Is Organizing Your Home

A Puzzling Thought?

Are you looking at the mess around you and not knowing where to start?  Are you having trouble finding the motivation to even want to start?  Many times we find ourselves in an overwhelming mindset that prevents us from taking any action at all.

Just as I described in another article, your disorganized clutter is like a big gig saw puzzle. 

When you dump the 1000 plus pieces on the table, initially it looks impossible, right?  What if you did not have a picture to reference and no idea what the picture was going to be when you finished?  Now that really seems impossible and some would say why bother.

You see, if you do not see the big picture before you begin, you are not sure you will finish or even like the picture if you do.  This is an overwhelming mindset.

So let’s break it down into bite size pieces.  The first thing I would do is turn all of the pieces right side up.

I would relate this to knowing what you have to work with.  Exposing the dirty truth of your clutter and shining a light on it.  There is no way you can deal with it, if you do not acknowledge it.

The next thing I would do would be to pick out the corner pieces.

The corner pieces are the beginning of your vision.  You are starting to see a glimmer of hope that you can do this.  When you find those pieces of the picture, you hold on to them because they are very important when it comes time to bring it all together.

My next step would be to find all of the flat edge pieces. This is a time consuming process, so I multi-task while I am doing this by also sorting the flat edges by various colors.  Soon I will have many piles of flat pieces sorted by color.
The flat pieces are the bones of the picture.  This is when you actually start going through your things and taking a hard look at them to determine which pile each piece goes in.  Keep, donate, sell, or trash?  The sorting process must be done in order to cut out the pieces that do not belong where they are.

My next step would be to take a corner piece and find the pile that is closest to it’s like color and start fitting some pieces together.  As the string of pieces start to take shape, I am beginning to see some results of my effort.

To me this is when you take a piece of your vision and act on it.  These strings of pieces represent the different areas in your home (Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc).  As you are sorting, you are now able to identify which room they go in and put away accordingly.

Now, it is important that every piece have a home.  You cannot force two pieces together that do not belong.  Why would your toothpaste be in the kitchen?  It belongs in the bathroom!  You get the idea.  When you take the time to place things in their logical place everything starts to make sense.

Now the bones of the project are complete.  The frame of the big picture is now in place which helps me to identify many places to start.  Do I want to start on the sky or the grass?  It really doesn’t matter as long as they both are completed.  This puzzle may take me weeks to complete, but each day I can see progress.

At first you were not sure where to start, but now you have many choices.  Now you can zero in on one small project and put those pieces together such as organizing your kitchen drawers.  It gives you a sense of accomplishment to complete each small project that you do instead of waiting until the entire picture is put together.  I had much rather have a bunch of small accomplishments to celebrate than one big one.  Wouldn’t you?

 Regardless of what your big picture looks like, remember it is uniquely yours.  Breaking it into smaller projects helps you to achieve the end result sooner!

Happy Organizing!

Does this article make you want to start organizing one small project at a time?