Organizing your personal space can be a tough process, especially if you don’t know where to begin. Just the thought of decluttering your home can be stressful for some. You may have even procrastinated organizing your home to the extent that living in years worth of clutter has become the norm. If you are ready to kickstart changing this norm and hope to once and for all get serious about living in a peaceful, organized home, then this post is for you. I’ll walk you through the benefits of and barriers to home organizing and share some helpful tips that might either motivate you to finally start your DIY organizing project or muster up the courage to get the help you’ve been needing all along.
Benefits of Home Organizing
Before we can talk about the benefits of an organized home, we must first address how a cluttered and disorganized home affects you. Let’s be honest about clutter! It adds absolutely no value to your life and well-being. Clutter steals your joy, brings stress and overwhelm, steadily drains your energy, and robs you of an environment to be most productive in, leaving you ineffective and unable to focus. I could go on about the effect it has on your relationships by stealing your time and money on short-term fixes or the way it can quickly reduce a beautiful home to a storage unit, but I think you get it. Nothing good comes from surrounding yourself with and holding onto possessions that are no longer serving you.
So what happens when you decide to transform your space and finally let go of the unnecessary weight clutter has added to your life? Glad you asked!! Peace, peace and so much more peace!! Seriously! But to be more specific, here’s a list of benefits you might find have been added to your life when you organize your home:
You save time.
You save money
Reduced stress and anxiety
Boost in confidence
Increased discipline
Deeper love and respect for your home and a desire to take better care of it
Increased effectiveness and productivity in your home
Healthier relationships
Sets you and your family up for success
Motivates you to tackle other tasks and projects
Organized mind. My personal favorite!
But if home organizing is so beneficial, why are many of our homes still cluttered? Because if it were really that simple, why would anyone ever have a need to hire professional help? Well, organizing can be simple, whether it's a natural skill or a learned skill. But on the other hand, there are also many factors that play into what can make it difficult for some as well.
Barriers to Home Organizing
Here are some barriers that may be keeping you from having a organized space:
Not knowing where to start or what to do. Having no goal or a plan can leave you stumped and confused.
Difficulty in deciding what to keep and what to toss. We have a way of attaching ourselves to possessions and forgetting that we have the authority to decide what comes and goes, no matter how expensive, sentimental, or potentially useful it may be. We have the right to detach and release.
Not knowing where to put items. This leads to a free for all where anything can end up anywhere because no home has been assigned to it.
Not knowing how to properly declutter. Inability to assess what's truly needed of high importance to you and having no parameters to keep you disciplined.
Having an emotional attachment to items. This can be due to items that were once owned by a lost loved one or memories from a special event or time in your life.
Anxiety about the organizing process. Because let's not act like the process of organizing doesn't require you to make more of mess before actually seeing the progress. This can scare people away from even wanting to start.
Feeling that you have insufficient storage. While that can be true, more times than not I've found that insufficient space is not what's contributing to a client's clutter issue. It usually is lack of frequent decluttering, shopping addictions, and a lack of system.
Lack of support. Without having the family get on board to help and maintain organizing, you may feel alone and discouraged from starting.
Regardless of the reason, one or many of these barriers may be halting your organizing journey. Knowing the specific issue that prevents you from being successful can help you with moving forward in either finding tips to address your issue or getting the help you need.
Tips For Home Organizing
Here are some tips that can help you start on the right foot with organizing your home:
Set a goal. What is it that you want this organized space to accomplish? More functionality? To be able to find items easier? To know whether the outcome is successful you’ll need to determine what you’re striving for.
Have a plan. Organizing is a systematic process that requires steps. Decide what you’ll do first, second, third, and so on. You can then duplicate this process for future projects.
Ask yourself these questions when decluttering: Do I love it? Do I use it? Do I need it? Do I have space for it? This should help you narrow down what to toss and what you keep. If something has been unused for several months or years, you will probably not need it in the near future as well.
Set aside enough time for your project or break it into multiple sessions. Organizing often takes more time than you think it actually will. To prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed, start with a small task that can be done in one sitting or break the project up into smaller increments.
Don’t purchase products before you declutter. You’ll spare yourself the frustration of having to return items or run back out to the store if you declutter first so you know exactly what products you need and how much of each.
Categorize like items. Identify similar items that can be stored together.
Assign a home for each group of items. Everything in your home should have a home. This helps you know where to put it when it’s out of place.
Take pictures of sentimental items. Keeping every sentimental item is a sure way to clutter your home quickly. Select a few items to keep and then take pictures of the rest. This way, you are preserving the sentiment behind the item without preserving the actual item.
Do not stash things away out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. If you can’t see it or find it, you won’t use it.
Label items! Labeling is a great way to ensure you can easily identify items. For paperwork or items that you’ve contained into a bin, adding a label helps the categories stand out so that there’s no confusion about it’s home.
There it is! We’ve gone through some benefits, barriers, and tips to give you a better understanding of the undertaking that organizing is, but also to give you a sense of calm about it. The more you know, the better prepared you can be! Hopefully this article has also helped to identify whether you’re a good fit to DIY or if you’d be more successful with professional help. If it’s the latter, I’m here to help! Ordered is dedicated to creating personalized organizing systems that will increase your productivity and the functionality of your home. If you're ready, schedule a call today!