Lesson 1: Getting Organized

This lesson identifies common roadblocks to organization and sets forth a simple formula for getting past them.

Introduce Yourself

If you haven’t already, please introduce yourself on the message board, and get to know your fellow students and instructor. We’re going to learn that organizing is a skill, not a talent you either possess or don’t. As you go along, you’ll probably find that sharing tips and skills with your fellow students is a valuable part of this learning experience.

Organizing Radically Redefined

"Organizing is the process by which we create environments that enable us to live, work, and relax exactly as we want to. When we are organized, our homes, offices, and schedules reflect and encourage who we are, what we want, and where we are going." – Julie Morgenstern, author Organizing from the Inside Out

Organizing Principles

Do you sometimes find yourself walking around with sticky yellow messages stuck to the bottom of your shoe? Do you have to wait for the phone to ring before you remember where you left it last? Do you feel like your closets start making hissing noises whenever you get near them?

Last-minute car-key searches, hours wandering around parking garages looking for your car, disorganized foothills of bills — all of these situations waste time and can catapult your blood pressure through the roof.

For those of you who think the only solution for your disorganized home and life is a well-placed firebomb, don’t give up yet. There’s hope for even the most disorganized, discombobulated desperado.

Organization is a learned skill you just haven’t gotten around to yet. It’s a whole new game when you take a fresh look at your methods and learn the foolproof formula.

Organizing is active and personal. It’s a process, and it’s about you.

Perhaps you need a little help getting your schedule into shape so that you can exercise more often. Maybe you need more help to get your desk cleared off so that paperwork flows more smoothly and rapidly from you to other people. Or maybe you need the organizational overhaul — everything on your schedule from work to home.

Whatever the case, let’s set the record straight about your new life in organizing:

• Organizing is a skill, like learning to tie your shoes, rather than an innate talent.
• Organizing can create great excitement by clearing away physical and mental clutter. It isn’t your same old boring task anymore.
• Organizing can be sustained if you organize around the way you naturally work.
• Organizing is worth the time it takes away from other tasks. In fact, you should build time into each day for organizing and maintaining that organization. Without this modern survival skill, you will likely spend your time on urgent but unimportant items.

Think First

"It’s not natural to stop and reflect when disorganization is at its peak. The impulse is to just dive in and attack. But if you invest a little time doing some thinking and analysis first, you will be able to zero in on just the right solution for you." – Julie Morgenstern, author Organizing from the Inside Out

Organize From the Inside Out

In the past, you may have tried unsuccessfully to get organized by adopting a popular slogan such as "touch the paper once and only once," only to be discouraged when the paper came back at you repeatedly like a super-bounce ball. Or maybe you took a friend’s suggestion to get rid of anything you have not looked at or used in the last year, but now regret both the advice and discarding the item.

The problem is that these strategies work only sporadically because they don’t take into account your personal organizing needs.

Your organizing needs are actually based on the big picture of your life.

• Who are you?
• What do you do and how do you like to work?
• When do you like to eat, sleep, and play?
• Where do you live and need to go?
• How do you think and relate with other people?

Defining your identity, and focusing on what is important to you, is the core of effective organizing. Author and professional organizer Julie Morgenstern calls this process organizing from the inside out.

Wasted Time

Americans waste nine million hours per day looking for misplaced items, according to the American Demographics Society. The Wall Street Journal reported that the average U.S. executive wastes six weeks per year (an hour a day) searching for missing information in messy desks and files.

Source: Morgenstern’s Organizing from the Inside Out

The Three-Step, Foolproof Formula

Organizing from the inside out isn’t magic. It’s an easy formula that you can remember. Use these three steps from Morgenstern’s book on any organizing project, large or small, and create lasting success for yourself at work and in your home environment:

• Analyze. Take time to define who you are now. Give yourself an answer to the questions: Where do I want to go? What are my goals? Why is it important to me? What is holding me back?
• Strategize. Make time to create an action plan to revamp your space and rejuvenate your routine without losing sight of a realistic schedule.
• Attack. Save time by attacking last instead of first. Then, you will be able to systematically sort, file, and arrange according to your way of thinking. You can begin to see striking changes when you follow a personal plan.

Say it: Analyze. Strategize. Attack.

Cut Clutter, Save Time

Cleaning professionals say eliminating excess clutter would reduce housework in the average home by 40 percent, the National Soap and Detergent Association reports.

Source: Morgenstern’s Organizing from the Inside Out

Take Your Time; Understand the Rules

Organizing is not the destination, folks. Organizing is part of the journey. It’s a vehicle that helps you get to everything else — work, friends, family, love, housework, sports, fun, you name it — real life. You don’t want the organizing part to take up all of your time. You do want the time it does take up to be productive.

