Magically Organized

Please join me in welcoming today Laurieann, of Motivate for Sanity’s Sake and owner of Organize It Mom!.  Now that we have newly organized spaces, it’s time to talk about how we are going to keep them that way.  Thanks Laurieann!

You’ve just spent all month cleaning out your closet, sorting and color-coding, and tossing.  You should be proud!  Rejoice!  Hey, maybe you should go shopping and get something for that new space in your closet.

Wait!

No!  Your job is not over yet.  In fact, the work has only just begun.  Really, sometimes sticking with it is the hardest part.

Once, I got a great compliment when my uncle came to my house and said to his wife, “Wouldn’t it be great if our house was magically clean like this?”  I was pleased but then I started to think about it… magically clean?  There was nothing magical about it.  It was me!  It was my hard work!  Let me tell you, there was nothing magical about cleaning behind my toilets with a toothbrush, or scouring my oven, or meticulously cleaning the floorboards and blinds.  In fact, it was the opposite of magic.

Usually, something that seems magical is really something that was a LOT of work behind the scenes.  The good news is, you’ve done the behind the scenes stuff.  But now it’s time to lean into the hard work of maintaining your hard work.

There are a couple of things you can do to make the leaning into it easier.

The first is to make sure the system works for you and not the other way around.  When you have a system that makes intuitive sense to everyone in the house… everyone in the house will use it.  Put the system RIGHT where the problem is.

For example, I used to be so frustrated that the newspapers were always piled up on the kitchen table instead of put away in their designated post-reading-until-recycled spot.  But then I measured the newspaper, went to the store and found the perfectly sized basket and put said basket right next to the table upon which the papers liked to pile.  Now those pesky papers are going where they’re supposed to… magically.

The second thing you can do is make your system so cool that by the time the novelty wears off, you’re already in the habit of using it.  When your system is so clever and creative that you love it, you’ll be so excited about using it everyday that before you know it, you won’t be able to remember what life was like without it.

Having a hole in my wall from the closet to the laundry room initially made doing the laundry fun. And now (after having the hole for a year and ½), it’s just a habit to do the laundry the minute the basket is full.

You’ve done a lot of work to get magically organized.  Now you just need to lean into it every day and keep it that way.  Good luck!