Things undone, tend to pile up.

Have you ever been in a rush and just told yourself, “I’ll get back to it later.” Run into a room, drop an armload of things on a flat surface and dash out again, only to find that you haven’t gotten back to it. Eventually, the flat places in your life are cluttered up and you can’t find things that are important. You end up with piles of things that you feel are important but you no longer understand why.

Why do we let that happen? What causes us to create these chaos piles that end up looming over our existence? So many of us tend to lose track of time, either by banking on being able to come back and finish or just running out of it. My life has been a lot of time spent studying self examination because of depression. I found an effective treatment but since then, I have looked back on my life and how many times things have spun out of control and clutter was one of these areas. I found that I didn’t want to take an extra 5 steps to put things were they belong. I didn’t think about taking a half hour to pick up a pile and go through it, wouldn’t take half a day to clean a room or even spend a couple hours organizing my office. In my depression, I would look past the piles to the point that I wouldn’t even see the mess and it would blend Into the landscape of my life.

Now, I look around me and while it is a bit cluttered; I don’t let it get out of control. I can sit in my living room, on my corner of the couch and recognize that I need to take 20 minutes to pick up. The kitchen needs a deep clean but it is manageable and there is the side table on my side of the bed. I also have other things that need to be put away but, they aren’t stacks that are threatening to fall over and bury me in an avalanche. Part of the problem I have is the size of my space, and lack of places to organize effectively. We have been in the house for 3 years and we are still trying to make it an effective living space for us.

What if you have been living or working in a space for years? How do you get a handle on that? There was a book written by an organizer who talked about holding things and asking yourself if it brings you joy. Do you really need to ask yourself about a pile of empty cardboard boxes? How do you clean a space you are using and working in at the same time? It is an uphill battle I am afraid. I can tell you that you might be self sabotaging if you walk into the space and not take the extra 2 steps to put things away where they belong just because you can’t bring yourself to walk into the rest of the mess. A couple of ideas are as follows:

1. Defend Your Small Space Of Organization! What ever you have accomplished when you organize, commit to keeping that area that way. It is a habit to be cavalier and drop what is in your hands and run, Just Don’t! You made that space clear and organized, don’t lose it.

2. Take the time to build on your accomplishment. Moving from room to room to start new organization, tends to wear you down and when you do that, you will find things in your cleaning project that belong in the last place you worked on. Because you are in the middle of a new project, you will just drop the things you find in the last project space and run without taking the time to put them away. It will cause you to lose ground in the original accomplishment and basically send you into a cleaning spiral that gets you nowhere. If you do need to start in a second area, create organizing boxes that are labeled with the areas they will need to go to. These are similar to “Doom” boxes, in that they are boxes that need to be dealt with later.

3. “A Place For Everything And Everything In It’s Place.” Stop putting things down where they don’t belong! Take the extra steps to put that object in your hand in its place. If it doesn’t have a place, think about where it should live before you put it down. Dick Francis was an author who wrote, “He always put things in the first place he would think to look for them.” That has always stuck with me and has stood me in good stead.

4 A friend once said to me, “A job isn’t done until you have cleaned everything up.” I tend to think of that all the time now. When I am working, I try to clean up before I leave. If I can put everything away at the end of the day, if I’m not the next person to come in; who ever does will find an easy place to work in the next day. It also makes it a welcoming space for you when you come back to it. Finding a clean workspace, gives your head space to enjoy being creative. Nothing blocks up creativity more than having to clean up a mess before you can begin. Some artists like cleaning and organizing time to plan, I do not. I find a cluttered workspace a huge distraction and would prefer to have a space that is ready to go for my next project.

5. You are never too old to give yourself stars on a calendar! Keep working on it. It is difficult to see the progress you are making but everything you put away, get rid of through donation or discard or clean is gained ground. Try to keep track of every car load you donate, garbage bag you toss and closet you clean; they are your triumphs.

**Full disclaimer; for those of you who deal with or have dealt with a family member of a hoarder, this isn’t about that type of mental disorder. It is very important that everyone understands this is for those of us who live a busy, disorganized and creative lifestyle. Hoarding is a mental health issue that needs more than a creative blog about being an artist and I am in no way considered a mental health counselor, lifestyle coach or psychologist nor do I claim to be any of these.

Organizing is like dieting; don’t beat yourself up when you backslide, there is always tomorrow to start over and try again to do better. In the meantime, I found another doom box that I need to go through. See you at the thrift store!