Under or Over?

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash

In her book, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin explores the question of overbuying vs. underbuying. Underbuyers try to get by on as little as possible, often to the point of running out of things. Overbuyers, on the other hand, like to stock up.

When it comes to organizational supplies, I'm a recovering overbuyer. I buy organizers that interest me, even if I don't quite know what I'll use them for and I often buy things I like in multiples. Consequently, I have my own little stash of goodies in the basement. I "shop" there quite often when I'm re-working an area of my house, hoping to find that I already have something on hand that will solve whichever organizational problem I'm working on.

If I'm to be honest, though, I have much too much. Part of this is due to the fact that, back when I was teaching organizational skills to elementary school students, I used to buy containers and folders to supply the monthly organizer giveaways I ran for the kids. When I retired, I still had a stash of those things in my office closet and, not knowing for sure where my organizational advice path would lead, I took them with me. Many have been put to use, but some are still stacked, one inside the other, on shelves in my basement.

Whether you're naturally an overbuyer or an underbuyer, I think the trick is to find the middle ground. When you find an organizer that works for you, it's not a bad idea to buy an extra to keep on hand for future use. But, unless you're stocking up for a remodel or giveaways of your own, buying too much of a good thing only serves to create a new organizational issue: organizing the organizers.

Similarly, being an underbuyer isn't necessarily a bad thing, but, when it comes to organizing, it might be worth considering why this is your behavior of choice. Are all of your things organized just as you like, so you have no need to buy anything? Are you struggling to solve an organizational issue, but still on the lookout for tools that fit your styles? Do you think that good organizers need to cost a lot of money?

If you answered yes to the third question, let me assure you that the majority of the things in my basement stash cost $5 or less. (When you're buying five to seven of one organizer so that there's a winner in every classroom, you tend to go cheap). In addition, depending on what you're storing, re- purposed shoe boxes, jars and egg cartons can work just as well as more expensive shoe racks, desktop organizers and drawer dividers.

Although I love that Gretchen got me thinking about the underbuyer/overbuyer conundrum, in the end, I think whether someone is an underbuyer or an overbuyer is less important than whether or not the buying habit works. Chances are, each of us is an overbuyer in some respects (for me, it's storage, stationery and toilet paper) and an underbuyer in others.

Where's your happy medium?

Happiness Through Habits

Alexander Stein via Pixabay

For the second time in as many weeks, my Happiness Project Calendar has inspired a blog post. Last Thursday, on a page with the header "Happiness and Order," Gretchen shared this:

A few quick, easy habits will give you a greater feeling of order:

• Replace lightbulbs and empty rolls of toilet paper right away. 

• Make sure every door or drawer closes easily. 

• Throw away pens and Magic Markers as soon as they run dry.

Easy and logical, right? But, if you're like me, there are probably myriad "little things" staring you in the face every day that you keep planning to get to, but still haven't managed to tackle. Things like tossing pens and replacing lightbulbs and toilet paper are easy -- they require only a moment, and the inconvenience created by not attending to them is much greater than the expenditure of time necessary to make things right.

It's the other stuff. The frame that needs to be re-glued because it mysteriously fell off the shelf. The stack of books you know you'll never get to the bottom of, but that you haven't made time to sort through. The bedroom ceiling that really needs to be repainted. You notice them at odd times or when you're in a hurry and, since they require more than a few minutes to fix, you put them off. Meanwhile, they keep staring at you, nagging at you, exhausting you by their mere presence. After reading last Thursday's page on my Happiness Project calendar, those nagging tasks in my house did everything but jump out at me and wrestle me to the ground.

But I still didn't do them.

Gretchen's got the right idea. Why not add a new habit to those like tossing pens and replacing lightbulbs and toilet paper? Why not tackle just one of those nagging, annoying tasks every day? Okay, maybe not repainting the bedroom ceiling, but how long will it really take to reglue that frame or sort through those books? Give it Five! might not be quite enough, but I'm pretty sure fifteen minutes will do the trick.

I think I know just where to start.

Organization Extra: Clutter Reduction = Happiness

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Last spring, right around the time the semester ended, I made a trip to the library to drop off donations. Time to read was still around the corner, blockaded by papers and finals that needed to be graded, but sending an author to the library and expecting her to leave empty-handed is like sending a two-year-old to a candy store with the same expectation.

So, I went in search of books that might make worthy contributions to next semester's classes, and emerged with Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Not only am I using it next semester, but I also enjoyed every chapter.

Today's Organization Extra, "10 Tips to Beat Clutter in Less Than 5 Minutes," is from Gretchen's Happiness Project Blog, one of many goals she set and achieved in conjunction with the writing of the book.

And who knows? These tips might actually yield that rare commodity: time to read a good book.