“Change It” Philosophy
Organizing is a thoughtful invest of time and easy to overthink. Instead, I try and determine how a space can serve life as it is, right now. As needs change, and they always do, so should the space.
Avoid overthinking.
When I’m in the thick of organizing, everything is pulled out of the closet and things seem worse than how they started, that’s usually when the overthinking begins. When the MPRS sets in (Mid Project Regret Syndrome - a term coined by one of my favourite influencers @busytoddler), it’s easy to loose sight of where to go next.
To avoid overthinking, I use this process:
Decide what the space is going to house before the project starts. For example, let’s say my hallway closet is going to house towels and medicine.
Remove anything that isn’t a towel or medicine, and find any towels or medicine that might be in other spots around the house.
Now the game of Tetris begins, where I need to find the best system to house the towels and medicine. During this process I may need to:
Reduce the number of towels I own, or pick some items that are “overstock” and create a secondary space for them elsewhere that’s not such prime real estate.
Take medicine out of its packaging and use containers to organize the medicine into smaller categories (ex. First Aid and Cold Medication)
Invest Time (Over Time).
The overthinking is often fuelled by the investment of time organizing takes. The idea of organizing is to make things easier to find and put away, so that ultimately I have more time for the life I want to live. It can feel counterintuitive to be spending so much time organizing when it’s time that I’m trying to ultimately save. To avoid this feeling, I try picking once space at a time to organize. If items are removed from that space, they don’t need a new home immediately. I keep those items in an TBD bin and move onto the next space. Eventually everything will find a home, over time.
As Needs Change, So Should The Space.
When items begin to overflow in their designated area, or I have a new category of items that are without a home, this doesn’t mean my organization system failed, it just no longer serves the life it upholds and it’s time to re-evaluate the spaces. Sometimes, an otherwise organized space needs to change because there is a new need. For example, I bathe my infant daughter in my kitchen sink, so I’ve carved out a small space for a container of her bath supplies in the drawer I keep my dish towels. Inevitably this need with change, but for now, having a space for those items is serving my life as is, right now.
