Morgenstern - Organizing from the Inside Out, Second Edition: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life

Organizing from the Inside Out

SECOND EDITION

SECOND EDITION

The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life

JULIE MORGENSTERN

Owl Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010

An Owl Book and are registered trademarks
of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright 1998, 2004 by Julie Morgenstern
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Librarx of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morgenstern, Julie.

Organizing from the inside out : the foolproof system for organizing your home, your office, and your life / Julie Morgenstern. 2nd ed.

p. cm.

An Owl book.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7589-2

ISBN-10: 0-8050-7589-5

1. Home economics. 2. Orderliness. I. Title.

TX147.M67 2004

640dc22 2004047460

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

First Edition 1998
Second Edition 2004

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7

To my daughter, Jessi, whose own magnificent gift of writing inspired me to reach for my dream. May this book, in turn, inspire you to reach for yours.

And to my parents, whose unwavering support and belief in me even through the messy times is a miracle.

Organizing from the Inside Out

SECOND EDITION

OK, so youve been trying for years to get organized.

Youve bought tons of books, clipped magazine articles, even taken an occasional workshop.

Youve enviously looked through the pages of organizing catalogs, the aisles of hardware stores, and the pristine environments of organized friends and colleagues, aching for the perfect answer to the war against clutter.

Youve spent countless dollars on a myriad of baskets, bins, sorters, racks, hooks, calendars, and cubby systems you were sure would put your life in order.

Youve even stayed home from picnics, parties, and dates to attack your clutter by applying the Organizing Credo: When in doubt, throw it out.

Yet, for all your efforts, you never seem to quite cross the finish line.

You experience a moment of relief, a flash of promise, but maintaining the peaceful bliss of an organized space remains out of reach. Before long, the clutter is back, and chaos is reigning once more.

You are suffering from a condition I call the Yo-yo Organizing Syndrome. It worksor rather, it doesnt work-just like yo-yo dieting, where you experiment with method after method of losing weight, making lots of enthusiastic starts, but always give up before reaching the finish line, and you wind up losing no weight or even weighing more than before. With Yo-yo Organizing, no matter how far along you get, you always end up slipping back and are forced to start from ground zero the next time you gather your willpower.

Frustrating. Maddening. Overwhelming. Demoralizing. Whether you are mildly or wildly disorganized, getting organized can often seem an impossible task.

But is it?

Absolutely not. The frustrations you experience trying to get organized are not the result of some innate inability. I contend they are due to your never having learned how to organize. Its not a subject taught in school. As a result, you have developed quite a few misconceptions, beliefs, and ineffective techniques that are standing in your way. The goal of this book is to radically change your thinking and approach to the organizing process. It will challenge all of your previous ideas about getting organized and cast light on what has been holding you back. It will show you specific techniques to make any organizing project simple, manageable, and attainable, rather than frustrating, overwhelming, and impossible.

A complete re-education, Organizing from the Inside Out, second edition, teaches you how to work with your personality rather than against it to achieve the results you are looking for. It was designed as a timeless reference book; you can read and reread its pages to master the fundamental principles of organizing anything. This books lessons, filled with the secrets of a professional organizer, provide you with a framework for taking advantage of all the other organizing books, articles, seminars, and products on the market.

The days of Yo-yo Organizing are overyou are about to discover how gratifying and successful organizing can be.

Those of you reading this book probably fall into one of three groups:

Youve struggled your whole life to get organized, and have never quite succeeded.

You used to be organized, but lost your grip somewhere along the way.

You feel basically organized, but are constantly looking for ways to improve your skills and systems.

Whichever group you fall into, one thing is true: You want quick solutions.

You dont have much time on your hands and need to become better organized swiftly so you can get on with your life. You dont want it to take forever because organizing is only a means to an end: to live your life more fully.

To that end, this book is structured to be as reader-friendly as possible. The only requirement is that you read which deal with the problem areas in your home or office that are of interest to you, and apply the principles youve learned to create customized systems that work for you.

In 1989, I created Task Masters, a full-service organizing business for homes, offices, and everything in between. Since then, hundreds of clients have called me when their own attempts at getting organized have failed. Its not easy for them to make that call. Some hold on to my number for years before working up the nerve. They are embarrassed. And they are afraid.

Their biggest fears? That theirs is the worst clutter problem Ive ever seen. That there is little I can do to help, and that it will take years to dig them out, if it can ever be done at all. They cant imagine where to start, and can see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Clients are always amazed that (1) I am neither shocked by nor pessimistic about what they show me, and (2) I can quickly map out a plan of action. How am I able to do this? Because nearly two decades as a professional organizer have taught me that there is a simple, reliable method that works every time, no matter how formidable the task.

Organizing from the Inside Out demystifies the organizing process by teaching you that formula, the same one I use with my clients; I promise it will help you win the war against clutter forever, just as it has helped them.

Most other books, articles, and seminars on organizing tend to focus on the solution rather than the problem: Heres a hot idea for organizing a bathroom; heres a cool technique for organizing your files; heres a neat tip for organizing your closets. What they ignore are the internal and external issuesthe psychological quirks, hidden dissuaders, and common mistakes we all makethat stand between us and achieving our dream of a usefully arranged and organized space. And yet without understanding these all-important issues, no amount of hot ideas, cool techniques, or neat tips will work.