Neglect. Stress. Joy. Health. Family. Work. Money. Prosperity. Opportunity. Travel. Celebrations.
All of these factor into the full picture of the state of organization and clutter in your home.
As a professional organizer, my life is no exception. Many people I meet assume that my home is pristine and organized at all times. The reality is different. I’m a regular human too, one who also experiences times when perfectly folded socks become far less important than other things going on in my life.
Organization doesn’t mean having a perfect photo-shoot ready house at all times. True organization means we have taken the time to understand ourselves, what we need our environments to be like in order to have them best support us. We have identified our priorities and developed systems and organization plans that take that understanding of our needs, preferences, and priorities into account.
This year of my life has been rife with moments to push organizing tasks to the back burner, which in my case also means pushing aspects of my business to the backburner - all despite the best laid plans!
I started out this year with every intention to FINALLY write a deeply comprehensive workbook outlining my method and all of the nuances I find invaluable for helping people along their organization journey. I worked out a detailed outline with deadlines for the different sections with my assistant. We had a strong start to the process. I knocked out some big sections right off the bat in line with the schedule we set…and then I did nothing with it for months.
It was disappointing to me that I didn’t meet an expectation I had set for myself. Sitting with that disappointment is wildly uncomfortable and easily provokes feelings of guilt and shame. After many years of living and learning, I no longer leap to berating myself for failing to meet an expectation. Instead, I pause to take stock of what was going on for me that made that expectation less important than what I actually spent my time and energy on. I encourage my clients to do the same when they are hard on themselves for letting the bathroom get a little messy or taking over a week to put their clean laundry away. Failing to meet a self-set expectation is the best time to reexamine our current needs and priorities.
In my case, it was so obvious that I had other things going on in my life that were more important than writing my workbook. In late October 2022, my husband and I started working with a fertility specialist. In early 2023, we’d figured out what pharmaceutical cocktail I best responded to and I was dealing with all of the many symptoms that resulted from 1) the meds 2) the stress and 3) having a “normal” hormone cycle that included regularly ovulating for the first time in my life. The physical side effects were challenging on their own, but the emotional and mental health swings literally made me feel like a different person. Turns out, it is incredibly hard to write about important methodical and emotional stuff like organization when your own brain is trying to stay above water. To top it all off, taking care of myself by eating well, exercising, sleeping enough, and taking my regular medications and supplements was more important than ever to increase the chances of success on our fertility journey.
Thus, writing my workbook got pushed to the back of my mind. All of my mental energy was spent on taking care of myself and reminding myself that the depressive thoughts and feelings I was experiencing were due to the meds and not myself or the state of my life. I still saw my current clients and responded to emails, but all feeble attempts at keeping up with blogging, my newsletter, and social media, not to mention writing the workbook, fell by the wayside. And to be very candid, so did folding my clothes! Instead of diligently folding my folded items, most of this year has seen me dropping unfolded lounge clothes in the lounge clothes drawer, exercise tops in the exercise tops drawer, and tossing all of my unfolded underwear in the underwear bin in my drawer.
I often share with clients that whether or not my underwear is folded is my own personal bellwether for how I’m doing in life. When things are good, happy, stable, exciting, easy, my underwear is folded and arranged in a color gradient that I find visually delightful and encouraging. It brightens my already bright day to open my drawer and see my pretty undies all folded and nice. When times are stressful, sad, harried, tired, low-energy, etc. that same underwear is just thrown in the bin. To be very clear, both of these states of folding are morally neutral - neither one is better than the other. In fact, both are excellent systems of organization that let me find what I need easily and keep my things orderly.
I like sharing that example with clients to help absolve them of the guilt and shame they may feel around their own organizing “failures”. It’s important to realize that neatly folded clothes and tidy bathrooms just aren’t as important as feeding our kids, making sure we get enough sleep, getting our bills paid, or tending to our health. An organization system is intended to be supportive of those other, more important priorities, not an additional burden for us to endure.
I’ve spent a lot of time re-learning that lesson for myself this year. I am so incredibly fortunate to be able to have afforded these out-of-pocket fertility treatments and even more lucky and grateful to be able to say they worked. I found out in late May that I was pregnant. I’m now 21 weeks along, expecting our first child in February. Needless to say, I swapped my fertility symptoms for pregnancy symptoms! Most have been routine and nothing to worry about, but some have taken more effort and medical attention to address. So the deprioritization of work continues.
I am dipping my toe back in here and there, but I have not been taking on new in-person clients, both because my energy and capacity are diminished, and also to prepare for taking some time off after the birth. The most important thing right now isn’t getting this workbook done or crushing revenue goals. It’s taking care of my daughter by taking care of myself. It’s doing all the research to prepare to become a parent. It’s intentionally acquiring all of the stuff needed to comfortably care for a baby. And that’s beyond okay.
I hope you can take my own example with you as you navigate your own moments of unmet expectations and the subsequent guilt or shame that might come with them. Please be easy with yourselves and remember that perfection is a myth and not the goal. Easing our suffering, reducing our stress, gaining more free time, supporting our true needs…these are more important.