Happy New Year! Let's Get Organized!

Happy New Year! Have you resolved to get organized in 2020? Well, you've come to the right place! What place is that? A non-judgmental place where you are encouraged to be yourself, build on what comes naturally and consider what works for you rather than one-size-fits-all storage solutions.

If it's your first time visiting, you might want to start out by taking the personal and organizational styles quiz. It will only take a few minutes and it will help you to determine which personal and organizational styles rise to the top for you. Though the names are far from technical and scientific, I'm very serious about helping people get organized. I just don't think it's necessary to check your sense of humor at the door in order to make that happen.

When I came up with these names, I was working with elementary school students, and so the names needed to be non-threatening and kid-friendly. As I began to talk with adults about getting organized, I found that they appreciated the silliness of the names, perhaps because the silly names made an overwhelming task seem less daunting. And so the names stuck. And you'll see them here a lot.

The first three (I love stuff, I love to be busy, I need to see it) are what I call the personal styles while the second three (drop and run, cram and jam and I know I put it somewhere) are the organizational styles. Hmmm....color-coding...any guess which personal style is mine?

Personal styles are the way we naturally function -- a part of our personality. Organizational styles are the methods we naturally use when we aim to organize -- unchecked, however, they're more like obstacles than organizational resource. The key to organizational progress lies at the intersection of our personal styles and our organizational styles.

Pixel2013 via Pixabay

When it comes to organizing, there will always be things we cannot control: the size of our living space, the amount of available storage space and the number of hours we have in a day. Sure, we can move, build on and pull all-nighters...but do we really want to devote our entire lives to getting ourselves organized?

Not me!

What we can do is impact those uncontrollable variables -- and even maximize them -- by using our styles to our advantage. 

So let's get started. Tomorrow, I'll talk about three ways to use STYLE (all caps for a reason) to enhance your styles and your organizational systems.

Happy New Year. Let's do this.