FOR A Fresh Start Embrace Your Next Chapter in Life
LIFE IS FULL OF CHANGES -- both expected and unexpected, self-imposed and imposed by others. I never expected to own my own business. I never expected to get separated and end up in a divorce. I didn't know I'd be living back at home for a while in my early forties (but thank goodness for Mom and Dad). Changing religions? Nope, also unexpected. I also moved to a different state, became a motor-home owner, and experienced a significant change in my work life from working with clients to working on products. In about eighteen months, a total of nine major changes took place in my life.
Changes, no matter what their nature, interrupt our lives and often require a response because these changes and transitions leave us with homes, belongings, and schedules that no longer work for us. Something is out of alignment, and we're not sure what -- often it turns out to be our surroundings, our organizing systems (how we do what we do), or our schedules. Suddenly these systems seem to work against us instead of with us, even if they once fit beautifully into our lives. What worked before will not work now. Responsibilities that didn't exist, or once belonged to someone else, now belong only to you, and you need to find ways to handle them.
Today, life is more complex than it was forty or fifty years ago, when I was growing up. The pace of change is faster. We raise a family, send our kids to college, and then welcome visits from grandchildren. We switch jobs, change careers, go back to school, and retire from one career to pursue a second career. We enjoy years with a spouse or committed partner and then find ourselves single -- whether by choice or by other circumstances. We reach an age where our parents begin to depend on us more than we depend on them and roles reverse. Some people call these seasons of life or phases of life. I call them chapters in life.
Just as a book has chapters, our lives do, too. We go through different life stages and circumstances, each of which is a chapter. We don't all have the same set of chapters, but odds are good your life is full of several different chapters. At the very least you transitioned from childhood to teenage years to adulthood, and from school to the working world. Other chapters may include marriage or a life partnership, parenthood, corporate career, self-employment, empty nesting, singleness, grandchildren, retirement, continuing education as an adult, a second career, and caregiving.
Each chapter brings new responsibilities and priorities, and you may find your values shift as well. These new circumstances often will give you a different mind-set about your "stuff" -- your belongings and your schedule and activities, and that's the key connection to organizing. Your life has changed and your attitude has changed. Now you need to reorganize your belongings and schedule to reflect those changes and fully embrace your new chapter.
As I moved through my set of life changes, it didn't occur to me to check in with my values, but a friend introduced me to her concept of "What's at your core." About ten years later, as I was receiving training as an Organizing Coach, I realized this concept was similar to some of the coaching activities I was learning about values and needs. It's important to reflect on what you value and to identify what enables you to live a satisfying, fulfilling life with integrity. Identifying your values and needs will be a useful exercise for you as well. Needs are the principles you live by- -- your personal priorities. Examples of needs are: equality, health, self-worth, spirituality, and peace. You may have some basic needs that were not getting met in your last chapter, so you'll want to start by covering the basics.
Your inspiration: a picture of your future dream space or who you're doing this for, a written explanation of why you are doing this, or an inspirational quote
Your completed Room Tour Questions for the area
Your completed Home is Not Home Without Chart
Notebook/plans
Music or an audio book
Timer, if you intend to work for a specific amount of time
Snacks, water
Boxes or plastic bins: Use plastic bins if you plan to store belongings. Use boxes for items leaving your house.
Tags, stickers, labels: It's easy to forget from one day to the next which box was for recycling and which was for donating. Always mark your boxes/bins/bags, or you'll be shaking your head when you have to relook at the items to figure out the purposes of each box.
I also suggest you bring a phone with you. If possible, avoid answering the phone while you work, but keep it nearby if you have someone who relies on you in an emergency.
Identify Your Receiving Areas
Before you start, identify where your holding areas will be. You will need a holding area for the boxes of items that are leaving your home, whether you are donating them, giving them to friends and family, or disposing of them. Some people will take the boxes directly to their cars, which makes it harder to revisit the box's contents and moves them one step closer to delivering the box to its final destination. If you forget about things in your trunk, write yourself a note on an errands pad or a sticky note, and keep it near your dashboard in plain view. Schedule a time on your calendar to make the trip.
