Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Messy Myth Podcast - You’re not messy, you just organize differently. | Clutterbug Podcast # 51

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

There is no such thing as naturally messy people, this is a myth. You are not a messy person, you just organize differently.   Take the free online test to discover your organizing style: http://clutterbug.me/what-clutterbug-are-you-test Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the messy myth. So thanks so much for joining me and I apologize. I haven't uploaded a podcast in a while. Life has just gotten away and I've gotten crazy busy. I hired an assistant actually to help me with video editing. I'm developing a video course. I've started writing my third book, and I'm just trying to produce more videos and content lately. So I'm just busy. Plus, I have three kids in the house and that whole

jazz going on. So life has definitely gotten in the way, and I apologize because my podcast has been put on the back burner, but I'm back and I am committed to podcasting more often. And today, I just finished the first chapter of my new book called The Clutter Connection, And the first chapter is actually called the messy myth. So I wanted to talk about that because I'm so passionate about it, here's the thing. There are so many people, including myself, who think of themselves as a naturally messy person, who just believe with all their being that they're messy. They always have been and they always will be, that they were born messy.

and let me tell you that being naturally messy is a myth. It is 100% a myth. And what I've really discovered over years of not only myself getting organized, but helping thousands of other families from all over the world get organized is that everyone organizes and tidies differently and that it isn't one size fits all. The unfortunate part is the trillions. traditional standards of what it should look like, of what a tidy home should look like, and what a tidy desk as a kid should look like a binder, a backpack, your bedroom is one

organizing style. It's hidden, putting things away out of sight, and it's using a really detailed system. So it's filing papers in a traditional filing cabinet. It's having a binder with different categories and things subdivided and organized. So traditional organizing solutions don't work for everyone. And when you've tried and failed to get your brain to use these systems that don't work with the way your brain type naturally organizes, you'll fail and you'll feel like a failure and you'll feel messy. And I think over time, these constant fails, these people constantly telling you that you're messy, telling yourself that you're messy, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And we grow up, you know, we're told messy as kids.

and we grow up to believe in our hearts that we are messy adults. And so that's what this chapter is about, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about today, is the fact that this is a myth. And I'm going to talk about one client in particular that was my light bulb moment, was my eureka moment as a professional organizer. And she was a lawyer. And this is after years of me struggling with my, own mess, assuming I was a messy person, and then realizing one day that I needed to dumb down

my organizing systems, that I couldn't use traditional detailed systems. I needed one basket just for bills. I needed not to sub-categorize everything. I organized my bathroom closet and had one for allergy medication, one for stomach aid, one for bandages, one for pain relievers. And a week later, was a big jumbled mess again and I wouldn't take the time to put things back in these subdivided categories but when I had one basket just for medicine I was able to toss it back in so simple and less organized systems made me more organized crazy right so I went from this person who believed that I was messy and chaotic and just constantly going to be a hot mess to someone who had a perpetually clean and organized home by just changing my perspective of what it was supposed to look like,

of not trying to fit myself in the box of what I thought an organized house should look like, and instead working with my natural style. So fast forward a bunch of years. I thought I was on to something. I thought I was some sort of organizing genius. I started my own professional organizing business, and I truly at this point in time believed that the majority of the population was like me because most of my clients were messy and they wanted help. And the reason that they were messy was because they couldn't follow the traditional organizing systems just like I couldn't. We had to have more simple, easy, simple, less organized systems. So I had a lot of really happy clients. And I would always say to my clients, if you are not satisfied, if this is not work for you,

I want you to call me and I'll come back and I'll redesign it for free as many times as I have to until it actually works. I came to regret this though when it came to my lawyer client. First time I went to her home, she was drowning in paper. She had a serious paper addiction and way too much paper and she definitely wanted to hold on to a lot of it. So I assumed that her problem was, you know, she had papers on every surface, on the floor, piles everywhere, was that she needed a more simple solution like I did. So I created her a basket for bills and one for current clients and one for past clients and really simple, simple, less organized system and sorted her papers into those simple categories, put it on a pretty bookshelf and a lot of matching baskets and left.

She was pretty horrified. I got to tell you the truth. She actually said, said to me, this is less organized than it was before. I told her just to try it for a week and then I know it doesn't fit with traditional organization, but try it for a week. If it still doesn't work, call me and I'll come back. Guess what? She called me and I came back. And she said to me that she craved detail. She craved those subdivided category. She didn't want all of her bills mixed together as bills. She wanted it separated into all of the different utilities. She wanted all of her clients separated by last name and filed that way. She didn't want my simple, easy solution.

It bugged her. So I was like, okay, you are a traditional organizer. She must just not have the time to set it up. So we went and bought filing cabinets. I spent hours sorting and sorting and sub-sorting, which is totally against my natural personality, but I did it. and we set up a really traditional organizing system. Filed all of her clients alphabetical.

Filed all of her bills. I had just, I mean, my label maker got a work out that day. We had all the little labels and I even made her a guide, a quick guide in alphabetical order, telling her exactly which filing cabinet in which drawer every file was in. So I went overboard and she loved it. She loved it because it was so perfect, you know, it was so, she was so, She was such a perfectionist. She was such an A-type personality.

