In this post, we are tackling the second of our 5 rules of decluttering and organizing: You must own your organizing style in order to stick with your decluttering and cleaning routines. This is part of our series on Decluttering and Organizing your home. You can find the first post in the series here. Don’t forget to subscribe to have the next post in this series sent straight to your inbox. 

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I remember walking into the classroom feeling like everyone’s eyes were on me – even though they probably weren’t. The night before I had decided that I was going to make over myself. New Year, New Me, right?

But, walking in, I felt all sorts of self-conscious. It was that feeling like my clothes didn’t fit right on my skin. 

Have you ever felt this way? When we try to shove ourselves in the box of a category created by someone else, we often feel uncomfortable, sad, and depressed. We feel this way because we feel shame that we don’t measure up. And, then we feel either sadness over the shame or anger that it’s there in the first place. 

Now, the world says that if you feel this shame, anger, or sadness, it proves that the category – or the expectation of fitting into it – was wrong. We now have a sentiment that says we must reject all categories because they may trigger these feelings. 

But this is a lie. 

We all have a command to steward our things well. 

Like we talked about in our podcast on order, our God is a God of order. And, he is a God that commands us to steward our things well. He commands us to put our own lives in order. This means we should work hard at cleaning, organizing, decluttering, and putting our lives in order. We work as though we were working for God because we are. 

Sometimes though, we can feel like my middle school self when we first set out on the task of cleaning our homes. It just doesn’t seem to fit right on our skins. So, we chalk it up to personality and say that we are just messy and a little disorganized. No big deal, right? 

If we are commanded to steward our lives well, we need to change our perspective on this. Even if we may feel shame, anger, or sadness, we still have a command that we must reach. The shame shouldn’t lead us down a road that amounts to despair and giving up. It should just help us realize that we have a problem, and that we need to problem-solve to find a solution. 

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You may feel a little imposter syndrome checking off the box that you are an organized, minimalist, have-it-all-together person. That does not mean that you have been given a pass to toss it all to the wind and just let chaos rule your home. 

As you might imagine if you’ve been reading my posts for a while, there is another way. A more balanced way. A third option between these two extremes. The world paints in polarizing dichotomies, but we have been given a path to freedom that walks right through the middle of them. 

We all need to steward our lives well, which means that we need to practice regular cleaning, decluttering, and organizing. Even if we don’t enjoy it. Even if we don’t feel good at it. Even if it feels like we are putting on clothes that don’t fit right. 

The best part is we don’t just have to grin and bear it. We can grow to love doing these regular cleaning routines and eventually grow into feeling like we are the person who keeps our lives under control. 

But how? How do we get to this point? 

We all can fulfill this command in unique ways through your style

Though I don’t think we get a free pass to be messy if we are disorganized by nature (and a little bit of nurture), we do have to understand that there are different ways and levels of being organized. On social media, we may find ourselves looking longingly at the color-coded boxes with perfectly cute labels that amount to organized aesthetic perfection. (Or you may find yourself thinking, “Who would ever want to go through all that work for a space no one but me will see?”) It’s important to recognize that just like with a clothing style, there are organizational styles. Some of us will find joy in making our closets cute and perfect with all the boxes, hangers, and shoe holders. Others of us will be much more utilitarian with a goal to just get things in a place where you can find them easily. 

The truth is both of those ways of organizing equal someone who has put their life in order and is stewarding their things well. 

Decluttering and organizing means that we get rid of what we don’t want and we have a place for everything that we do want. 

Your style can be cute, rustic, farmhouse chic, bare-bones, utilitarian, or scrappy. It doesn’t really matter because your home is your own and should represent you. Leaning into your organizing style will help give sticking power to decluttering and organizing. This means that once you have finished decluttering, organizing, and cleaning your home, it will actually stay (mostly) decluttered and organized. 

Rule #2: Own your organizing style. 

In this series, we are going through 5 rules to live by when decluttering and organizing. After you figure out the why behind your clutter, the next step is to figure out what your organizing style is. 

Honestly, this is probably the most helpful tip for me! I always loved looking at different organizing books, seeing the color-coded clothes and the neat and tidy boxes all stacked together. Everything is out of sight and out of mind. 

But, for me, if something was out of sight, it literally was out of my mind. I would look through my closet six months later and say, “That’s where that thing was!” Meanwhile, I had already ordered a replacement that had been living on the counter because I didn’t know the best way to organize it. 

The problem here? 

I was not accepting my organizing style. Acheson, author of The Clutter Fix, says that we all fall into one type of organizing style that is a combination of two factors. You can think of these factors as a spectrum, with people falling generally on one side or the other. 

