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A peaceful home supports you and provides shelter and solace. Are your surroundings supporting you  in the things you’d like to achieve in life? Is your disorganization causing your life and home to be a horror instead of a haven?
Disorganization Creates Stress
Panic and anxiety result when your commitments are not handled, things fall through the cracks, and you have that nagging feeling you are forgetting something.
The cure? Having one trusted system, such as a comprehensive day planner tool, to capture your commitments and tasks, so that your brain can relax and stop replaying important information, carrying it around only in your short term memory.
I call this the “Bookmark Principle.” We have a trusted system called a bookmark that tells us what page we stopped reading in our books. We would be a little crazy to run around constantly repeating to ourselves, “I’m on page 52, I’m on page 52…” But we do that all of the time with our little to-dos and “gotta-remembers.” The bookmark is a trusted system that allows our brains to free up space, and our calendar and task management systems should do the same.
A great way to capture some of the free-floating “gotta-remembers” into your systems is with Jott, a free service that you register for at www.jott.com. When you’re driving and you remember suddenly that you need to pay a particular bill or check on something, you can speed-dial Jott, speak your thoughts into the phone, and relax knowing that an e-mail will land in your inbox in just a few minutes with your transcribed message.
Clutter Steals Your Time and Energy
The root of all clutter is delayed decisions and actions. When you gaze upon your countertops, your dining table, your desk, and your floor, do you see the objects there, or do you see the aura of all of the delayed actions and decisions they represent? Imagine the relief of having these energy drains disappear!
Catch yourself when you say you’ll “put it here for now”—that is one of the danger signs of a delayed decision. Remember that procrastination can often stem from perfectionism. It does not have to be perfectly done; it just needs to be DONE! “Good enough” is all most people have time for, so please hang up your superhero cape and be kind to yourself.
Clutter Creates Conflict
Did you ever notice that your own clutter can be tolerable, but other people’s clutter is incredibly annoying? Couples and families fight about clutter and disorganization constantly. To paraphrase George Carlin, your stuff is in my space… you lost my stuff… you left the stuff out… where is my stuff? Getting organized helps the whole family live and work better together.
Getting organized means making choices about your time, information, and belongings that reflect the values and goals you have for your life. If your environment and systems are not supporting you in this vision, it’s time to make a change and move, as Julia Louise Woodruff said, “Out of the strain of the Doing, Into the peace of the Done.”
Related Articles from Lorie:
Sowing The Seeds Of Organizing Success
Assessing Your Home's Treasures
Lorie Marrero is the Chief Executive Organizer and founder of Living Order, a regional organizing service business, and the creator of ClutterDiet.com®, an innovative new membership program to help busy people get organized online.
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