Please welcome back guest contributor Lisa Woodruff from Organize 365 to the blog today. I’m excited to have her here to share some great tips on how to organize husbands.
I am so honored to be guest blogging again on Org Junkie! As a professional organizer I often am asked, “How do I get my husband to be more organized?”
Spoiler alert… It’s not about them. It’s about you.
Don’t stop reading!
The first step in getting your husbands on board with your organizational program is to reflect on where you are in your organization.
It is so easy for us to start organizing ourselves and start making progress. Then, we look to our spouses and notice they have not made the same progress we have made. We want them to be doing what we are doing.
However, they need to see a few more things from us before they’re ready to jump on board.
Husbands are looking for you to be consistent.
How long have you been organizing? And are you organizing on a regular basis or just when the mood strikes?
I am sure you would not still be following Laura if she was not consistent about the number of posts she produces and curates about organization. And if she was talking about organizing in obscure areas of the home or in areas that are not relevant to you, you would not be interested in her style of organization.
But because she and I have been consistently blogging and podcasting about organizing for over five years, and have focused on the steps and stages to getting you organized, you are following us and you are successful.
Your husband is also looking for you to be consistent and continue organizing before he decides to join you.
Your husband is looking for results that last.
How many other times have you said that you were going to get organized?
Have you ever tried an organizational system or approach that has not worked long term?
Even if you are making progress getting organized now, how long has your husband been seeing you make this progress?
He wants to know that the system that you have found now is really going to work and is worth the time investment.
Change is yucky.
Change, even good change, can be yucky. It means that you will feel differently in your space. It also means that you have to learn to live a different way, live with less.
And if you are the one deciding to make the change, he may be resisting the fact that he does not have a say… even if an organized life is better.
He has to want it for himself.
There is no way around this one. You can only change you. He has to want the change that he sees in you.
Stop focusing on his passion projects.
Most husbands do not have the same quantity of items that their wives do. What they do have are passion projects with lots of pieces and parts.
While you are decluttering areas of the house that are not your passion project, most spouses only keep items that are part of their passion projects. They are afraid that agreeing to get organized with you means they have to give up their passion projects.
So continue to move the items related to their passion projects into fewer and fewer rooms of the house, but let them decide when and if they reduce the amount in their stash.
I LOVE to teach, inspire and motivate through podcasts. You can listen to the Organize 365 Podcast right here in this post or in your podcast player on your phone.
Here is my podcast about How to Organize Husbands #131
http://traffic.libsyn.com/organize365/Org365-131.mp3
And the podcast all about Passion Projects #126
http://traffic.libsyn.com/organize365/Org365-126.mp3
Thanks everyone!
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