Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Are You Disorganized, or Just Busy?
Some people hire personal trainers because it’s a way of committing. They know that if they don’t set aside that time, something else will take precedence, or they’ll do a half-hearted workout or get distracted by a phone call. For some of my clients, I serve the same function: They aren’t really disorganized so much as busy, and they want to block out the time to get organized in the most efficient way possible. Together, we plow through accumulated piles much faster than they could if they were alone. I keep things moving. Sometimes I can make suggestions to streamline their systems, but often they have systems, they just don’t have time to maintain them.
Where is the line between busy and disorganized? If you work full time, and you have kids, and you are constantly moving from work to pickup to dinner to bedtime, it’s hard to do the maintenance things. I found it harder to keep up as my kids got older, because they stayed up later, leaving me less time to catch up after bedtime.
Sure, you could do it on Saturday, but maybe that’s sports day, and you want to spend it outdoors with your family not inside going through every piece of paper that arrived in the mail or from school during the week. Maybe you don’t have children, but you travel for work or you have something you are passionate about that fills your evenings. The fact is, everyone is busy and often they are busy with the stuff that makes life great.
If you are organized enough, you have places for everything, and systems to keep things from piling up even if you don’t always have time to put things away on a daily basis. But if piles are accumulating and you aren’t paying your bills and you don’t know where to put the stuff you are acquiring, then it isn’t that you are too busy. You need some better systems and strategies.
Life is for living, not for filing. I would never tell anyone to turn down theatre tickets to stay home and catch up on their clutter. On the other hand, saying yes to every invitation and joining every team can lead to a cluttered and chaotic life. It can seem important to keep our children scheduled, but it’s just as important to practice—and model for our children—orderliness and manageability.
Absolutely hire an organizer if you need the help to keep your commitment to your habits and systems if your life is busy. But it’s also okay to make yourself less busy: Skip the reading in Brooklyn, even though it sounds really great, because you’re already going out three other nights in a week. It’s okay if your daughter gives up ballet, because she really loves the Tae Kwon Do and volleyball, and five nights of activities is just too much. I want a rich life, but I also want a peaceful life. Fun is fun, but too much is just chaotic, not fun.