One thing most* organising books tend to brush over is this – the less you have the easier it is to be organised.
Now that I have much less stuff I find it so much easier to find things because everything has a home. And it’s easier to put things away because the cupboards are half empty and there is lots of space.
But getting rid of the stuff is not easy, which is why I think many organising books tend to give it a cursory glance.
It took me about six months of concerted culling, selling and recycling and it was hard work! The only reason I managed to get there is we were moving overseas so the stuff had to go! Paying thousands of dollars for storage was a powerful motivator.
But it is much easier to do a life changing purge than to fiddle around the edges and then try to organise the remaining stuff into filing cabinets, bookshelves and cupboards. I know because I have tried both methods.
- I wrote this blog post before Marie Kondo published her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.