And so she was like, this is going to work for me. This is amazing. She was happy, happy, happy. So I left. And a week later, she called me again. Let me tell you, I kind of wanted to throw punch her. I was like, listen, lady, I showed up there. All of her files were all over her desk again.

Paper spread all over the floor. And everything spread out. And she was embarrassed. And she just said to me, you know what? I don't know why. but this works better for me having it spread out on the floor and on the desk and on the couch she had a couch in her office covered in paper she said i don't like it in the filing cabinets i don't see it i'm afraid i'm going to forget about it i just need to see it i'm just a naturally messy person she said and it was at that moment that it was like a lightning bolt i realized

she's not messy she organizes differently she's visual she's visual she wants to see her papers. The problem in the first time that I did it was that I was using too simple of a system, a simple hidden system, which is what I like. I like things simple, but still out of sight in pretty baskets hidden away. I don't want to see it. And that did not work for her at all. That was the exact opposite of her. The second time, I went with her detailed, perfectionist, really detailed and categorized organizing system, which is what she does like, except it was still hidden. It was still in filing cabinets and drawers and out of sight. And she hated that. So here's what I decided to do. We went online and we bought magazine racks, like 12 of them.

And floor to ceiling covered her wall with magazine style racks, vertical paper filing systems. And instead of using the filing cabinet, we had one section from floor to ceiling with all her client files and the one for her home bills and one for just everything but out covering her walls instead of the floor and the desk with these color-coded file folders on the wall where she could just grab and see it and put it back. I was like having heart palpitations. That was not me at all. On the other wall we filled it with bulletin boards so she could put inspirational quotes and she could tag all the things she wanted to remember and those little scrap pieces of paper or papers that she had to deal with. And then we filled the other walls with art and inspirational quotes.

Literally like every square inch of her walls was covered with bright, colorful stuff. It was overload for me. I felt anxious. I felt overwhelmed. I felt just distracted in that space. But here's the thing. She felt focused and energized and creative and inspired. And she was thrilled. I left there. Just like what's happening? You know, I had never met anyone who craved that way before. And she called me a couple of days later and said she was redoing her kitchen.

She was taking all her upper cabinets off and putting in open shelves, that she was getting rid of all her clothes, storage and opting for bookshelves instead. And she said to me, you are so right. I'm a visual organizer. I'm not messy. I like to see my things. It was just, it was a change.

That was the client that changed everything for me. That is the client that really showed me. There isn't just two organizing types. There's more. There are people that just because they don't think like me or think the traditional way. Just because their visual organizers doesn't mean that they're messy. They just need systems that complement that visual style.

And the truth is there isn't really a lot of inspiration to see with that style in magazines or on television. That isn't a traditional style. It's a really untraditional. It's thinking outside the basket. So it doesn't make it wrong, though. It isn't one-size-fits-all. Think of how unique we are as people.

and yet we're trying to make everyone's homes organized and function the exact same way. So, of course, they're failing. Of course, they're not able to do it that way because that's not how their brain works. And then, of course, they feel like a failure and they feel messy. So this client's life was changed. She, you know, it changed everything about her life. She's so happy. I still get Christmas cards from her.

I mean, she's absolutely ecstatic, but she changed me too. the third time I went back to her house before we discovered that she was a visual organizer my initial thought was that she was lazy she must be she must just maybe she's just a lazy person she just maybe she is just a messy person i should never have thought that way because i used to think that exact same way about myself because i couldn't follow the traditional way that you're supposed to clean and tidy i'm using air quotes that you're supposed to clean and tidy i had to find my own way Instead of putting myself inside society's basket of what it says it should look like, I had to make my own.

And so did she. And so that was really the start, the start of me realizing that being messy is a myth. That being naturally messy is not true. That doesn't exist. You're not messy. You organize differently. And as soon as you can identify your organizing style and work with that style, we're going to stop focusing on what doesn't work. We're going to stop focusing on the negative.

And instead, look at the positive. Look at the things that you can keep organized. Ask yourself why. Why is this working? And how can I take this and replicate it in all the areas of my home that aren't working? Let's take that from a negative to a positive. Knowing yourself, really knowing yourself is the secret to change. having self-awareness is what is going to change your behavior and all of those bad habits that you're feeling bad about yourself now as soon as you really understand yourself it's going to be so much easier and all of those are going to go away without the hard work without the effort like magic so that's what i wanted to share with you today the messy myth because i also want to I want to remind you not to label your children as messy or your husband or whatever it is,

your wife, whoever it is that you're living with. And instead look at them differently. Look at them and say, why? Why aren't, why isn't my husband putting his clothes on the hamper? Why aren't my kids putting the toys away, the right way, the way that I've told them to? is it that they're just different they're organizing different their brain is working differently than yours and how can you adapt your home and your solutions to complement their styles so that's it today thank you guys so much for tuning in i really hope you enjoyed again if you have no idea what i'm talking about i'm talking about the four different organizing styles based on if you're a visual organizer or you like hidden organizing solutions and if you're you're a visual organizer or you like hidden organizing solutions and if

you are detailed or you like simple organizing solutions and you can find out your own organizing style for free it's a free test i'm not going to ask for your email i'm not going to spam you i'm totally i hate that crap it's all just a free content for you and a free ebook and you can find that at clutterbug.com so go to wwww clutterbug.com you can take the test download the free ebooks and check out all the free printables that I have. So thank you guys again and I will see you next time.