If you find yourself struggling with HOW to get organized, it might make all the difference in the world to step back and ask, WHY get organized? You will find it easier to stay organized, if the reason why has more to do with savoring than with saving.
When you’re saving, it’s either stuff that ties you the past or prepares you for the future. Some of both is necessary, but too much can compromise your enjoyment of the present.
Savoring is about enjoying the present. When your organizing is more about savoring you save a reasonable amount of stuff to live, but it’s there to be USED, not to be arbitrarily amassed.
When organizing is built around USE, then a plan for movement is built into your organizing systems. Circulation prevents accumulation.
On the other hand, when you organize with only saving in mind, stuff piles up beyond usability. Since there’s no plan for usage and movement, the only answers lie in bigger bins, inside bigger rooms.
Eventually, you run out of space and no organizing system in the world will get you organized then.
Savoring is about setting limitations, while saving is endless. In a strange way, limitations breed freedom. Consider the opposite. The excess that comes from unlimited saving, gets in the way of enjoying your life, including all the stuff you are saving!
Quite often the key to making the switch from save to savor, is to place value on the space between items over some of the items themselves. Paths allow room for movement and use. Paths give you room to savor.
There are many theories on happiness, but they all seem to have one thing in common: focus more on enjoying the here and now. Just saving can result from living in the past and worrying about the future. When your focus is on savoring, you can still honor the past and prepare for the future, but above all, enjoy the moment.
That’s the important part. The appropriate organizing systems will follow.
Leave A Comment