How Mindful Organizing Can Declutter Your Life Physically, Mentally, and Emotionally
Photo credit: Paico Oficial
Are you stressed out about your massive to-do list?
Have several yet-to-be-completed projects on the go?
Feeling obligated to respond to everyone vying for your attention?
Battling all the distractions coming at you at breakneck speed?
Overwhelmed by the clutter in your home, workspace, and head?
I’ve got a solution for my fellow multi-passionate go-getters:
Mindful Organizing
Two words you’re familiar with, but perhaps not linked together.
Many people see mindfulness as something you do interdependent of other activities. While we can all agree that yoga and meditation have amazing health benefits, this approach focuses on other activities.
Organizing mindfully is about being present to your situation and emotional state so that you can make informed organizing decisions. With more control of your schedule, systems, energy, and space, you can bring more of your creative ideas, projects, and passions to life and thrive.
To further explain what Mindful Organizing is, how to do it, why it matters, and How I can help, read my answers to the most common questions I get asked as an organizer, educator, and mindset mentor.
1. What is Mindful Organizing?
If mindfulness is being present to what’s unfolding around you without judgment, and being organized is having the strategies, structures, and systems in place to help you thrive, together they are a powerful combination.
Mindful organizing combines reflective practice with concrete action to achieve lasting results.
Being mindful while organizing means paying close attention to what’s getting in the way of you bringing more ideas, projects, and passions to life. It's about transforming the mental and physical clutter that holds you back into clarity so that you can take intentional action.
Organizing while being mindful means deciding what adds value, utility, and joy to your life, removing all the things that do not, so that you don’t waste your precious time, energy, space, and money on things that add stress to your life.
2. What are the benefits of Mindful Organizing?
For those of us leading robust, busy lives, it’s easy to feel disorganized and all over the place. Overwhelm and stress are all too common for us multi-passionate A-types.
The good news is that Mindful Organizing can help you feel more in control of your schedule, systems, space, and mindset so you can thrive.
Mindfulness has been proven to help relieve stress, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate emotional health challenges.
Organizing has been proven to relieve stress, increase productivity, improve sleep, increase happiness, and produce positive feelings both psychologically and spiritually.
Mindful Organizing helps you gain more control of your life so that you can focus on what matters most right now.
Brain Science tells us that we can change our neural pathways (connected nerves with electrical impulses that control our actions), but we must be present to make any change.
3. What’s involved in Mindful Organizing?
To help facilitate Mindful Organizing, I’ve developed the T.U.D.O.S. Technique (yes, my last name works well!), a simple 5-step method that combines mindfulness awareness, collaborative decluttering, and hands-on organizing. It’s designed to help you be more productive, creative, and confident in your life.
Step 1: THINK - the “T” in T.U.D.O.S. is the mindfulness piece where you ask yourself why you want to get organized, what’s holding you back, what patterns must shift, and how you want to feel afterwards.
Step 2: UNCOVER - the “U" in T.U.D.O.S. refers to bringing out all items before decluttering & organizing. Ex: gather up all your office supplies from all areas before deciding how best to streamline your workspace.
Step 3: DECIDE - the “D” in T.U.D.O.S. is about making choices about what to keep, toss, recycle, donate, sell, and return . Ask yourself what adds value, purpose, or as Marie Kondo says, “brings joy” to your life.
Step 4: ORGANIZE - the “O” in T.U.D.O.S. refers to systems you can use to store, display, or file your items. The key? Containing them in places and spaces that are easy to access, put back, and make sense to you.
Step 5: SUSTAIN - “S” in T.U.D.O.S. is all about implementing strategies that help you stay organized and clutter-free. Creating sustainable systems that work long-term, and tweaking as you go, is the key here.
TAKE ACTION:
Decide on a specific space you want to organize. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and imagine walking into your newly organized space. What does it look like? How does it feel? What’s different about how you operate in it? How do you feel? Open your eyes and consider what you can do to help you get from where you are now to where you imagined going.
4. I want to do this, but can’t start. How do I begin Organizing Mindfully?
Ah, starting is often the hardest part! Managing your expectations, emotions, and energy isn’t easy, but it’s worth it!
Starting with one small step is the key. Not the entire basement, but a single shelf; not your whole office, just the top of your desk.
Once you start, momentum builds, confidence grows, and progress follows.
You’ll also want to begin with areas and items that are emotionally less challenging. Ex: organizing your bathroom before your closet and stationary before memorabilia. Once you see progress, you’ll feel more confident making decisions in other areas. Following my T.U.D.O.S. Technique helps!
Pro Tip:
Prepare all your supplies (boxes, bins, bags, tape, labels, sharpies), put on some energizing music, write out your action plan, breathe deep, and simply begin. You can do this!
5. How do you help people Organize Mindfully?
In theory, it all sounds great and doable right? But without support and expert guidance, decluttering and organizing can get challenging, quickly.
Having someone who understands your unique organizing challenges witness your progression is powerful. Doing this alone can feel isolating.
As an organizer, educator, mentor, and coach, my non-judgmental, creative approach acknowledges what’s working well, what’s getting in the way, and what we can do to make meaningful change.
Often my clients say that my enthusiastic, practical, and creative problem-solving makes the process easier. My role is to facilitate your success.
I’m privileged to have worked with ambitious multi-passionate, and results-oriented people who want to optimize their schedule, systems, and space. I love the work that I do!
Ready to take action?