I was working with a client yesterday, and I asked what she had been organizing between our virtual sessions.
She said, “I cleared off my dining room table. It was driving me crazy.”
I said, “That’s great. I love it! What did you do with everything?”
She said, “I put it in bags.”
I asked, “Did you sort or categorize it?”
She looked at me with wide eyes, like she was about to be in big trouble, and said, “No.”
Was she in trouble? Nope. Did she accomplish her goal of clearing the table? Yes. Did she accidentally just give herself another frustrating clutter project in the meantime? Also, yes.
Here’s the thing…she got exactly what she wanted. The table was clear. She experienced immediate relief and visual calm.
That’s a big win.
But now, she has two giant bags of completely random stuff sitting somewhere else in the house, waiting for her to deal with them. And we all know how that goes…
We tell ourselves we’ll get to it later, but later never comes. And then one day, we happen upon that bag and can’t remember where or when it’s from, and what we should do with it.
Different spot, same problem.
So often, we feel stressed or overwhelmed by a space, so we jump into action. We just want it to feel better. So, we clear it, move it, bag it, hide it, or try to do something (literally anything) to get that immediate sense of relief.
And it works…for a minute.
But the goal is a little incomplete. Because what we want isn’t just a clear table.
We want strong systems that support our daily life. We want to be able to use that space easily. We want to know where things go. We want paperwork to be manageable in real-time, rather than turning into a pile that stresses us out.
We want the space to support us, not just look better for a moment.
When we act from that, “I need this gone right now” feeling, we tend to just shuffle things around the house.
We don’t actually solve anything…we just shift the chaos to a new container. And then wonder why it keeps coming back.
So, here’s a different approach to consider.
Instead of going big, go small…like teeny tiny. Smaller than you even think you should.
Choose something so easy it almost feels like it doesn’t count.
You could:
- Grab a handful of unwanted items and take them to be donated
- Clear dishes from the living room
- Run one load of laundry
- Make a phone call you’ve been putting off
- Throw away old bread ties in your junk drawer
That’s it.
I know that doesn’t sound like a big transformation, but it is.
Because if you do a handful of these small actions consistently, you’ll start to see real change.
And more importantly, you start to trust yourself. You start to have the experience of “I can actually follow through on this,” or “I was able to finish that,” instead of “I tried and it didn’t work” or “things always end up worse than when I started.”
Organizing isn’t just about getting your home in order. It’s about learning how to move through your space in a way that works for you, so you don’t end up burned out or overwhelmed.
If you’re feeling the urge to do a big reset right now, take a quick pause instead.
What’s the smallest thing you could do that would actually move things forward?
Start there.
It may not feel like much, but it’s a start. And that’s all you truly need.
