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Hi. I'm Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we're
going to find out if you measure up. Are you really organized? And we're going to do that
by looking at the definition of what it means to be organized. I've created this definition
as an acronym of the word "neater." So today in Part 1 we're going to look at the first
three letters, N-E and A. And in Part 2, we'll be looking at T-E and R.
So let's look at the first letter, "N." It stands for "not perfect." We tend to measure
ourselves against pictures in magazines. And we need to understand that those pictures
are created by teams of people, including interior designers, stylists, lighting people,
photographers, all these people are experts and they create beautiful pictures that inspire
us, and that's great. But we need to be inspired, not discouraged by what we see there and we
need to expect our homes to be lived in. So organizing is not like the picture you see
here [POP] on the screen, it's not about lining up everything by color or everything being
perfectly straight. It's about doing things that save you time and save you stress.
So let's talk about the next letter, "E," "effective." It means doing what works. We
just did another video about this in our previous post and I showed you several things that
I've done that were also not perfect, and that they just worked. And they weren't necessarily
the most tailored solution. So you need to make sure that you are easy on yourself, you're
forgiving of yourself, you just do something that makes sense for you and your family and
it may not be something that the experts would have told you to do. And if you are a parent
you'll understand this analogy. If your child goes through a phase of eating peanut butter
sandwiches every single day [POP], go with it. They'll grow out of it. They're not going
to get hurt by it. And it's easier for you and they're happy. Just go with it. It's the
same way with organizing. Whatever systems you've got going in your home, even if they're
kind of silly, if they work for you, just do that.
Okay, the next letter is "A," for "always improving." Now, this is something I talk
about because I often tell people that I am organized because I am lazy. I don't like
to do things the hard way. I'm always looking for shortcuts. And when you're always looking
to improve, you are looking for an app to do that for you, you're looking for a way
to delegate it, you're looking for a way to eliminate that chore from your list. So I
have three lazy questions for you that you can ask yourself every day to look for these
shortcuts: One, how could I do this better? Two, how could I do this faster? Or, three,
how could I not do this at all? If you can delegate something or cross it off your list,
fantastic. Maybe it's just not [POP] necessary, maybe it's something you've perfectionistically
thought that you should be doing and you don't need to do. But try to cross these things
off your list, find easier, better ways to do things, use apps, use tools, get ideas
from your friends, [POP] but don't do things the hard way. Improve all the time so that
you can have better systems in your life.
Okay, those are the first three letters. We're going to find out how you measure up more
next week in Part 2. In the meantime, if you want to read more about the "neater" acronym
and get ahead of me and find out what the last three letters are for, you can check
it out in my book at http://www.clutterdiet.com/buybook. I have The Clutter Diet, The Skinny on Organizing
Your Home and Taking Control of Your Life.
See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.