The first spectrum is either everything-out or nothing-out. An everything-out person would say that they need to see all of their belongings or they will forget about them. (Ahem, me.) A nothing-out person likes to have everything in boxes or behind closed doors. There can be disorganization problems with both, and neither one is a better option. But, you need to work with the style that you have. I would try to organize like a nothing-out person and then I found that I could never find anything! So, when I changed my organizing style, it began to work much better for me. 

The second spectrum is either simple or detailed. Someone who likes simple organization likes to throw everything into one area and not sort out the types. So for instance, if you had office supplies like pens, pencils, and markers, a simple organizer would just throw all of those in one bin because they are all writing utensils. A detailed organizer would like to separate each type into different categories and then place them in a smaller container. (Normally, that smaller container would be in a larger one that houses them all to make it nice and neat.) I find that I am more of a detailed organizer. 

As I said before, you are normally a combination of the two. So you could be a detailed everything-out organizer or a detailed nothing-out organizer. Knowing this helps to tailor your organizing systems to match the way your brain works. As with any new habit, you want the system of your habit to be as simple as possible so that you begin to implement your habit consistently. 

Most organizing systems that you see pictures of online are detailed, nothing-out organizers. They sport color-coded systems for everything from shoes to office supplies with separate containers labeled precisely for each item. I would use a system like this consistently for about three days and then begin to just pile everything in a container. Then, I would forget what was under the lid of said container, and when I needed to find that thing, rush to the store. 

Over time, I’ve realized that I am an everything-out detailed organizer. I like to see what I have, but I like the places I store it to be separated by type. So in my laundry room, I have an open container where I store everything related to the laundry. Then, I have mason jars and other open containers in the big containers where I’ve separated out different cleaners and other items related to doing the laundry. Seeing everything helps me to put it back in place. 

What is your organizing style?

The first step you have to do is figure out what type of style you are. You can look at the pictures and graphics above to try to place yourself in the right quadrant. You can also ask yourselves these questions to figure it out: 

1. Do I tend to forget about things that I have if I can’t see them? If so, you are probably an everything-out organizer. 
2. Does too much visual clutter in closets make it feel messy even if everything has a home? If so, you are probably a nothing-out organizer. 
3. Do I hate digging around for a specific item in a box? If so, you are probably a detailed organizer. 
4. Do I struggle to put things away if I have to sort it out into a specific type? Would I prefer to just throw everything in one big box even if I have to sort through it later? (Like sorting out crayons and markers or sorting through different types of toys while you’re putting them away.) If so, you are probably a simple organizer. 

No organizing style is better or worse than the next. Your organizing style just is. You want to get to the point that organizing and putting away your belongings is second nature. So, you need to figure out the way that you can make that process as easy on yourself as possible. And, as pleasing to you as possible. 

This is why, if you are a nothing-out person, it’s worth it to buy the boxes and sort and label everything. If you do this, you will enjoy your home so much more which will probably make it a lot easier to want to keep everything picked up and put away. 

This is also why, if you are an everything-out person, you’ve struggled with normal decluttering advice. Most of the Pinterest eye candy is created by nothing-out, detailed organizers. You probably feel like you’ve tried on clothes that don’t fit right if you try to shove yourself in that category. Because of that, you have probably tried to get organized and then failed because it just didn’t work. 

Implementing Your Organizing Style

When you are just beginning to go through the decluttering process, it’s helpful to do a big purge. You can pull everything out in your house and go through it room by room or type by type in one big decluttering session. Or you can spread the process out over several weeks or months choosing to do one drawer at a time. 

Then. get the right tools for your organizing style. You may need big boxes or little boxes, clear boxes or cloth and wood baskets. Whatever you’ve decided, work on implementing that in your home, it will make it so much easier to keep your house decluttered. 

Just remember the 2 cardinal rules of organizing: (1) You should have a home for everything you want (and you should get rid of everything you don’t want). And (2) This ‘home’ works best if it is labeled – so everyone in your house knows that this is where it goes – and if it has a container. Boxes and bins work wonders for containing your mess. This will help these places to stay organized because everything isn’t getting mixed together every time you open up that closet. 

It will also clue you into when the clutter might be taking hold again. If you see your bins, boxes, shelves, and cabinets start to get full to bursting, you might need to go through and do a quick decluttering of that area. 

What’s your organizing style? You comment below, and let me know what you think. Subscribe to get the next post sent directly to your inbox. You can also share this post with a friend to help jumpstart your decluttering journey. 

Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.