Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Home Organizing Tips and Solutions for Visual Organizers (Butterflies) | Clutterbug Podcast # 35

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

Organization is not one-size-fits-all. Identifying your personal organizing style (and those of your family members) can help you create an organizing system and solutions that will finally get you organized for good.  Today's podcast is all about those visual organizers, the Butterflies. I share tips, tricks and inspirtation for evern the messiest Butterflies out there! You ARE an organized person, you just haven't found the right system yet.  To discover your organizing style, take my free test at: http://clutterbug.me/what-clutterbug-are-you Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome back Clutterbugs to the Clutterbug podcast. And today I'm really excited because it is the first day of our new Clutterbug series where we're talking about the different types of organizing styles. And I want to talk just for a second of why I feel this is so important and tell you, I guess, where this sort of started and came from. When I started my journey on organization, you guys know that I was. drowning in clutter, I could never find anything, but even then I was the type of person who really wanted to fake a clean house. So if looking around my home, if I knew you were coming, let's be honest, if I knew you were coming, everything looked really tidy and I loved decorating and so my

home was a priority to me. I tried to make it look as nice as possible. But in order to achieve this, I had to shove and hide all of the clutter and junk in every hidden crevice. So closets and drawers under the bed, everything was full and bursting and I knew where nothing was. I couldn't find anything. And then I started to fill up those sort of hidden rooms in my house. So we had a storage room in the basement. The shower in the downstairs bathroom, I filled that with junk. I mean, we couldn't even use the shower. We rarely used it anyways. But because it was a hidden spot, the shower curtain I started filling that space up and then I started filling up a corner in the basement because all the other hidden spaces were full and I was like a hoarder

but a Heidi hoarder I hid it all it was only I knew and while this was still you know it it appeared I guess as is a as if I was a clean and organized person the reality was that I was disorganized just like people who you can see their visual clutter and I couldn't find anything. If it was raining out and we needed an umbrella, I had to tear the house apart to see where it was. When my kids would come home, I didn't want to see their shoes, so I would chuck them in the closet and throw their backpacks and everything

and smooch it in just to shut the door. And then the next day when we went to leave for school, you know, everything would be tumbling out and I would have to root around looking for things. So it was definitely an issue. and I started becoming organized by watching Peter Walsh. I watched his show Clean Sweep on TLC while sitting in my pile of children. I was running a daycare at the time. My house was full of toys and every space was full and crowded and cluttered.

And I felt overwhelmed. And I don't even think I realized that the clutter was really an issue at this point. I just realized that everything took me longer to find than I thought it did other people. And I honestly thought people robbed me often. I was like, I can't find my phone. Maybe someone broke into the house while I was sleeping and stole it. And then, you know, I'd find it like in the fridge or some ridiculous thing. Like I was just frazzled. I was frantic. I was crazy. So I started watching Peter Walsh. And I guess because my home didn't look like an episode of hoarders, it didn't look as cluttered even as other people's homes that my friends and family because everything

was hidden, I didn't even realize that I had an issue until I started watching. I started watching. watching Peter Walsh and his words resonated with me and I bought all his books and I slowly started tackling just one little drawer, one little closet at a time. And fast forward a few years later, I ran out of spots in my own home and I started doing friends and family and then I started getting clients and I quickly realized that just because an organizing solution worked for me definitely didn't mean that it worked for other people. And I realized this because I would say to my clients, listen, I'm of the mind frame where I feel guilty charging money for things. I know what's in my head and I know I have to get over that, but I would charge my clients,

