Why a professional organizer can’t help you

Yeah, I’ve googled “Help getting organized” before, too. The piles, the closets, the dirty corners, the cruft of living a full life all feels like too much to handle on my own. Surely someone has figured out a better way, a way that would help me get organized, stay on top of life, and not get overwhelmed anymore.

Turns out what google usually suggests are businesses that we can pay to come into our homes and organize everything for us. I’ve known a few ladies who did that, either for fun for friends or even as a small business.

Is that the solution that will work for you? It’s not the solution that would work for me. I know even though I’ve never tried it. The only reason I know is that I’ve come to realize WHY I wanted a professional organizer. It seems like a magical answer: Let someone else come deal with my clutter and my mess.

We assume that if everything was straightened out then we’d be able to keep it that way.

Will a professional organizer help?

Maybe you’ve never had it together before, never been organized before, so you don’t even know what it looks like to get there. You think, though, that if you did get organized – or, better, if someone else came in and made you organized – that you’d be a totally different person moving forward.

It’s just your stuff holding you back. If your situation, if your stuff was different, you’d be different. Sorry. That’s not true. Your stuff isn’t cluttered and disorderly on its own accord. The stuff is not sabotaging you.

I’ve never had a professional organizer come in and set things up for me, but I have set myself up with an organized system.

Systems aren’t the solution

I’ve sorted papers, organizing them with crafted, intelligent filing systems. I then did not maintain said systems.

I’ve set up launch pads and office cupboards. I like them, but they take work to maintain. The dirty little secret professional organizers don’t tell you: The more systems you put in place, the more you have to keep up with.

I’ve organized my spice drawer many times. Sometimes alphabetically, sometimes according to higher use. It wasn’t the classification system that made a difference – it was whether or not I put things away, right away, in the designated space that made a difference. If I did that, it really didn’t matter if there was no order to the spice drawer. It was useable and neat.

I’ve wanted a clean room and so spent not only a full day or two thoroughly cleaning, but even taken a weekend to paint and get new bedding. I changed the light fixture to really upgrade the space. And cleaning my room still took work afterwards. Unless I continually, actively, kept it up, the beautiful and orderly room devolved quickly.

Be your own organizer

A prettier, orderly room didn’t make the process of keeping it orderly any easier. All the habits that made it chaotic and cluttered in the first place were still there, bringing me back to my own personal equilibrium – which, at the time, was messy.

Entropy is real.

Our situations don’t change who we are.

That’s not to say that we don’t need help getting organized. Help is often needed. We just need to look in the right place. The real problem isn’t the stuff or the situation. The real problem is us.

There is no quick or magic solution to poor habits and bad attitudes. There is no easy button to replace them. It takes time and effort – but it’s effort that is totally worth it.

Real help getting organized

I know because I’ve put the effort in AND I still have to keep the effort up. There is no finish line or status achievement of being organized – it’s actually a learned way of living and managing stuff and responsibilities.

Anyone can learn it. Slowly, bit by bit, you can reclaim order in your home. But more importantly and firstly, you can reclaim order in your attitude about your home.

Baby steps, not total life makeovers imported from someone else’s work, will work over time.

Check out my free workshop on baby steps here:

Work on baby steps in August in Convivial Circle with Baby Step Bingo – a fun game with prizes and camaraderie that will give you visible progress and help you notice that progress.