Organising, is difficult.  Not for everyone but definitely for the ones who struggle with doing housework and finding  A Place for Everything.  Having organizing systems and organizing solutions in place.  When your behind with keeping the clutter at bay, it puts you behind with your housework, mainly cleaning, because it’s impossible to clean clutter or clean around clutter.  When you do try, the cleaning is barely noticeable anyway.

I understand your frustrations.  I too was completely disorganized and struggled with getting my house cleaning done.  I searched and searched for the solution to my nightmare.  I made repeated oaths to getting organized at home starting tomorrow, (much like my diets) all of my attempts failed.  Why?  Why was it that I just couldn’t get it together, and have routines in place for having a clean and organized home?

I next began to look at all the organizing solutions, that was offered online.  They all pretty much said the same thing.  Find a place for everything so that everything would have its own place.

This advice was as old as the person who came out with the saying in the first place.  Some old advice is good and trusted advice.  The A place for everything part, is the what to do.  It’s the how to do it, that I needed some help or new ideas on. I needed an organizing system.

A Place for Everything and Everything in It’s Place = ”A” as our mnemonic replacement. Or short and easy way to remember the phrase.

“A place for everything and everything in its place“.  I, like so many others know that phrase so very well.  Have known it for many years.  Such  a simple sounding phrase.  Very easy phrase to learn, seeing the word place comes up twice, as does everything.  The other five words being A, for, and, in and its.  Those words we all use millions of times every year.  So what is it with the remaining words?  ”Everything and Place“.  Why is it that so many of us suffer with so many problems, distractions, fears, difficulties, time constraints, emotional upheavals, indecisiveness, confusion, nostalgia, procrastination, lack of energy, feeling unwell, thoughts of our own mortality and the state of our finances in 20 years from now, to even whether we have the authority to make a decision on an item that we’ve owned for the past 20 years?

All It basically said was, there should be a home for everything in your home, and that home for each and everything, should be the place where that thing can be found at all times.  (When it isn’t in use of course)  How could it be then, that such a small phrase, in this day and age conjures up so many emotional types of thoughts and feelings?

image source: marthastewart.com

When I read blogs about getting organized, and the phrase “A place for Everything A E I I P” comes up, I’m instantly filled with many emotions also.  These emotional triggers, end up being the chinks in our organizing amour that lead us to either stopping the job before completing it.  Never starting the job, finishing the job but letting everything all pile up again, and no matter which way you look at it, we end up looking like Eeyore from Whinnie The Pooh. “Failing”.

So what are these Chinks in our Organizing Armour?

When referring to cooking, Tim says “I don’t care why people pick up cookbooks.  I’m much more interested in why they put them down”.  (He’s referring to cook books that are teaching how to cook, along with recipe books)

The hypothesis: If I can address the primary, but often ignored failure points, I should be able to increase the number of people who become master chefs.

The margin of safety, he explains as a minimal amount, which is still enough that it works.  As an example he uses, Dr’s prescribing to their patients, the minimum effective dose.  Take one asprin for the pain.  If that doesn’t work take one and one half an aspirin.  That works. Great, better only the extra half, than the whole second pill.

So it’s working out the minimal amount of effort, to obtain a result that will work.  ”An organizing solution.?”

When it comes to getting [organised] and finding a place for everything, I asked the question to many people on Organizing forums, Facebook pages, blog conversations along with organizing bloggers and professional organizers.

What are the tripping/failure points, the road blocks that come up and stop people from organizing their possessions and finding a place for everything?

Why aren’t the organizing systems working for some people, A lot of people?

- before even moving onto the second part of the phrase and actually keeping everything in it’s place.