I think I charged $20 an hour in the beginning. And I felt like that was highway robbery. Like I felt like so guilty charging $20 an hour. So I would say to the clients that if it didn't work for them, if I left and, you know, next week, you were not 100% satisfied with this. If this solution wasn't staying organized for you, give me a call, and I will come back and I will fix it for free. And let me tell you, they called. And I would call and check up, you know, because I feel guilty that they paid me and I'd be like, just making sure it's really working for you and I'm going to come back and fix it for free if it's not. And then I started having to go back and fix it for free a lot of times, like often. And quickly that $20 an hour I was charging was pretty much

putting me into the red, right? I wasn't making anything because my gas to get there and all the hours and time away from my family that I was putting in to try to help people organize based on my style or the style I've seen on television or the research or in books wasn't working for certain people and I was just I was perplexed as to why and honestly I'm going to admit to you the first thing I thought was they're lazy they must just be lazy but then I would look around their home and say I remember one client in particular she was a lawyer and she seemed like a really meticulous person. I mean, she had her master's degree and was running her own law firm and her house, for the most part, was really clean, but her office was insanely

messy and filled with paper. And we could not find a system that she could maintain. And so I thought, you know, I don't think she's a lazy person. I don't think that's the issue. So I looked around her home and I asked her to tell me, show me stuff that is working. Show me some organizing solutions that do work for you. And when she was showing me her bulletin board in her kitchen with all of her papers pinned up and she was showing me other areas of her home that were staying perpetually organized, they were really visual. Nothing was hidden away. She was a visual organizer. And me, for myself, the systems that had worked for me were things like filing cabinets and and file folders for paper where the paper was hidden away.

And those were really traditionally the type of paper organizing systems that you can purchase. So that's what we were trying to do. We were trying to find and fit her into this organizing box that just wasn't her natural style. And she wasn't able to do it. And so instead what we ended up doing was getting a lot of these magazine rack holders. So these vertical file folders that hang on the wall, and we labeled the front of them, and she could put her papers in there. She could still see her paper piles. They were out.

They were visual, but they were off her desk. They were organized. And we set her up a more macro organizing system for her papers on a shelf instead of a filing cabinet in bins that was really labeled. And believe it or not, I never heard from her again, which was music to my ears. It was not that I, you know, I didn't want to hear from her again, but that meant that finally we had found a solution that worked for her. So then from then on, when I went to a new client's home, the first question I would say is show me something that's working for you. Because I wanted to know what their organizing style was. Before I even realized what I was doing, I had realized that not everyone organizes the same.

And you have to sort of see what's working in order to establish and sort of replicate that. in other areas. And after doing this for a long time, I kind of realized one day I woke up and was like, wow, really, there's four. There's four different styles. And I can meet someone now and generally even just talking to them about their clutter, about their issues, or about how they like to organize, I can tell them immediately. I know what styles will work for them and what won't, just meeting them and talking to them, not even having to see their space. for the most part, people really do generally fall into these categories. Now, that being said, it's hard for me to articulate these categories. It's hard for me to explain it. And I think

so many people are perfectionists. And people who struggle with clutter are almost always perfectionist. Believe it or not. I mean, it sounds really an impossible thing. How could you be have a mess everywhere and be a perfectionist? But that is exactly what's happening. So, So these people want to know, you know, exactly who they are and exactly how to organize their things and do it the perfect way. And that perfectionism is paralyzing them. They're not even getting started because they're so worried about being perfect that they're not even beginning the process.

Or, you know, they want to know exactly what bug they are and then exactly what to do. Well, here's the thing. Everybody's sort of going to be leaning towards I feel personally one person. one organizing style, but it doesn't mean that in other areas you may be a bit more of another style or you might just not be full ladybug. Maybe you're 70% ladybug with a 30% cricket in there. So that's really what I wanted to talk about first. I want you guys, when you're listening to this podcast, when you're watching the videos, when you're thinking about your home and your organizing style and you're thinking about setting up a style, I want you to remind your

to let go of perfection, that it doesn't have to be perfect. Not only that, it shouldn't be perfect. And as soon as you give yourself that grace and you remind yourself that this is about the journey, it isn't about the end result. I know you want that end result. You want that clean and organized home that stays that way for good. But the journey to get there is just as important because you're going to learn so much about yourself why it is that you, drop your keys on the kitchen counter instead of hanging them on the hook. Why your husband, this never puts his clothes in the dirty laundry. Why we do the things we do and how we can improve on those is even just as important,

