Which one are you?

Life Changing Home Organizing Ideas Published on 29-01-2006
By Rebekah Slatkin



Resource Rebekah Slatkin is the founder of Club Organized and is able to organize even the most cluttered, unmotivated person! Get free access to DECORganize, the how to want to get organized and STAY that way, system.Includes FREE BONUSES and more!
Website URL http://www.cluborganized.com


I want to ask you a question. You may not like the answer though. Can you call your home a retreat, sanctuary, or any of these loving words? Does it comfort you and keep you going in this world of many challenges? Do you walk into your home and feel the stress melt away? Are you able to tap into your potential and talents and actualize on inspiration you may receive in and out of your home? Is your need for relief, relaxation, and safety met here?

In other words, how do you feel when you are driving home or walking through the door?

There may be differing answers for you and for the other members in your home. You, perhaps, do not feel recharged or reenergized from your home. That may be due to your overwhelming number of responsibilities in the home- feeding everyone, cleaning the home, taking care of the housework, doing the laundry, cooking, etc. You still, however, need to be able to recharge your batteries in order to be able to take care of everyone else.

You know how in an airplane, the flight attendants tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before any childs’. Your needs need to come first.

If you answered “No” to the questions I asked you about whether your home is a rejuvenating place for you, it is time to create the home that I describe above. You deserve it and need it.

To read more about why many of us have not been able to get organized in the P.A.S.T, go to www.cluborganized.com and become a free member.

I’ll briefly review my acronym P.A.S.T. so it makes sense to you.

P stands for clutter Personality Types. The 3 basic types are Thinker, Doer, and Feeler. These 3 types come from the three parts of the brain, actually.

Thinker-You are highly intelligent, self-critical or apologetic, compare yourself to others, and often a procrastinator due to your perfectionist nature. You are excellent with coming up with solutions, practical problems and thinking in abstract terms. Are you cautious and careful? Do you struggle with making decisions? Your complex, deliberated thought process and analysis perhaps seems “slow” to others.

Doer- You are creative, fast-paced, full of ideas, often shift from one thing to another, not really sticking to any particular system. Looking for the newest way to “cut corners”. Do you lose interest easily, seeming inconsistent to others, have a hard time focusing? It’s torture for you to think about working only on one thing at a time. You love beautiful things and want them so much, you’ll go back to the store and get it.

Feeler-It’s hard for you to say no. You feel sentimental about many objects, you are people-oriented, often concerned about hurting people’s feelings. It’s tough for you to make time for yourself. Your home is made up of bits and pieces of your family.

There’s another feeler category. A feeler/nurturer takes pride that others depend on you. Do you have an image of how you want your home to look and a preconceived notion to how it “should” be? Listening to others tell you how to change your home feels a little threatening.

-A stands for attitudes that work against us.

-S stands for sociological and inherited beliefs we have about ourselves and our clutter, i.e., self criticism, guilt.

-T is for the technical difficulties in your home, such as not liking the space or not enough lighting in a room.

Why did I start with the mushy talk before I told you the practical steps for how to organize? Because, changes begin from inside. As Hannah Kelley says of The Art of Home, “Until you understand the reasons behind your behaviors, you will never be able to permanently change.”

I hope you’ve perhaps identified with one of the Personality types or recognize some of the attitudes (last issue) that work against you, you may be holding. Because, if you do, now we can get started formulating a customized plan on how to organize. It’s like a movie. You may like action while your spouse hates action movies. Your preferences are different than the next persons.

However, movies are made with basic overall guidelines, introduction, plot, climax, resolution (like a book) and these general principles, do work in fact for many people while the different movie genres are preferred by diverse individuals.

I have an organizing method that I find works to get people organized. I will explain my theory and then customize the action steps according to your Clutter Personality Type-thinker, doer, and feeler. Like the movie.

I call it DECORganize™. I recently formulated this principle after years of watching different types of people struggle with wanting to get organized, doing it, and staying organized. If you are a doer/creative person, you are going to love DECORganize™. A thinker or feeler can stretch to do this, and only positive rewards will be the result.