1. Fear- fear is my first emotion.  When your talking about finding a place for everything, and your home is filled to the brim with so many things that don’t have a home, the image in my head at the enormity of the job at hand, in finding a place for everything, is nothing less than fearful.  That in itself is enough to stop me from getting started, at finding “A P F E”
2. Time - we are all busy people.  Having the time to find APFE is overwhelming, especially when so many things need to have a place found for them.
3. Confusion - at knowing where to start and where you are going to put all of these things.  If your cupboards, drawers, shed, garage and every other place in your home is already bursting at the seams with stuff, no wonder people feel overwhelmed and confused by the task.
4. Failure to Plan- should be simple right?  We are getting our  things and finding places for them to permanently reside, so that we might be able to find them on the next occasion that we need them.  Our other goal is to make our home look neat and tidy by putting all of our things away.   Once again this is a mammoth task, when looked at as one huge job.  A plan must be made, breaking the areas down into small segments and followed, to succeed at this goal/project.
5. Procrastination - putting the job off for another day.  Often caused by perfectionism and knowing that such an enormous task could no way be completed on the same day as starting the task.  Feeling the need to have all the latest and greatest organization products such as baskets, boxes, calendars, planners, ect.
6. Nostalgia - often when our homes are full of stuff, lots of the stuff may well be things that have been passed onto us by a loved one or a friend.  There could be unwanted, yet loved items (because of loving the person who gave it to you).  Are you holding onto things that your grown adult kids, don’t want stored at their own homes, but are more than happy to put you out, by cluttering up yours?  Are you keeping baby toys? (That was one of my problem areas.  Two giant plastic tubs full of stuffed toys.)  Perhaps sorting through piles of items in this category has lots of emotional baggage tied to it.  You’ll probably find that there never is a right time to face this type of everything.
7. Distractions- people - It’s always so easy to let people distract us.  In a good way, we are easily distracted by our kids and our families.  In a good but little more annoying way, we are often distracted by close friends, relatives, bosses and co-workers.  Next in order of distraction would come unimportant telephone calls, (ie; girlfriend just calling for a chat)  impromptu meetings with neighbours  friends of friends, acquaintances, and any other social type of situation.  How often you allow yourself to be distracted by people which are of little importance to you, largely determines how much free time you end up with after doing all of the things that you already do and dealing with other emergencies, that crop up over the course of a day.
8. Distractions – other -The year 2013 and you can say distracted again.  With so many cool things calling for our attention, it’s little wonder that we could often choose being distracted over finding a place for everything in our homes and getting organized. Television, the Internet  our smartphones, watching DVDs and Blue Rays, listening and watching music videos, playing PlayStation’s  reading magazines, doing our hobbies.  It’s certainly a time when the words “I’m board”  should never even be thought of, let alone spoken.
9. Lack of energy and feeling unwell - with all that we do each day, especially for those with kids, and even more so for those with kids who work, it’s little wonder that by the end of the day, the last thing we feel like doing is getting our stuff sorted.  Those who suffer with ailments and injuries, also most often have a hard time at getting motivated to tackle this task.
10. Indecisive - sometimes its difficult to make decisions about what to keep and what not to keep.  You may have lost weight and own fat clothes, or vice versa.  How do you know if you will gain or lose in the future?  So do you keep all the clothes in case?  What about having more children and the maternity clothes?  The baby clothes, bottles and other accessories.  The questions are long and sometimes difficult to come up with answers too.  It’s easy to see why this is another of the road blocks that cause us to give up on finding a place for everything.

Know what’s stopping you

If you know what it is that’s your stumbling block.  The thing that stops you in your tracks from getting yourself organized, you can come up with a way to deal with it when it occurs.  There is an article coming up shortly that has loads of ideas, to help you get over those failure points.  But, for now, it’s important that you know what yours are.

 

click picture for link: source real simple.

Grab some paper and a pen and write down this question

In the past when I’ve been ready to get organized, what was it that made me stop and give up?

IT’s important that you know the trigger, the thing that makes you say, dam it, it’s too hard I don’t want to do this any more.

Know the trigger find the solution

Once you can name the trigger that makes you give up getting organized, we can find a way to overcome it.  Once you have worked out what your road block/trigger is, that causes you to give up your organizing endevours, leave a message below in the comments, or come over to our Facebook page, and leave a comment over there, about your trigger.  I will make certain that we work to find a way to beat all these road blocks and get you on the road to organizing success.

How we are different to the other Home Organization Sites

And that is how we are different here at Routine Habit.  We are looking to help you find the source of your frustrations to your home organization.  Instead of showing you how to vacuum your carpets, or put labels on your files, we are focused on helping you;

• discover your organizing roadblocks
• helping you find a solution to the problem that is the roadblock/failure point or tripping point, that makes you stop and give up on your home organization quests.
• get’s you over the stumbling block and onto a system for clearing the clutter from your home.
• helps you manage your home for the future with routines and habits for keeping it organized and clean in the future.
• keeps your home clean and organized by focusing on the minimum required dose.
• keeping your home clean and organized by understanding that 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.
• We are teaching the 20% effort that will give you the 80% results.

But before we can get into all of that, we need to remove that clutter, find a place for everything, and then, you will begin to be astonished at the amount of work, effort, cleaning, organizing, that you’ll have to do in the future to keep your home that way, and learn to enjoy the organising.

This is the first part of this article on “A”.  Before we can move on, we need to establish, what it is that is always holding us back?

Don’t forget

To leave a comment below, with the answer to your question about, what it is that causes you to stop getting your home organized?

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Also please call over to our Facebook page and say hi, and let us know if your planning on taking part in our Organization Domination Challenge.

Until next time, please take care of one another,