a time. But you can see in our duo-tasking video how to cheat that just a little bit.

Let’s go to the next letter, it is “R.” and that is “Ready for anything.” And this refers to being prepared for life. Whatever life throws your way, if somebody starts a fire, you’ve got a fire extinguisher, if someone cuts their finger, you’ve got a Band-Aid. What you want to be is the ant, not the grasshopper. Now, what I don’t want you to confuse this with is being over-prepared and keeping everything just in case. And you know who you are if you’re thinking that way. I want to emphasize that this is about planning, not about keeping. So, it’s about being ready for things like company coming over or having an extra person for dinner, it’s not being ready for a freak snowstorm in the middle of Florida. So, if you’re keeping a snow shovel in Florida, you’re probably not meeting the definition of being organized. So that’s not what this is about. You do want to plan ahead and be prepared, and that’s what the letter “R” is all about.

If you liked this, make sure you go see Part 1 and learn about N, E, and A. And if you want to read even more about how to get organized, you can look at our book, The Clutter Diet, the Skinny on Organizing Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life. You can see that at https://www.clutterdiet.com/buybook.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

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