How to Make Organizing Perfect For You and Your Brain

Being a professional organizer, I never organize the same way for each of my clients.  Everyone functions differently.  I can color code, alphabetize , and beautify everything, but the question is, “Is it going to stay that way?”  “Will I put it back in the same place each time?,” is a question you need to ask yourself.  It’s about form AND function.  For example: hair brushes. If you are honest with yourself you know that you can’t deal with brushes on the counter and you also know you can’t deal with putting them in a vanity cabinet. A reasonable alternative, in this hypothetical case, is a brush drawer or brush basket under the sink.  It’s easily accessible.  Then your  aesthetic comes through when you buy that cute little basket that perfectly fits!

The bottom line of organizing is prioritizing and decision making.  This constant decision making about what is important to us and WHY it is important to us can cause mental fatigue. Check out this article on LifeHacker.

This is why we find organizing our shit so incredibly daunting and exhausting.   Physical clutter and mental clutter cause the same final result: stress and inefficiency. 

Also, go easy on yourself. Be careful not to second guess or obsess over your decisions.  Nothing will ever be “perfect”.  Allow your space to expand and contract.  I can obsess over perfecting a space to make it look the way a picture in a magazine does. I have to remember that idea doesn't exist. Those pictures are taken with a crew and quite a bit of production. A space is perfect when it's efficient and pleasing to the eye. And even that should be constantly changing. As in everything, we expand and contract as our universe does and so do the spaces we inhabit. Sometimes we nest and sometimes we purge.  And that, is perfect.