Progress Over Perfection
When it comes to organizing, your mindset matters. How you think about your space and what you want out of it is huge in creating a home that you really love. Organizing and decluttering is also a lot of work, and it’s a process that will take time. How and when you organize is up to you, and it’s important to celebrate every bit of progress.
Oftentimes, conversations around organizing and owning your physical space can become comparative: your home should look a certain way, and you should use specific organization tools, and if you don’t have it all together, you’re doing it all wrong. This mindset is unfortunately very prevalent, and it can make it difficult to not only get started on your journey, but to enjoy the process as well. To truly be successful at organizing, it’s important to focus on your own needs rather than the glossiest picture on social media.
When you’re starting the journey of organizing your home, your mind, and your life, progress is progress.
Go At Your Own Pace
Organizing and decluttering takes time, and it can be really overwhelming. At Organizing Maniacs, we celebrate the small wins. If you spent 10 minutes cleaning out your junk drawer before work, that’s awesome. If it takes you three months to reorganize your closet, that’s awesome too!
If you’re looking to organize and declutter your entire home, it can take months to work through every room on top of attending to work, family, and other life needs. Give yourself grace from the outset: while giving yourself a timeline can help you stay on track, it’s okay if things don’t go the way you plan. Maybe you only have time to work on your home once a month, or you find you need multiple sessions to declutter one room. This is totally fine. The important thing is to set yourself up for success and give yourself the time you need to accomplish what you want to get done. If this takes a day, great! If this takes a month, also great.
Whatever timeline you choose, it should work for you and your family; it doesn’t have to work for anyone else.
Embrace the Small Wins
Home projects are typically organized by large goals: you’re cleaning out the garage or redoing a bathroom; you're preparing for an estate sale or your kid is moving out for the first time. These are big adjustments that cause big changes to the house, and it’s important to recognize your changing life stages. But in and around these larger and more time-consuming projects are the small wins. Maybe you’ve cleaned out a particular room, or you parted with something you’ve been holding onto that you don’t need anymore. There are so many small wins that deserve your attention and celebration. Setting specific rewards for when you reach those small, manageable goals is proven to help improve motivation and help you stay consistent with your projects. What these rewards look like is up to you, but it should be something you want that will motivate you to complete your goal. By recognizing these small achievements, the project continues to feel worthwhile, and you can physically feel the progress that you’ve made.
Prioritize Joy Over Perfection
Your space is not meant to be perfect. You do not live in an IKEA showroom. You are not a real estate agent selling this home (although we can help you with staging your home when you’re ready to sell). You live in this home, and the work you do on it is meant to make it feel livable.
As much as it can be tempting to follow every piece of advice from your favorite Tik Tok influencer or obsess over how clean your space is at all times, doing so won’t really help you or anyone else. You’ll only stress yourself out and feel like you and your home aren’t enough.
Organizing is meant to bring peace, and if it’s not doing that, then it’s a sign that a new direction is needed. You might find that the organizing methods you chose are too complicated, or you might just need a break. Whatever it is, honor that. Your space will still be there, and you won’t lose anything by finding joy in what you already have and not what social images make you think you need.
Progress is progress, no matter what that looks like for you. Recognizing and celebrating this continuously is important for fueling your commitment to organizing your home and your life. You don’t need things to look picture-perfect for it to be perfect for you and your family; at the end of the day, the only person whose opinion matters is yours. Pat yourself on the back for all that you’ve achieved so far. Remember how far you’ve come, and as you continue to reach your goals, keep remembering. You’re doing great, and the joy your home will bring is all you need.