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The Art of Organizing Anything

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. —Lois Borland Hart (1980)

And three kinds of people will pick up this book.

Some people—and you are the envy of your family and friends—are inherently, comprehensively, and consistently organized. Linda Barnes described an obsessively neat character as someone who "folded her underwear like origami." You may not be at that point, but you could no doubt write a book like this yourself. What you'll find here are some clever tricks to fine-tune your already wonderfully organized life.

Or you may be looking at this book because you are too often the target of unsolicited comments: "How can you find anything in here?" "Are you having a garage sale, or is this mess yours?" Family and friends hint that you need to do something about "all this." However, you (a member of a fairly small group) actually manage your life quite nicely in the midst of chaos. If you like the way you live, if the only reason you think you need to get organized is that other people tell you that you do, put this book down. Return to whatever you were doing. When people make rude remarks, do as Phyllis Diller once advised: "If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door, greet him with, 'Who could have done this? We have no enemies.'"

This book was designed for the third type of person. You are frequently frustrated and irritated by your lack of a reliable organizing system in your personal life and your work life. You can rarely find anything on the first go-round. You're habitually running a day late and a dollar short. Worst of all, there's no one to blame but yourself. You've tried to find the culprit—too much work, too small an office, too large a house and, yes, regrettably, the people around you. It wasn't much help when you realized that behind all the confusion and waste of time and money was ... you.

To know whether you need some organizing strategies, ask yourself these questions:

* Does the disorder in my life keep me from doing what I want and need to do?

* Does the disorder in my life make me feel inadequate and unhappy?

Impairment (being unable to get things done) and distress (feeling angry, frustrated, irritable, or hopeless) are valid reasons for wanting to put some order into your life. When a lack of organization seems to be holding you back and keeping you down, it's time to do something.

Alice Koller wrote, "I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop doing what I've been doing." If this describes your feelings, you are ready to take action.

What Is an Organized Life?

Only you can answer this. And you need to, because there's no way for you to succeed if you're working toward a fuzzy goal. What would an organized life feel like to you? How will you know when you have achieved it?

Set a realistic goal. Maybe you need to rethink only your workplace. Or maybe you do well at the office, but let everything go at home. Perhaps only a couple of areas of your life need attention, and making a few key changes might be enough. You might be happy with being organized 75 percent of the time. Decide at the very beginning what is "enough"organization for you.

Rarely is life "either/or" (either you're a complete mess or you're organized to your back teeth). Aim for somewhere comfortable in the middle.

Some disorder is normal, human, and even desirable. And life is often about things that are half-finished, projects in process, and being in the middle of a job. We need to accept the lack of perfection, the lack of completion, in our daily lives. Finishing some things—not all of them—has got to be enough.

Certified professional organizer and president of the National Association of Professional Organizers Standolyn Robertson says, "Being organized is not necessarily the same as being 'neat,' because organization is about function, not appearance." Organizing guru Bonnie McCullough agrees: "To be organized is not synonymous with meticulous. To be organized means you do things for a good reason at the best time and in the easiest way."

In other words, you do whatever works.

The perception that you can't be both tidy and creative is another myth. Most creative people know which skill sets (being organized and logical and tidy, for example) they must shelve when they are creating something. Even so, many highly creative individuals report that they work better in a calm, organized environment. Messy, tidy, creative, and uncreative are simply adjectives that can be combined in several ways; with human beings, everything is possible.

Because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to organizing, this book offers a variety of solutions and suggestions. It's up to you to take the ones that suit you, adapt some others, and forget the rest.

Getting organized is all about you—the way you think, how you work, what makes you feel good or bad, and how you define accomplishment. Some people love colored file folders; others find them messy looking. Some people find that their own clutter makes sense to them; other people find that their clutter is a nightmare. The shelving that solves one person's storage issues would never work for the person next door.

We assume that being "organized" is always a good way to be. And it usually is—but not always. So before you get too deep into bins and baskets and filing systems, ballpark your project to see if the costs and benefits balance each other.

Statistics vary, but it would appear that Americans spend a lot of time hunting for lost items—perhaps an hour and a half to two hours a day, or six weeks a year, or an entire year out of your lifetime. Statistics don't matter as much as how much time you yourself lose looking for misplaced papers or keys or objects. If you spend 30 minutes shopping for a keyrack and hammering it up by the back door, the costs in time and money are a real bargain compared to the time you normally spend looking for your keys. On the other hand, if you lose 20 minutes once a month trying to find a document, it might not be worth bringing in an organizer, investing in a filing system, and attending a workshop to learn how to use it.