You'll also need a holding area in each room of your home. I suggest you simply place a box labeled "Keep in (name of room)" in each room. You will fill this box with items that you have moved from other rooms in your home as you organize those rooms. You can find a specific home in the room for each item when you are ready to organize that room. This keeps you focused on one task at a time and takes the pressure off of you to find homes for everything at once, which can be overwhelming. Keep this receiving box in a room even after you finish organizing it because you will still be organizing other areas and may find new items that belong in this space. You can address these new items in the future when you fine-tune the systems in that room.
Your boxes and bins will be your companions as you organize. These temporary containers will keep your piles separate and clearly labeled so you don't need to revisit your decisions. They are also easy to stack and carry. You will need a minimum of three boxes -- keep, donate, dispose -- but it's often helpful to have more categories. If possible, have a separate and clearly labeled box or bin for these categories:
Keep in this room: You'll know what goes in this box because you've decided on the key purpose or activities for this room. If you think most of the items will stay in the room, after you've made a decision on the item, simply place it right where you found it.
Keep, but belongs elsewhere in your home: You can make one box for the entire house or one for upstairs and one for downstairs if you think a lot will be leaving the room. Distribute the contents of this box to receiving boxes in the appropriate rooms only after you've finished organizing for the day.
Donate: If possible, have a separate box for each organization you are donating to. It will save you sorting time in the future. At the very least, label each item with where you are donating it so sorting will go faster in the future.
Give to family or friends: Again, name each box or put a sticky note on the item.
Belongs to someone else: This can include borrowed items and items that belong to someone who no longer lives in the house. It is traumatic, and I'm not overstating this, for someone to throw out your things. I've heard many stories, such as a mother throwing away her daughter's coin collection. The daughter is now in her fifties and still remembers this event; plus, the daughter now tends to hold on to too many things, partly because of this incident. When you are done organizing, you can contact the owners of these items and ask them to come pick them up or offer to ship the items to them.
1. Set a small goal. I strive for three days a week, not seven or even four. I know myself. Had I said more than three, the first time I fell off the wagon, I'd never get back on. I hope to increase to four, but I'm good with three for now. It's more than zero. Make sure your expectations are realistic.
2. Roll with the unexpected. I cut myself some slack when life crises hit. My housemate went through knee replacement surgery, one and then the other, last summer. A week after the second surgery, my father suffered a heart attack and had quadruple bypass surgery. I knew that going to the gym would have burned stress, physically and mentally. But adding one more thing to my to-do list would have caused my head to explode. It's a balance, and I know myself best. If life is throwing you curve balls, live in the moment and cope as best you can, guilt free. Get back to it when life settles back to normal.
3. Remember why you're doing it. Also remember the sense of accomplishment you feel after you complete the task. It's important for me to remember how good I feel after I workout. It makes it easier for me to start. How can you keep this in front of yourself? For me, having a housemate who goes to the gym daily helped because we would talk about her workout, even when I wasn't going. I started missing that feeling, which was a strong motivation. If you don't have someone to discuss your motivation with, try motivating yourself by reflecting on a time when you felt really great about an organizing system. Write that story down and read it frequently.
4. Put it back on your calendar. If I don't plan for it, it doesn't become part of my regular day. It ends up being extra, something that I get to do if work is done and if the household is all set. I try to make the gym (i.e., me and my health) as important as the household and my business. It's not easy, but as long as the trend heads in the right direction, I'm good with that.
5. Use an accountability partner. It's okay to ask for support. My housemate helps me because I see what going to the gym does for her. A personal trainer, when I first started at the gym, got me motivated and on the right track in just a few sessions. A professional organizer could do the same for you. It doesn't have to be a long relationship. Sometimes it's useful to regularly schedule something. Other times, it's useful just to get a jump start.
As you organized for your fresh start, you likely learned some important new ways to motivate yourself. You understand yourself better now. You found some tips and techniques to stay organized, to whittle down the stuff, and to keep a household organized "enough." It would be useful to write these down or journal about them. This will help instill the ideas and get them into your memory bank for use again.
You've just started a new chapter in life, but eventually this chapter will end and you'll begin yet another chapter. Remember, change is constant, so be flexible. When that next shift happens (and hopefully it won't be for a while), you can reach for this book again and organize another fresh start for those future opportunities. The more you are aware of change, the more you can prepare for it and adjust to it.