Maybe this sounds familiar. You’re ready to get organized. (And you mean R-E-A-D-Y.) Quite frankly you’ve had it with all the clutter in your home and you’d like it gone right NOW, thank you very much. But when you look around and take-in all that needs to be done, your desire to get organized vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared. Instead of feeling inspired, you feel overwhelmed.
If you’ve ever felt this way, my friend you are not alone. Feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of getting organized can be caused by a number of things—the cluttered look of the space, the perceived enormity of the task at hand, and even guilt about all the clutter. But most of all, you feel overwhelmed because of the gap between where you are and where you want to be. This “gap” is the project called “organize my home.”
When you think about the project “organize my home,” you see the entire project. It’s all those unknown and uncomfortable steps in the gap between where you are now and the organized home of your dreams that ties your stomach in knots. So here’s a simple fact to keep in mind next time: you can’t do a project; you can only do steps. Let me clarify a bit.
What’s the difference between projects and steps?
Well, a project is any task that requires two or more action steps to complete. Preparing chili for dinner (believe it or not) is a project, based on this definition. A step, on the other hand, is a single action that moves you in the direction of a completed project. Chopping onions is a step.
So you can’t really do the project “make chili”; but you can chop onions, sauté them, brown hamburger, stir in tomatoes and chili beans, measure seasonings, pour spices into the pot, and simmer for 30 minutes. In a nutshell, you can do the steps involved in making a pot of chili, and at the end of all these steps you have a tasty dinner for you and your family. (Yum.)
Why is this important?
Inherently you know that making a pot of chili requires a series of steps. You’ve made chili before or perhaps your Mom made chili for you when you were a child. You’ve come to accept that making chili requires a series of steps…and no one feels badly about it. You pull out the cookbook, make a list of ingredients, shop for your ingredients, and step-by-step you make your chili.
When you understand that organizing is a project made up of a series of steps, you let go of a lot of unrealistic expectations. You recognize that while you can’t “do the project” you can do steps that move you forward. And this feels much, much better.
Putting the Plan Into Action
1. Select a project.
Any project will do…but the key is to pick just one project and forget about all the others. Give yourself permission to focus your time and attention on the one project you choose. Think of it this way: There’s no sense thinking about tomorrow night’s chicken while you’re cooking today’s chili. Right? So why think about the basement while you’re organizing your kitchen. The basement will be there when the kitchen is done.
2. Break Your Project Into Small Sub-Projects.
Let’s go back to the example of preparing a meal. The sub-projects for making chili are to decide what you want to cook, make a list of ingredients, shop for the ingredients, and finally, step-by-step prepare your chili. Apply this same thinking to organizing. Let’s say the project you selected in step one is your kitchen. This project could consist of sub-projects such as organize the pantry, drawers, cupboards, refrigerator, freezer, and so on. Remember those overwhelmed feelings we were talking about in the beginning? If you focus solely on your refrigerator this seems very doable and not so overwhelming. Wouldn’t you agree?
3. Select a sub-project and get started.
Just as you selected your first project, now it’s time to select a sub-project. Once you have your sub-project, think about the steps required to move you forward. Keep in mind that it isn’t necessary to figure out every single step of the project before you start and you don’t need to go into great detail with the individual steps. Trying to do this just makes you feel even more overwhelmed.
Let’s go back to our chili dinner example. When you decide you are going to have chili for dinner, you don’t need to decide which brand of chili beans to use at that time. Instead, you add “chili beans” to your shopping list. The decision about the specific brand can be made while you’re at the grocery store and have more information available to you. For example, is your favorite brand in stock? Do you have a coupon for another brand? Are there any tasty-looking chili beans on sale? All of these factors weigh-in on which can of beans you put in your cart…and ultimately into your pot of chili.
The same holds true with an organizing project. You don’t have to have every single detail worked out before you start organizing. The details, such as which container you’ll use to organize your spices, for example, become clearer as you move through the organizing process. The important thing is to think in terms of steps…and then get busy taking one of them!
So…I have one final question for you. What action are you going to take as a result of reading this article? Are you going to make a pot of chili, or are you going to identify one step that will move you forward on your quest for a more organized home and life? I say, let’s do both!
