Recently, my friend who inspired the post called “How can I get my hubby to clean up his ****?” told me she had found a way to do the impossible: clean her husband’s office in his absence. Her trick? She asked her husband’s assistant, whom he trusts implicitly, to organize his things along side her. And they promised the husband they wouldn’t throw anything away. They would just reorganize it into boxes and onto shelves.
This may have worked because the assistant was enough of a neutral third party AND knew the husband’s work habits well enough that he trusted her to take the lead in organizing the office.
This is a problem that I can relate to. My own husband hates the mess in our garage and is frustrated that he can’t find anything, yet won’t let me give him a hand in organizing it. Seriously, it would go so much faster if he’d let me help — we organizers can get to the bottom of a mess fast, sometimes without throwing a thing away. But I’m too close to the problem — we need that neutral third party to smooth the way.
So my friend’s brilliant solution of having the assistant take the lead makes me think that my husband would let me “do my thing” in our garage so long as his best guy friend was supervising.
I’ll keep you posted as to how that goes. And I’ll remember to pass that bit of advice on to my clients who are equally frustrated by someone else’s mess.