So, you’ve got to follow the rules on this trip. Otherwise, you’ll be back where you were before — disorganized and on the road to nowhere. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stick your hands out the window and feel the breeze. Being yourself is one of the rules. C’mon. Let’s get this show on the road!

Keep the formula in mind. Analyze. Strategize. Attack.

Remember it in that order, without skipping anything in the analyze section.

We’ll add the second formula — SPACE — to it later.

Diagnose Your Disorganization

Professional organizers tell their clients that many messes may look alike but be caused by very different forces. Usually, the problem is not a lack of storage space. You may even think that people cause their own clutter problems because they are just sloppy. Not so. (Remember, organizing is a skill that can be learned, like riding a bike.)

Clutter happens in layers. According to Morgenstern, you can experience three levels of disorganization: technical errors, external realities, and psychological obstacles.

• Technical Errors are everyday, clutter- and confusion-producing actions or situations that can be fixed by the organizational equivalent of tightening a screw or sharpening a pencil. Review this area first, because every mess you make contains a technical error.
• External Realities are environmental roadblocks you did not create, but that stand squarely in your way. These can include situations such as unrealistically heavy workloads, life transitions, or society’s warp-speed expectations and schedules.
• Psychological Obstacles are hidden causes for disorganization, such as unclear goals, a need for abundance, a fear of success (or failure), or a tendency to thrive on chaos.

You will most certainly recognize your technical errors right away, but there may be more to it than that. As other external or psychological organizing problems come to light, be honest with yourself but refrain from going overboard. The idea is not to beat yourself up for past mistakes, but to find out what is keeping you from being organized and how to move forward.

Let’s go find out where the traffic slowdowns are in your organizing system.

Behind Every Mess

Start with the easy problems. There are only six, which are largely physical. Solve these technical errors and you’ll either be home free or a long way toward getting organized and fully able to recognize other organizing hurdles. Morgenstern identifies them as:

1. Homeless. You can’t put it away if you don’t know where it goes. Take time to look at what you have. Assign every item just one home. Put it away in that home every time. Start out easy with just a couple of items like your keys and wallet. Tell the other people in your home or office where the item’s home is, and ask that they help you stay on track.

2. Troublesome. You’re not putting things away because it’s too difficult to carry them off to faraway or inconvenient homes. Solve by locating storage within arm’s reach of where things are used. Relocate files used on a daily basis to drawers that can be reached while sitting at your desk.

3. Too much stuff. Your stuff outweighs your present storage space. Solve by a combination of reducing the amount of your possessions, adding storage containers, or making better use of wasted space.

4. Too complicated. Overdoing it causes complications. Maybe you previously set up an organizing system so specialized that it’s difficult to remember where an item lives. So, you stop putting things away. Solve by redesigning a simpler system using labels and other clues for easy retrieval.

5. Out of sight! Out of my mind? Leaving things out as a visual reminder of things to do can become an organizing nightmare. Actually, it’s a very common problem. You’re afraid you will forget about it if you don’t leave it out where you can easily see it. Trouble is, things start building up — especially if there is more than one person in the house using this memory technique. Solve by creating a memory trigger that does not clutter your landscape. Try placing an attractive box or basket by the door to hold outbound items.

6. The bore chores: Solve the boredom you perceive in organizing by taking time and effort to add personal style to your projects and storage solutions. Turn on the music, add some color, and jazz it up!

Recognize Forces Beyond Your Control

Five big realities of life can give us all reason to think that getting organized is an elusive dream. Organizing alone cannot completely take away these problems. However, actively recognizing them will allow you to cope more easily and make positive changes with your new organizing skills. Morgenstern enumerates these realities as:

1. You have an unrealistic workload. You simply have more work than hours in the day. The causes are many, including company mergers, downsizing, administrative changes, phenomenal business growth, opening your own business, dual-career or single-parent families, and caring for extended family members. Ask for help. Communicate and delegate effectively. Hire out when possible. Streamline your routine and your expectations. Learn to let go.

2. You feel trapped in the fast lane trying to keep up with a rapid pace and constantly changing technological tools. Try to be aware of where and how you’re getting caught up in the rush. Remember that technology is a tool to be used, not a slave driver. Learn to put on your brakes — say "no" when you need to, and be realistic.

3. Change isn’t always convenient. Change, in its many forms — job or career, school, marriage, divorce, birth and adoption, family illness, opening a business or merging one — takes away our touchstones and the effectiveness of our present organizing systems. Cope by waiting it out and establishing temporary systems.

4. You are dealing with uncooperative partners who are making your organizing efforts difficult or impossible. Try talking with the person very directly. The key is to show that person what’s in it for him or her. Be patient and clear about exactly what you want. Make it simple and easy for your partner to follow through.