Being organized is supposed to make you feel better. If something you're doing along the organizing lines makes you feel worse, stop and rethink the project.

If you've read this far, you're aware of the benefits of being organized (more time, money, and productivity; less stress, frustration, and irritability; fewer errors, missed opportunities, and overdue bills). You may have benefits of your own in mind. Decide what you want more or less of as a result of getting organized.

In some cases, your career could be an issue. Barring exceptional circumstances, most managers would prefer promoting someone with an organized office rather than someone with a messy office. Organization is all about thinking: What is the logical way to group these things or ideas? Rightly or wrongly, others can't help connecting an ability to organize with an ability to think.

How Much Organizing?

In an intriguing book, A Perfect Mess, Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman argue that, although "it flies in the face of almost universally accepted wisdom, moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly organized ones." They say that "people and organizations are at their best when they've achieved an interesting mix of messiness and order" and that "there is an optimal level of mess for every aspect of every system. That is, in any situation there is a type and level of mess at which effectiveness is maximized, and our assertion is that people and organizations frequently err on the side of over organization."

We can all identify with them when they say, "The unpleasant feeling that each of us should be more organized, better organized, or differently organized seems nearly ubiquitous."

When you think about making changes in your life, recognize the times and places and areas of your life in which a little disorder might not be a bad thing.

In the End ...

Consider the possibility that your best efforts might not be enough. This book might not be enough. If you are unhappy—if the emotional fallout from the disorder in your life is overwhelming you—it wouldn't be out of line to see a therapist, at least long enough to understand what's driving your unhappiness.

If you can't function the way you want to—if you hemorrhage time and money and productivity because your "systems" don't work—consider contacting a professional organizer. Get recommendations from friends and business contacts or check out the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.net) and the Professional Organizers in Canada (www.organizersincanada.com). As of 2008, more than 4,000 professional organizers are at work in the United States and Canada. Also see the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (www.nsgcd.org) and individual organizing firms like Vicky Norris's Restoring Order (www.restoringorder.com).

Questions to ask up front:

* How much do you charge per hour?

* Is there a minimum charge?

* Do you charge for travel expenses?

* Are there any other charges I should be aware of?

* Do you give estimates?

* What happens if I need to cancel or change an appointment?

* Can you give me some references?

And you are not alone. If you search online, you will find Messies Anonymous (www.messies.org), home of the Organizer Lady; Clutterers Anonymous World Service Organization (www.clutterers-anonymous.org); a Google newsgroup called alt.recovery.clutter; and groups of "clutterbuddies," hoarders, and pack rats.

But, first, check out the 10 simple organizing principles in the next chapter.

Chapter Two

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. —Maya Angelou (1970)

Imagine the thousands of available organizing systems and tools: hanging files, colored folders, baskets and bins, labels and tags, marking pens, photo albums, Rolodexes, pencil holders, clothes racks, shoe racks, pegboard and shelving, curio and linen cabinets, divided drawers, map chests and hope chests, hooks and hangers, corkboard and eraser boards, and so on.

Then think of the hundreds of thousands of items that need to be organized: letters, contracts, records, office supplies, meeting minutes, conference brochures, equipment manuals, telephone numbers, addresses, events tickets, books and magazines, CDs and DVDs and old LP collections, clippings, family photos, children's drawings, clothing, holiday decorations, yard tools, travel items and luggage, and so on.

Does that make you want to lie down with a cold cloth on your forehead? Me too.

Rather than specify the one best way to organize each aspect of your life, this chapter provides you with a shortcut to the shortcuts. (Part 3 gives specific advice, tips, and suggested organizing aids for your office, your home, your papers, your computer, and your personal life.)

If you familiarize yourself with (and live) the following principles, you can organize anything—even something that this book, in all its organizational wisdom, hasn't thought of yet. And the best part is, you can organize it in a way that is natural for you, which means that you are much more likely to get organized and stay organized. It's easier to remember a few commonsense principles than to adopt a "system" that requires a fair amount of effort, time, money, and trying to remember how it works.

Although the principles are numbered, it would be difficult to rank them in the order of their importance in your life. Adopt them as guidelines. If you understand the principles behind each principle, keeping your life a little tidier than it is will soon become second nature to you.