It’s hard to feel the motivation to organize. Yes, clutter is like a spreading mass (pardon the analogy, but it is). It is dangerous, harmful, and continues to grow unless thwarted by continuous efforts to monitor it and remove. STILL, thinking of clutter this way is often is not enough to push people to organize.

I love how Hannah Keeley, author of The Art of Home puts it. We still don’t feel motivated to remove clutter even when seeing it as dangerous and growing because clutter is comforting. Hannah says, “We all have “creature comforts”. Thinkers like to buy lots of books and software. You like having the power of knowledge to handle a situation. Nurturer/Feelers like to buy gifts for the kids or the home. Doers like to buy beautiful things and tools that teach skills or “cut corners.” And once we accumulate all of this stuff, it’s so hard to want to get rid of it or organize it, because it is comfortable to be surrounded by all this stuff we like.

Getting out of your comfort zone is hard. I know! I also know that getting rid of clutter is exhilarating. Talk to anyone who has recently undergone a purging job. They’ll tell you how much better they feel. Guaranteed.

No longer do I have to really push people to organize or even find the motivation to organize. That’s because ™ is a motivator in itself. I’m finding, that when people (especially creative doers) create beautifully decorated small areas or corners of their homes first, they are then motivated to organize and stay that way.

Does this sound backwards? Decorating and rearranging before organizing? It kind of is. But it provides INSTANT rewards and DECORganize gratification and that is what people want today.

How to do it?

Start here. Decide which room is most important to begin loving? Your bedroom? I like to start here because where you sleep is where you recharge, get inspiration, etc. It is the basis for everything else that happens in your home. If you are not happy, no one else in your family will be happy.

Start with a clean slate and start small if you are currently living below clutter. Maybe just your bed you’ll DECORganize™.

You can use 4 boxes or even laundry baskets, and trashbags for putting all surrounding clutter away.

Move all the clutter around the bed or in the bedroom into one of these containers. If you don’t want to sort now, then literally take your arm, and go around sweeping all clutter off of your dresser tops, nightstands, and the floor…into a box. Get it out of site. You’ll deal with it later. (We'll use Julie Morgenstern's SPACE formula to deal with the clutter).

Rearrange furniture in the most beautiful way. Go find pillows and a bedspread you love and add color to your bedroom.

Thinkers-don’t waste time figuring out the best way to do this. Decide on a plan of action-ex. You have until Wednesday by 3PM to go to HomeGoods and pick out a beautiful bedspread with coordinating pillows.

Nurturers/Feelers-Even if you are not sure it is going to match, put something you love on the bed. You can always change it later. It doesn’t have to coordinate with anything else in the house. Just do it.

Doers-You probably have something around the house that can serve this purpose. I know you’ll have no trouble with this step. If you do have things lying around that could potentially decorate the bed and you want to buy new ones, then you need to force yourself to purge at least the same amount of things you are buying.

Yes! You now have an area that is beautifully decorated. Decorating and decluttering by removing everything else in the space is going to force you to organize. By organize I mean sorting through the clutter you removed and asking yourself if you love it. Let me say though, once you see how beautiful your room turned out, you most likely won’t even want to deal with what is in the box.

Even if the rest of your home is full of clutter, wouldn’t it be great to own little areas that look like some of the magazine pictures you love? A dressing area with a makeup table, a reading corner, or a Martha Stewart like linen closet? A photography station or a correspondence area stocked with stationary, stamps, pens, and stickers?

Start small. If you need more ideas of what and how to create the little areas, cut pictures that you love out of magazines.

Thinkers- get your strategy down pat and then do it before a deadline or before the timer rings.

Doers-ask a thinker for assistance with your strategy and then run with it.

Nurturer/Feeler-make it work for the whole family. Let your nurturer float around the areas you DECORganize, instead of the entire house.

For more ideas on areas in your home to DECORganize, I’m sending you my free Organizing from A-Z Design Pak as a bonus.

By the way, when you signed up for the SECRETS of DECORganize, you will now be the first to know when my book, How to DECORganize every room in your home comes out. That means discounts and coupons just to you!