if not more, than the end result that we're heading towards. So let's just jump right in to a butterfly. And I'm going to break it down for you quickly. A butterfly, I know I've said this before, but a butterfly is all about abundance. And they like their visual person. so they like to see their items. This doesn't mean that they want to see absolutely everything they own, but they do like seeing the things that they love,

and they do like being able to see the things that they need and use on a regular basis. So I think where this really comes from is the fear of out of sight, out of mind. And with a butterfly, perhaps they've always been like this, or perhaps they've lost a lot of things, and so they have some sort of anxiety there about misplacing items. and that anxiety stops them from putting things into hidden places such as drawers, closets, dressers, binders, file cabinets. If something that is important or they feel like they're going to use it again soon or they don't

want to forget about it, they're really likely to leave it out. And I think this gradually grows into leaving everything out. And the other thing about a butterfly is they need really easy, simple organizing solutions. And what I mean by that is a butterfly is not the type of person who's going to take the time to sort their items into really minuscule categories. Now, they may sort it in the beginning when it comes to the initial organization, but they're not going to take the time when putting it away to find that little tiny bin and unstack them and take the lid off and put it back where it goes. They're going to toss it back in its home. And this isn't a bad thing. This is just

the way that they are, and this is the way I am, this is my organizing style, even though years and years and years and years of organization and practicing and trying different techniques, and I mean, I do organization for a living, I still am not going to take the time to open the lid, pull out the bin, and put things into tiny categories. I need macro organizing. So there is micro organizing and there is macro organizing. and micro means those little details, bento box style where everything's in a small little category, but a macro organizing is when like all your bills are just in one bin that says bills, not broken up into electricity or gas, credit card, you're sort of getting the difference there. And this applies to just so many different areas of your home and your life, macro and micro organizing.

So a butterfly loves abundance and visual, but they need macro organizing systems. So when you combine these two things, it equals clutter. I'm just going to be completely honest. It usually equals a lot of clutter. And every person that I've met who struggles with lots of piles and clutter everywhere, they're almost always a butterfly. And I think they've grown up honestly feeling that they're just a, disorganized messy person. It's something that they've been probably told as a child because this was their

tendency as a child to leave things out, to struggle to put away and to need a simple organizing solution. And so it's become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The other problem is there isn't a lot of organizing solutions out there that are tailored for having your things out and organized in a visual way and really simple. Most organizing solutions, are file cabinets or binder systems or, you know, all baskets that are, they're very pretty and they're all like the same. But that isn't something that's going to work for a butterfly. They need to see their things. So a lot of pretty baskets on a beautiful shelf, while it's lovely, and butterflies might aspire to that organizing style. The truth is, as soon as they put

their stuff in those pretty baskets and walk away to the kitchen to make themselves a tea, they come back, they've completely forgotten about those things. So they know that. about themselves too and that anxiety is going to stop them from using that system it's a subconscious anxiety that stops them from hiding their things away so let's work with with your natural tendency let's not fight it you i really believe that if you're a butterfly you're never going to become a cricket you i know for myself after years of trying to be a more detailed or like organized person It's never manifested. I have tried and tried to change into a cricket to a more detailed person who's going to take the time to put things away really, really properly.

And I've never been able to maintain it. So why am I beating myself up over this? Why am I even wasting my time attempting an organizing solution when really what I should just be doing is making one that works for me and moving on? There is more important things in life than cleaning and organizing your solution. home. Organization is all about saving you time. It's all about making your life easier. It's all about you never having to look for the umbrella. Because you know exactly where it is. You never have to look for anything or you shouldn't have to. You should be able to grab and put away everything in your home in minutes, minutes, never taking you longer than that. And if it does take you longer,

