Everybody has a different idea of what it means to be organized. What feels organized to one person may appear messy to another person. You may stack all of your bills in a pile on the kitchen counter. Your organized friend may file them by subject in a vertical file folder on the kitchen counter. When you need to pay your bills, you grab the pile and the checkbook and get to work. Your organized friend does the same thing. Guess what? Both methods can be considered organized, because you know what is in the pile, you don’t lose your bills, and they get paid on time.
However, if you find yourself experiencing the following, you probably have an organization problem in your house:
1. You spend a lot of time looking for things you lost.
2. You often are late for meetings and appointments and/or your kids are late for school because you can’t find your notes, the field trip permission slips, the directions, etc. Or you are late because it took you longer than you thought to get yourself or your kids ready to go.
3. You have many duplicates of items (think black shoes, flashlights, sporting equipment), which you bought because you did not know you had the originals or you could not find the originals.
4. You don’t eat dinner at the dining room table because it is covered with stuff.
5. Your kids are wearing dirty clothes because they do not have any washed clothes.
6. You feel like you cannot have any guests over to the house, and you are mortified if somebody stops by unexpectedly.
7. Taking a look around your house makes you feel depressed, anxious or depleted.
8. Parts of the house or entire rooms are unusable due to the volume of stuff in them.
If you recognize yourself in any of these scenarios, do not despair! You don’t have to live like that. Your chaos can be conquered. Consider hiring a professional organizer (like me! Check out my website) to show you how to reclaim your space or buckle down with a good organizing how-to book for a major sort and purge. Make the decision to turn your home into the refuge that you deserve.