To a consistently disorganized person, getting and staying organized is an ongoing process. If you struggle with figuring out how to go about getting organized, it helps to have a definition, an end goal, of what you are trying to do.
I define “being organized” as giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
Let’s break that down a bit:
Giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
Giving yourself access means it does not magically happen.
When you need your car keys as you walk out the door, they don’t magically appear in the bowl at the door. Someone had to put them there.
That someone would be you.
Be nice to yourself. Put systems in place so that you are the one keeping yourself organized.
Giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
To have access to something means that you can find it, touch it, or use it. Whatever access means to you for that particular item.
Having your car keys in a bowl on a side table at the front door is giving yourself access to those keys.
You would not have access if they were located in a box in the garage.
Location is everything.
Giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
Sometimes in organizing, it’s difficult to separate things into the two piles – what you need and what you don’t need.
The things you don’t need often cover up and hide the things you do need in the moment.
An example would be again looking for your keys in that bowl by the door. You wouldn’t be able to find them if stacks of unopened mail are covering the bowl.
You don’t need unopened mail as you head out the door, but you do need the car keys.
Giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
Timing is crucial and extremely important in designing your system.
Thinking about when you need something, when you need to have access to it, is as important as how you give yourself access to it.
I need my keys to my car when I head out the door. Taking that into account, I decided to place a bowl by the front door so I could have access to them when I needed them the most – when I was leaving the house.
Giving yourself access to what you need when you need it.
That’s the best definition of being organized that I could come up with that made sense to me.
Keep that definition in mind as you develop your own personal organizing system. It will help you make decisions a little more easily.