you're not having a system that's designed specifically for you. So what does work for a butterfly? Well, open shelving, and I'm all about not having to spend money, and I say this all the time. Like, you don't have to spend money to get organized. Unfortunately, if you're a butterfly or a bee, that's not 100% true. I really recommend that you invest in shelving and you invest in a lot of shelving. Because having that visual display space to store your things means that it's off the floor, it's off your counters, and it has an easy home that you can just walk over and grab. and you're going to feel less stress and your life, your home is going to run much more efficiently

if you have a lot of storage space. You don't have to buy expensive shelving. You can look, you know, for secondhand or used ones or, you know, beg friends and family who aren't using them to get you some. It's not about having a magazine Pinterest-worthy space. It's about having a home that functions really, really well for you and a place where you feel happy and inspired and yeah so shelving you need shelving you also need clear bins so even though those pretty baskets look fab on Pinterest or on Instagram and they're all like on a shelf and you're like oh I want that I want my home to look like that here's the thing clear works better for you and go ahead though and put those clear bins in your linen closet and get some pretty colored bins for the shelves that you have all over, but make sure then that you label

those bins. Because if you just have a bunch of baskets or bins that are solid colored and not labeled, your brain has zero idea what's inside of that. You need that visual reminder of what's inside, but you can get that visual reminder from labels. So clear bins really work for you, as does labeling those bins. And I'm not talking with a little label maker. I'm I know those daimo label makers are awesome, but that is not big enough for you. I want you to be able to stand across the room and look at your shelf and know what's inside just by looking at it from like 12 feet away. You're going to have to do that.

So I want your bins to be really big. And that's going to be a visual reminder for your brain of what's in there. And it's going to alleviate a lot of the subconscious anxiety that you have about putting away your things. I also want you to consider. Now this is just a consideration, removing the closet doors off your closet. So if you're a butterfly, like I do not recommend this for other bugs. But when it comes to a butterfly, if you're really struggling to put your clothes away, and the only thing in your closet is like the clothes you never wear that you don't like

and everything else sort of draped across your dresser hanging on the back of the door hooks or laying across the chair, I really want you to consider removing your closet doors. You don't have to get rid of them. I mean, you can put them in the basement or restore them or just put them in the corner in your room and give it a try. Because what I've found with other clients is as soon as those sort of barrier that stops the visualness of you seeing your clothes is removed, they were way more likely to actually hang their clothes up and put their clothes away. It's eliminating that fear that you're going to lose the clothes or forget about the clothes. And even though it's irrational, I mean, your clothes aren't going anywhere.

It's not like your closet's some dark abyss that's sucking them into nowhere. it really is a sort of form of anxiety that butterflies can get about putting their things out away. I also want you to invest in some bulletin boards, even if it's sticky notes on your wall or tape, tape things to your wall, but have a spot where you're going to put your papers. And if you have a lot of papers, I really love the idea of clipboards. Clipboards, go to the dollar store, get some clipboards. These work wonders for a butterfly. So if you're a mom and you have a bunch of kids and they come home with all that schoolwork, what I do as a ladybug is I file it in a file folder on my counter, my kitchen counter.

This isn't going to work for you. So what butterflies usually do is they fill their fridge with magnets with all the little papers that they have to remember. Am I right? School field trips and notes and maybe kids' artwork. Except now the problem is you can't see the forest for the trees. You have too many things and then everything is. becomes invisible. And there really is a sort of anxiety that comes with like forgetting something or losing something that is much more heightened with a bee and a butterfly. So instead, clipboards are

really awesome. You can have one clipboard for each family member, maybe hang their picture above it or put their name, hang those clipboards on the wall with some 3M hooks, and then put the papers on the clipboard with the most important one that you have to remember or the most pertinent one that you have to remember in the front. Remember to purge them often and go through them and the ones you don't need anymore get rid of. But this is a really easy way, like hanging clipboards on the wall, is a really easy way of managing your paperwork, especially those like doctor's notes and field trips and school newsletters and all of those type of things, having one clipboard for each family member, or maybe even one clipboard for kids' artwork as well, hung above, is a perfect way

