Do you love to organize? Here’s how you know you love to organize: you go to put the pen back in the junk drawer, and you don’t just close it. You decide that it’s a mess, and you start taking everything out. You start putting all the pencils together and all the pens together, and you throw out all the random bits of rubber bands and papers. You have everything nicely lined up. You might even get out that label gun and make a label for the drawer. You don’t hurry when you do it. You actually take your time because you enjoy the process of organizing.
When the drawer is finished, you close it and feel such a sense of satisfaction. That’s organizing. Most of us love it. I know I do. Have you ever noticed that you can organize that drawer, give it a gentle push, turn around, look at the rest of your kitchen, your calendar, your day, and feel completely overwhelmed? Yes, you might be very happy that you organized that drawer, but inside, that feeling of overwhelm, that deep breath you keep taking, that sigh you keep making, didn’t go away because you organized the junk drawer.
The truth is, very often we don’t even realize that that’s what’s going on. We think that when we organize the drawer, it will take a burden off us, and we will no longer feel that sense of overwhelm. We might not feel distressed or uncomfortable when we open the junk drawer, and we might feel good walking past it, even if it’s closed, knowing it’s organized. It will not change the sense of overwhelm that runs through the rest of our lives and our day. Let’s apply that same thing to organizing your calendar, your day, and your planner. All of those things work much like a junk drawer does. You feel better because it looks better. It may function better, but it also is not guaranteed to take away our sense of overwhelm.
I recently wrote in my book, Clearing for Clarity, about the importance of clarity in relationship to decluttering and organizing. If we don’t have clarity on who we are and who we’re becoming, we don’t have a direction. We may spend a lot of our day, a lot of our time, or a lot of our thought and energy organizing things that may not matter or that don’t belong any longer.
A simple example: let’s take it back to that junk drawer. Do you have school-aged children who have homework and projects to do in your life, in your home now? If you do, you may have crayons, markers, glue sticks, scissors, and all of those things in your junk drawer. I know I absolutely had those things when my kids were younger and doing projects. It wouldn’t make sense at this stage of my life, with no one doing projects and coloring and coloring books, to have those things in my junk drawer and to organize them, because it is not who I am. It is not our family’s lifestyle, and it has nothing to do with who we’re becoming.
Very often, we organize the things that no longer fit our lives because we don’t take a moment to clarify where we’re going, who we are, who we are becoming, and what we actually need to take with us. Something I also find with my clients is that they will spend a lot of time talking about, thinking about, and maybe even organizing drawers, cabinets, calendars, and closets. The real pressure that comes to us in life, the one that causes overwhelm, goes deeper than that. The type of questions we should be asking ourselves are:
· Are your commitments aligned with the life you’re creating?
· Does your calendar reflect your priorities?
· Are your hobbies still yours, or leftovers from another season?
· What goals belong to the woman you’re becoming?
I tend to call it a transition, and the dream is the transformation, but where are we in that process? Does a junk drawer even matter? It matters a lot once we have clarity on who we are becoming and what we’re moving towards, but without that, it is simply an exercise in moving objects around and making order out of things that may or may not be needed or that may no longer belong. Truthfully, sometimes that’s a difficult decision. This work isn’t always easy, and it’s easier to reorganize a chunk of time than to do some deep coaching or journaling and really think about who we are and who we’re becoming. That’s hard and sometimes uncomfortable.
So the question to ask is not “How do I organize this?” or “How do I move these things around so they fit better?” but rather, “What belongs here now?” Organizing is managing what already exists. It’s managing who we were, and we need to start managing who we’re becoming. “Organization is about order. Clarity is about direction.”
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Organization is just a tool for managing what already exists. Clarity is the real goal.
When we create space and align our lives with who we’re becoming, organization becomes much easier and overwhelm begins to lift.
“There is nothing wrong with organizing. We just often start there when clarity should come first.”
What are you trying to organize that might need to change?
Talk to you next Monday, Meryl.
Part of the Monday with Meryl series.
