Neat Does NOT Equal Organized!

I had an incident with my wonderful husband Friday, whom I will try to embarrass as little as necessary in this post… let's just say it involved a lost car registration sticker. (I love you, honey!) But it was very time-consuming and annoying for both of us. He is someone who fortunately is very neat and tidy, but then things like this happen, so…

It is very possible to be super-neat but not be organized. If you stash items in a box, drawer, bag, tray, or other container, it may look terrific but it is NOT organized because you can't find anything when you need it. In the organizing industry there is a great deal of association with the word "neat," such as TV shows and names of businesses (and I do love the word!), but unfortunately the word sidesteps a big myth about true organization.

It's like having a beautiful shiny sportscar that, when you open the hood, has a dirty and broken engine. Looks great, doesn't run. True organization requires functional systems that allow you to find things efficiently and know what you have. (See my previous post regarding Form vs. Function for more) Form must be secondary to function.

Stashing usually is caused by delaying decisions, so if you can, catch yourself doing this and make decisions about the items right then and there. If you MUST stash (because your mother-in-law is coming over unexpectedly in 5 minutes), use a container that you really need for something else, like your everyday laundry basket, so you will be forced to clean it out very shortly afterward.

Do you have stashes, and are they stealing time from your life when you can't find your stuff?

(I hope you enjoyed this encore presentation of a previous post from a while back… I thought my newer readers would enjoy it while I am doing some extensive traveling. Thanks!)

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