How Organized Are You? Quiz and Excuse List Reveal the Truth! (Pt. 1 of 3)

A friend once told me, “A person with a tidy house is either never home or very boring.”

Being one to question the basics, I started to wonder if the most interesting and successful people tend to have cluttered and sloppy surroundings.

Around the same time, I was working in an office where the chief executive displayed the polar opposite in his work style.

Every time I passed his office, I caught sight of his calm, distinguished, aquiline profile, at his very elegant table desk, with just a single document before him. No evidence anywhere in his office of other work, mail, or extraneous paraphernalia. This businessman, by the way, was extremely successful and never boring!

My conclusion:

• Organization is good
• Disorganization and clutter cause stress
• Clutter is a bad influence on work performance

Consequences of Clutter

A cluttered office reflects a cluttered mind.

Organize your work area and you organize your mind, your work, and even your life perspectives.

Technology certainly facilitates a neater, nearly paperless environment. However, your computer can also accumulate clutter, slow you down, and very quickly stir up high stress levels.

Disorganization is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as
“a state in which everything is out of order”.

When a person is disorganized, he often takes two or three times longer looking for things that should be easily accessible. On a recent CBS Sunday Morning Program, organizational expert, Andrew Mellin, noted this statistic on the CBS Sunday Morning program: “We waste a year of our lives looking for lost items.”

At times, the disorganized person feels overwhelmed by the burgeoning clutter weighing on him every day.

Wouldn’t it be better to get organized for less stress?

Clutter Comfort Level

Thanks to Einstein, we know that everything is relative, right? 

Adults and children have different tolerance levels for clutter. Unless an adult points it out, young children are often oblivious to clutter. This is due to the level of cognitive maturity at their age.

Yet some adults have a very high tolerance for clutter and it is not due to low cognitive maturity. Namely, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and Steve Jobs worked creatively amidst clutter. Graphic by Stress Buffer

Indeed, many adults suffer from an extreme condition that psychologists label as a disorder called compulsive hoarding.

You may be a genius, compulsive hoarder, or somewhere in between.

In any case, most people find clutter to be an ongoing annoyance. In fact, clutter is a major stressor and can impair optimal functioning in the home and office. Since you are reading this post, you probably feel there’s some room for improvement of your organization skills and this would certainly mitigate some stress in your life.

So, let’s proceed to take inventory of your personal organization level.

Take the Clutter Quiz!

How organized are you? Gauge your organization skills against this short list of habits that are common to many of us.

        Grade yourself this way:

1 “No, never!”
2 “Maybe, sometimes.”
3 “Yes, that’s me!”

THE CLUTTER QUIZ

1. You find it difficult to find things at work or at home because of the volume of stuff you have and how they are arranged and stored inside your workspace, home, or garage.

2. When you open a drawer to look for something, it takes you more than 10 minutes to find what you need because of the clutter.

3. You find it difficult to come early or on time for scheduled events and appointments.

4. Procrastination is “your middle name”.

5. Paying bills is often a monthly exercise of asking “how many weeks do I  have before this company starts calling?”.

6. Family members, close friends or even colleagues are telling you to do something about the clutter you make at home or work. You feel bad about it most of the time, but you feel it’s hopeless or not worth your time.

7. You are chronically stressed by clutter and you wish it would just go away.

8. You have a tendency to buy two or more of the same item so you won’t have to spend time looking for the ones you misplaced.

9. You don’t normally use lists because you think they don’t work.

10. You often think that it’s going to take too much time to fix your clutter, so you just let it be.

Analysis:

Every person has a certain degree of disorganization.

However, if you said, “Yes, that’s me!” more than three times, then it’s time to get serious about repair and maintenance! Every one of those habits is an obstacle to your organization and probably clutter as well.

Moreover, disorganization is likely causing you chronic clutter stress, which as insidious ways of affecting your overall health. You must do something about it. And right away!

If you follow this three-part series, it will be entirely possible for you to get organized and relieve clutter stress.

Bonus: You are more in control of your life.

How to Organize Yourself for Less Stress:

Your First Step

To solve any problem at its core, we always try to identify the cause.  This assures an easier, more accurate and thorough solution.

Generally, disorganization includes an accumulation of stuff, papers, files and the like that are no longer useful to us.

Therefore, to overcome your disorganization and clutter problems, you must confront yourself with why you have this tendency to cling to so much stuff.

Check the following list of Excuses that many people cling to justify their clutter-filled lives.

See if you connect with any of these common excuses.

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

What if I suddenly need this one day?

My dad gave this to me when I was 13 years old.

Someone out there will pay good money for this thing.

I can find something to match this someday.

Right now it’s broken but one day 

I will have it fixed and it’s going to work perfectly again.

If I lose enough weight, I’m going to like the way I look in again.

I’m sure that one of my kids will want to hand this down to their kids in 20 years or so.

It’s such a waste to throw it away. I bought it at a bargain price.

One day this is going to be a collectible and I’m going to have a true treasure sitting right here!

One day I’m going to have enough free time to start reading again. I want this to be there on that day.

Et cetera, Et cetera, Et cetera

Any of these sound like you? This is not too unusual. However . . .

Are you making an excuse every single time you get the yen to get organized?

If so, you’re giving yourself permission to continue a bad habit.

It’s time to get off the side roads.

Take the road straight ahead to the place of No Excuses!

What should you do now?

First: Congratulate yourself on taking your first steps on how to organize yourself for less stress! You’ve scored yourself on your organization level and identified your excuses.

Second: Stop rationalizing your old habits with those old excuses. It’s time to step away from your nonfunctional ways and let your rational part of yourself guide you to better habits.

Third: Proceed to Part 2 of our series – – There you will discover how clutter affects your mind and how to retrain your mind to love your new ways of getting and staying organized. See you there …

By the way, if you haven’t accessed your FREE – –

10 Stress Habits and Alternatives!

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