I’ve Worked with a Professional Organizer. Why is My House a Wreck?
But I did the work, right?
You were stressed, overwhelmed, always picking up but never enjoying your home. You built up the courage to talk to someone about it. You asked for help.
You did all the work of a big declutter in your home. You went through room by room, item by item, deciding what stays and what goes. You made it to the part of your life where you knew what was in your house and where to find it. Your family members could even find things. You were finally enjoying your home and your family and your life.
Then one day you looked up and there were piles all over the house, drawers are getting stuck, and there seem to be more clothes on the floor than in dressers or closets. What happened?
Did you do the right work?
Doing the big declutter is the first part of the work. It’s often the most time consuming. The next part of the work is the systems. This includes the daily, weekly, and monthly work of picking up and decluttering.
Imagine your bloodwork came back showing elevated levels that the doctor wants to keep an eye on. Your doctor tells you to eat more vegetables and move your body a little more. So for the next 6 months you do just that and when you go back, your bloodwork is better. Another 6 months go by, you go back to the doctor and your levels are elevated again. “Have you been keeping up with the same lifestyle that helped you get your levels back to normal?,” your doctor asks. “No, I thought I got them back so I went back to the way I was living before.”
The big declutter is important to get you to a clean slate but then you live in your house. And if you have a spouse and kids, you have multiple people living in the house. That doesn’t even account for the things that are coming in with each person. When you finished decluttering your house (even while you were working on decluttering your house) the items in your house were being added to. That’s why maintenance is important.
I feel confident that your Professional Organizer mentioned and probably even walked through a plan to help you maintain the organization in your house. But this is the biggest reason why a house gets back to a “wreck” even after working with a Professional Organizer: you don’t keep up with the systems. Some other reasons that we won’t discuss in this article is that the things coming into your house have overrun the space in your house or your calendar is too full. No matter what the reason, maintenance sessions will always help.
Common Systems
Systems are just about as personal as the questions to determine what you want to keep in your home. However, there are some common systems that will help any household as long as you make them work for you… and work the system.
Pick up daily.
At the end of each day, take 5-10 minutes to put everything back where it belongs. This will be a lot faster and easier if you pick up after yourself as you use things. Start with an end of the day pick up by choosing a time of day or connect it to another activity you routinely do. For example, after dinner put the dishes away and then put everything else in the house away. If you have family members, make it a family activity in which each person picks up their own things. This is good for mail/papers and backpacks as well. That can all be done as soon as everyone is inside the house from the end of the work or school day.
Clean out weekly.
This is especially helpful for food. Especially food in the fridge or on the counter that just doesn’t stay fresh longer than a week. Whether you meal plan or not, this is going to help you to keep food waste at a minimum and a not-sticky smelling fridge and kitchen at a maximum. Have kids? Make it fun by sending the kids on a food scavenger hunt. Brave? Let them make a meal with the things they find.
Declutter monthly.
If you’ve just done a big declutter, keep it up with a monthly maintenance session. If you have had trouble keeping up with things in the past, you will benefit from using a Professional Organizer for these sessions. Don’t worry, you will get through so much more in one session than you did originally. Hopefully you were already able to notice a big difference in your ability to make decisions from your first session to the end of your decluttering sessions. What may have taken you 5 hours to start with will likely only take you 1 hour in maintenance sessions. If you are working in a few spaces every month, you will have worked through your house again in a year or less.
(If you’ve worked with me before you know that I recommend going through your spaces every six months. This is the same as a monthly maintenance session which should get you through your whole house in less than a year.)
What Should I Do Now?
If you feel the same way that you did before your first big declutter, reach back out to your Professional Organizer. There is no judgement, only help. You know so much more about yourself now than you did before. You know more about how the process works and now, most importantly, you know where you need help in maintaining. There is no shame in knowing yourself and asking for help. We all need a doctor.