for you to really inexpensively organize your paperwork, have like a little command center for your family, I suppose, and not break the bank, right? So, yeah, those are some solutions I wanted to talk about specifically for a butterfly. And if you're listening to this and you're not a butterfly, you are like me, you're a ladybug, so you like everything to look pretty clean and tidy,

but you shove and hide, or you're a cricket, which means you like everything to look pretty clean and tidy, but you also like really micro-organizing systems. I have to first, wait, okay, let's roll back. When I say like a minimal, like crickets and ladybugs are minimal, I don't mean full minimalist. I think there's this misinterpretation that minimalism is what I'm talking about

when I say like you like minimal visual clutter. I don't mean that you want a white box with like just a bed and no throw pillows. I have a ton of crap, like an obnoxious amount of stuff. stuff, I just don't like to see it all. So I would rather my things be, you know, behind a closet door or all my random clutter inside a cabinet than having it all displayed on a bulletin board or having it on open shelving where I can see it. And that really is the difference. So it's not about having less stuff. It's not about wanting a stark white minimal room. It's about not wanting to have a lot of things to look at.

I still have, you know, decorative, pretty things out, but I don't want to see my toaster. I don't want to look at, you know, my, I don't even want to look at my kids' artwork there. I said it, is that horrible? Whatever. I don't want to look at it. I'm a horrible mother. I'd rather put it in a binder and have it hidden away. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about an other bug.

Someone who really generally, I mean, I get anxiety about looking at a lot of stuff. that I don't find pretty or that I don't find, you know, that is like a decorative thing. If I'm just looking at like everyday useful items, like if people are stacking their mugs on the counter, I get little heart palpitations. I can't handle that crap. So that's what I mean. But if you are one of though, if you are a cricket or a ladybug, but you're living with a butterfly, oh my goodness, I want you to remind yourself that the same level of anxiety you feel having everything out and looking at those piles of clutter, they're feeling that anxiety when they hide and put those things away. They really do. So you're going to have to get creative, both of you

together, you're going to have to get creative and think of solutions that are a compromise for both of you. Yeah, you're going to have to relax a little bit and have more stuff out than you would like to have and they're going to have to understand where you're coming from too and probably put more away than they feel comfortable putting away so it's all about communication it's about understanding each other and really talking about it having that you know sit down talk with them and working out a plan and maybe it is that you buy more shelving and that you label the baskets for them so they can find their things and that you have some bulletin boards when you first come in in the home or get those clipboards and hang them up. And maybe you're not 100% happy and maybe

they're not 100% happy. But together, you're much happier than you are right now with the way you're living. So hopefully this is helpful to you. And we're going to continue this clutterbug series. We're going to be talking about bees and ladybugs and crickets coming up. So I'm so excited about this series because I really believe that especially visual people, like a butterfly and a bee have gotten a bad rap and they've been told that they're messy they feel like they're disorganized but the truth is that they just don't organize like the majority of people or the traditional ways when it comes to organizing solutions that we all see in the media and in books and and on television so you are not messy remind yourself that you are not messy

you just organize differently and once you realize that something and once you realize that system that you love, you can replicate it throughout your entire home. And finally, you know, get on top of things, have more time, have less stress. Organizing can even save you money. And really the best part, it's going to increase your happiness. The worst thing is waking up in the morning and looking around your home and feeling bad about yourself. If you're waking up and it doesn't bother you, then what the heck? It doesn't matter. Leave it as it is. But if you look around your home and you think to yourself, I'm messy, I'm lazy, I don't like myself because of the way your home looks, that's something that we want to change. That is the thing that

we're going to remedy together. So you are in the right place. And together we are going to take care of this and it isn't about being perfect and it isn't about having a perfect organizing system. It's about finding your umbrella in 20 seconds on a really rainy day. So thank you guys so much and I hope you enjoyed and I will see you next time.