Principle 1: Be Your Own Best Friend

Nobody is making you get organized. You are choosing to read this book. You will choose to adopt 1 or 15 or 60 strategies to organize your life. Everything you do you will be doing for yourself because you want your life to run more smoothly.

Too often we feel that someone is making us get organized, and we get resentful and we rebel. Never mind how we were raised or the bullies on the block or the overbearing teacher we had in sixth grade. The point is, we don't like to be fenced in, and keeping things organized makes us feel a bit oppressed. When you start feeling surly, haul yourself back to the main idea: you're doing this for you.

Start thinking of yourself as your new best friend. For example, before you leave the office at night, you'll straighten up your desk, shove the papers together in some approximate order, leave your list for the next day in the center of your desk, and push in your chair. When you come in the next morning, you're going to be a happy camper. Whoever was the nice person who did this for you?

When you stop painting for the day and don't take time to put your oil paintbrush in thinner, you return the next day to a ruined brush—maybe your last good paintbrush. A kind friend would've taken a minute to do right by the brush so that you could pick up where you left off and not have to run out to buy another brush.

You don't have to clean up the kitchen before you go to bed at night, but it's going to be you walking into the kitchen the next morning. Maybe you don't mind dried food on plates. Truly, that's all right. But if you like to start the day with a clean kitchen, do yourself a favor and clean up the night before.

Make a habit of taking a few minutes to tidy things whenever you stop working on something. Maria Montessori used to teach her young pupils that the work was not finished until the table was cleared and their chairs were pushed in. Your work isn't finished until you've left things the way you want to find them when you return.

As a corollary, organize to please yourself. Unless you share an office or a closet with someone, you get to do things your way. Because your choice of whether to have open shelves or a closed cabinet or whether to have hanging files or stacked files springs from your own tastes, you are more likely to support them. If you choose colors and designs that are pleasing to your eye, you're more likely to keep their surfaces clean.

It's all about you. Every bit of organizing that you do is going to make your life easier. When you lose a button from your shirt, there's a sewing kit ready to go. When you want to lend a business book to a friend, you know where to put your hands on it. When you need the car, it's fairly clean, there's meter change in the glove compartment, and it even has gas. When you want coffee, you have not only coffee but filters and sugar in the cupboard and milk in the refrigerator. It's much like having your own servant or assistant, someone who keeps your life running smoothly.

The mindset you want is one that looks forward to the next time you return to this spot. And the key to looking forward is looking behind.

Before you leave a room, look behind you. What needs putting away, cleaning up, or jotting down? Will you find the file where it belongs, or will you have to spend half an hour looking for it? Will your desk be cleared for takeoff, or will you despair at the thought of digging in? Will you find enough laser paper to run off 10 copies of the report, or will you have to go get some? Will your tape dispenser be ready to roll, or is it still as empty as you left it?

Before you leave the sales counter, look behind you. Did you leave a briefcase, packages, or an umbrella? Before you leave a meeting, look behind you. Did you leave a jacket, papers, or your purse? Before you leave your car, look behind you. Is there trash to be disposed of, something to be carried into the house, or a forgotten box in the backseat? Before you leave the kitchen, look behind you. Did you clear off, put away, stack in the dishwasher, and otherwise leave no tracks?

What it comes down to is that being organized is about being nice to yourself—doing what is needed so that when you return to a spot an hour, a week, or a month later, you'll find things all ready to go—with the emphasis on being able to find things.

You'll have many opportunities to be grateful for your new best friend.

Principle 2: Reduce Every Task to Its Smallest Parts

After you set a goal ("organize my office"), break down the job into the smallest possible steps ("clean out my middle drawer," "organize my office supplies shelf," "clear off the top of my desk," "gather my files on the Fresher project and collapse them into one file, weeding out duplicate and unnecessary material").

To organize your kitchen, do it drawer by drawer and cupboard by cupboard. If you're landscaping, divide the area into sections (northwest side of the house, northeast side of the house) or into type of work (planting bulbs, sowing grass, weeding, installing a fence).

Never start a job without dividing it into logical smaller tasks. And always finish one task before going on to the next, even if they seem related.

If you're working on a project with a deadline, after dividing the job into parts, work backward from the due date to assign an intermediate deadline for each part of the project.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Art of Organizing Anythingby Rosalie Maggio Copyright © 2009 by Rosalie Maggio. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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