If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I write about style in two different contexts: our personal and organizational styles (our organizing "defaults") and the STYLE process: Start with successes, Take small steps, Yes, it has a home, Let it go! and Easy upkeep.
The first four are pretty self-explanatory -- we know what successes and small steps are, and we expect organizing to require us to put things away and de-clutter. But what, exactly is "easy upkeep"?
Easy upkeep is the place we get to when we have created organizational systems that work for us. Our belongings have homes that fit our styles and those homes make sense to us, which makes it easy (relatively speaking) to keep clutter to a minimum. We’ve let go of the things that we don’t need, and learned to utilize the space we have in an efficient way. The things we use often are easily accessible and the things we need to access less frequently are stored in the out-of-the-way places we don't mind digging into on an occasional basis.
Did you notice that perfection and perpetually clutter-free surfaces were nowhere in that description? Easy upkeep is not magic, nor does it mean we stop working at staying organized. It just means things get easier.
Once upon a time, I thought I'd get my happy ending -- a perfectly organized house that I could maintain effortlessly. I dreamed of the day when I'd find homes for everything important enough to keep -- homes that fit my personal and organizational styles -- making de-cluttering a thing of the past.
You might have noticed that's nowhere in the description either. And you might be wondering why. (I know I was).
Staying organized is a continuous process because life is a continuous process. If we never brought anything new into our homes, we could (perhaps) maintain the organizational status quo. But life changes bring organizational changes, which makes staying organized a balancing act. Even if we're really good at practicing one in/one out (getting rid of something old every time we acquire something new), it's inevitable that some of the things we bring in will require different spaces and systems than the things we get rid of.
And that's not always bad. When my mom passed away and my dad downsized to move closer to us, I acquired some furnishings from my parents' house. They didn't fit neatly into any space at first. I needed to find them homes, which also led to me getting rid of some of my things. This required planning and reconfiguring that was, in the end, worth the effort involved. Still, it wasn't an even exchange and things got complicated (one might also say "cluttered" or "disorganized"), to say the least.
Changes like these tend to have a trickle-down effect that makes us wonder if we'll ever see organization again, let alone easy upkeep, but even smaller changes can keep us on our organizational toes. A simple trip to the grocery store can leave us wondering where to put the new things until the old ones are used up.
But once we know how we organize best and what tools work for us, it's easier to arrive at workable solutions. Clutter becomes a temporary state of affairs instead of a pile we can't even imagine climbing out of, and we instinctively know which things to put in which places because we've planned our organizational systems around our instincts.
And that's what's at the heart of easy upkeep. It's easy because we chose our tools and systems based on what works for us, but it still requires upkeep. When all the systems make sense, and we have time to use them, organization is something we can do with relative ease.
And that's as close as we get to a happy ending. Organizationally speaking.
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