I'm a Clutterbug

This week on the podcast, we are talking about Clutterbugs and the idea that each of us has a different organizational style that can be categorized as one of four different kinds of bugs: the cricket, the bee, the butterfly, and the ladybug. When I took the quiz, it said I was a “Bee”, and when I read the description, I felt like it described me to a “T”. For instance, Bees are generally very organized, but they also like to keep their tools and supplies close by in plain view, and if they are working on a project, they will keep all the supplies out until they are done. The bad side of that is that if the job doesn’t get done right away, Bees tend to make piles of things to put away later, and those piles can be a big, hot mess.

Yes, it really does get this messy sometimes.

Organizing has been an ongoing project of mine for years. I am constantly organizing something, so there’s always some part of my house that’s a total mess. Right now, I feel like my whole house is a total mess! In December and January, we remodeled our living room and dining room. We had to move everything out to the garage so the contractors could rip out our carpet, install hardwood floors, update our baseboards, install crown molding, and paint. And while all that was going on, we were caring for a sick friend and so had also emptied one of our bedrooms to make room for his belongings. That meant I had stacks and boxes all over my house, too.

We had 3 rooms of stuff stored in the garage.

Bees make lots of piles until they're ready to file things.

Some of my displaced craft supplies.

It’s hard to get motivated to put a whole house back together. It’s almost like moving, so I’ve decided to give it a “moving” type of approach. Rather than just bring everything back and put it back where it was, I’ve decided to go through my belongings box by box and decide what to keep and what I can give away or trash. And like moving, I’m being a bit selective about which boxes I open first.  Do I really need to open the box of knick-knacks that was on the top shelf in the hallway closet before I sort through that box of linens? Probably not, so boxes and tasks are done by priority, and that way I can do it a little at a time. Taking on one box or one small task at a time is a lot easier to manage than putting away all of the books or setting up the whole guest bedroom. So that’s what I’ve been doing, tackling one small task at a time whenever I can. It might take me a little longer to get it done, but I’ve already lived with this stuff in my garage for nearly 5 months, so what difference will one more week make?

One of the handy tips I picked up from the Clutterbug website was to stop worrying about finding the “perfect” storage solution. One of the Bee’s traits is to pile things up while trying to find the best way to store them; we also like to wait for better timing to put things away. That is a bad habit of mine that I am trying to break! I have piles and piles of paperwork that I “mean to” do something with, but haven’t. Sometimes the relevance expires before I get it filed or put away. To fix that, I’m using a couple of different techniques that I’ve learned from Totally Tiffany and another that was inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

I’ll start with Tiffany. Tiffany Spaulding launched her company, Totally Tiffany in 2003, and since then, she has been dedicated to producing innovative scrapbooking and craft storage products as well as providing free, no strings attached, virtual classes on getting organized.  I took her online classes about 10 years ago or so when I purchased a “Scrap Rack”, one of her early products. The storage system was awesome, but it was her organization technique that really makes it work. For starters, she broke down and categorized almost all scrapbooking supplies into four simple categories: alpha-numeric, date-specific, themes, and colors. By sorting all of my stuff into those four categories (in that order), I was able to arrange six tubs of stickers and embellishments into one neatly assembled Scrap Rack. Even more importantly, I can quickly find just about any item I might be looking for. Bear stickers…got that! It’s in the “Animal” theme category. Working on a page and need something pink? I can find that, too, because everything pink that doesn’t have a specific category is right there in the pink section.

One tub of craft supplies that I loaded into the Scrap Rack.

More of my craft supplies.

The Scrap Rack with my supplies in it.

I can even apply this technique to other things in my house. My closet uses a similar system, but instead of “themes” and “colors”, my clothes are sorted by type.  Sleeveless shirts here, then short sleeves, then long sleeves, followed by t-shirts. The pants are sorted by length and use: yoga pants, sweats, capris, jeans, dress slacks, and so forth.

Shirts organized in my closet.

Another key point that Tiffany teaches is the “touch it once” principle, which I’ve mentioned in the podcast coming up this week.  I go back to this concept all the time because it just makes so much sense. The idea is that you should never wait to put away new items you bring into your house (or to put away items after you use them). In her example, Tiffany uses ice cream. If you go to the store and you buy ice cream, what do you do with it when you bring it home? You put it away in the freezer – immediately! You don’t set it on the counter while you make dinner, walk the dog, or do a load of laundry. You simply put it away. It takes two seconds and it’s done. That’s what you should do with everything you bring into the house. Bring in the mail, sort it, and put it in its appropriate place: the bills go in the bill file, the correspondence goes in the correspondence file, the junk mail goes in the trash. You should never leave it in a stack somewhere to deal with later. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way more times than I can count. Bills that I thought I paid were found months later at the bottom of a pile. Correspondence was ignored. Opportunities were lost. But by handling things once and only once, to put them in their correct place, documents can be found, bills can be paid, and you won’t accidentally buy the same craft punch twice because you’ll know that you already have one of those.

My last trick to organize comes from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but it was my daughter Christen who pointed it out to me. Several years ago, she introduced me to the Eisenhower Matrix, which is a very simple time-management method that stems from a quote by President Eisenhower (read the quote here). The basic idea is that you categorize your objectives or tasks by their urgency and importance. It’s a very effective technique for prioritizing tasks, and, as Christen also pointed out, it can be adapted to other sorting methods. She recently used it to prioritize her crafting projects, and that prompted me to use it for prioritizing my household remodeling “recovery”. 

For my restoration projects, I set up the matrix to differentiate the tasks I needed to manage myself versus what my husband could tackle. These were arrayed across the grid so that they were further divided between tasks that could be done by one person versus tasks that would require help. Within each quadrant, I also sorted the items by urgency and whether another task had to be completed first. The final list looked like this:

My remodeling matrix.

I had the good fortune of a friend stopping by to help me unbox books one day this week, and Christen is often quick to offer suggestions or ideas on how and where to store things, so my mess is dwindling. There’s still a lot to do, though; I’m still working on my organization projects, and probably always will be. For me, organizing is always a work in progress, and I don’t think I will ever be completely satisfied with just one method…I just keep adjusting and looking for whatever is “good enough” for now, and when that technique no longer works, I’ll just have to think of something else. 

Be sure to listen to the podcast on Wednesday to hear more about the Clutterbug technique, and join the conversation on our MMC Chat Facebook group!

Download a FREE copy of an Eisenhower Matrix HERE.