Ah, Instagram…
For an organizing coach like me, it’s an online world of beautifully organized homes mixed with tips and hacks that look so simple to do.
The other day I was scrolling through my feed and two posts stood out to me.
The first post was very visually pleasing, colour coordinated pencils and crayons in a specialised organising container.
The next post was a short video about all the cool hacks you can do to organise your stuff using… an egg carton!
I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of these types of posts before.
Here’s what makes me shudder:
The first one – the colour coordinated container idea – you could definitely spend a lot of time and money on to organise your stuff.
The other one – the egg carton hacks – is an excuse to hoard leftover egg cartons until you get around to using them for the one thing that they might actually be useful for.
There are so many awesome ideas out there that look like they’re going to be that ONE thing that is going to solve your clutter, but I’m here to tell you that there’s no such thing.
Whether you want to organize your messy desk, a disorganized kitchen, or tackle the endless battle with keeping the toys neatly packed away…
… that perfectly designed, colour coordinated container, or egg carton, isn’t going to help.
The thing is, if you have a “problem area” in your home that you want to be sorted and stored in a particular way, there probably is an organizing solution for it, BUT FIRST you need to know how to deal with the clutter before you can work out how to store it in the way that you want.
The truth is, that perfect-looking storage solution you’ve had your eye on isn’t going to solve your clutter problems.
It doesn’t.
I’ve seen this SO many times with clients. They’ve invested time and money in a storage solution, but it doesn’t hold everything they needed it to and there’s spillover clutter still sitting around months later.
The result is you being frustrated because you bought what you thought was the perfect thing, and it’s not helping.
It just adds more stress.
There are no bad ideas when it comes to decluttering and organising there’s just what ideas are going to work FOR YOU.
And I’m willing to bet that those two Instagrammable ideas that I saw would probably cause you more stress in the long run because they will only add more things to your to-do list, rather than take away and allow you to make space for living the life you want to lead.
You’re better off starting with decluttering instead of buying things you don’t really need or keeping little bits and pieces in the hopes that they might help.
The perfect solution is to keep decluttering and work on habits that have worked for you in the past.
And, if you don’t know what habits and strategies will work, then it’s time to get help.