5. You have limited space. You are out of room. This is not the same as having more stuff than space. (In that case, you aren’t using all the stuff; you’re just hanging on to it.) Cope by eliminating excess, putting everything in its place, maximizing every space, and going vertical.

Are You Getting In Your Own Way?

Are you standing in the way of getting organized? Could be. Many of us have deep feelings inside that are put into conflict when we try to get organized. As much as we want to get organized, as hard as we might try, we never let ourselves succeed. Although you may find working with a professional to be beneficial, see if you can find yourself in any of the 10 common psychological obstacles to getting organized that Morgenstern has identified:

1. Need for Abundance. Like to surround yourself with stuff? Does volume represent comfort and security for you? Work with and build around this need to keep things accessible and orderly.

2. Conquistador of Chaos. Like solving complex problems? Love the thrill of coming to the rescue, or creating order from chaos? Once organized, consider redirecting your talent for "fixing things" to more important problems.

3. Unclear Goals and Priorities. Do you take on too much? Feel scattered? Distracted by what you "should" want in life? Identify and achieve goals over time. Focus on doing a few goals well, and postpone others.

4. Fear of Success or Failure. Do you make excuses? Do you fear that being organized would make you more successful? A host of reasons can be at work. Explore by research and reading, or with a professional. Work slowly to overhaul and become more comfortable with yourself.

5. Need to Retreat. Is clutter a barrier or protective shield between you and the world that consumes your time? Move slowly to create clutter-free zones. Allow time to adjust, and push back barriers.

6. Fear of Losing Creativity. Crave and fear organization? Searching for things all the time? Procrastinating? Know that being organized releases rather than restricts creativity. Make use of visuals, simplicity, and fun designs.

7. Need for Distraction. Does disorganization keep you from dealing directly with major sources of stress in your life? Seek and substitute a direct approach for dealing with larger problems you are evading.

8. Dislike the Space. Is your space so loud, quiet, dark, lonely, or dreary that you don’t like being there? Brighten up and personalize the space so it’s more to your liking.

9. Sentimental Attachment. Is stuff piled all over that represents your past? Feel like it’s a part of your identity? Remember, identity comes from within. Learn to let go in steps.

10. Need for Perfection. Is clutter accumulating because you don’t have the time to do the job just right? Do something (vs. nothing). Give yourself permission to be imperfect. Realize no solution is perfect.

It’s Your Life: Analyze It!

According to Morgenstern, you should ask yourself five questions to complete the analysis phase of getting organized. Let’s get some answers!

1. What’s working for you? Even if you think your desk, office, kitchen, living space, or calendar is in shambles, there is probably something that works well for you day in and day out. What can you always find and accomplish? No matter how small, take some pride in yourself for getting it done. This is your organizational building block. Save time by starting here, capitalize on your strength, and make it happen again.

2. What’s not working for you? You are allowed to whine here. (But only here!) List everything that is not working for you. Don’t hold back; tell all in detail.

3. What items are most essential to you? The items that are important to you here are physical things. Take time to relate the things to your big-picture goals. For instance, if you are starting a new home business, what records will you need on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis? What products and supplies?

4. Why do you want to get organized? Is it because you have a driving need and desire to get organized? Or is someone else pushing you? You need to know, because at some point you might want to quit organizing. If you can remind yourself of the concrete reason you started this process, you can pull yourself through.

5. What’s causing you problems? Think back to the layers of clutter (above) and potential roadblocks to getting organized.

"You Can Do It" Resources

Congratulations! You’re just about finished with Lesson 1.

Take a deep breath and know you can do it. You can get organized.

Take your time. Make time for the analysis. Save time by following the formula.

Now is the time to start pulling it all together into your own analysis. Everything you have learned so far applies to organizing the big picture of your life, but it also applies to each space or organizing problem that you face.

Don’t worry if all this information has your head swimming. The assignment with this lesson will guide you through completion of the analyze step of the formula.

Although day-planners will be covered in a later lesson, you will want to make sure yours is up to date. Get rid of outdated material. You may also consider putting some materials into a separate binder to be used as a home reference manual.

If you do not currently have a day-planner that you enjoy using and refer to regularly, please do not rush to purchase one this minute. An inexpensive spiral notebook will do fine for course assignments and getting organized.

In any case, write it down!

In the next lesson, we’ll get to the heart of creating your own personal organizing plan.

Assignment: Getting Organized
Identify, create, purchase, find, grab, whatever — a home for your organizing course notes. This can be a section in your daily planner, a notebook, or a section of pages stapled together. Make a point of giving this set of pages a consistent home where you will always find them.